PART 3 — WHEN MERIT WAS NOT ENOUGH
From Excellence to Mass Production: How Racism, Nepotism and the Loss of Standards Damaged Myanmar’s Medical Education
I have hesitated before writing this.
Because this is not supposed to be my autobiography. I have written about my schooldays, my medical education, my teachers, my examinations and my professional life elsewhere. I do not consider myself a genius. I have never claimed extraordinary IQ or a photographic memory.
What I had was something much less glamorous: persistence.
For years, I studied. I failed some examinations. I tried again. I sat through demanding professional examinations. I became a doctor. I taught Anatomy. I continued trying for postgraduate training. And when opportunities were repeatedly closed to me, I eventually left.
This is not the story of a gifted genius being robbed of a throne. It is the story of an ordinary student asking for one simple thing: judge me by what I can do.
That is why, after more than half a century, the memory still hurts.
When “Passing” Actually Meant Something
In our time, medical education was not designed primarily to produce large numbers of graduates. It was designed to produce doctors who could survive the standards of the profession.
Students were examined repeatedly. They could fail. They could repeat. They could be forced into supplementary examinations, or change professions altogether, or be rejected outright. It was stressful — sometimes brutally so. But the underlying philosophy was clear: a medical degree had to mean something.
The examination was not asking, “Have you attended the lectures?” It was asking, “Do you actually know your subject?”
At the Institute of Medicine, Mandalay, our intake was only about 100 medical students. By the 2nd M.B.,B.S. stage, only around 60 remained. By the Final M.B.,B.S., only around 30 eventually passed. These are my own cohort’s recollections, not a claim to nationwide statistics — but they capture the spirit of the system.
Behind those students was an astonishing investment in teaching. In our 2nd M.B. classes, there were roughly 120 tutors, lecturers and trainers for about 60 students — something approaching two trainers per student. This was education as intensive human investment.
Anatomy, Physiology and Biochemistry were not subjects to be survived by memorising lecture notes. Students faced repeated written, practical and viva examinations, and the viva was not a friendly conversation. You stood alone before a tutor, lecturer or professor and answered questions directly, on cadavers, bones, specimens and microscopes. If you knew your subject, the examination continued. If you did not, it could become even longer.
A student could be expected to distinguish the eight carpal bones, identify a bone’s side and orientation, and explain its relationships with the surrounding ligaments, tendons, muscles, arteries and nerves — and then defend the answer face-to-face. Students were expected to consult major original textbooks — Gray’s Anatomy, Cunningham, Gardner, Grant and others — not simply one prescribed set of lecture notes.
By today’s standards, some of this memorisation may appear excessive. Modern integrated curricula rightly put more weight on clinical reasoning — differential diagnosis, investigation and treatment — than on reciting every anatomical relationship to the same depth. That is educational evolution, and it is not something to resent.
But there is a profound difference between reducing unnecessary memorisation and reducing academic standards. The old system may have overemphasised factual mastery in some areas, but it demonstrated an extraordinary seriousness about standards themselves. The danger in what came later was never that education became more clinically relevant. The danger was that academic rigor itself could be diluted.
Those two things — evolution and deterioration — must never be confused.
There is also a darker, human dimension to this history that should not be romanticised. Former students remember the psychological pressure of those years as severe, and some, according to personal recollections from the period, were driven to the point of suicide. Academic rigor without adequate pastoral support can become destructive. The objective of education should never be to make students miserable. But neither should compassion become an excuse for abandoning standards. The ideal lies somewhere between cruelty and complacency: demanding excellence while supporting the student who is struggling to reach it.
From Education to Production
Later, the philosophy changed. Expansion became the priority. Numbers became impressive. Intake grew from roughly 100 to 1,500 in a single cohort.
Expansion itself was not the problem. A poor country needs more doctors, engineers, teachers and scientists. The real danger arose when mass expansion was not matched by a corresponding expansion in resources, teaching time, clinical exposure and assessment. Fifteen times as many students cannot be trained properly merely by changing the number written on an admission list. You need something approaching fifteen times the educational infrastructure. Otherwise the institution becomes an assembly line — and doctors are not widgets.
A university is not a factory. You cannot raise the production target from 100 to 1,500 and congratulate yourself because the statistics look impressive. A country can produce more certificates. It can produce more graduates. It can even produce more doctors on paper. But if the training, examination and supervision have been diluted along the way, it has not necessarily produced more competent doctors — only more people carrying medical degrees.
Mass production may be appropriate for commodities. It is dangerous when applied to professionals whose mistakes can cost human lives.
The Wound Beneath the Argument
There was an even more dangerous disease than mass production: the belief that ancestry could matter more than ability.
Once a society starts asking “Who are you?” before asking “What can you do?”, meritocracy begins to die. A mixed-blood child may be rejected. A Muslim may be restricted. A person without connections may be overlooked. A politically inconvenient scholar may be discarded. Meanwhile, someone with the correct background or the correct connections advances instead. The individual loses an opportunity. The nation loses talent.
I was one of those students who repeatedly performed at the top of my class and achieved strong examination results — I recorded 99 in Chemistry and 100 in Mathematics, and I was encouraged toward medicine by my family. Yet when I sought postgraduate surgical training in Burma, I was rejected — not once, but across four attempts. I was not unaware of the reason people whispered. I was a “Kalar.” That word was not simply a description of ancestry. In the discriminatory atmosphere of the time, it could become a verdict.
I later sat for the MRCOG Part 1 and passed it after six months of preparation. That contrast does not, by itself, prove the motive behind any single rejection — I want to be careful there. But it establishes, at minimum, that I experienced the gap between my academic record and my treatment as profoundly discriminatory.
The tragedy is not that one student was rejected. The tragedy is what happens when a country repeatedly rejects capable people because of ancestry, religion, family connections or political convenience. The rejected person may lose an opportunity. The country loses the professional it could have had.
History gives us a painful irony here. Some of Myanmar’s most capable people have been treated as outsiders because of mixed ancestry — Dr Nyi Nyi himself later became caught in questions surrounding his ancestry and political acceptability. Others left Burma, some pushed out, some simply unable to see a future there. Many of those people went on to contribute to the countries that received them — countries that did not ask only “Where were your ancestors born?” but asked instead, “What can you do?”
A country that rejects a talented doctor because of his ancestry may imagine it has protected itself. A country that promotes a less capable person because of connections may imagine it has rewarded loyalty. A university that lowers standards to inflate its graduation statistics may imagine it has expanded education. All three are making the same mistake. They are measuring the wrong thing. They are counting people instead of cultivating people.
Racism does not make a country stronger. Nepotism does not make a university better. Lowering standards does not make more doctors. They only make a country poorer in the one resource it can never replace: human talent.
What Did Myanmar Actually Lose?
When a talented student leaves Myanmar, Myanmar does not merely lose one student. It may lose a future specialist, a future professor, a future researcher, a future teacher of hundreds — and the thousands of patients those professionals might eventually have served. The loss multiplies through generations. The migrant’s children may become doctors, engineers, scientists, academics and administrators in another country. His grandchildren may become leaders there. The migrant may not, in the end, be the ultimate loser. The country that drove away his potential may be.
Myanmar does not need fewer educated people. It needs better education. It does not need fewer universities. It needs universities that can maintain standards. It does not need fewer doctors. It needs well-trained doctors. It does not need fewer opportunities. It needs opportunities allocated according to ability rather than ancestry, connections or political loyalty.
A nation does not become great by keeping its “pure” people and driving away its “mixed” people. It becomes great by developing every capable person it possesses. If a country rejects its talented children because of racism, nepotism or prejudice, those children may eventually find another country willing to recognise them. They may survive. They may prosper. Their children may prosper even more. But the country that rejected them may never recover what it lost.
That is not the victory of nationalism. That is national, self-inflicted brain drain. The greatest resource Myanmar has repeatedly wasted is not gold, oil, jade or natural gas. It is human talent.
“Self-Praise” or the Right to Tell Our Own Story?
Some readers have criticised MMNN articles as “self-praising” or as propaganda. I understand the criticism. But I would answer with a thought inspired by the Malaysian writer and playwright Kee Thuan Chye and his Once Upon a Malaysian Dream: this is our version, our perspective, our experience. Others may have different versions. We respect them. But we also have the right to tell ours.
MMNN does not claim to hold the only version of Myanmar’s history. We are presenting the version seen from where we stand. Some of us are Myanmar Muslims who have lived through discrimination. Some have been forced into exile, some left voluntarily but never stopped loving the country, some became migrants, some became refugees, some lost citizenship, homes and careers. Some remained inside Myanmar and experienced the same history from a completely different position.
For decades, many of these experiences were ignored, minimised, misunderstood, or simply never recorded. So here is the uncomfortable question: if Myanmar Muslims — self-exiled, forcibly exiled, migrants, refugees or “pariahs” — do not record our own experiences, who will? Perhaps someone else eventually will. But they will see Myanmar from their position. We see it from ours. That does not make our version infallible. It makes it necessary.
We welcome historians, journalists and readers who challenge our interpretation. If they have better evidence, let them present it. History becomes richer when different voices are allowed to speak. But asking a minority to remain silent because its testimony sounds like self-praise is another matter entirely. A people who do not write their own history risk becoming footnotes in somebody else’s.
MMNN does not claim: this is the only truth. We say: this is what we saw, this is what we experienced, here is our evidence — now you have the right to judge.
The world already knew what a Burmese medical graduate meant. For generations, Myanmar’s medical graduates were recognised internationally for their rigorous training; students came from abroad for postgraduate education in Burma, and Burmese-trained doctors went abroad and stood shoulder to shoulder with graduates of any other country. We do not need to trace every footprint to prove that. The footprints are already there. What matters now is understanding how a system that once produced such graduates gradually came undone.
I was born in Burma, educated in Burma, and shaped by Burmese education. Like the Burmese saying about the smell of nga-pi, some things stay with you even after you leave. I may not like the smell — and I certainly don’t eat it — but I cannot deny that I grew up with it. Myanmar’s education is part of my own history, including its achievements and its failures. That is precisely why I am able to criticise it without hatred. I am criticising something that formed me, because I still care about what it could have been.
Chinthae Lae Pyan
At my present age, I sometimes look back over my shoulder like the Burmese saying Chinthae Lae Pyan — the lion turning its head to look behind. And I see my failures differently now.
For many years I regarded those repeated rejections as bitter disappointments. I tried again and again. I wanted postgraduate training. I wanted to remain and serve in Myanmar. But perhaps Allah had other plans. There is an old wisdom shared across traditions: man proposes, God disposes. Shakespeare said something similar — there is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will.
What if I had succeeded? What if I had obtained the training I sought and remained there? Perhaps I would have quietly practised medicine. Perhaps I would never have written. Perhaps I would never have documented the history, persecution and experiences of people from Myanmar.
After leaving Myanmar, my life took a direction I never expected. I wrote. I documented. I translated. I preserved old records. I wrote for newspapers and journals. I maintained blogs and archives. I made videos. I kept speaking about Myanmar Muslims, and about a country I had never stopped loving.
The rejection was real. The discrimination was real. The hurt was real. But the rejection did not have to become the end of the story. Allah can turn a closed door into a road — and sometimes it takes decades to understand where that road was leading.
In Myanmar, my world had been comparatively limited. Later, living and working in Malaysia, I encountered people from communities whose names I had barely known — different Chin communities, several Kachin groups, Rakhines, Pashus, people from Ye and Myeik (Tavoy), among many others. Many came not as tourists but as migrants and refugees, seeking safety and a livelihood. If I had remained where I originally wanted to be, perhaps I would have served mainly the people around me. Instead, my unexpected journey allowed me to meet and serve people from many different corners of Myanmar.
I once thought I had lost Myanmar. Perhaps, in another sense, Myanmar lost me. But Allah gave me another place to live, work, raise my children and serve people — including, eventually, people from communities I might otherwise never have known.
So, after all these years, I do not want to finish this story with hatred. I have had enough bitterness. I would rather finish it with gratitude.
Alhamdulillah.
I did not get everything I asked for. Perhaps I received what Allah wanted me to have. I tried. I failed. I tried again. Some doors closed. Other doors opened that I could never have imagined. I left Myanmar, but Myanmar never left me. I became a doctor. I taught. I wrote. I documented. I served migrants and refugees from communities I had barely known existed when I was young. I made mistakes. I suffered disappointments. I became angry. Sometimes I became bitter.
But now, looking back over my shoulder — Chinthae Lae Pyan — I see my life differently. Perhaps I did not always get my way. But perhaps Allah was guiding me His way.
Shukur Alhamdulillah.
I did it my way. And, InSyaAllah, I did it in the service of others.
Man proposes; Allah disposes.
I tried.
I failed.
I tried again.
Some doors closed.
Other doors opened that I could never have imagined.
I left Myanmar, but Myanmar never left me.
I became a doctor.
I taught.
I wrote.
I documented.
I served migrants and refugees from communities I had barely known existed when I was young.
I made mistakes. I suffered disappointments. I became angry. Sometimes I became bitter.
But now, looking back over my shoulder—Chinthae Lae Pyan—I see my life differently.
Perhaps I did not always get my way.
But perhaps Allah was guiding me His way.
And after all these years, I can say:
Shukur Alhamdulillah.
I did it my way.
And, InSyaAllah, I did it in the service of others.
