CAMBODIA AND LAOS, BUDDHISM IN
“The logic of territorial contiguity, Buddhism, and politics both secular and related to Buddhism, defined the history of Cambodia. Hemmed in by Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam, the south of Cambodia alone confronted the Gulf of Siam, making her open to Indic Hindu cultural and religious influences primarily via trade. The Khmers made up almost 90 percent of Cambodia’s ethnic population.” (EoBDK – AWI)
“Before Theravāda Buddhism became predominant in the fourteenth century, Mahāyāna Buddhism and, as elsewhere in the peninsula, animism had taken strong root. Theravāda Buddhism made its presence felt in the reign of King Jayavarman VII, who reigned 1181–1201. The original Cambodian empire at the height of its power extended over parts of northern Thailand, Laos and Vietnam, providing an aura of a golden age to later rulers. Later, however, Cambodia closer to modern times lost considerable territory to Vietnam, a neighbor she traditionally feared, and to Thailand. The French who became the paramount power in the region established a protectorate in Cambodia in 1863, and later in 1889 made all of Cambodia a French colony, increasing its size by successfully compelling Thailand in 1907 to return three Cambodian provinces Thailand had appropriated in the eighteenth century.” (EoBDK – AWI)
“However, Cambodia’s relations with Thailand were closer on account of a strong common Theravāda tradition, in contrast to those with Vietnam. Thailand, with an older Buddhist tradition and unfettered by colonialism, extended a benign fraternal tutelage over Cambodia. An independent Theravāda Buddhist tradition was fostered by Cambodia’s rulers of the nineteenth century beginning with Duang (1848–60), and continued more forcefully by his successor Norodhom (1860–1914), whose reign broadly coincided with that of Mongkut in Thailand. A notable feature was the importation of the Dhammayuttika Nikāya (monastic group) that Mongkut had created in Thailand as a countervailing reformed sect to the older Mahānikāya sect. As rulers both Duang and Norodom espoused the Dhammayuttika sect, which received added legitimacy when, as a result of the efforts of Mongkut, five Cambodian monks went to Sri Lanka to return with Buddhist relics and saplings from the Bo tree in Anurādhapura.” (EoBDK – AWI)
“With the death of Mongkut, Thai influences on Cambodia became perceptibly less. Chulalongkorn, though concerned with the condition of Buddhism in Cambodia, was by inclination cosmopolitan and secular. In any event, the differences between the newly established Dhammayuttika sect and the older Mahānikāya Order were more to do with style than substance.” (EoBDK – AWI)
“Meanwhile the French colonial government adopted multiple strategies towards Buddhism. Unlike in Vietnam, there was no Mandarin class influencing court policies, a class the French used in ruling Vietnam. The French were faced with a problem in Cambodia. The Buddhist monks in spite of the absence of an organizational structure comparable with Thailand were potentially an imperium in imperio, given their ubiquity, universal presence and the reverence traditionally shown to Buddhist monks. At the end of the nineteenth century an official survey revealed the existence of well over 2,000 monasteries. The fluid political situation in countries across the borders of Cambodia, the politicization of the Cambodian monkhood or their manipulation, was a veritable sword of Damocles.” (EoBDK – AWI)
“As if to give substance to official misgivings, the monks in Cambodia in the modern period from 1820 to 1916 led rebellions that, however, were suppressed without difficulty in spite of a conniving backdrop of peasant unrest fused with millennial ideologies. The latter had potential to latch on to the age-old visions of the glories of the Khmer empire dominated by powerful rulers. The French in a sense legitimized the phobias by forbidding Buddhist monks from learning martial arts or practicing indigenous medicines, which reputedly had talismanic powers making their users invincible. The king under French colonial rule was at best a ceremonial figurehead, the head of a spiritual Buddhist state, with its rituals and ceremonies of largely symbolic significance and as an entity running the affairs of Buddhism, but constrained to show deference to the policies of the colonial authority. The government contained the potential political danger of the monks by keeping in place existing regulations prohibiting monks from voting or holding office. The restrictive policies found favor with conservative Buddhist elements in Cambodia as in other Buddhist countries confronting modernization. Monks functioned best immured in monasteries and attending to the spiritual needs of the laity, avoiding both social and political involvement. Moreover the French placed restrictions on the construction of new monasteries, and insisted that monasteries be certified by the state following ordination.” (EoBDK – AWI)
“More effective were French policies of restructuring the educational system with a view to undermining the traditional Cambodian penchant for looking to Thailand for higher monastic learning and thereby coming within the ambience of Thai cultural and covert political ideologies. Comparable importance was attached to changing the dependence on monasteries as the sole source of primary and secondary education, in a strategy to undermine the traditional Buddhist influence on education. At secondary and higher levels, two new institutions, while seeming to focus on scholarly Buddhist studies, encouraged the creation of secular intellectual elite. A mix of educational reform, modernization, and economic opportunities created the classic bifurcation characteristic of countries under the fiat of sustained Western colonization.” (EoBDK – AWI)
“With the phasing out of French rule in 1953, there was a critical power vacuum in Cambodia. In 1946 when belatedly the right to form political parties was conceded, to the right of the political spectrum there was the Nagara Vatta, which enjoyed a measure of royal support and stood for liberal democracy basing its support on the middle class, but clearly lacked a rural base. Its rival UIF had the support of Buddhist monks and was strongly pro-communist. Popular support with no viable focal point to turn to rallied round Prince Sihanouk who had ascended the throne in 1941. His popularity with radical left forces was strong following his uncompromising stand against the American presence in Vietnam, and the forced use of Cambodian territory in the war against the Vietming. Above all he had led Cambodia to formal political independence in 1953. Sihanouk was aware of the rising tide of communist popularity in the rural areas, where communism appealed to an emasculated Buddhist monkhood with no point of legitimate political focus as well as to an impoverished rural mass. The king tried to popularize Buddhist Socialism, visualizing a society ethicized by Buddhist values that would avoid the greed of capitalism and the negative egalitarianism of communist redistribution of economic wealth and productive potential. The utopianism appealed neither to the wealth-producing bourgeoisie nor to the mass of the rural disadvantaged. Sihanouk conceded that he had failed, reflecting philosophically on the mismatch of idealism and limitations of human nature driven by selfinterest. He was ousted in a coup that brought in Lon Nol as head of a new Khmer Republic Lon Nol, who had the backing of the Americans, was pro-Buddhist and anticommunist. His notably brief tenure of office, marred by illness, failed to prevent the Khmer Rouge from taking complete control of Cambodia in April 1975 under the leadership of Pol Pot, who until he was deposed by Vietnamese forces in 1979, unleashed a reign of terror directed at Buddhism and the sangha, bringing both to the point of near extinction. Viscerally committed to Marxist ideologies in their most elemental forms, Pol Pot understood that the real obstacle to the establishment of a communist state was Buddhism, which in effect meant the traditional order of monks. Tactically, however, he made a distinction between Buddhism and its ethical positions, and the order of monks representing the latter as a parasitic class who used karma to legitimize their privileged position enabling them to live otiose lives of little utility to society at large. The nuance’s distinction appealed to rural youth and to younger monks at the lower end of the monastic hierarchy. Above all it legitimized the take-over of monasteries, putting them to secular uses, the expulsion of older monks, forcing them to work in the fields, the destruction of monasteries and stūpas, the decapitation of Buddha images and the cynical use of palm leaf manuscripts to roll cigarettes: acts which reverberated in the Buddhist world and may have overall had the ironical effect of undermining the communist appeal in South and Southeast Asia.” (EoBDK – AWI)
“His successors in the post-Vietnamese era of healing were wiser and quick to learn from his mistakes, notably the People’s Republic of Kampuchea and the Buddhist Liberal Democratic Party. They understood the dialectic that those who aspired to usher in a new order of society would serve their interest best by recognizing the legacies of the past to make the new order a viable synthesis. The new dispensation made a commitment to Buddhism, gave the sangha recognition, and made provision for a king. It was clearly an emblematic gesture but counted in a society that attached great value to symbols, leaving the reality to be achieved at some future point.” (EoBDK – AWI)
“Meanwhile the land-based kingdom of Laos in its pre-European phase was dominated by Thailand and Vietnam, especially the latter. Some of the territories appropriated by Thailand to the west of Laos became part of French Indo-China. Laos traditionally was a Buddhist country with strong links between Buddhism and the state. Successive rulers fostered Buddhism and the monastic order to legitimize their authority. In the rural areas, where the bulk of the population lived, the links between the monastic order and the laity were strong constantly reinforced by legitimizing rituals. Laos attracted foreign scholars and enjoyed a reputation as a center for Buddhist studies. The picture of stability and tranquility was shattered with the advent of France and the gradual expansion of French power in the nineteenth century. Although Laos was an appendage in the larger context of French interests in Vietnam and Cambodia, French power had far-reaching implications for Laos. It put an end to the idea of Laos being a Buddhist state, and sundered the links between the monastic order and the ruler and his claims to legitimacy, with the king becoming the titular head of a virtually non-existing Buddhist state, beholden to the French for the modicum of influence he exercised.” (EoBDK – AWI)
“Less than a century of French colonial rule led to an irreversible bifurcation in Laotian society. French rule created a Europeanized elite susceptible to Western cultural mores and, more importantly, to ideologies of capitalism and liberalism. However, French rule also opened pathways to the mesmerizing influence of Marxist-Leninist ideologies that swept through Asia in the throes of decolonization. French rule, which formally ended in 1954, ushered in a prolonged period of acrimonious conflict between the RIG, the Royal Pathet Lao who stood for democratic forms of government and economic liberalism, and the PL, the communist Pathet Lao, inspired by literalist exegetical interpretations of Marxist-Leninism. In an expedient coalition which brought the two parties to work together, the ministry of religious affairs came within the control of a staunchly ideological communist who immediately and effectively followed policies of demolishing the traditional institutional infrastructures of Buddhism, eroding the power of the sangha in the rural areas. In any event the communist Pathet Lao which had long been active in the rural areas, was easily able to seize power in 1975 to establish the Lao People’s Republic. The Pathet Lao ideologues, sensing the importance of Buddhism and the tactical need to legitimize their authority, worked out an extraordinarily detailed and complex synthesis of Marxist-Leninist ideologies and Buddhism, committed in the process to one consistent principle that in situations where the two ideologies could not be harmonized, it was Buddhism that had to yield the point. In this way Laos earned the distinction of becoming the first Marxist state in the region.” (EoBDK – AWI)
See also: Buddha and cakravartins; Politics; South and Southeast Asia, Buddhism in.
(EoBDK – AWI)
(EoBDK)
Fair Use Source: EoBDK
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