Events

CHAIRPERSON

Assoc Prof Michael Feener, Asia Research Institute and Department of History, National University of Singapore

ABSTRACT

In contemporary Myanmar ‘religious conversion’ is a sensitive and political issue. The government has sponsored official missions to promote Buddhism both in outlying rural areas within Myanmar and in foreign countries where non-Buddhists reside. Such activities are called thathana pyu (promotion of Buddhism, or missionary work). Some conservative Buddhist groups are lobbying the government to issue draft legislation called Myosaung Upade (Protection of Religion Law) to prevent conversion of Buddhists to other faiths, especially Islam. Ostensibly, the government-sponsored missions and the social movements are motivated by an intention to work on or to protect ‘religion as inner faith’, which is seen as part of political and national identity.

To what extent do the missions in Myanmar actually promote ‘religion as inner faith’ and how do they achieve conversion? My paper focuses on thathana pyu activities at the national and local levels: initiatives by government agencies and undertakings by religious communities, including pagoda-building initiatives by charismatic monks. It then examines three issues: the meaning of thathana pyu from an emic viewpoint; what kind of objects the actors are working on, especially by engaging in pagoda-building; and the difficulties that missionary monks encounter after detaching from the support of laypersons in communities that symbiotically sustain local monasteries.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Keiko Tosa is Visiting Senior Research Fellow at ARI and Professor of Area Studies (Southeast Asia) of Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. She is the author of Study of Weikza Belief in Myanmar (Keiso Syobo 2000, in Japanese). Recent English-language publications include “From Bricks to Pagodas: Weikza and the Rituals of Pagoda-Buildings”; “The Sangha and Political Acts: Secularization in a Theravada Buddhist Society”; “The Cult of Thamanya Sayadaw: The Social Dynamism of a Formulating Pilgrimage Site”; and “The Chicken and the Scorpion: Rumor, Counternarratives, and the Political Uses of Buddhism”. Her current research focuses on the Buddhist missionary work and its impact on social welfare, education as well as on assimilation policy and religious conflict.

REGISTRATION

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