The Burma Muslim Congress (BMC) was a

Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...

political party in Burma (present-day

Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John C. Wells, Joh ...

History

The party was founded around the same time as the

Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League The Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League (AFPFL), ; abbreviated , ''hpa hsa pa la'' was the dominant political alliance in Burma from 1945 to 1958. It consisted of political parties and mass and class organizations. The league evolved out of t ...

(AFPFL), which it became affiliated with in December 1945. The party's first president,

U Razak U Razak (Urdu: ; ; my, ဦးရာဇတ်, ; also Abdul Razak; 20 January 1898 – 19 July 1947) was a Burmese politician and an educationalist. He was a Bamar of Tamil ancestry and also was a cabinet minister in Aung San's pre-indepe ...

, became president of the AFPFL's

Mandalay Mandalay ( or ; ) is the second-largest city in Myanmar, after Yangon. Located on the east bank of the Irrawaddy River, 631km (392 miles) (Road Distance) north of Yangon, the city has a population of 1,225,553 (2014 census). Mandalay was fo ...

branch in 1946.Haruhiro Fukui (1985) ''Political parties of Asia and the Pacific'', Greenwood Press, p119 Razak was subsequently appointed Minister of Education and Planning in Aung San's government, a post he held until he was assassinated alongside San.Moshe Yegar "The Muslims of Burma", A study of a minority Group, p75 Following Razak's death, secretary-general U Khin Maung Lat succeeded him as party president. He became a member of the AFPFL Supreme Council, and was appointed Minister of Justice in 1950, a post he held until 1958. A few months after independence in 1948, new Prime Minister

U Nu Nu ( my, ဦးနု; ; 25 May 1907 – 14 February 1995), commonly known as U Nu also known by the honorific name Thakin Nu, was a leading Burmese statesman and nationalist politician. He was the first Prime Minister of Burma under the pr ...

requested that the BMC leave the AFPFL. In response, U Khin Maung Lat decided to discontinue the party's Islamic religious activities and rejoin the AFPFL. In 1954 the AFPFL Supreme Council asked the party to fully merge into the AFPFL and cease to exist as a separate organisation. Although this request was initially refused, the party did merge in 1956. The party was immediately re-established by U Than Myint, who moved it to the left. It joined the

National United Front The National United Front ( my, အမျိုးသား ညီညွတ်ရေး တပ်ပေါင်းစု) was a political alliance in Myanmar, Burma. History The alliance was formed in 1955 as a successor to the People's Democr ...

alliance in 1958, but left in 1960, changing its name to Pathi Congress and began campaigning for a separate state for Burmese Muslims, before haemorrhaging support.

References

{{Asia in topic, Islam in Islam in Myanmar Defunct political parties in Myanmar