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How Communication Technologies Shape Public Discourse and Power in Buddhist Myanmar

Press Freedom in 2018

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Digital and Social Media: Connecting with the World Outside, Part 2 12 plain 2019-07-05T22:48:27-07:00
The question of who belongs to Myanmar after 2011 surfaces in debates about Buddhist nationalism and the role of monks who once again command a powerful political force. Growing access to digital communication contributed to an increasing awareness of events in Myanmar globally and rising expressions of Buddhist nationalism. Media outlets in Myanmar and in the West have stressed a resurgence of Buddhist nationalism and Burmese xenophobia.

In this complex scenario, Myanmar’s social and historical realities contradict common Western sentiments toward Myanmar Buddhist practices as a uniquely peaceful and non-violent religion. Consequently, a political, social, and religious backlash began to jeopardize foreign support for democratic reforms underway in Myanmar.

Responses among global Buddhist networks to the discourse on Buddhist nationalism in Myanmar included the Dalai Lama, who admonished Burmese monks and, together with his fellow Nobel Prize recipients, has called for an end to violence. Others echo the view prominent in the West that Buddhism is inherently non-violent and peaceful, obscuring the political and social realities of those historical moments when Buddhists have been both victims and perpetrators of violence. Some Western media outlets stressed a resurgence of Buddhist nationalism and Burmese xenophobia. Time Magazine identified the Burmese monk Wirathu as the “Face of Buddhist Terror.”

Jack Kornfield (2014), a well-known American meditation teacher, published his firsthand report about the causes of violence in Arakan, but not without explaining “real” Buddhism. Under the title “Buddhists Betray the Teachings,” he describes social causes for the Rohingya conflict and then concludes that “surprisingly, there is widespread ignorance in Burma of the many core Buddhist teachings. Most of Buddhist practice is devotional… In this culture of devotion, the teachings of the noble truths and eightfold path, of nonviolence, mindfulness, meditation, and virtue are not emphasized.” This pejorative rhetoric deprives Myanmar Buddhists of voicing their own perspectives, while Abeysekara (2002:203) reminds readers that the voice of authenticity always belongs to the community of practitioners.

New transnational publics now also include diaspora communities who locate themselves in a more complex social world than their peers at home. In a letter published in 2018, a group of Burmese Buddhists living abroad asks their fellow countrymen “to consider whether the hyper-nationalism gripping the country now is compatible with the teachings of the Buddha… His teachings promote critical thinking, compassion, and striving to make ourselves and the world around us better. He warned against the dangers of attachment—to one’s race, religion, and nation—as these attachments prevent us from seeing the four noble truths and following the eightfold path.”

Example: The letter can be read on this website.

Concerns about press freedom in Myanmar continue to linger, as the podcast below explains.

Example:

Myanmar journalists reporting for Reuters on the 2017 massacre of ten Rohingya men in Rahkine remain imprisoned under the pretext of a colonial law that prohibits sharing state secrets.

Facebook is the universal platform in Myanmar that many users identify as the internet per se, because it is usually pre-installed on digital devices. Debates in the West about Facebook’s role in enabling the organization of violence have been hosted by serval media outlets. Following a rapid and yet unmonitored rise in hate speech since 2012, Facebook has been criticized for insufficient monitoring and a general lack of accountability in checking the spread of hate speech. As part of his testimony before Congress, Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg was questioned about the company’s lack of social responsibility in Myanmar. The spike in hate speech is captured in the chart below:

Examples: Here are links to important discussions about the role of Facebook in facilitating the rise of anti-Muslim communal violence in Myanmar.
These cartoons speak to the ambiguous public attitudes Myanmar citizens hold toward Facebook’s role in the country’s public discourse.

Different communication technologies have had a significant impact on the roles of the monastic institution (sangha) in Myanmar. Against a colonial history fraught with encounters that many Burmese still view as anti-Buddhist, the notion of secular governance remains weak and largely unpopular. Following decades of totalitarian rule (1962-2010), the sangha has reclaimed its place in the Burmese public sphere as monks have both supported and contested military regimes in Myanmar. The sangha today in Myanmar is not a homogeneous group that speaks in a single voice, and its affirmed uniformity was clearly an idealized rather than a historical reality. Yet, Buddhist monks continue to enjoy tremendous power among the Burmese public. As monks on all sides of the political continuum seek to participate in emergent social and political reforms, they represent a formidable and unpredictable force in determining this country’s future.

Author Biography
Juliane Schober is Director of the Center for Asian Research, professor of religious studies at Arizona State University and PI on this UISFL project, Asia Mediated. Her primary areas of research include Theravada Buddhist practices in Southeast Asia, especially Myanmar (Burma); Anthropology of Religion; Material Culture, Media and Aesthetics; Icons; Ritual; Modernity, Politics, and Religion; Colonial Studies; Conflict and Society; and Sacred Biography.

Her book, Modern Buddhist Conjunctures in Myanmar: Cultural Narratives, Colonial Legacies and Civil Society, was published in 2011 (University of Hawai’i Press). She co-edited Buddhist Manuscript Cultures (Routledge, 2008) and edited Sacred Biography in the Buddhist Traditions of South and Southeast Asia (U. of Hawai'i Press, 1997). She has authored many book chapters, journal articles, and essays in encyclopedias.

Juliane Schober is a 2018 Research Fellow of The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation in Buddhist Studies. With support from the Henry Luce Foundation, Professor Schober has developed a collaborative project on Theravada Buddhist civilizations in Southeast Asia. She founded the Theravada Studies Group, an academic organization affiliated with the Association for Asian Studies that promotes comparative research in the social sciences and humanities about Theravada Buddhist traditions in Asia and globally though pilgrimage and diaspora networks. She has been awarded grants from the US Department of Education, Title VI (NRC, FLAS, and UISFL), the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Science Research Council, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, and the Smithsonian Institution.
The Emergence of Print Culture during the British Colonial Era (1824-1948) Print technology facilitated the establishment and reach of the British colonial administration and, in a broader sense, the construction of what Benedict Anderson terms “imagined communities” that shaped modern forms of government in Myanmar (Schober 2010). Since the time of early-modern contacts with the West and subsequent colonial domination of many Theravada civilizations, Buddhist civilizations have interacted with modern Western political thought and practices and produced modern social formations that drew upon both manuscript and print technologies. Print was a crucial technology, facilitating both the formation of a modern nation-state and its Buddhist and secular forms of dissent. Access to printed sources was also instrumental in providing the Burmese English-reading public with a growing exposure to Western political and social theories.

At the time of the British conquest of Burma, the literacy rate among Burma was about equal to that of the Irish at the time, hovering below 20 percent of the population. In 1836, the country's first newspaper, The Maulmain Chronicle, was published, followed by The Rangoon Chronicle in 1853, later renamed to The Rangoon Times. King Mindon (1853-1878, r.) was an advocate of press freedom and encouraged the creation of the first Burmese-language newspaper, Yadanapon Naypyidaw Thadinsa, featuring events at his palace. He also established the country's first indigenous press law, the Seventeen Articles, which safeguarded freedom of the press. Several Chinese-, Burmese-, and English-language newspapers were permitted to report news from around the country and internationally, interviewing politicians and interacting with foreign journalists, contrary to most of Burma's South-East Asian neighbors.

Throughout the colonial era, there was a steady increase in the number publications in circulation. The country's first English-language newspaper, The Maulmain Chronicle, was published in 1836. In 1864, Bishop Bigandet, the Vicar Apostolic of Ava and Pegu, was instrumental in producing the first printed version of the Burmese Tripitaka. The “Sun,” which was later also published in Burmese, soon became an important outlet for voicing new kinds of Buddhist discourse on the colonial identity of the modern Burmese. In 1911, there were forty-four periodicals and newspapers in circulation and by the end of the 1930s, that number increased to more than 200 newspapers and periodicals in circulation. Newspapers like these, editorials and printed leaflets soon provided significant access to information that circulated relatively freely, facilitating new networks across the colony and even providing insight into the larger concerns of the British colonial administration.

Communication through print was initially impeded primarily by language barriers. English literacy was largely a privilege of high-class Burmese, who produced and consumed public letters and popular publications. Print knowledge was instrumental in organizing resistance to colonial rule, particularly among a young, educated elite. Many of them, but not all, had traveled to England and had become adept at promoting Burmese Buddhist causes through print leaflets, newspapers, and even research agendas published in the Journal of the Burma Research Society. Examples of such developments include the well-known Foot Wearing controversy, a debate demanding that Europeans remove their shoes when visiting sacred Buddhist sites.

The advent of colonial modernity and print circulation furthered the emergence of new kinds of public figures representing Buddhist learnedness, heightened prominence of meditation, and its lay teachers. Beginning at least with the colonial period—which started in Myanmar in 1823, when the British began to expand their colonial rule into Burma, over the course of three wars during the nineteenth century—Buddhist actors, institutions and public practices have not only responded to changing political contexts, but increasingly, such movements have been closely allied with political power—either through mutual cooptation, or, alternatively through moral contestation. Buddhism became a fervent ground for anticolonial resistance and early nationalism. Monks increasingly entered political discourse with the rise of the Young Men’s Buddhist Association and similar movements seeking to affirm a Burmese Buddhist identity. Monks were also active in politics in the early 1920s, when Burmese fought for home rule, or direct representation under British colonial rule, seeking to end annexation under the British Raj in India. Colonial restrictions on public speech prohibited Burmese to assemble in numbers greater than five people, except for religious occasions. Buddhist voices of resistance also profited from a widespread mistrust of secular power, a popular sentiment that further empowered Buddhist monks to play pivotal roles at historical watersheds that shaped the nation’s future.

Burma’s history of so-called “political monks” includes narratives of resistance against the state as well as narratives of cooptation by political power, showing that monks are in unique positions to shape public opinion. U Ottama and U Wisara were prominent figures in the rise of political monks who advocated anti-colonial discourse and promoted inter-Asia networks and alliances.

The advent of print culture eventually triggered changes in the structures of Buddhist authority, including a renewed emphasis on self-reform and monastic discipline in light of the waning authority of sangha council. Monks also began writing in new genres, such as moral instructions for lay consumption and even novels, writing in the voice of an individual. Even cartoons became a site for voicing critiques and dissent.

After independence in 1947, Burma’s first democratic prime minister, U Nu, looked to mass lay meditation to help popularize democracy, promote development, and foster millennial expectations for a prosperous Buddhist nation. Buddhist identity became a flashpoint in 1961, when U Nu sought to declare Buddhism as the official state religion, a move that not only alienated minorities, but also provoked a military takeover. During the Socialist Union of Burma, the Ministry of Religious Affairs undertook monastic reforms that imposed tight controls on the sangha and began to intervene against charismatic monks, their powerful networks of donors, and economic resources.

Between 1989 and 2011, the military junta that came to power after the 1988 uprising succeeded in silencing nearly all forms of dissent, including religious voices, and eventually co-opted Buddhist moral authority to enhance the state’s authority.

During the period of military dictatorship (1962-2010), press censorship played an important role in shaping public discourse. Anna Allot, who edited a collection of Burmese stories with PEN, an international organization of writers advocating press freedom, writes: “This was a highly political process, inducing apprehension and fear, blacklisting or even imprisoning journalists, authors and other intellectuals. Censors would rip out pages or ink over prohibited content. They could also require propaganda to be featured in the publications, including political slogans like “The Emergence of the State constitution is the Duty of all Citizens.” Other efforts to promote the military regime’s politics by controlling literary output consisted of stories that decried western fashion and “immoral” behavior. Occasionally, subtle plays on words, sarcasm, metaphors, or even just spellings would elude censorship and convey veiled messages to readers.”

Example: Here is a podcast on Press Freedom in Myanmar and the importance of training investigative journalists.

As access to foreign print and satellite mass communication seeped into Burma under military control, Buddhist discourse and mass movements increasingly made use of these new communication technologies to voice dissent. During the first decades of the twenty-first century, mass media, including print, satellite TV, and increasingly, though still restricted, public access to the Internet fueled a popular resistance couched in Buddhist sentiments. For example, the prolonged exile at home and resistance of Aung San Suu Kyi during her house arrest could not have been effective without print and mass media. In 1997, a collection of her essays with the title Letters from Burma was published and presented an encompassing, yet easily accessible critique of the corruption and lack of resources during the military era.

Example: Suu Kyi’s weekly letters initially published in a Japanese newspaper as resistance in printed format.

The widespread censorship of print culture was accompanied by selective reification of autocratic ethics associated with manuscript culture, Buddhist kingship, and their corresponding hegemonic power structures. The suppression of free speech was accompanied by military elites staging state-sponsored rituals like the pilgrimage of the Chinese Tooth Relic and other public merit-making rituals. Ruling in the absence of a national constitution, military leaders increasingly sought to legitimate their power by sponsoring large Buddhist rituals that ensured better rebirths for all citizens of the state. Some Burmese saw in the state’s appropriation of Buddhist symbols a moral vindication of the military dictatorship and a repudiation of the violence and political abuses that had been committed under its auspices.

The military junta increasingly silenced nearly all forms of dissent, including religious voices, and eventually co-opted Buddhist moral authority to enhance the state’s authority. The struggle against the later military junta (1988-2011) united secular opponents of the regime, including university students, opposition leaders, and public intellectuals and members of the sangha.

Against this background of suppression, monks again emerged as significant political voices and influenced public discourse, rallied popular resistance against the state, and provided social services where public assistance failed. At several moments during the military dictatorship, e.g. in 1988, 1996, and 2007, monks invoked public “strikes” (thabei’ mouk) and refused donations from the military regime and its supporters. This potent ritual act challenged political authority by refusing to give donors opportunities for merit making. Since merit-making rituals are the primary means through which social hierarchies are constructed in Buddhist manuscript cultures, the monastic refusal to accept donations risks a high potential for communal violence.

Examples:

This drawing by the Burmese artist Harn Lay shows the mistreatment of monks at the hands of the military. The incident it depicts marks the start of the Saffron Revolution.

Military dictatorship had corrosive effects on Burmese families with relatives in the sangha and the military. Monastic factions crystalized between, on the one hand, an older monastic establishment co-opted by the Ministry of Religious Affairs and, on the other hand, a younger generation of monks, many of whom had been victimized by the events of 1988 when the sangha provided infrastructural support to the popular uprising led by student demonstrators.

Access to satellite and internet communication was a significant element in breaking the stalemate between a Buddhist resistance and the military power at the end of Myanmar’s totalitarian period. When Buddhist monks challenged political power during the socially engaged Saffron Revolution in Myanmar in 2007, print and television technologies facilitated the circulation of information and helped mobilize resistance against the ruling military junta. Demonstrators carried CNN signs during their marches to draw attention to global media coverage and a sense of protection that the protesters derived from it. The docu-drama “Burma VJ” later illustrated how images and reports of the protests were smuggled out of the country using thumb drives and a well-coordinated media effort in exile.

Example: The documentary film can be watched here:

The media image Burmese monks projected to the world outside Myanmar was that of a progressive force engaged in social reforms, advocating human rights, and challenging the military junta in the streets of Yangon and elsewhere. Reports of their marches were featured daily in the media channels of the global public sphere, creating a powerful Buddhist narrative that equated the Buddhist ethic of loving kindness (metta) with the Western political ideology of democracy. Although the protest marches were brutally put down, they nonetheless presented a formidable challenge to the military’s moral authority.

Monks again refused donations from military families, ultimately demanding the regime’s resignation in favor of a moral government. Along their protest marches, monks accepted food and water from democracy advocates. At the dramatic height of these protests, they accepted water from and extended blessings to Aung San Suu Kyi, who, for the first time in years, appeared in public view at the gate of her compound where she had been under house arrest.

A consequence of the prolonged state censorship (over six decades) of speech and print culture has been the proliferation of monolithic and idealized representations that dominated public perception of Buddhism in Myanmar. Censorship has also submerged from public discourse deep-seated tensions about religious and ethnic identities and communities. With the rapid introduction of digital communication media, the fault lines that remained hidden from public awareness quickly emerged as focal sites for divisive dissent along religious and ethnic lines as soon as the country opened itself up to economic liberalization and digital information flows.
The Emergence of Print Culture during the British Colonial Era (1824-1948), Part 2 After independence in 1947, Burma’s first democratic prime minister, U Nu, looked to mass lay meditation to help popularize democracy, promote development, and foster millennial expectations for a prosperous Buddhist nation. Buddhist identity became a flashpoint in 1961, when U Nu sought to declare Buddhism as the official state religion, a move that not only alienated minorities but also provoked a military takeover. During the Socialist Union of Burma, the Ministry of Religious Affairs undertook monastic reforms that imposed tight controls on the sangha and began to intervene against charismatic monks, their powerful networks of donors, and economic resources.

Between 1989 and 2011, the military junta that came to power after the 1988 uprising succeeded in silencing nearly all forms of dissent, including religious voices, and eventually co-opted Buddhist moral authority to enhance the state’s authority.

During the period of military dictatorship (1962-2010), press censorship played an important role in shaping public discourse. Anna Allot, who edited a collection of Burmese stories with PEN, an international organization of writers advocating press freedom, writes: “This was a highly political process, inducing apprehension and fear, blacklisting or even imprisoning journalists, authors and other intellectuals. Censors would rip out pages or ink over prohibited content. They could also require propaganda to be featured in the publications, including political slogans like “The Emergence of the State constitution is the Duty of all Citizens.” Other efforts to promote the military regime’s politics by controlling literary output consisted of stories that decried Western fashion and “immoral” behavior. Occasionally, subtle plays on words, sarcasm, metaphors, or even just spellings would elude censorship and convey veiled messages to readers.”

Example: Here is a podcast on Press Freedom in Myanmar and the importance of training investigative journalists.
As access to foreign print and satellite mass communication seeped into Burma under military control, Buddhist discourse and mass movements increasingly made use of these new communication technologies to voice dissent. During the first decades of the twenty-first century, mass media, including print, satellite TV, and increasingly (though still restricted) public access to the Internet fueled a popular resistance couched in Buddhist sentiments. For example, the prolonged exile at home and resistance of Aung San Suu Kyi during her house arrest could not have been effective without print and mass media. In 1997, a collection of her essays with the title Letters from Burma was published and presented an encompassing, yet easily accessible critique of the corruption and lack of resources during the military era.

Example: Suu Kyi’s weekly letters initially published in a Japanese newspaper as resistance in printed format.
The widespread censorship of print culture was accompanied by selective reification of autocratic ethics associated with manuscript culture, Buddhist kingship, and their corresponding hegemonic power structures. The suppression of free speech was accompanied by military elites staging state-sponsored rituals like the pilgrimage of the Chinese Tooth Relic and other public merit-making rituals. Ruling in the absence of a national constitution, military leaders increasingly sought to legitimate their power by sponsoring large Buddhist rituals that ensured better rebirths for all citizens of the state. Some Burmese saw in the state’s appropriation of Buddhist symbols a moral vindication of the military dictatorship and a repudiation of the violence and political abuses that had been committed under its auspices.

The military junta increasingly silenced nearly all forms of dissent, including religious voices, and eventually co-opted Buddhist moral authority to enhance the state’s authority. The struggle against the later military junta (1988-2011) united secular opponents of the regime, including university students, opposition leaders, and public intellectuals and members of the sangha.

Against this background of suppression, monks again emerged as significant political voices and influenced public discourse, rallied popular resistance against the state, and provided social services where public assistance failed. At several moments during the military dictatorship, e.g. in 1988, 1996, and 2007, monks invoked public “strikes” (thabei’ mouk) and refused donations from the military regime and its supporters. This potent ritual act challenged political authority by refusing to give donors opportunities for merit making. Since merit-making rituals are the primary means through which social hierarchies are constructed in Buddhist manuscript cultures, the monastic refusal to accept donations risks a high potential for communal violence.

Examples:
This drawing by the Burmese artist Harn Lay shows the mistreatment of monks at the hands of the military. The incident it depicts marks the start of the Saffron Revolution.

Military dictatorship had corrosive effects on Burmese families with relatives in the sangha and the military. Monastic factions crystalized between, on the one hand, an older monastic establishment co-opted by the Ministry of Religious Affairs and, on the other hand, a younger generation of monks, many of whom had been victimized by the events of 1988 when the sangha provided infrastructural support to the popular uprising led by student demonstrators.

Access to satellite and Internet communication was a significant element in breaking the stalemate between a Buddhist resistance and the military power at the end of Myanmar’s totalitarian period. When Buddhist monks challenged political power during the socially engaged Saffron Revolution in Myanmar in 2007, print and television technologies facilitated the circulation of information and helped mobilize resistance against the ruling military junta. Demonstrators carried CNN signs during their marches to draw attention to global media coverage and a sense of protection that the protesters derived from it. The docu-drama “Burma VJ” later illustrated how images and reports of the protests were smuggled out of the country using thumb drives and a well-coordinated media effort in exile.

Example: The documentary film can be watched here:

The media image Burmese monks projected to the world outside Myanmar was that of a progressive force engaged in social reforms, advocating human rights, and challenging the military junta in the streets of Yangon and elsewhere. Reports of their marches were featured daily in the media channels of the global public sphere, creating a powerful Buddhist narrative that equated the Buddhist ethic of loving-kindness (metta) with the Western political ideology of democracy. Although the protest marches were brutally put down, they nonetheless presented a formidable challenge to the military’s moral authority.
Monks again refused donations from military families, ultimately demanding the regime’s resignation in favor of a moral government. Along their protest marches, monks accepted food and water from democracy advocates. At the dramatic height of these protests, they accepted water from and extended blessings to Aung San Suu Kyi, who, for the first time in years, appeared in public view at the gate of her compound where she had been under house arrest.

A consequence of the prolonged state censorship (over six decades) of speech and print culture has been the proliferation of monolithic and idealized representations that dominated public perception of Buddhism in Myanmar. Censorship has also submerged from public discourse deep-seated tensions about religious and ethnic identities and communities. With the rapid introduction of digital communication media, the fault lines that remained hidden from public awareness quickly emerged as focal sites for divisive dissent along religious and ethnic lines as soon as the country opened itself up to economic liberalization and digital information flows.