History of Myanmar's labour movement (p24/505)

This post presents page 24 of The History of the Myanmar Labour Movement by Thakin Lwin (Bagan Books, 1968).

Vocabulary:

အပြတ်အသတ် ။ by a large margin; decisively; overwhelmingly
ထည်ဝါ ။ to be grand, haughty.
ခန့်ညား ။ to be awed, cowed
သုံးစွဲ ။ to use

Translation:

... holding a [general] referendum in 1932, although with the total number of votes the side [choosing to] not divide won by a landslide, in accordance with the desire of the British capitalists for the benefit of their business, the division [of India and Myanmar] emerged.

At that time, the educated nationalist youth started to lead the Dobama Asiayone, which was organising agitation, and being the most advanced and most motivated political force, gradually gained increasing influence among the people. By organising and agitating through both legal and illegal means it was able to give the British administrative system the most trouble.

With the promulgation in 1935, by the British Parliament of the 1935 Act of Burma, starting from 1 April 1937 Myanmar was separated from the Indian colony and the single jurisdiction [over the two countries] ceased and with direct administration the Burma Office was expanded under the control of the British government. After that, another general (referendum) election was held in 1936 so that Myanmar would be administered with a new administrative system in accordance with the law. In accordance with the new administrative system mentioned above, two levels of parliament were formed using haughty terminology. These were the lower parliament [House of Representatives] and upper parliament [Senate]. There were 132 people in the the lower house and 32 people in the upper house. In that, from among the 132 members of parliament in the Lower House there were 25 constituencies reserved according to ethnicity, 16 for merchants, representatives of Yangon University and representatives of workers of Myanmar and India nationalities, each with separate constituencies and for whom it was possible to vote for as members of parliament. From among the 36 members of parliament in the Upper House, 18 people were elected from the Lower House and the remaining 18 people were appointed according to the preference of the governor. The government that was selected and formed from the parliament was just the government of the governor's advisory council.