Buddhist Violence in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Bhutan and Tibet

Though one does not often think of Buddhism as a religious culture that supports political activism and violence, strong movements of religious politics have surfaced in several of South Asia's Buddhist nations that have had a violent edge.

In another Theravada Buddhist country of South Asia, Buddhism has also been an instrument of protest and revolt. In the country of Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, Buddhist monks were at the forefront of protests against the autocratic military rule. In 2012, a new movement developed that was strikingly similar to the anti-Muslim rhetoric of Sri Lanka's BBS move­ment. In the Myanmar case, it was linked to long-standing tensions between Burmese and the Muslim minority community of Rohingya in Rakhine state. Some Burmese activists claimed that the increase in the Muslim population would soon make them the majority, and riots ensued, with killings on both sides. This tension spread throughout the country in a spiral of anti-Muslim activism, fanned by the rhetoric of activist monks like Ashin Wirathu from Mandalay. The government responded to the anti-Muslim sentiment with a series of enactments that greatly restricted the rights of Rohingya within Myanmar, essentially making them citizens without a country.

In the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, the longing for a Buddhist state was realised. An almost theocratic alliance among the monarchial, monastic and elected branches of power in Bhutan led to an enormous amount of government support for Buddhist institutions and sites, and established a rigid code of behaviour that mandated that all citizens wear traditional clothing and maintain their homes in traditional styles. Non-Buddhist Nepalese Hindus were forcibly removed from Bhutan, an act of ethnic cleansing that expelled 15 per cent of Bhutan's population. Many of these exiled ethnic Nepalese were driven into refugee camps in India and Nepal.

In Tibet, monks protesting the loss of cultural autonomy and the steady increase of Han Chinese presence in the region clashed with the Chinese military. Often, despite the Dalai Lama's admonition to adopt only non­violent tactics, Tibetan Buddhist monks were aggressors in the conflict. From the Chinese perspective, the Tibetans challenged the notion of China's sovereignty. From the Tibetan perspective, China was attempting to under­cut the national cultural integrity ofTibet. The old issue of the role of religion in defining a national community was once more the central issue.