ARI Working Paper Series

In 1926, a new syncretistic religion was founded by the educated but dis-enfranchised Vietnamese employees of the French colonial administration in Saigon, Indochina. “Caodaism” (the worship of the “highest power”) was officially called “The Great Way of the Third Er of Redemption” (Đại Đạo Tam Kỳ Phổ Độ), and presented an Asian fusion of millenarian and monotheistic beliefs. Caodaists adopted the idea that one race or people may be “chosen” for a special spiritual mission from Christian teachings, but inverted the sense in which it was applied. Instead of talking of a “mission civilisatrice” or a “white man’s burden”, Caodaists argued that Asia was the true home of all religious teachings and the Vietnamese, having experienced the most intense colonization in East Asia and the most repressive colonial regime, had for this reason been honored with the mission of announcing the single origin of all religions to the rest of humanity. A discourse initially phrased in terms of race, and influenced by turn of the century notions of Social Darwinism, was transformed by the 1940s into one of nation and a “national religion” which would also be realized as a global faith of redemption. The historical development of these notions is traced from 1920 to 1954, with reflections on the relationships between race, religion and nation from the perspective of colonial and postcolonial studies.