Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2013. xi, 242 pp. (Tables, illus., B&W photos.) US$22.00, paper. ISBN 978-0-8248-3561.
Most scholars of Southeast Asia are well aware that an individual’s relationship with the Buddhist community, or Sangha, is central to Khmer religious practice, and that Buddhist monks occupy essential sociocultural roles as educators and spiritual guides in Cambodian society. But despite the importance of Buddhist monks to most Cambodians, the Communist Party of Kampuchea’s (CPK) violent persecution of the country’s ethnic minorities tends to take the spotlight in the existing scholarship on the Cambodian genocide. It is for such a reason that Ian Harris’ Buddhism in a Dark Age: Cambodian Monks under Pol Pot is such a welcome addition. An Emeritus Professor of Buddhist Studies at the University of Cumbria, Harris combines archival materials with dozens of interviews with genocide survivors to argue that successive Cambodian regimes “have sought to disengage Cambodian Buddhism from its traditional roots through the introduction of a modernist emphasis on the value of the monk’s engagement in socially progressive activity” (170). Rather than something disembodied, passive, or “devoid of purchase on historical and political reality,” Harris asserts that Buddhism remained influential even in lieu of the Sangha’s marginalization and the defrocking of monks, serving as an extant source for CPK thought and policies (3).
Buddhism in a Dark Age consists of seven engaging chapters that cover the period from the rise of Prince Sihanouk’s Buddhist socialist Sangkum Party in the opening chapter to the rise and fall of Democratic Kampuchea (DK) and the emergence of the Vietnamese-backed People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK). The second and third chapters—the latter is arguably Harris’ most interesting—traces “filial links between the ideology of Angkar [the CPK] and the more traditional Buddhist categories and attitudes that are well established in Cambodian history and culture” (44). Subsequent chapters discuss the ways in which the CPK treated Buddhist monks during its reign, the Party’s destruction of wats and removal of monks from their traditional roles as educators, and the topic of monk mortality during the DK years. The final chapter explores the attempts to rebuild, unify and “(re)-politicize” the Sangha under Vietnamese rule (163).
As a whole, the book introduces the erosion of the Buddhist state in Cambodia, the CPK’s persecution of monks, and the long and trying process of rebuilding the Sangha in the post-DK years. Harris’ discussion of the ways in which the CPK pushed monks away from their usual study of classical scriptures and practices of meditation and towards “productive” labour shows the reader one of the many Party practices that brought the Sangha to its near total destruction. The two chapters that attempt to link Theravada Buddhism to Cambodian/Khmer communism present intriguing pathways into understanding the extant ideas that possibly influenced CPK thought. Yet such efforts also raise questions on the role Buddhism played in the development and promulgation of CPK thought, among others.
Indeed, Harris argues that many of the CPK’s policies are identical to and possibly informed by Buddhist practices (43–44). Such efforts bear resemblance to Frederic Wakeman’s History and Will, in which Wakeman argues that earlier Western philosophical tracts informed Mao Zedong’s later ideology and practices. But such connections do not necessarily “fit,” thus giving the impression that Wakeman—like Harris—is exploring backward and finding continuities in disparate sources that may very well have figured less prominently in the subject’s thought as ideology matured. How do we know, for instance, that Buddhist modes influenced many CPK leaders’ ideologies to the degree Harris suggests, especially after their conversion to communism in Paris during the 1950s? Or that Cambodians endorsed the CPK because of the Party’s allusions to Buddhism, and not, say, references to Cambodia’s oral history and tales of past greatness (Angkor)? While an understanding of the confluence of extant, pre-revolutionary political thought with alternative ideas from outside sources is necessary to explain CPK thought, the primacy Harris places on Buddhism as the possible driving force behind the nature and form of the CPK’s political thought ultimately raises more questions than it answers.
Harris also argues that in some areas Buddhist influence was “explicit” while in others “it led to the inversion of customary Buddhist modes of praxis” (63). One wonders if a link exists between the CPK’s inversion of Buddhist modes and the inversion of Maoist precepts in the doctoral dissertations by the CPK’s intellectual thrust (Khieu Samphan and Hou Yuon). Despite the author’s partial siding with Karl Jackson—who argued that Khieu’s doctoral dissertation was a blueprint for DK (51–52)—there is almost no discussion of it or its impact on the nature of Democratic Kampuchea.
The author also relegates the importance of the Cultural Revolution as an influence on CPK practice. Harris interestingly makes no connection between the CPK’s “Year Zero” and Mao’s campaign to destroy the “Four Olds,” both of which broke with orthodox Marxist analysis, nor does he link Mao’s Great Leap Forward to the “Super” variant the CPK initiated. The absence of engaging the topic of nationalism is also a disappointing omission. It would have been interesting for Harris to situate his assertions on Buddhism in contrast to Penny Edwards’ “temple complex” argument—that the symbol of Angkor Wat came to signify Cambodian sovereignty and faith in Cambodia’s past glory and fears of impending annihilation. Indeed, the French construct of the glorious Khmer past, which contrasted with Cambodia’s present state of weakness, is necessary in explicating the CPK’s weltanschauung.
These questions and criticisms notwithstanding, Buddhism in a Dark Age is a well-researched and thorough analysis of the struggle of Buddhist monks over the past century. Harris’ book is both a long overdue contribution to the literature on the Cambodian genocide and an ambitious study that reminds us of the resilience of Buddhism in Cambodia—even to those who sought so fervently to eradicate it.
Matt Galway
The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
pp. 360-362