Southeast Asia: Politics, Meaning, and Memory. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2014. xi, 221 pp. US$54.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-8248-3937-6.
Alicia Turner examines the ways in which Burmese responded to colonial conditions and, in the process, developed new ways of envisioning themselves through their activities in newly created Buddhist associations. Turner seeks to locate the discourses on Buddhism during the British colonial period in their own terms, separate from issues of nationalism and modernism. Her interest is in how local Burmese understood what was happening to Buddhism in Burma and the ways in which these Burmese used their understandings to preserve Burmese Buddhism and in the process transformed both Buddhism and themselves.
The introduction begins this argument by describing discourses on sasana (often glossed as “Buddhist religion”), identity, and religion as they were understood in the West. Sasana is a broader term that encompasses Buddhist texts, practices, monks, and rituals as locally understood. When the British took control of Burma the king was sent into exile, and so laypeople began to step in and fulfill the kingly role of protecting and purifying the sasana, founding Buddhist associations to do so. These associations led to a sense of community among their members and a shift in their identities. The third discourse, that of religion, played British and Western ideas against and through the Burmese understandings creating an arena for Burmese Buddhists to contest and resist British colonial practices.
The second chapter focuses on sasana and the history of Buddhist reforms in Burma to argue that these reforms, while meant to preserve and purify Buddhism in practice, transformed it, recreating a Buddhism that fit current ideas and contexts. The Buddhist religion, like everything else, is impermanent and declines through time. The first aspect of Buddhism to disappear would be the Buddhist teachings. Earlier rulers sought to stem the decline by preserving the texts and rewarding monastic learning. Now laypeople sought to preserve Buddhism by forming organizations to raise money for the monks and monasteries and to preserve texts by encouraging their memorization. The Buddhist associations drew on Western technologies for organizing groups, complete with membership lists, journals, and membership fees. The post-colonial changes in Burmese Buddhism, then, are not a result of radically different processes but rather another series of changes that seek to preserve Buddhism, and Buddhist practices, but that in fact reshape it.
Education and the different ways in which the Burmese and the British understood it is the focus of the second chapter. Monastic education was a way for boys to make merit for their parents and to learn and preserve the Buddhist Pali texts, thus staying the decline of Buddhism. The British, seeing the monastery schools, imagined an education system they could use to train Burmese students in modern subjects. These two notions of education were antithetical and the British did not succeed in having secular subjects taught in monastic schools. Lay lead schools that provided an education in modern subjects that prepared the students for jobs in the colonial bureaucracy began replacing monastic education. People saw schoolboys becoming increasingly disrespectful to parents and other authorities and Burmese saw this as another sign of the decline of Buddhism. The solution was to teach Buddhism in these schools, often for no more than half an hour a day; this meant a radical change in what constituted a Buddhist education.
Besides joining associations to preserve Buddhism, Burmese began to consider what else they needed to do to prevent Buddhism’s further decline. Although generosity remained an important Burmese virtue, they started to emphasize personal morality as central to preserving Buddhism. Morality and asceticism became individualized as Burmese signed pledges not to drink alcohol or eat meat. As with the Buddhist associations, the temperance movement drew on Western notions for organization, including the signing of temperance pledges. Individuals’ behaviour becomes a means to preserve Buddhism as morality becomes internalized, a part of their self-identity. Individuals become agents whose actions can save Buddhism.
The ambiguity of the term “religion” opened up spaces for the Burmese to resist British modernist universalist understandings of religion and to assert the particularity of Burmese Buddhism. Turner explores this with her analysis of the “shoe question,” where Europeans removed their hats as a sign of respect at pagodas rather than removing their shoes as a Burmese would, and the issue of the Shikho, where Burmese would prostrate themselves before monks who were their teachers, something the British wanted school boys to do to their secular teachers. The Burmese argued that both of these were important particular aspects of their Buddhism and school boys should not have to bow down to secular teachers and that Europeans should remove their shoes. And the British, eventually, had to acquiesce to the Burmese demands.
The conclusion takes us back to how we should understand the processes involved in the saving of Buddhism. Turner argues that we should not simply see these processes as nascent forms of nationalist movements or the inevitable effects of modernization on traditional religions, but rather as specific adaptations in the particular Burmese place and time. This book is an important corrective to those views and ably demonstrates that the Burmese were the actors and agents of the changes in Buddhism, although the range of their actions and agency is limited to colonial context.
It is a rare treat to read a book that explores an old topic—the impact of colonialism on Buddhism in Burma—and find a new, intriguing approach to the issue. The book would be useful in courses where colonial and global processes are being examined as well as courses that focus on the complexity of analyzing lived religions. It is accessible to middle-level undergraduates and above.
Nicola Tannenbaum
Lehigh University, Bethlehem, USA
pp. 198-200