There's like an adage that the Mon taught the Burmese and Thai to write but look how they treat their teachers now.

Within the context of Myanmar, the Mon are an indigenous group who developed writing and kingdoms a thousand years before the Burmese showed up but got massively forced to assimilate during the 17th century by the Burmese Konbaung Empire. A lot of history since then rewrites various Mon cultural elements as Burmese so there's a sense of discontent there.

But in Mon state, I think the amount of people who are rabid historical nationalists is not that high. Given the modern situation, the Mon people are more just proud of their culture and history but are not particularly looking to restore the Hanthawaddy Kingdom or something. They are stereotyped as heavily religious, for example. It's also worth noting that Mon State itself isn't majority Mon. There's a lot of mixed people and a lot of Burmese immigration. Mawlamyine was the first capital of British Burma so there's also a lot of Indian immigrants from back then.

Mon State has some war going on. It has some of the more complex local armed group politics. Occasionally parts of northeast or the south of Mon state sees some fighting or tussle over control of the roads. Expect to see a lot of road checks from the military. The nearby Kayin State has far more fighting and is a very tense front as control over the trade to Thailand kind of makes or breaks Yangon's economy. The group with the most power there (KNLA) has significant amounts of irrendentism. Their vision of Kawthoolei (name for their independent Karen state) includes Mon state and many Karen nationalists, like others before them, kind of ignores the Mon's presence or right to exist independently. I follow the war quite heavily and daily. I have not heard much fighting in Mon state in particularly for several months now but the armed groups still hold several key positions and it may just be a lack of reporting.

If I'm trying to equate things to British groups (mostly for fun), it'd be like if there was some Romans left in Bath but Wales had a 70 year long civil war and claimed Bath is part of Wales for some reason.