While most canonical texts in the Buddhist Theravada tradition offer evidence for a doctrinal position against violence, at the same time, the Theravada canonical literature recognizes that the predicament of kingship for the performance of its duties necessarily entails conducting wars or inflicting violent punishment on culprits, i.e. acts that bring negative karma to the king's future rebirths.Pivotal in fostering the social and material conditions for enlightenment, Buddhist communities generally do not unite across national boundaries for a common goal or to combat a religious "other." In contrast to other world religions, Buddhism does not uphold a belief in religious redemption through warfare like the Crusades. Nor does it have a doctrine or history to mobilize religious communities to act violently against unbelievers. Buddhists in its "authentic" form, also do not identify with a global, transnational, or universal brotherhood in order to legitimate local practices. Instead, the Buddha's sacred biography and the cult of his relics justify ritual veneration at sacred centers throughout the Buddhist world that are seen as centers of extraordinary power. That power is understood to embody simultaneously political and religious dimensions that reflect on the status of local Buddhist leaders and define a political and ritual hegemony within their communities.
Seen from the vantage point of history, however, violence has been and continues to be present in Buddhist societies as Buddhists have been both targets and agents of communal violence. In 1973, the Thai monk Kitthiwuttho stated that killing communists did not cause negative karma and the Buddhist Precepts were tantamount to national law. (Donald Swearer, The Buddhist World of Southeast Asia , 1995, 95) And in the absence of a national constitution in Burma since 1988 (that would otherwise empower the official acts of a secular modem state), the regime has employed Buddhist authority and institutions to legitimate its politics.
In Sri Lanka , violent riots have been promulgated by Buddhist monks and lay people in defense of their vision of a distinctly Buddhist nationalism. At the same time, Sri Lankan Buddhists have been the target of violence unleashed against them by ethnic and religious, the Tamil Tigers. (See Donald Lopez, 2001)
At the turn of the twentieth century, Buddhism underwent revitalization and reforms in Sri Lanka that were in large measure the result of efforts by Angitara Dharmapala, the Sri Lankan protege of Henry Olcott and Helena Blavatsky, prominent founders of the Theosophical Society. This revitalization, modeled largely after Christian organizations and a Buddhist identity in Sri Lanka , became a rallying point against British colonial power.
Upon independence, monks claimed the right to vote in elections and hold political office. These facts strengthened their role in the public life and politics of the new nation. Thus in Sri Lanka, monks have been able to occupy significant political positions in public life, gaining the right to vote in elections and run for political office. In this regard, the Sinhalese sangha negotiated to a far greater degree a modem re-definition of the normative role of a Buddhist ascetic. Traditional monastic ideals remain normative in Burmese national culture, however, where monks may not vote and are encouraged by the Ministry of Religious Affairs, on grounds of rules governing monastic conduct (vinaya), to remain aloof from worldly and political affairs. (See H.L. Seneviratne, The Work of Kings: The New Buddhism in Sri Lanka, University of Chicago Press, 1999).
In Sri Lanka , about 75 percent of the population is Buddhist. Tamils constitute a minority that is mostly Muslim, but also includes a significant (18 percent) number of Hindus. But for Sri Lankan nationalists, Buddhism is commensurate with a Sri Lankan identity whose history they believe reaches back to the mythic origins of the island recounted in the sacred Mahavamsa (Great Chronicle). Sinhalese monks continued to be activists in the ethnic and political struggles of the early 1980s. Their actions, indeed, their self-proclaimed sacred duty, were to preserve thatreligio-nationallegacy for future generations. Monks saw themselves as not merely advisors, but as moral guardians of the Sri Lankan nation and defenders of the Dharma, both threatened by ethnic and religious others. It was their responsibility to pave the way for politicians to safeguard a Sri Lanka where Buddhism would prosper. During the bloody civil wars in the 1980s between Tamil separatists and Sinhala Buddhists, monks were instrumental in organizing and mobilizing people to defend the Sinhala identity. Statements like "There is no Buddhist sangha where there is no Sinhala race" were part of their battle cry. (See Anada Abeysekara, Colors of the Robe: Religion, Identity, and Difference, 2002). Monastic militancy even led to the murder of Sri Lanka 's Prime Minister, Ranasingha Premadasa, in 1993.
Contrary to popular perceptions in the west however, the sangha is an institution structured by multiple principles of hierarchy. A culture of hierarchy pervades interactions with and among monks as junior monks are expected to obey and respect senior ones. Most basic is the seniority that monks acquire through years spent living a monastic life. In most branches of the tradition, full ordination requires that the monk be at least 20 years of age and his seniority increases with each year of service. The relative seniority of a monk since ordination also determines whether he greets another monk by bowing to him or whether he will receive such homage, although the relative position of two individuals to one another may be less marked. Monastic rank within a monastery further differentiates status among monks, with the abbot receiving unqualified respect from monks residing in his compound. Ordination lineages in the Theravada tradition may also differentiate themselves from other lineages by stressing stricter adherence to the monastic code of conduct (vinaya). Respective claims to strict purity in monastic practice also introduce an element of contesting relative hierarchy among monastic communities. Modem reforms of the sangha introduced by the state have sought to institute administrative centralization that links local chapters to regional committees and national leadership. While traditional practice espouses strict adherence to hierarchy within the sangha, such interpretations necessarily also recognize, but may not condone, ways to contest it. Hence, it would be misleading to view the sangha as a monolithic institution since historically, it comprises diverse communities that distinguish themselves through local teachings, practices, language, and ethnic identity.
In the West, popular opinion nevertheless tends to identify "authentic" Buddhism with nonviolence and many presume that Buddhism rejects all forms of violence. (See also Tessa Bartholomeusz, In Defense of Dharma, 2002). Fueled by long-standing anti-Muslim sentiments in Burma , anti-Muslim riots flared up in November 2003.
"To be Burmese is to be Buddhist" is a slogan first coined by the early nationalist movement, the Young Mens' Buddhist Association founded in 1906 when the country was a British colony. Since then, this statement about national identity has been invoked in various contexts and has taken on diverse interpretations. Because of its history of mapping national identity onto a universal religious identity, Burmese Buddhism, its practices and institutions have drawn on a deep emotional reservoir and extensive social memory by which Burmese may interpret events of the present through experiences of a past, including riots and mass violence against the powers of the state. (See Mary Callahan, Making Enemies:War and State Building in Burma, Cornell University Press, 2003).
The Buddhist sangha is the only cultural institution surviving the collapse of the traditional kingdom after the third and final Anglo-Burmese war in 1885. Buddhism has been a rallying point for resistance against the colonial state and its successors since independence in 1948, even like is the case with Indonesia and India , Burma , represents the continuation of a ‘British colonial’ state. But the type of political and economic reforms critical to fostering civil society in Indonesia were not implemented with sufficient cohesion to build a post-colonial state to serve the Burmese nation. (Robert W. Hefner, Civil Islam, Princeton University Press,2000).
As other-worldly ascetics detached from worldly gains, monks have traditionally enjoyed a position of authority permitting the sangha to speak the "truth" to those in power. The sangha one should ad, has also been a steadfast critic of Burmese governments from the democratic administration of U Nu, to Ne Win's Socialist Program Party and its successor regimes under the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), and, most recently, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC).
With the exception of the British colonial administration, every Burmese government since independence in 1948 has catered to the sangha for popular support, religious blessing, and political legitimation. By the same token, these governments have also had to contend with the power of the sangha to mobilize people. Governments have used Buddhist ritual to legitimate political power in times of constitutional crisis or in the absence of a national constitution altogether. Governments have used Buddhist authority or "Buddhification" to rally nationalist sentiments among the general population, to foster an ideological Buddhist nationalism, to integrate Christian, animist hill tribes and other ethnic minorities into the administration of the nation-state, and to put pressure on non-Buddhists to convert to Buddhism. For instance, "Indian Rights Group Accuses Myanmar of Forcible Conversion of Christians," Agence France Presse, November 11, 2001, reported that according to the Naga People's Movement for Human Rights (NPMHR), hundreds of Christian Nagas had been forced to convert to Buddhism by the ruling military junta and religious bodies. Those resisting either experienced displacement and persecution or were kept as bonded laborers by the junta and Buddhist monks. Other forced conversions occurred in other tribal areas.
Furthermore, Buddhist nationalist sentiments have been invoked to deflect public attention away from other crises, including agricultural shortages, banking failures, and impending anti-government demonstrations. The modem state imposed centralizing and standardizing reforms on the Buddhist sangha at several historical junctures. In order to revitalize Buddhist learning and invigorate monastic organization, U Nu convened the Fifth Buddhist Council in 1954-56. U Nu initially gained the support of Buddhist monks and thus enhanced his own charisma and the state's legitimation, but the demise of his government in 1962 was triggered by his inability to resist monastic pressure to establish Buddhism as a state religion. During the 1990s, the SLORC regime sponsored a great many lavish Buddhist rituals to legitimate its power in the absence of a national constitution and other means of legitimating the power of the state. And the state has used the authority of Buddhism to instigate and sanction mass violence to be perpetrated against "enemies of the Burmese nation" and religious and ethnic others. (See Juliane Schober, "Buddhist Just Rule and Burmese National Culture: State Patronage of the Chinese Tooth Relic in Myanmar," History of Religions 36, no. 3, 1997: 218-43.)
Anti-Muslim riots have periodically erupted since the late 1930s when the majority of Rangoon's population was of Indian origin and more than one million Indians lived in the Irrawaddy Delta region, making a living as land owners and money lenders.It is important to note the country's ethnic composition in this regard. Although the Burmese sangha is predominantly Burman, it also recruits significant membership among ethnic minorities, including the Mon, Karen, Arakanese, and Shan. Almost all ethnic Burmans, who make up 65-80 percent of the population, are Buddhist. This brings the total Buddhist population in Burma close to 90 percent. In Bruce Matthews, "Ethnic and Religious Diversity: Myanmar's Unfolding Nemesis," Visiting Research Series, no. 3, Institute for Southeast Asian Studies, 2001, 1-18, it is reported that ethnic Burmans, nearly all of them Buddhist, make up 65 percent of the country's population of 50 million people. The combined Buddhist population comprises an 80-90 percent majority, 4 percent Christians, 4 percent Muslim, and about 2 percent Hindu. Other accounts place the Muslim population closer to 8 percent. The above breakdown also does not account for a percentage of tribal, animist groups. According to "The Alms Bowl Remains Overturned: A Report on SLORC's Abuses of Buddhism in Burma ," Buddhist Relief Mission February 1997, the sangha in Burma comprises approximately 400,000 monks.
A few weeks before, before the anti-Muslim riots in 1997, farmers had staged demonstrations to protest against forced government buy-outs of their harvest. Rumors of food shortages ensued. For several months leading up to the spring of 1997, monks from major Mandalay monasteries had secretly organized an impending human rights strike, demanding the release of 16 monks whom SLORC had previously imprisoned. A detailed and multi-faceted report on the situation for Muslims in Burma was published by Images Asia in two parts in March 1997.
The extent of violence inflicted upon Muslim communities is difficult to ascertain. One measure, however, is the large number of Muslim refugees the riots engendered, especially among Rohingas who fled their native Arakan in Lower Burma primarily to Bangladesh . The attacks caused an unknown number of deaths, the burning of Muslim homes and shops, and the desecration of sacred sites and objects, including the destruction of mosques, scattering of Qurans in the street, and driving pigs through consecrated grounds. Accounts about these raids do not add up to a coherent master narrative, but fall into separate versions. They include an official version given by government media, accounts by Buddhist monastic organizations, and additional versions based on foreign press reports and first-hand descriptions by Burmese Muslims, Buddhists monks, and other eyewitnesses. Each kind of narrative attributes to entirely different contexts the underlying causes and immediate catalysts for these mob attacks on Burmese Muslim.
Different observers affirmed SLORC's role in instigating the riots. Some observers stated that the monastic attackers, whose identity was mostly hidden by robes draped over their heads, were, in actuality, mere imposters and agitators sent by the regime's grassroots organization the Unity, Solidarity, and Development Association (USDA). The Nation reports on March 28, 1997: "Lt. Gen. Myo Nyunt, Burma 's religious minister went to meet local Muslim leaders and reportedly said: 'Let them [monks] destroy it - don't resist them, the army will compensate you for everything.' Thus warnings of impending attacks would come from local government officials or army officers urging Muslims not to retaliate or fight back, but to endure the Buddhists' rampage. This allowed many Muslim families to flee to safety, abandoning their homes and mosques to destructive fires set by rampaging crowds.
In response to the rioting that spread within days throughout Burma , SLORC imposed martial law, closed all universities, and instituted curfews on monasteries in Mandalay and in other cities. Soldiers surrounded many of the larger monasteries, especially in Mandalay and Rangoon . At the same time, state television aired lengthy and frequent broadcasts depicting the regime's leading generals venerating senior Buddhist monks and making extravagant donations to them.
In a statement on March 18, 1997, the All Burma Young Monks' Union (ABYMU), an exile group founded in the aftermath of 1988 explained that monks in Mandalay had planned human rights demonstrations to protest against the government's refusal to reveal the fate of 16 monks who had been previously arrested. Their demands also included easing government restrictions on the sangha. Other senior monks urged calm among the general population, explicitly distancing themselves and the sangha as an institution from violence committed against Muslims. Concurrently, they affirmed their allegiance with Muslim suffering in a common struggle against SLORC's injustice.
SLORC most likely instigated the initial attacks against Muslims in Mandalay to contain anti -government activities among Buddhist monks in Mandalay and the threat of renewed demonstrations that public knowledge of their activities would likely bring about. Over the past decades, there have been repeated allegations of such diversionary tactics that create umest the military can contain, while detracting public attention away from impending crises that were seen as a greater threat to the state's stability. At the same time, it is also clear that Buddhist monks participated in later stages of the anti-Muslim mass rioting. Aung Zaw writes in The Nation: "A young monk in Rangoon did not deny that they were involved. 'Yes! We do have a plan to protest against this brutal regime. Our target is SLORC." The rationale that anti-government monks adduced to justify attacks against Muslims as actually an attack on SLORC appears convoluted. Such justifications were born out of the popular resentment among Burmese of the support SLORC's bid to join the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) had received at that time from Malaysia's Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. In addition, Indonesia 's former president Suharto had recently visited Ne Win in Rangoon . The public support from Muslim nations for SLORC was popularly seen as undercutting the movement for democracy in Burma . In the same piece, Aung Zaw reports that " ... about 50 monks at Bargaya Road in Rangoon followed by soldiers and riot police went to another mosque, chanting: 'We don't want Muslims' and throwing stones at the mosque. The authorities did not intervene." (Aung Zaw, " Rangoon Plays the Muslim Care!," The Nation, March 28,1997).
Monks soon became victims of the state's reprisals against "enemies of the state" who agitated in the uprising. Senior monks were held accountable for the involvement of younger ones in the riots. Many were forcibly disrobed, demonstrating the military's flagrant disrespect for traditional monastic authority. Hundreds of monks were detained and imprisoned for years to come. Some died in prison due to torture, illness, or lack of medical care. The government subjected monasteries to collective reprisals and retaliated with curfews and other restrictions on monastic participation in public life. It imposed rigid and comprehensive reforms on all religious organizations in Burma , Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, or Christian alike. Nearly every aspect of monastic administration, education, and the personal lives of individual monks was under close government scrutiny. Most significantly, religious reforms since 1988 have brought the Buddhist sangha under the authority of the modem state. The Ministry of Religious Affairs has been strengthened in many ways and has been given the charge to implement the preservation and propagation of Buddhism in Burma . In sum, in response to popular demands for political reform, the state appropriated the religious authority and institutions of Buddhism, exerting unprecedented control over religion in public life.
Against this background of increasing restrictions on monastic life, the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), the regime that eventually succeeded Ne Win and his disbanded BSPP government, sought to transform a national community into a ritual community devoted to the veneration of sacred relics of the Buddha, thus minimizing the agency of the sangha. Participation in this Buddhist ritual community also implied participation in a national economic and political network few could afford to ignore. In this manner, the state used Buddhist sacred objects and ritual to enforce a totalizing hold on power. (See Bruce Matthews, "The Present Fortune of Tradition-Bound Authoritarianism in Myanmar ," Pacific Affairs 7, no. 1, 1998).
The anti-government uprising in 1988 constitutes a tragic watershed in the recent history of a country whose citizens believed themselves to be on the verge of political reforms, only to plunge into the shackles of a military regime that rules by force and exploitation. The bloody path from that moment of hope in 1988 to the subsequent decades of fear was paved with the bodies of thousands. These deaths and subsequent purges in education, government, and in the monasteries affected the personal lives of every Burmese family. The absence of a national constitution, the lack of effective political reforms, deeply seated resentment towards the military regime, and widespread social suffering have collectively determined the parameters for Burmese politics since 1988.
In the months prior to the uprising in March and August of 1988, a failing economy caused reverberations throughout Burmese society. Shortages of food staples such as rice and oil, student unrest at Rangoon Technical Institute and Rangoon University , signs of the imminent resignation of the Burmese Dictator Ne Win, and the promise of a multi-party system further heightened tensions. Sparked by a seemingly minor student encounter with police in a Rangoon coffee shop, the demonstrations spread rapidly to the Rangoon Technical Institute and Rangoon University , but were quenched each time with brutal police force. As the demonstrations turned into riots, the police and military killed scores of students, deaths for which the Burma Socialist Program Party (BSPP) refused to hold its security forces accountable. More and more segments of Burmese society took to the streets of Rangoon , Mandalay , and soon cities throughout the country to demand government reform and accountability. In early August 1988, large segments of the Burmese work force, including professionals, civil servants, customs officials, nurses, doctors, and even soldiers from certain military units went on strike to join mass protests and demand radical political change. Perhaps inspired by the Philippine experience of "people power," there was a prevailing sense in Burma and abroad that real political and economic reforms and a change of government were imminent. The army responded quickly and put a bloody end to the uprising. As thousands of demonstrators were killed by police and military, many, especially students and monks who feared reprisals and mass arrests fled up country and eventually crossed the border into Thailand .
The parameters of this four part research project do not permit to focus on other secular resistance organizations, including the Burmese Government in exile, the National League for democracy (NLD) and a great many others in and outside of Burma. We simply want to mention them here to underscore that the focus of this part three-article, does not intend to convey a monolithic presence of Buddhism in the anti-government struggle, though clearly it is a major force contesting the hegemonic powers of the regime. Moreover, as the tensions extended into decades, some monks have successfully circumvented the policing structures of the state through selective collaboration with their efforts and by accepting "taxation," especially on the foreign donations they receive.
Amidst the chaos the Burmese sangha emerged to provide an organizational structure to the popular uprising. Monasteries became sanctuaries, particularly at night when military police arrested student agitators at their homes. Monks organized demonstrations, relayed information through an internal monastic network, and even stepped up to administer some judicial and civil infrastructures in those towns and areas considered "liberated" by the democratic uprising. The yellow robes of the Buddha offered anonymity to those fleeing from government persecution and the monastic network became a conduit for safe travel to the border and into exile. Along with numerous other exile and refugee organizations, the All Burma Monks' Union was formed to speak for the sangha from the relative safety of the Thai border.
Accounts of the monastic role in these events are found in news media reports, in Bertil Lintner, Outrage: Burma's Struggle for Democracy (Hong Kong, 1989); and in reports by the Buddhist Relief Mission. The regime refers to "the tragic disturbances of August 1988" as the work of communists, especially the Burmese Communist Party (BCP) plus "foreign imperialists" and their agents with whom they are in "collusion." This entirely mythic attack is a diversionary strategy to detract from the actual crises that reappears frequently in the regime's rhetoric. See, for instance, Maung Maung, The 1988 Uprising in Burma, Yale Southeast Asia Monograph, 1999, where the role of the sangha is never mentioned.
While Buddhist kings (dhammaraja) were expected to convene and promote monastic reforms, Buddhist law (vinaya) stipulates that monastic ordination removes an individual from civil jurisdiction. Upon becoming a member of the sangha, Theravada monks assume new names and social identities. They also give up all property and are no longer subject to civil authority. However in an open letter commemorating the fifteenth anniversary of these riots, the All Burma Young Monks' Union (ABYMU) made the following statement: "Since 1988, the Buddhist monks of Burma have been imprisoned, forcibly disrobed, used as porters in military operations, sent to labor camps, prohibited from freely practicing their religion, and forced to move out of the monasteries in which they reside by the leaders of present military regime. For these cruel acts, there are now some monks who have already passed away in prison. Among the detained monks were many prominent and senior monks, including a well-known Tipitakadhara monk. These leading monks are well respected by lay devotees for their efforts in Dharmma and Vinaya. The regime has a long history of oppressing revered Buddhist figures." (ABYMU, "Statement of the All Burma Young Monk's Union Regarding the Demonstrations by Buddhist Monks in Mandalay on March 17, 1997).
At great expense to the citizens who donated money and labor for lavish religious construction and rituals, SLORC largely succeeded in reinforcing its hegemonic power through its use of religious sources of authority. By the early 1990s, the state had co-opted the senior sangha and the majority of the Buddhist population into acquiescent participation. These programs to silence and police Buddhist and other forms of dissent drove popular protest underground, creating a generalized distrust and fear in private and public spheres of Burmese life in which rumors abound, filtering public events and producing counter-narratives at amazing speeds. To explore the role of rumors and conflicting narratives about events that led up and occurred during the riots, see Paul R. Brass, Theft of an Idol: Text and Context in the Representation of Collective Violence (Princeton University Press, 1997); and Vena Das, "Specificities: Official Narratives, Rumour, and the Social Production of Hate," Social Identities 4, no. 1 (1998): 109-30 .
The ambush and massacre of National League for Democracy (NLD) supporters in a wooded area near Dipeyin began in the evening of May 30, 2003. The events surrounding this incident are primarily political and not religious in character. They indicate heightened political tensions between Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) and the ruling regime, that, by that time, had been renamed the State Peace and Development CounciI. It is, however, the state's manipulation of Buddhist symbols of authority in constructing the ambush that qualifies it for inclusion in this discussion. Although the SPDC had been under international pressure to negotiate with the NLD, Senior General Than Shwe, Chairman of the SPDC, who staunchly resisted such negotiations, consolidated his power within the inner circles ofthe SPDC in April 2003 and again in the fall of 2004. Aung San Suu Kyi, Secretary General and charismatic leader of the NLD had been released from house arrest for nearly a year. Despite repeated interference with her travels in Burma and public speeches, Suu Kyi speaks out publicly about her concern over the lack of progress made in UN negotiations. On May 6, she left Rangoon for a tour to re-energize the membership in the NLD youth groups and the events of the massacre led to her eventual re-arrest and detention since that time.
For a discussion of religious and political aspects of Aung San Suu Kyi's charisma and her role in formulating Socially Engaged Buddhism in Burma, see Juliane Schober, "Buddhist Visions of Moral Authority and Civil Society: The Search for the PostColonial State in Burma," in Burma at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century, ed. M. Skidmore (University of Hawaii Press, 2005).
Traveling in the evening of May 30, 2003, the NDL caravan of some two dozen cars and motorcycles was redirected by a military road block, to a minor road that turned out to be blocked by fallen trees. As they made their way through a wooded area near the village of Dipeyin, the caravan was greeted by a large crowd of villagers. A Buddhist monk approached Aung San Suu Kyi's car and invited her to speak to the crowd. Suu Kyi declined due to the late hour, but the monk persisted until her aide, Htun Zaw Zaw, got out of the car to dissuade him. Once the caravan stopped, USDA members emerged from the near-by woods to attack NLD supporters. Hundreds of police, men dressed as monks, armed soldiers, and prisoners from Mandalay Prison suddenly dismounted from trucks, armed with bamboo spears, guns, iron pipes, and rocks and joined in the attack. In the massacre, more than one hundred supporters of the NLD are said to have been brutally slaughtered. Suu Kyi's car escaped to Dipeyin where she was taken into "pre-emptive" custody. US Embassy personnel visited the site days later and concluded in an official statement that the attack had been planned.
Signaling perhaps the most egregious manipulation of Buddhist symbols and authority, the monk's role in stopping the NLD caravan speaks to the tremendous respect individual Buddhist monks as well as the institution of the sangha as whole occupy in contemporary Burmese culture and politics. Brig-Gen. Soe Naing was promoted to the number two position within the government during the fall of 2004, following another political reshuffle. In December 2004, he addressed an international Buddhist summit in Rangoon.