U Thant | Myanmar Educator, UN Secretary-General (2024)

U Thant (born Jan. 22, 1909, Pantanaw, Burma [now Myanmar]—died Nov. 25, 1974, New York, N.Y., U.S.) was a Myanmar educator, civil servant, and the third secretary general of the United Nations (1962–71). Neutralist by inclination and in practice, he criticized both West and East for actions and attitudes that he considered threatening to world peace.

Thant was educated at the University of Yangon (Rangoon), later the Arts and Science University, where he met Thakin Nu (afterward U Nu, who became prime minister of Myanmar in 1948). The death of Thant’s father (1928) forced him to leave the university before graduation, and he returned to his hometown as a teacher at the National High School and later (from 1931) as headmaster. In 1942 he was secretary to the educational reorganization committee of the government of Japanese-occupied Burma. From 1943 to 1947 he once more was headmaster at Pantanaw.

After World War II Thant was recruited for government service by U Nu and General U Aung San, leader of the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League. He was appointed press director (1947), director of broadcasting (1948), and secretary of the Ministry of Information (1949). In 1952–53 he was a Myanmar (Burmese) delegate to the UN, becoming his country’s permanent UN representative in 1957. He was vice president of the UN General Assembly in 1959.

After the death of UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld, the United States and the Soviet Union, failing to agree on a permanent successor, accepted U Thant as a compromise candidate for the acting secretaryship, to which he was elected on Nov. 3, 1961. On Nov. 30, 1962, he was elected permanent secretary general, and he was re-elected for five years on Dec. 2, 1966; he retired at the end of 1971. A devout Buddhist, he sought to apply the principles of detachment and concentration to the solving of international problems.

U Thant died in New York City of cancer, and his body was returned to Yangon for burial. There it became involved in a bizarre tug of war between university students, who seized it on Dec. 5, 1974, and buried it in a hastily built mausoleum in the grounds of the Arts and Science University, and police, who retrieved it by force on December 11, buried it privately, and sealed the tomb in concrete. Subsequent rioting led to the military regime’s declaration of martial law in the city and to several deaths.

Thant wrote (in Burmese) books on the history of cities, the League of Nations, and Myanmar education, as well as a three-volume history of post-World War II Myanmar (1961). A collection of his public addresses and essays from 1957 to 1963 was published as Toward World Peace (1964), and View from the UN (1978), an account of his years as secretary general, was published posthumously.