Buddhism, Politics and Political Thought in Myanmar
Abstract
This is the first book to provide a broad overview of the ways in which Buddhist ideas have influenced political thinking and politics in Myanmar. Matthew J. Walton draws extensively on Burmese language sources from the last 150 years to describe the ‘moral universe’ of contemporary Theravada Buddhism that has anchored most political thought in Myanmar. In explaining multiple Burmese understandings of notions such as ‘democracy’ and ‘political participation’, the book provides readers with a conceptual framework for understanding some of the key dynamics of Myanmar’ ongoing political transition. Some of these ideas help to shed light on restrictive or exclusionary political impulses, such as anti-Muslim Buddhist nationalism or scepticism towards the ability of the masses to participate in politics. Walton provides an analytical framework for understanding Buddhist influences on politics that will be accessible to a wide range of readers and will generate future research and debate.
... The regime often employs religious donations and merit-making ceremonies to bolster its authority, drawing on the Burmese concepts of ana (power) and awza (influence) (Steinberg 2007). These actions also accumulate hpoun, further strengthening the regime's claims to charismatic legitimacy (Walton 2017). Derived from Puñña (merits) and associated with Karma (actions), hpoun is a key concept in Buddhist cosmology. ...
... Many of these activities fall into long-established interactions between political-military elites and the monkhood. At a broad level, they seek recognition from monastic institutions as part of performing the kingly duty of upholding institutional Buddhism (Foxeus 2023;Walton 2017). On a personal level, these interactions follow the Sayar-Dakar (monk-devotee) relationship often observed in the Burmese cultural and political context (Frydenlund, Wai 2024;Steinberg 2007). ...
This paper examines the strategic use of rituals in Myanmar after the 2021 coup, focusing on their role in political legitimacy. It explores how the military regime and protesters employed rituals in protests and observes divergent practices. The regime relied on symbolic rituals supported by monastic institutions, while protesters used rituals less aligned with normative Buddhist practices. The study highlights differing methods of ritual knowledge dissemination: hierarchical for the regime and network-based for protesters. Despite similar worldviews, their motivations and applications of ritualistic knowledge differ.
... Being a friend or a foe of the regime would determine the interaction of individuals with the decision-making centre. A final line of division, which often but not always overlaps with ethnic divisions, runs along religious lines, with Buddhism as the predominant religion against a number of other religious groups in the country, including Muslims, Christians and Hindus (Walton 2016). These divisions have created multiple levels of segregation, raising challenging questions about the body politic in Myanmar and how the demos (i.e. the political community) should be defined to allow for a functional and inclusive democracy (Laoutides & Ware 2016). ...
... 4 Finally, the two most populous Theravada Buddhist countries in Southeast Asia, Myanmar and Thailand, offer evidence also of both civil and uncivil behaviour by religious groups and organisations. Members of the sangha may have been at the forefront in 2007 of Myanmar's Saffron Revolution demanding the end to military rule (Walton 2016), but the decade of political liberalisation also fostered the rise of militant Buddhism with a violent ethno-nationalist agenda, particularly directed against a Muslim minority. In southern Thailand, too, monks have taken up arms against a Malay-Muslim insurgency (Jerryson 2011). ...
... On 27 June 2013, the 969 Movement transformed into MaBaTha, which subsequently established branches throughout the country. MaBaTha had a powerful political lobby with President Thein Sein and convinced the government to pass the Race and Religion Protection Law, which specifically targeted Rohingya Muslims (Walton 2016). ...
After more than half a century of military rule in Myanmar, a democratic transition started in 2011. General Thein Sein established a civilian government from 2011 to 2016, and then in
2016 Aung San Suu Kyi, the daughter of the ‘father of the nation’, came to power. But Suu Kyi’s government had to share power with the military, as the constitution provided them vital
privileges. Subsequently, following brutal actions against the Rohingya ethnoreligious group during Suu Kyi’s tenure, the international community accused her government of doing nothing to stop ethnic cleansing and genocide. This article examines why Aung San Suu Kyi, as leader of a fledgling democracy, failed to protect the Rohingya from ethnic cleansing. The arguments centre on the countrywide anti-Rohingya sentiment, Myanmar’s unstable democracy, Suu Kyi’s election process, the power imbalance between military and civilian
governments and Suu Kyi’s policy tilt towards the military, and how these factors contributed to ethnic cleansing and genocide. Michael Mann’s theory on the ‘dark side’ of democracy, here applied to Myanmar’s democracy under Aung San Suu Kyi, examines how it connects with repression, ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Rohingya minority.
... British colonial rule in Burma (1824Burma ( -1948 led to decline in traditional socio-political orders, but at the beginning of the 20th century did also produce vibrant resistance and religious innovation, for example through new monastic and lay associations that sought to protect Buddhism from perceived decline. Religious studies scholars and historians alike have made crucial insights for our understanding of the rise of Buddhist protectionism and Burmese nationalism (Turner 2014), Buddhist innovation and modernization (Braun 2013), or re-imaginations of Buddhist political thought and practice (Schober 2011;Walton 2017). Such notions of decline are not only the result of the external threat posed by European colonial rule, but feed into Buddhist historiography's notions of decline of the buddhasasana, that is, "Buddhism" as a social entity in this world (Frydenlund 2018a). ...
Buddhist protectionism in contemporary Myanmar revolves around fears of the decline of Buddhism and deracination of the amyo (group/“race”). Buddhist protectionists and Burmese nationalists have declared Islam and Muslims the greatest threat to race and religion, and Myanmar has witnessed widespread distribution of anti-Islamic and anti-Muslim content, as well as massive violence against Muslim minority communities, the Rohingya in particular. The Indian neologism “Love Jihad” has scarce reference in contemporary Burmese Buddhist discourses, but, importantly, the tropes of aggressive male Muslim sexuality and (forced) conversion through marriage (“love jihad”) have been one of the core issues in Buddhist protectionism in Myanmar. The article shows that such tropes of the threatening foreign male have strong historical legacies in Myanmar, going back to colonial Burma when Burmese concerns over Indian male immigrant workers resulted in both anti-Indian violence and anti-miscegenation laws. Importantly, however, compared to colonial Indophobia and military era xenophobic nationalism, contemporary constructions are informed by new political realities and global forces, which have changed Buddhist protectionist imaginaries of gender and sexuality in important ways. Building on Sara R. Farris’ concept of “femonationalism”, and Rogers Brubaker’s concept of civilizationism, the article shows how Global Islamophobia, as well as global discourses on women’s rights and religious freedom, have informed Buddhist protectionism beyond ethnonationalism in the traditional sense.
... Likewise, the potdrumming also took place in 1988, which the Tatmadaw then banned for three decades (May Thet Zin 2021), but resurfaced in 2021 as a nationwide cross-cultural protest ritual. The 2007 "Saffron Revolution" was articulated within a distinct Buddhist framework (Walton 2017). Jordt, Than, and Lin (2021) show how the 2021 resistance was grounded in democratic ideas of the sovereignty of the people, and not Buddhist political paradigms. ...
The military coup in Myanmar on February 1, 2021 ended semi-civilian rule (2011–2021), bringing the country once again under direct military rule. Through a multi-methodological approach—analyzing written statements, digital data, and qualitative interviews—this article explores how multiple religious actors have responded to the coup. Our findings show that compared to previous uprisings, the 2021 anti-coup protests were characterized by global internet culture, interreligious solidarity, and new visions for a plural and democratic Myanmar. Behind the seemingly spontaneous street protests were also religious institutions and networks, indicating long-term pro-democracy education, activism, and networking within different religious fields.
... Since the mid-nineteenth century, Theravada has been shaped by nationalist movements in Burma, Sri Lanka, and elsewhere. Defense against corruption of the official religion has frequently been presented as the prime legitimating factor of post-colonial states, and nationalists have propagated an ideology which elides Buddhist identity with that of the ethnic majority, and presents the ethnoreligious majority as under attack by outgroups (Turner, 2014;Walton, 2016Walton, , 2017. In this context, it is unsurprising that adherents to orthodoxy would also demonstrate fierce loyalty to the broader ingroup. ...
Anthropologists and historians of religion have commonly contrasted “great” (literate, authoritative, and centrally regulated) traditions with “little” (popular, unauthorized, and locally variable) traditions. These two dimensions of doctrinal religion are thought to be a product of divergent patterns of learning and cultural transmission. It is common for the official representatives of doctrinal religions to portray the unauthorized practices of little traditions pejoratively as amoral superstitions. Here, we consider an alternative theory, that great and little traditions are a product of distinct forms of cooperation: the one focused on loyalty to large-scale categories evolving via cultural group selection, the other focused on advancing the interests of kin-based relational ties evolving via intra-group selection. To investigate this theory further, we carried out a series of studies with followers of great and little traditions within Burmese Theravada Buddhism, showing overall that great tradition affiliation involves stronger alignment with categorical large-scale groups, while little tradition affiliation involves stronger alignments with relational kin-based groups. We propose an empirically-grounded general theory of the evolutionary processes and psychological mechanisms underlying the bifurcation between great and little traditions in the world’s doctrinal religions.
... The military took over, responding to external turmoil and internal unrest. Fearing student revolts, it closed the technical universities (Walton, 2016;Myint-U, 2008). Expertise withered. ...
Motivated by foreseeable changes in the Earth's systems, governments across the world learn to anticipate the consequences. Understanding how such anticipation comes about should ease its further development. We therefore explore the central capacity within anticipatory governance: the capacity to infer future consequences. Such inferential capacity consists of tools, techniques, and practices increasing an agent's options to infer consequences. We examine the development of this capacity for two Southeast Asian deltas, using data from a multi-sited ethnography and a social network analysis. These methods combine the small-scale 'lived' perspective of agents and the multiscale network in which these agents deploy strategies to entrench tools, techniques, and practices for inferential capacity. Strategic choices in positioning for network effects and fostering reciprocity matter, while values and historical contingencies cannot be brushed aside.
... In 2007, monks refused to accept military donations to deny the officers the opportunity to earn merit. 81 Monks have also led the opposition to a Chinese-funded copper mine project at Letpadaung in northwest Myanmar. 82 In Cambodia, Buddhism is undergoing a revival. ...
The material dimensions of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which
encompass multibillion-dollar investments in transport infrastructure
and industrial estates, are expected to make China a key player in the
development and increasing integration of mainland Southeast Asia.
This article, however, looks beyond trade and hard infrastructure to
examine China’s emerging efforts to build influence at the ideational
level through the use of Buddhism as a cultural resource. It documents
government-sponsored outreach to Southeast Asia’s Buddhist leaders and
communities in Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos. It finds that
there has been a surge in outreach from a range of Chinese provinces
since the advent of the BRI in 2013. These outreach efforts warrant
categorization as influence operations because they are orchestrated
through the offices of the United Front Work Department, are being
used to promote China’s political goals, and are sanctioned by a party
that remains staunchly atheist and forbids its members to practise
religion. In broader terms, China’s use of Buddhism as an adjunct to
the BRI in mainland Southeast Asia suggests it is seeking to dampen
disquiet about the BRI, including by fostering a sense of shared values
with mainland Southeast Asian states.
... In the Islamic world, Rifa'a al-Tahtawi provided a translation of the 1814 French Charter with comments on the concepts of self-governance and freedom, and Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī later discussed the relation of modernity and democracy in Islam. In Burma, Pho Hlaing advocated indigenous democracy in his 1878 publication Rajadhammasangaha, a treatise in which he developed democratic elements, such as election and limitation of power of the king and a consultative parliament, from Buddhist moral rules (Hlaing 2004;Walton 2017;Lwin 2018). In Japan, Nakae Chōmin published his "Discourse by Three Drunkards on Government" in 188. ...
This article sketches a theoretical framework and research agenda for what is labeled as “Comparative Democratic Theory.” It is introduced as an approach to democratic theory which is informed by conceptual and methodological debates from “Comparative Political Theory” (CPT) as well as from insights from a global history of democratic thought. The inclusion of CPT perspectives into democratic theory is motivated by what is diagnosed as a conceptual blindness in Western democratic theory. When following this approach, however, the two extremes of unjustified universalism and normatively problematic relativism both must be avoided. To do so, a mode of sound abstraction is proposed, using the term “constellation,” and a discussion of aims and benefits of Comparative Democratic Theory is presented.
This book examines how sociopolitical and intercultural ideologies surrounding globalisation and neoliberalism are constructed and negotiated in travel documentaries, focusing on the role of the BBC in reproducing neo-imperialistic and neoliberal values. It argues that these documentaries naturalise the values underpinning globalisation and justify the exploitation of resources from the United Kingdom and the West at the expense of developing countries, reflecting forms of neo-imperialism.
After discussing the role of the BBC as a public service provider and the research’s theoretical and methodological foundations, three case studies explore the semiotic and cognitive processes involved in media effects. Through an interdisciplinary approach integrating multimodal critical discourse analysis, audience research, and relevance theory, the book contributes to discussions on the application of multimodality theory to social concerns and addresses academic communities in media studies, critical discourse studies, and semiotics.
This book will interest scholars in multimodality, critical discourse analysis, media and communication studies, and semiotics.
The paper proposes a novel longitudinal approach to the study of the rhetorical effects of media by combining Audience Research (e.g. Schrøder et al ., 2003), Social Semiotics (e.g. Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996, 2001; van Leeuwen, 1999; Machin and Mayr, 2012) and Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson, 1995). After introducing a more nuanced model of RT’s contextual effect , the paper reports an empirical case study to explicate the methodological approach. Evidence is provided that a specific text can have a long-lasting effect on an audience: a hierarchy of effects and the cognitive circumstances under which this may happen are discussed.
The civil war in Myanmar/Burma, now entering its final stage, is interesting not only due to domestic political, regional, economic, and strategic reasons. Its metapolitical stake lies in the question which Burmese vision of politics will prevail: the traditional authoritarian “argument of order” or more freedom-oriented “argument of liberation”. At the background there is a profound societal change that took place in Myanmar in the last fifteen years, a change that reinterprets traditional Burmese political codes.
The article raises the problem of public appeal to fortune-telling practices, such as astrology, numerology and special protective rituals (yadaya) by current military leaders of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar. It is noteworthy to say that such practices are inextricably linked with traditional Buddhist concept of kammic kingship. Such model draws on the so-called kammic path: improving kamma through merit-making activities as well as building or renovating stupas or Buddhist monasteries. Esoteric practices (astrology and numerology) provide donors with precise information on favorable time and date for carrying out merit-making ceremonies according to private horoscope of a particular donor. As the yadaya ritual carries out a protective function it could be linked to the so-called apotropaic Buddhism, according to M.Spiro classification. In public life the appeal to such practices make possible to reduce bad forces impact on future events. The evidence of various divinatory practices and protective rituals usage are mentioned in written sources on precolonial history of Myanmar. In that case the public appeal to such practices today could be seen as a logical transformation of popular historical tradition.
This article examines interfaith dialogue (IFD) as a transformative tool for combating religious discrimination and fostering inclusive societies. Drawing from theological insights and practical applications, the study explores the historical, social, and psychological roots of religious discrimination, highlighting how IFD can bridge divides and promote mutual understanding. Inclusive theologies and pluralist frameworks, including phenomenological pluralism, are analyzed to underscore their contributions to creating dialogical spaces where diverse religious identities coexist and thrive. Through detailed case studies and an evaluation of practical strategies, the article demonstrates the effectiveness of IFD in reducing stereotypes, promoting human rights, and cultivating intercommunal trust. It also introduces innovative methods for implementing IFD, addressing challenges, and leveraging digital platforms to extend its reach. Ultimately, the research affirms IFD's vital role in addressing the complexities of a pluralistic world while inspiring future initiatives for peacebuilding and reconciliation.
This chapter provides background on geography, demographics, history, and political culture of Myanmar. The analytical focus is set on (reoccurring) ideological patterns and a dysfunctional national imagination throughout changing political regimes. In this context the historical development of institutionalized heritage practice and ideologically shaped protective legislation for cultural heritage are discussed. The chapter draws particular attention to the 1988–2011 period of the SLORC/SPDC military regime and the 2011–2020 period of democratic reforms and “transition.” It also provides vital insights on the history and development of Myanmar’s persisting ethnic conflicts and approaches to national reconciliation, particularly as practiced under the most recent NLD government (2016–2020).
As the planet’s ecological crisis deepens, what can music reveal about the shapes that environmentalism is taking across the world? This article shows that music is a sensory pathway into notions of nature and of saving nature in repressed and marginalised places. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork since 2010 in the war-torn Burma–China–India borderlands, I explore a dissident rock band’s pioneering environmentalist song. The song’s Kachin Jinghpaw language lyrics talk of ecological destruction through a worldwide trope—‘nature is crying’—but express more specifically a nationalist and religious environmentalism. The song calls on Christian Kachin people to rescue a God-given national homeland, amid the broader album’s call for ethnonational resistance against a ‘colonising’ military regime in Burma (Myanmar). I explore the song’s lyrics and karaoke music video—line-by-line and scene-by-scene—as a way to sense both the logic and feeling of environmentalism emerging amid war.
In recent years, thousands of Buddhist monastics have marched in antiregime protests across South and Southeast Asia. Among the largest and most influential nonstate organizations in the region, monastic communities appear to be powerful agents for political change. Yet, like similar movements over the last half-century, recent monastic protests did not produce broader political resistance among the monkhood, nor did they lead to substantive political change. What explains this? Why has antigovernment activism among Buddhist monks been less durable or impactful than other types of monastic activism, such as the varieties of chauvinistic nationalism that have risen to prominence in recent years? This article draws on three case studies—Myanmar, Thailand, and Sri Lanka—to offer one answer: sangha capture, the strategic use of law, bureaucracy, patronage, and coercion by governing elites to induce compliance among monastics while also muffling and marginalizing would-be critics.
This last chapter highlights what Tony Waters learned from writing and working with his student Saw Eh Htoo, as well as his PhD students from Myanmar. Among the things learned are first that Buddhist political societies are not completely analogous to Greek Demos, Israeli Tribes, or Canadian Federalism; Myanmar needs to be evaluated on its own terms. Second, liberal education and schooling are not the same thing; after all General Ne Win expanded the schooling systems rapidly, which turned out to be an excellent mechanisms for the spread of authoritarianism. Third, Benedict Anderson’s ideas about nationalism and “imagined communities,” and Max Weber’s ideas about Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft speak to the concern of students from Myanmar. Fourth, they emphasize that Buddhism is important for understanding Myanmar, even if they themselves are Christian, or secular. Fifth, Myanmar’s students are acutely aware of power outside the government structures that Westerners typically focus on. Temples, churches, ethnic groups, liberation groups, and others are also important.
The habitus of Burmanization is deep within Burmese society. Only when the consequences of over sixty years of cultural conditioning are addressed, will the basis for peace be established. This will require the de-Burmanization, de-Militarization, and de-Centralization of Burmese society so that the multi-ethnic nature of Myanmar can be accommodated in a fashion that reflects minority and majority rights. To do this peace narratives need to be constructed which are new and different than those of the past. The education system must be transformative, cultivate diverse values, and ultimately leverage the positive values of Buddhism in developing a peaceful and prosperous secular nation.
Los Rohingya son una minoría musulmana en Myanmar que han sido objeto de discriminación y violencia generalizada y se han visto obligados a escapar por la frontera hacia Bangladesh y la India. Están desnutridos y apátridas; por lo tanto, tienen que vivir en campamentos improvisados. Los recientes enfrentamientos étnicos en el estado de Rakhine (Arakan) de Myanmar entre los Rakhines budistas y los Rohingya musulmanes han captado la atención internacional. Parece como si se hubiera corrido una cortina para exponer una cicatriz horrible. Los musulmanes de Rohingya nunca fueron incluidos en la lista de 137 etnias reconocidas por el Gobierno de Myanmar, lo que provocó su falta de reconocimiento como ciudadanos de Myanmar y la incidencia de tortura y discriminación contra ellos por motivos étnicos y religiosos. El pueblo Rohingya ha sido perseguido durante décadas y ya es hora de que su causa reciba la atención que merece. Sin una investigación más profunda sobre los orígenes de la crisis de los Rohingya, el futuro de esta comunidad de minoría étnica parece sombrío. Debe haber consecuencias para aquellos que perpetran, permiten, ayudan e instigan tales crímenes. La comunidad internacional debe tomar medidas para salvaguardar a los Rohingya, abordar los cargos de crímenes de lesa humanidad y garantizar que las atrocidades y la impunidad no queden sin control durante otra generación. A la luz de la agitación política y las rupturas constitucionales en Myanmar, este artículo intenta arrojar luz sobre las causas de estos atroces abusos contra los Rohingyas. El documento también hace un esfuerzo por investigar la situación de los refugiados Rohingya al observar los principios de no devolución y otras normas consuetudinarias del derecho internacional en países vecinos como India. El artículo continúa discutiendo la posición adoptada por el gobierno indio sobre la definición de la nacionalidad de estos refugiados y ofrece recomendaciones para hacerlo.
The rise of Buddhist nationalism in Sri Lanka and Myanmar after independence certainly caused major troubles in the post-colonial state-building processes in both countries. While the constitutional process became malleable to the influence of the growing Buddhist nationalism, this also continued to be a crucial factor in deciding the political leadership of both countries. This article argues that the conflicts emerging from Sri Lanka’s and Myanmar’s twisted identities weighing between modern statehood and Buddhist nationalism are rooted in the historiography of both states, which was dominated by Buddhist cosmological narratives. The article shows how the influence of Buddhist cosmology in carving a ruler who stood above mundane polity did not wither away after the British colonial experience in Sri Lanka and Myanmar. The troubled stage of constitutional practices that brought some negative impacts on the respective country’s minorities has risen from the effects of Buddhist cosmological notions on the public consciousness of both Sri Lanka and Myanmar.
The intensification of Russia-Myanmar relations has been one of the the unexpected consequences of Russo-Ukrainian war. For Russian Federation Burma/ Myanmar used to be a secondary partner, important only due to being the major client of the military-industrial complex. Global (semi)isolation of Russia changed these calculations, upgrading the importance of Myanmar in Russia’s foreign policy. For Naypyidaw these relations have been important since the last coup (1 February 2021), in the aftermath of the putsch Moscow became the biggest international protector of Burmese generals. Due to these two reasons Russia-Myanmar relations have reached the unprecedented high level, unseen in history of this bilateral relations.
The National League for Democracy (NLD) was largely synonymous with Myanmar’s semi-democratic intermezzo in 2016–21. For 2 years after the military coup in 2021, it resumed the role of major opposition party performed from 1988 to 2015. Although it was dissolved by the military junta in 2023, it remains a dominant political force inside the country. This article examines the commitment of NLD leaders and voters to liberal agendas. It reviews existing literature, draws on our dataset of Facebook posts by NLD members of parliament, analyses our 2017 survey, and triangulates it with 2020 World Values Survey data. It argues that the NLD was a relatively liberal force in Myanmar’s democratisation in the 2010s, though its liberal commitments were coupled with rising illiberal values. It is thus possible that even if the NLD were reconstituted and re-elected under a future democratic settlement, that democracy would not be liberal.
This Companion offers a global, comparative history of the interplay between religion and war from ancient times to the present. Moving beyond sensationalist theories that seek to explain why 'religion causes war,' the volume takes a thoughtful look at the connection between religion and war through a variety of lenses - historical, literary, and sociological-as well as the particular features of religious war. The twenty-three carefully nuanced and historically grounded chapters comprehensively examine the religious foundations for war, classical just war doctrines, sociological accounts of religious nationalism, and featured conflicts that illustrate interdisciplinary expressions of the intertwining of religion and war. Written by a distinguished, international team of scholars, whose essays were specially commissioned for this volume, The Cambridge Companion to Religion and War will be an indispensable resource for students and scholars of the history and sociology of religion and war, as well as other disciplines.
This article traces inconsistencies and consistencies of penal practices in Myanmar from dynastic times until today. With inspiration from Foucault's history of the present and Holland and Lave's history in practice, the article demonstrates how penal practices are shaped by legacies of the past. Additionally, the study shows how the continued use of practices from authoritarian times revealed the weakness of the democratic transition in Myanmar. To do so, three practices are studied through interviews with former prisoners conducted during long-term ethnographic fieldwork. These are the use of convict officers, amnesties and torture. These practices are described in first-hand accounts by former prisoners and traced back through time by comparison with existing research on penal histories in Myanmar. This tracing reveals that some practices have been used continuously across dynastic rule, colonial times and independence, while others have been discontinued only to reappear. The penal practices in Myanmar today continue to be deeply influenced by their history and reveal the continued presence of authoritarian ideas.
This paper explores the most salient images throughout Aung San Suu Kyi's political career (1988-2021). It aims to capture how she became an icon of Burma's struggle for democracy for both her supporters and opponents, and was then vilified in the wake of the Rohingya crisis. Aung San Suu Kyi's portrayal and its ups and downs highlight the polarised nature of opinion in the global world. This visual history of opinions sheds new light on the current Burmese crisis. It reveals the irreconcilable rift between the Burmese people and the military junta, which echoes the wars of our time.
This article highlights the legal and technical challenges of contemporary heritage conservation in the context of a weak democracy, ethnic unrest, and military rule. Burma was a military dictatorship from 1962 to 2010, followed by the operation of the civil government between 2011 and 2021, which was then overthrown by the military in 2021. These ten years of civil government were characterized by a reopening of the borders to the international community, initiatives towards democracy. In terms of cultural heritage, Myanmar appeared to have made progress in modernizing its legislation when the country ratified and implemented international conventions protecting tangible cultural heritage such as the World Heritage Convention, the 1970 UNESCO Convention, and the 1995 UNIDROIT Convention. In 2015, the elected parliament drafted new legislation protecting cultural heritage: the Law Protecting Ancient Objectsand theLaw on the Preservation and Protection of Ancient Buildings. How has the ratification of international conventions and new laws impacted domestic conservation practices in Myanmar? The democratic turn entailed a visible modernization of laws, policies, and conservation techniques. However, this time was also characterized by peaks of violence between the Burman government, the Rohingya people, and other ethnic minorities. Ultimately, this article reveals that the protection of heritage became closely linked to ethnonationalist ideologies that have survived the numerous changes of political regime. This is particularly true in the Burmese context. Foreign technical assistance must be aware of the country’s complexity and learn from lessons of the past.
Buddhism and Comparative Constitutional Law offers the first comprehensive account of the entanglements of Buddhism and constitutional law in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Tibet, Bhutan, China, Mongolia, Korea, and Japan. Bringing together an interdisciplinary team of experts, the volume offers a complex portrait of “the Buddhist-constitutional complex,” demonstrating the intricate and powerful ways in which Buddhist and constitutional ideas merged, interacted and co-evolved. The authors also highlight the important ways in which Buddhist actors have (re)conceived Western liberal ideals such as constitutionalism, rule of law, and secularism. Available Open Access on Cambridge Core, this trans-disciplinary volume is written to be accessible to a non-specialist audience.
Buddhism and Comparative Constitutional Law offers the first comprehensive account of the entanglements of Buddhism and constitutional law in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Tibet, Bhutan, China, Mongolia, Korea, and Japan. Bringing together an interdisciplinary team of experts, the volume offers a complex portrait of “the Buddhist-constitutional complex,” demonstrating the intricate and powerful ways in which Buddhist and constitutional ideas merged, interacted and co-evolved. The authors also highlight the important ways in which Buddhist actors have (re)conceived Western liberal ideals such as constitutionalism, rule of law, and secularism. Available Open Access on Cambridge Core, this trans-disciplinary volume is written to be accessible to a non-specialist audience.
This article examines the entangled secular/religious construction of neighbourhoods in Mandalay as dynamic, people‐based and relational processes that are centred in dhamma‐youns (dhamma halls) which work within and across administrative ward boundaries. Cities in Myanmar have not followed the trajectories of urbanisation documented in the global North and its socio‐spatial relationships are inextricably bound to the Theravadin Buddhist lifeworld. This entanglement requires attention because international development aid promoted purely secular forms of urban governance between 2011 and 2021, and Buddhist morality remains salient after the February 2021 military coup d'état.
Burma/Myanmar’s Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former State Counsellor, Aung San Suu Kyi, remains a legend. However, she has become controversial due to her stance on the Rakhine crisis—the mainstream Western narrative accusing her of betraying democratic values. For more than twenty years, Suu Kyi preached about “the revolution of the spirit” needed to bring democracy to Burma. Has she changed her stance? This chapter delves into Suu Kyi’s political philosophy in how she understands social transformation. Suu Kyi’s political leitmotif is a belief in conscious, educated individuals serving as agents of change; empowering and educating individuals enable them to understand that democracy is politically and morally the most benevolent option as it allows self-improvement. They would choose democracy, striving to uplift themselves and restore Myanmar’s place among nations. Essentially, Suu Kyi’s democracy is built on internal, inward-based moral qualities of individuals, yielding both positive and negative consequences.
Objectives
Valid and reliable instruments for the measurement of mindfulness are crucial for people living with HIV. However, there was no Myanmar version of such an instrument.
Methods
We adapted the English version of the 12-item Cognitive and Affective Mindfulness Scale-Revised (CAMS-R) based on standard cross-cultural procedures. By randomly sampling methods, a sample of 248 eligible people living with HIV was contacted from a closed Myanmar Facebook group; 159 PLHIV completed the initial 12-item version of the adapted survey.
Results
Three items were removed due to low item-to-total correlations of the corrected item-total correlation as well as having infit and outfit mean squares outside the range of 0.6 to 1.4. After deleting the 3 items, the three-factor structure was confirmed by confirmatory factor analysis, which indicated good model fit. The resultant 9-item CAMS-R in Myanmar (CAMS-R-M-2) achieved good internal reliability (Cronbach’s α of 0.75 to 0.87, and the corrected item-total correlation ranged from 0.44 to 0.81). Construct validity of the scale was demonstrated by significant association with self-reported HIV stigma and social support levels ( r = 0.63, and − 0.53). In Rasch analysis, the infit and outfit mean squares for each item ranged from 0.49 to 1.24, and the person reliability was 2.17 and the separation index was 0.83.
Conclusions
The 9-item CAMS-R-M-2 with a three-factor structure has good reliability and validity. Higher total scores and subscale score reflected greater mindfulness qualities in people living with HIV in Myanmar.
Recent reforms in Myanmar afforded local Christians new opportunities to more actively share the gospel with Buddhists. In doing so they entered into a public sphere tentatively emerging from five decades of censorship and other restrictions on expression. This article explores the place of misunderstanding and translation in encounters between evangelists and Buddhist audiences. For evangelists, to go public was to open oneself to the possibility, even the likelihood, of being misunderstood. Such misunderstandings emerged in part from the negotiation of similarity and difference entailed by translation practices. Edwards situates these practices in a conceptual and linguistic space partly shaped by nineteenth-century missionary efforts, and also by state attempts to regulate the public use of Buddhist language.
This article investigates the legislative activity of Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar's iconic dissident, during her inaugural tenure as opposition MP in the country’s first post-junta parliament (2012–2016). How did such a totemic figure behave in a legislature dominated by an army-backed party and military-appointed MPs? What legislative tools did she use? The study draws evidence from Burmese-language proceedings of Myanmar’s Union legislature and field interviews. The findings point to a largely marginal, yet disciplined, involvement of Aung San Suu Kyi in legislative business. She neither acted as party whip nor openly criticised government record or took disruptive action in the context of Myanmar’s ‘discipline-flourishing democracy’. Yet, she joined policy debates through the occasional motion, used her position as a catalyst for engaging the government and the world, and successfully marshalled her party to win the next two general elections in 2015 and 2020. The findings have implications for understanding how the strategies of such near-mythical figure can explain subsequent electoral or political (mis)fortunes.
The 1989 collapse of the Communist Party of Burma through rank-and-file mutiny, and its splintering into manifold ethnic armed organizations, presaged a weakening of prospects for any leftist project across ethnic lines in Myanmar. These developments coincided with the flourishing of so-called new wars, in Myanmar and elsewhere, organized around identity politics rather than ideology. For liberal critics, such developments confirmed a belief that leftist projects could only ever be an authoritarian imposition over ascriptive ethnic difference. Considering such critiques, this article presents an alternative approach to leftist politics in Myanmar, as advanced by author and journalist Bhamo Tin Aung in his 1963 novel, Yoma Taikbwe, which narrates the emergence of antifascist struggle under wartime Japanese occupation. The book articulates a leftist politics that attends to ethnic difference as an experience grounded in uneven political economy, thus paralleling arguments from the Black radical tradition. In this way, Bhamo Tin Aung pointed to a leftist politics realized through negotiation across difference. It is a politics that remains as pertinent as ever, given worsening class inequality and enduring ethnic chauvinism, in Myanmar and elsewhere, and given the importance of cross-ethnic solidarity in the struggle against military rule following Myanmar’s February 2021 coup.
This article examines colonial secularism in Burma through a history of the built environment of Rangoon. The creation of the colonial city in the 1850s as an ordered grid of ethnic neighbourhoods and established religions served as a pedagogy of the secular, teaching its population to internalise religious difference. And yet, against this secular vision in brick and pavement there were exceptional spaces that enacted alternative visions. The Thayettaw monastic complex began as home for the diverse displaced ethnic monasteries of the pre-colonial town, but it soon defied the boundaries of colonial rule. Its practice of Buddhism became a mechanism for mobility, interaction, and interconnection.
This article responds to recent calls to consider how religion is defined and deployed in and about Myanmar. Discussing local Pentecostal efforts to evangelise to Buddhists in contemporary Yangon, it presents the encounter with the religious other as one ground from which definitions of religion might emerge. I show that, by taking up new opportunities to share the gospel, believers entered into a long conversation between Christianity and Buddhism dating back to the colonial period. Tracing the different definitions of religion that this conversation generates, and attuning to the dissonances between them, might offer alternate ways for approaching what gets termed the religious and the secular in the study of Myanmar.
Violence against Muslim minority communities in Myanmar has brought the issue of human rights to international and domestic attention. Burmese democratic leaders, activists and Buddhist monks have attracted sharp international criticism for their seemingly neglectful responses to widespread human rights violations. Yet little attention has been directed towards understanding how these leaders make sense of “human rights.” This article argues that the shift in international attention from the problem of military authoritarianism to the marginalisation of religious minorities precipitated new ways in which human rights has been given meaning by Burmese Buddhist political and religious leaders. Examining their use of human rights language through interviews conducted between 2016 and 2017, we highlight contrasting responses to “human rights.” Some respondents rejected human rights language outright, while others imparted the phrase with their own meaning, presenting a variety of hybridised visions of human rights that sometimes supported, rather than opposed, the exclusion of Muslim minorities. Finally, others strategically avoided human rights language as they sought to promote human rights aims amidst popular rejection of the discourse. These findings highlight the importance, for actors seeking to promote human rights in Myanmar, of sensitivity towards divergent meanings of human rights.
This article explores everyday urban governance and politics in Mandalay, Myanmar. We examine this through a focus on state-society interactions within Mandalay's ward offices, which are the lowest tier of the administrative backbone of the Myanmar state known as the General Administration Department. This reveals the existence of three intertwined forms of urban 'politics' in Mandalay: elite politics, which echo the practices of civil society in the sense of Partha Chatterjee; popular politics, which echo the practices of political society; and self-governance, which is an approach to politics culturally and historically situated in Theravada Buddhism and Myanmar's authoritarian legacies. The situatedness of the case prompts us to argue in favor of expanding the southern urban critique beyond its conventional focus on liberal democratic metropolises of the global South, in order to enrich our understanding of what constitutes postcolonial urban politics. We suggest this could be achieved, as we attempt here, by adopting collaborative research methodologies and by extensively building on southern area scholarship in ways that mediate epistemic expropriation.
The article looks at the nature of the state and society in contemporary Thailand using a comparative historical analysis. Thailand is led by an officer corps, faithful only to the monarchy regime, while the land is at the disposal of the absolute sovereign who unquestionably holds control over its terrain, resources and people. It is a mix of Siamese palingenetic ultranationalist sentiment with re-interpretations of a conservative Buddhist ideology which is based on the morality and right of the rulers to rule. To the military leaders, its general officers, the military–monarchy nexus embodies a supreme source of secular morality and power with the right to dominate and where the ends (always) justify the means. Thai society has become irreparably divided by the interests of the ruling elites, defining the exceptions and, it is argued, comparable to historical and contemporary authoritarian regimes elsewhere. The article argues that the country, led by the New Right, articulates disarming elements of semi-fascism under the military, in a compact with the interests of the monarchy.
After decades of military rule in Myanmar, civil society organizations and the National League for Democracy (NLD) have used the opening public space to mount inter-religious dialogue and to raise sensibility for religious freedom in an ethnically and religiously diverse nation. At the same time, the new democratic space is also used by well-resourced Buddhist and nationalist organizations and the military in the name of protecting race and Buddhist religion (sasana). The article argues that it is not clear what democracy in Myanmar means and that its contents are highly contested. However, the promotion of covenantal pluralism seems to be a crucial step towards reconciliation, constitutional protection of religious minorities, and long-lasting peace.
Contemporary Buddhist violence against minority Muslims in Myanmar is rightfully surprising: a religion with its particular moral philosophies of non-violence and asceticism and with its functional polytheism in practice should not generate genocidal nationalist violence. Yet, there are resources within the Buddhist canon that people can draw from to justify violence in defense of the religion and of a Buddhist-based polity. When those resources are exploited in the context of particular Theravāda Buddhist practices and the history of Buddhism and Buddhist identity in Burma from ancient times through its colonial and contemporary periods, it perpetuates an ongoing tragedy that is less about religion than about ethno-nationalism.
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