Read: "‘The Robe and the Sword’ (by Sonia Faleiro): Echoes of Buddhist extremism in India’s own relationship with minorities"
Vivek Pinto
Flipping open Sonia Faleiro’s The Rob and The Sword, you come across an unusual section for a book of its size (152 pages) – a “cast of characters” spanning four pages and five countries, the kind you see in long family sagas and thick volumes of nonfiction. If you’d like to get a whiff of what’s in store, you can take your time with it, going through famous names and Faleiro’s descriptions of them.
The new normal
The slim book is about, to borrow the subtitle, “how Buddhist extremism is shaping Modern Asia”. A perfect gist that can jolt an unprepared reader – for Buddhism is a faith one would associate with peace and calm. The question must have troubled the author, who travelled to many parts of Asia where the robes of the Buddhists had somehow turned into a weapon and monks, once thought peaceful, had turned to violence. The result is a lyrical, disturbing account of a metamorphosis that, like all changes, slow and steady and happening before our eyes, can become the new normal.
From Dharamshala in India – home of the Dalai Lama – to the Sri Lankan towns which were marred by violence and the borders of Thailand and Myanmar, where survivors flocked in fear, Faleiro finds stories that bore an uncanny resemblance to each other. In each of the places, a man had emerged from among the monks and Buddhists to become a ferocious leader who would one day wield power and unleash violence, most often against the minority Muslims.
From the outset, without having to state the obvious, Faleiro’s descriptions draw parallels. The growth of hyper-nationalism and militant organisations can bring chilling reminders of similar movements closer home. A Burmese monk came up with a theory called “the sex strategy” that he alleged was used by Muslim men to seduce Burmese women and “overtake Myanmar’s Buddhist population”. Another Burmese leader introduced a citizenship law that included 135 indigenous groups but excluded Rohingya Muslims.
Faleiro heard accounts of riots, with witnesses stating that the police stood by and did nothing to help. The Bodu Bala Sena (BBS), an ultra nationalist organisation of Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka, tied up with India’s Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh in 2014. So did Ma Ba Tha, a similar organisation in Myanmar.
In Myanmar, of course, there was another all-powerful group – the junta that took power and famously put politician Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest, and defrocked dissenting monks. Over the years, thousands of Rohingya muslims were killed.
Many deep tragedies
That Faleiro is lyrical in her narrative only deepens the sense of tragedy. “The monks to whom they (the Burmese) offered rice, bowed their heads, and whispered prayers were no longer just meditative figures in saffron robes. Increasingly, they became men who shouted slurs at Indians, looted shops, and incited – even joined in – acts of violence. The robe remained, but, for some, the role had changed.”
In Sri Lanka, where she describes the death of a Muslim man in a mob attack in 2014, she writes: “It was there, among the injured, that Sahuran’s family found him – cut down on his way to protect what was his. A single, crimson bloom marked his forehead."
Faleiro can’t stress enough how in all these countries faith is so intertwined with politics and power. And she finds an explanation for the apparent severance of Buddhism with the ideals on which it was founded: “In a world shaped by conflict and fear, perhaps no vow – no matter how sacred – is entirely safe from the pull of politics.”
She gently nudges the reader to remember history and trace the roots of the divisive nature of our world back to the centuries-long colonial rule in and around South Asia. She reminds the reader that in India, Ceylon and Myanmar, it was the British who created a census based on ethnicities, and boundaries where none had existed. “In all three countries, the classification system defined who was considered pure and who could be discarded.” It helped, she states, create the conditions for religious nationalism.
Not just in history, you will find disturbing parallels in contemporary times, which Faleiro confines them into short, telling paragraphs. The rhetoric used to dehumanise people, she says, has always been there, and continues to exist.
Discrimination often doesn’t end with race or religion; it invariably seeps into gender. It’s touching that Faleiro found among her storytellers women ready to recount the days of displacement and violence. It should not come as a surprise that in the world of monks and militancy, where power and respect are taken for granted, women were few in numbers. But that was not going to dissuade the resolute author from finding them. In Thailand, where Buddhism has become a major draw for tourism, she found Dhammananda Bhikkhuni, the first Thai woman to become a monk. The 81-year-old told Faleiro that Buddhism isn’t patriarchal in principle, but it supports patriarchy.
The Robe and the Sword: How Buddhist Extremism Is Shaping Modern Asia, Sonia Faleiro, HarperCollins India.
Brian Desouza
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