By AMAR DIWAKAR
Of the world’s major faiths, Buddhism is oftentimes characterized every bit existence a organized religious belief of peace, tolerance, too compassion. The Western come across alongside Buddhism has largely been distilled through yoga, the beatniks, Hollywood, too Dalai Lama quotes shared on Facebook. But fifty-fifty a cursory glance at the intelligence that emanates from the Buddhist globe reveals a to a greater extent than sanguinary province of affairs. In Myanmar, ultra-nationalist monks have got fueled a genocidal crusade against the country’s Rohingya Muslim population. In Thailand, the authorities has responded to a long-running Malay Muslim insurgency inwards its southern provinces yesteryear fostering a Buddhist militarism, encouraging monks inwards local temples to ally alongside the armed forces. And inwards Sri Lanka, the Buddhist-majority Sinhalese were engaged inwards a bitter civil state of war against the Hindu-minority Tamils for decades. More recently, Buddhist nationalists at that spot have got stoked anti-Muslim riots. 
Still, Buddhism continues to have got an alien aura, every bit if it were an “entirely otherworldly organized religious belief alongside a gnostic distaste for the worldly order,” every bit the scholar Ian Harris has written. There is a vogue to frame the ascension of Buddhist nationalism every bit an anomalous phenomenon. In fact, every bit the historian Eugene Ford shows inwards his mass Cold War Monks: Buddhism too America’s Secret Strategy inwards Southeast Asia, the Buddhist globe was a laboratory of competing visions too ideologies inwards the Cold War—an experiment that helped politicize Buddhism into the oftentimes violent, reactionary strength nosotros regard inwards Southeast Asia today.
Of the world’s major faiths, Buddhism is oftentimes characterized every bit existence a organized religious belief of peace, tolerance, too compassion. The Western come across alongside Buddhism has largely been distilled through yoga, the beatniks, Hollywood, too Dalai Lama quotes shared on Facebook. But fifty-fifty a cursory glance at the intelligence that emanates from the Buddhist globe reveals a to a greater extent than sanguinary province of affairs. In Myanmar, ultra-nationalist monks have got fueled a genocidal crusade against the country’s Rohingya Muslim population. In Thailand, the authorities has responded to a long-running Malay Muslim insurgency inwards its southern provinces yesteryear fostering a Buddhist militarism, encouraging monks inwards local temples to ally alongside the armed forces. And inwards Sri Lanka, the Buddhist-majority Sinhalese were engaged inwards a bitter civil state of war against the Hindu-minority Tamils for decades. More recently, Buddhist nationalists at that spot have got stoked anti-Muslim riots.
Still, Buddhism continues to have got an alien aura, every bit if it were an “entirely otherworldly organized religious belief alongside a gnostic distaste for the worldly order,” every bit the scholar Ian Harris has written. There is a vogue to frame the ascension of Buddhist nationalism every bit an anomalous phenomenon. In fact, every bit the historian Eugene Ford shows inwards his mass Cold War Monks: Buddhism too America’s Secret Strategy inwards Southeast Asia, the Buddhist globe was a laboratory of competing visions too ideologies inwards the Cold War—an experiment that helped politicize Buddhism into the oftentimes violent, reactionary strength nosotros regard inwards Southeast Asia today. Buddhism too statecraft have got long been joined at the hip. The organized religious belief supplied the symbols of kingship inwards courts, capitals, too urban centers from Burma (now Myanmar) to Siam (Thailand) to Laos, every bit monastic orders too ruling elites forged intimate ties. Following the seventeenth century, European imperialism disrupted the symbiosis of organized religious belief too province inwards places where colonial regimes were installed. By the early one-half of the twentieth century, anti-colonial movements saw monks participate inwards dissent, laying the foundations for the clergy to move into secular affairs.
The exception was Thailand, the only terra firma inwards the part to avoid formal colonization. It was a distinction that shaped its nationalist narrative, which glorified the monarchy patch sheltering its monks from the activism of their counterparts inwards neighboring countries. However, during World War II, regal Japan’s business of Bangkok offered a harbinger of the exterior pressures that would move released upon Buddhism inwards the postwar era. Tsusho Byoto, an obscure Japanese scholar-monk, advocated a militarized project design of Zen inwards an endeavour to recruit the guarded Thai monastic social club to the fascist cause. While he ultimately failed, Byoto’s “vision of an internationalized Thai monkhood would inwards many ways essay prophetic,” Ford writes.
The immediate postwar aftermath saw revolutionary nationalist movements proliferate from Republic of Indonesia to Vietnam, guided yesteryear an anti-colonial ethos informed yesteryear Marxism. Colonial powers waged costly too ultimately doomed counterrevolutionary wars to reestablish control, which too thence dovetailed alongside the U.S.’s anti-communist efforts every bit Europe withdrew from the scene.
A military-strategic alliance alongside the U.S. became the fundamental pillar of Thailand’s unusual relations afterward 1947, drawing the residue of Southeast Asia into a turbulent geopolitical orbit. The partnership early faced 2 challenges: Thailand had to maintain upward the appearance that the conservative monkhood was segregated from the political realm, patch adherence to the First Amendment prevented whatever instantly U.S. interest inwards Thailand’s religious affairs. All this did was compel Washington to operate clandestinely, every bit it began to shape a pliable Buddhist bloc that would deed every bit its proxy.
The gravitational forces of the Cold War would create the Buddhist clergy to larn to a greater extent than politicized too to a greater extent than internationalized than e'er before. In 1953, during the Eisenhower administration, Vice President Richard Nixon undertook a formative trip across Asia. In Vietnam, Nixon visited the front end lines of the Indochina Wars to witness a French offensive against Viet Minh insurgents. He was frustrated yesteryear France’s patronizing mental attitude toward its Vietnamese allies, too disturbed yesteryear a failure to institute a legitimate create to counter the stirring appeal of their anti-colonial adversaries.
The defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu inwards 1954 too thence made it clear that armed services activity itself was insufficient to fight communism inwards the region. Hearts too minds—or, pagodas too temples—were going to move merely every bit essential. Religion, Ford says, “was a lever the the States could purpose to wield influence of a nonmilitary or psychological nature, non to the lowest degree yesteryear emphasizing to local populations the supposed communist threat to their religious institutions.”
Coinciding alongside Washington’s strategy at the fourth dimension was the emergence of a pan-Buddhist consciousness. Advancements inwards communication too shipping had accelerated religious too cultural central too deepened interconnectivity inside the milieu of Theravada Buddhism, the predominant strain of Buddhism inwards Southeast Asia. The 2,500th anniversary of the Buddha’s expiry inspired the launch of the showtime international Buddhist organisation inwards 1950: the World Fellowship of Buddhists. Coupled alongside the 1954 staging of the Great Buddhist Synod inwards Burma, at that spot were signs that the consolidation of a Buddhist bloc was ripe for engagement.
The earliest of U.S. efforts began inwards Burma betwixt 1951 too 1952. Burma’s Prime Minister U Nu had been battling a domestic communist insurgency since 1948 too looked to contain “Burmese Buddhism” into an anti-communist program. This was good received yesteryear Washington, every bit conveyed yesteryear a 1951 State Department memo to its diplomatic mission inwards Rangoon. The memo highlighted the rules of solar daytime of the month every bit it applied to U.S. funding of religious activities, which had to move undertaken through mortal channels to obscure whatever official links.
The CIA deepened such activity across the region. As early every bit 1948, it harvested intelligence on Bangkok’s Vietnamese monasteries to monitor for potential communist links. At the invitation of the U Nu government, the Committee for a Free Asia—which was renamed the Asia Foundation inwards 1954—became active inwards Burma inwards 1952, bankrolled yesteryear the CIA through the National Committee for a Free Europe. (Much of Ford’s archival sources come upward from the Asia Foundation.) The Asia Foundation had extensive behind-the-scenes interest inwards the Great Buddhist Synod. By 1962, Ford notes, it had contributed over $300,000 inwards the cast of master printing equipment too technical advice to brand “Burma’s Buddha Sasana Press the world’s largest too best equipped Buddhist publishing house.”
The Asia Foundation would too thence expand its operations into neighboring Thailand, Cambodia, too Laos. Harnessing the foundation’s platform too networks inwards the region, Washington provided grants to Buddhist educational too civic groups, too distributed anti-communist propaganda. It also made certain to send (unofficial) delegations to Buddhist conferences patch sponsoring trips for senior members of the Buddhist community to the U.S.
By 1957, White House policy-makers had produced a full general policy framework geared towards the manipulation of Buddhist institutions too monks. The draft was circulated inside U.S. embassies across Southeast Asia, too fifty-fifty a particular “Buddhist Committee” was formed inwards the State Department to assist its implementation. By emphasizing community activism, Ford writes that the Asia Foundation’s “aim had been to save the monkhood’s traditional abstention from politics yesteryear providing option forms of civic engagement.” Much similar Byoto, the Asia Foundation resembled a unusual agent determined on restructuring Thailand’s cloistered Buddhist institutions.
As turmoil enveloped Southeast Asia, however, the strategy began to unravel, every bit forces that were activated failed to align every bit intended.
A coup d’état deposed Burma’s U Nu inwards 1962, too the armed services junta engaged inwards a protracted crusade against a local communist insurgency. The repression of Buddhists nether the U.S.-supported Catholic leader Ngo Dinh Diem inwards Vietnam during the “Buddhist Crisis,” too the self-immolation of the monk Quang Duc inwards 1963, hastened a political crisis that culminated inwards a armed services coup, Diem’s assassination, too the farther spiraling of South Vietnam into chaos. In 1967, the Asia Foundation’s CIA patronage was exposed inwards the antiwar magazine Ramparts. Eventually, despite U.S. armed services assist too religious sponsorship, communists took might inwards Lao People's Democratic Republic too Kingdom of Cambodia inwards 1975. That same year, Saigon fell to the Viet Cong.
With the specter of communism at its doorstep, the Thai conservative establishment curbed the postwar experiment of civilian democratic dominion inwards its holler for for stability. It achieved this yesteryear soliciting the services of a notorious right-wing monk named Kittivudho, who to Ford represented “both the activation too the internationalization of Thai Buddhist conservatism.” By incentivizing the assassination of leftists alongside accumulation of religious merit, Kittivudho fused Buddhist doctrine alongside a virulent anti-communism. He lent institutional back upward to right-wing paramilitary organizations too vigilante groups, every bit the Thai authorities (with implicit back upward from Washington) carried out a cruel crackdown on students, project activists, too farmers.
Cold War Monks alerts readers to the ways inwards which the volatile currents of the Cold War swept upward Southeast Asian Buddhism. What was an ultimately unsuccessful exertion to depict the monkhood out of its political quietism swiftly mutated into an anti-progressive force, too continued to suffer every bit a night cloud over the region’s politics inwards subsequent decades.
This bloody legacy echoes inwards the present. It tin move detected inwards the tearing answer of Thai monks to the Malay Muslim insurgency inwards the south, a crusade that has many similarities alongside Myanmar’s clerical-led anti-Muslim 969 movement. Under the pressures exerted yesteryear globalization, Buddhism continues to supply a source of legitimacy for nation-states across the region. Its followers are susceptible to battle cries to save the faith nether the banner of a muscular Buddhist nationalism.
The resultant of the Cold War did non erase the imprint of a to a greater extent than bellicose Buddhism. Only instead of a godless communism, at nowadays it is a transnational militant Islam that is envisioned every bit a threat to Buddhist identity too tradition. This ideological shift merely thence happens to coincide alongside the U.S.’s “war on terror,” which has been operationalized to justify the bloody reprisals inwards Thailand too the pogroms inwards Myanmar. And the monks are front end too pump of it all.
Amar Diwakar is an independent author too researcher.
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