Three prominent Muslim students from Thandwe town earned distinction in Myanmar’s early university history:

1. U Kyaw Khin (BSc, B.L) (Thandwe) During the 1930–31 academic year, when the University Students’ Union was first formed, U Kyaw Khin served as Chairman, with U Yar Shit as Secretary. Together, they organized and led the student body.
2. U Ba Shin (Thandwe) On December 1, 1920, the British colonial government enacted the University Act. In response, on December 3, eleven senior students from Rangoon College gathered at the southeast corner of the Shwedagon Pagoda and pledged to boycott the Act. Among these first student strike leaders were two natives of Thandwe — U Ba Shin and U Ba U. The names of those eleven pioneering students are inscribed on a commemorative stone pillar at the Shwedagon Pagoda.
3. U Htun Sein (Thandwe) In the 1931–32 academic year, elections were held for the executive committee of the University Students’ Union. U Htun Sein was elected as Chairman.

Note: This account is excerpted from Yangon University (1920–2020): Centennial Reflections by Myanmar language scholar Dr. Aung Zaw.

This translation highlights the role of Thandwe-born Muslim students in Myanmar’s early university and nationalist movements. Their leadership in student unions and strikes against colonial policies placed them at the forefront of both educational and political history.

Maung Maung

သံတွဲမြို့တွင်မွေးဖွား‌

ခဲ့သောနိုင်ငံ့ဂုဏ်ဆောင်

အစ္စလမ်ဘာသာဝင်

တက္ကသိုလ်ကျောင်းသားကြီး(၃)ဦး။

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

၁။ဦးကျော်ခင်(BSc,B.L)(သံတွဲ)

၁၉၃၀-၃၁စာသင်နှစ်တက္ကသိုလ်ကျောင်းသားများသမဂ္ဂကိုစတင်ဖွဲ့စည်းစဉ်ကဦးကျော်ခင်ကဥက္ကဌ၊ဦးရာရှစ်ကအတွင်းရေးမှူးအဖြစ်

တကသနှင့်ကျောင်းသားထုကိုဦးဆောင်ဖွဲ့စည်းခဲ့သည်။

၂။ဦးဘရှင်(သံတွဲ)

ဗြိတိသျှအစိုးရက ၁.၁၂.၁၉၂၀နေ့တွင် ယူနီဗာစတီအက်ဥပဒေကိုအတည်ပြုခဲ့ရာ ဒီဇင်ဘာလ၃ရက်နေ့တွင် ရန်ကုန်ကောလိပ်မှ ကျောင်းသားကြီး၁၁ဦးတို့သည် ရွှေတိဂုံစေတီ၏ရင်ပြင်စနေထောင့်တွင် တွေ့ဆုံ၍ ရန်ကုန်တက္ကသိုလ်ဥပဒေကိုသပိတ်မှောက်ရန်

သစ္စာဓိဌာန်ပြုခဲ့ကြသည်။

ထိုပထမကျောင်းသားသပိတ်ခေါင်းဆောင်များတွင် သံတွဲမြို့သားဦးဘရှင်နှင့်ဦးဘဦးတို့နှစ်ဦးပါဝင်ခဲ့သည်။

ထိုကျောင်းသားကြီး၁၁ဦး၏အမည်ကို ရွှေတိဂုံကုန်းတော်စနေထောင့်တွင် ကျောက်စာတိုင်ရေးထိုးဂုဏ်ပြုထားသည်။

၃။ဦးထွန်းစိန်(သံတွဲ)

၁၉၃၁-၃၂စာသင်နှစ်တွင် တက္ကသိုလ်ကျောင်းသားများသမဂ္ဂ၏ အလုပ်အမှုဆောင်အဖွဲ့ကိုရွေးချယ်ခဲ့ကြရာ

ဦးထွန်းစိန်သည်

တကသဥက္ကဌအဖြစ်ရွေးချယ်ခံခဲ့ရသည်။

မှတ်ချက် – မြန်မာစာပါမောက္ခ ဒေါက်တာအောင်ဇော်၏

ရန်ကုန်တက္ကသိုလ်

(၁၉၂၀-၂၀၂၀)

ရာပြည့်အလွမ်း စာအုပ်မှ‌ကောက်နှုတ်ဖော်ပြပါသည်။

Thandwe’s Muslim Students and the Birth of Myanmar’s University Movement

Yangon, MMNN — The early decades of the 20th century were a turning point in Myanmar’s educational and political history. At the heart of this transformation stood a group of Muslim students from Thandwe, whose leadership and courage helped shape the University Students’ Union and the nationalist struggle against colonial rule.

The University Act and the First Student Strike

On December 1, 1920, the British colonial government enacted the University Act, a move widely seen as restricting access to higher education and consolidating colonial control. Just two days later, on December 3, eleven senior students from Rangoon College gathered at the southeast corner of the Shwedagon Pagoda. There, they pledged to boycott the Act — a decision that marked the beginning of Myanmar’s first student strike.

Among these eleven pioneers were U Ba Shin and U Ba U, both natives of Thandwe. Their names, along with the others, remain inscribed on a commemorative stone pillar at Shwedagon, a lasting testament to their defiance.

Leadership in the Students’ Union

The momentum of student activism carried into the following decade. In the 1930–31 academic year, U Kyaw Khin (BSc, B.L) of Thandwe was elected Chairman of the newly formed University Students’ Union, with U Yar Shit serving as Secretary. Together, they organized and mobilized the student body, laying the foundation for a union that would become central to Myanmar’s political awakening.

By 1931–32, another Thandwe-born student, U Htun Sein, was chosen as Chairman of the Union’s executive committee, continuing the town’s legacy of leadership in student politics.

A Legacy of Courage and Commitment

These figures — U Kyaw Khin, U Ba Shin, and U Htun Sein — represent more than individual achievement. They embody the role of Muslim students in Myanmar’s nationalist history, challenging colonial authority and inspiring future generations. Their contributions remind us that the struggle for education and independence was a collective effort, transcending ethnic and religious boundaries.

Historical Source

This account is drawn from Yangon University (1920–2020): Centennial Reflections by Myanmar language scholar Dr. Aung Zaw, which documents the century-long journey of the institution and its students.

This article situates the translated text within the broader context of Myanmar’s student movement, highlighting Thandwe’s Muslim students as pivotal actors in both education and politics.