Partly in response to the campaigns of agitation led by predominantly Bamar figures, the British had drafted soldiers from the Kayin, the Kachin and other smaller ethnicities into their army, as well as Muslims, and awarded them positions above that of Bamar. They were seen as more trustworthy than these other dissenters who had led the charge against British rule. But that ill-thought-out policy of the British backfired in more ways than one. Not only were the flames of resentment towards them further fanned, but the independence movement of the 1920s and 1930s developed an ethnic and
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