A ‘religious revival’ is on the rise all over the world and it accompanies an explicit demand for the “purification” and separation of religious persons and communities that were historically interwoven. New forms of rivalrous discourses have created antagonistic interchanges among Buddhists, Christians and Muslims in Theravada Buddhist contexts. Yet, these rivalries are nonetheless characterized by certain discourses and practices developing in common amidst religious rivalry. Their innovative moves to enhance lay religiosity inaugurate new forms of cultural expression and theo-political formations. This panel examines innovative strategies, mechanisms, and ideologies of the organizations participating in global “religious revival” with special reference to Myanmar and Sri Lanka, locations characterized by majority Buddhist populations and substantial Muslims and Christian minorities. Their visions of “purification” are strongly marked by conceptual intersections and borrowings. By asking how these inter- religious milieus or practices of inter-religious mingling intersect one another, the scholars in this panel will examine Buddhists and Christians’ co-constituted religio-political efforts.
In recent times, Sinhala Buddhists, in particular monks in Sri Lanka, famously called as ‘militant monks’ shared a precarious collective perception— a constructed imaginary that treats an increasing Muslim population, their business, and cultural practices as a form of Muslim fundamentalist terror. The monks demand the sovereign power of the country to address this terror and put Muslims in the ‘right place where they belong.’ Sangha participation in politics is not a new phenomenon in Sri Lanka, but this demand to be sovereign in the country is new which informs the practical experience and consciousness of ordinary citizens leading to real consequences that interrupt state sovereignty as a mode of governance—a process I call ‘third wave monks’ politics.’ While monks involved in the third wave argue that they enact a deeply historical past precedent stretching to the early centuries, I underscore the relative novelty of their demand to be sovereign and current projects and ambitions, rooted only in the last two centuries.
The modernist transformation of southern Buddhism intensified in relation to Christian discourses that challenged Buddhist morality and practice during the colonial era. Buddhists’ revivalist projects endeavored to reorient laity towards Dhamma-following, and away from vernacular religion. In Sri Lanka, this laicization ideal-typically discouraged Sinhala Buddhists’ veneration of (ostensibly) “Hindu” deities, and sought to banish “superstition.” However, the last few decades have seen the arrival and growth of Pentecostalism—a Christian form that anthropologists characterize as “postmodern”. Pentecostalism takes spirits and deities to be materially very real. Religious modernization appears to have left Buddhist repertoires ill-equipped to respond to Pentecostalism. With this in view, this paper addresses the vernacular Buddhist deity and spirit possession, diabolizing Pentecostal rhetoric, and inter-Asian itineraries of spirits. The ethnography illustrates how vernacular Buddhists and Pentecostal Christians spar with, and misunderstand one another, as they respectively seek to retain roots, and gain new ground in Sri Lanka.
In 1905 Ma Nu, the daughter of one of the most prominent men in Rangoon was abducted by armed men and kept on a boat with E Maung for six weeks. Was this dramatic elopement against the wishes of powerful patriarch or a violent abduction of a vulnerable girl? The question hinged not on whether the two were in love, but on Ma Nu's religious identity. Under colonial law, if she was Buddhist it was a consensual marriage. If she was Hindu, she was incapable of consent or marriage to him. In this jumble of gender, sex and law by religious difference, when asked her religion, Ma Nu replied, "I am Hindu, and a Buddhist also." Working from Saba Mahmood's (2015) insights about how colonial secularism entwined the fates of minority religious identity and the gender, this paper explores how claims about sexual violence reify the boundaries of religious communities and force singular religious identities on people who otherwise lived lives multiple and fluid religious affinities.
After the coup in Burma/Myanmar, people criticized many prominent senior Sayadaws (abbots) for siding with the military as the regime committed atrocities throughout the country. However, the final outrage and ditch-down for one of the most powerful monks came in the form of “blasphemy”. The Sitagu Sayadaw opined that the Buddha had five hundred monks whenever he toured around because he needed protection from ill-wishers. This provoked a major public outrage as blasphemy since the Buddha could never be killed by someone. Considering how charges of blasphemy and heresy were used the State to control the monastics, this paper argues religious legitimacy as a Buddhist monk must have to come from the religion itself: the discursive power is socially located and once it is dislocated socially, it loses legitimacy and hence is called “blasphemous”. That is why even the revolution against the military dictatorship has to use the religious power of blasphemy to finally come to terms with the regime monks.
| Anne Blackburn | amb242@cornell.edu | View |