South-East Asian government, politics and policy

Summary

In 1916, Haji Abdul Karim Amrullah, an Islamic religious scholar (ulama) from Sumatra, made a sneering remark about the Mufti of Johor. “To become a Government Mufti in Malaya is a great glory,” he said. “You have an official uniform, with a whole banana-comb of epaulettes on the shoulder, a jubbah [Arabic-style garment] embroidered with gold thread, a silk turban, and your own car. The ra'ayat [people] fear and obey you, eat the scraps from your table, your spat of sireh [betel leaf]. And if you want to get married…Bismillah [anytime with God's consent].”

Muftis are religious scholars (ulama) whose role is to provide guidance to the Muslim community and issue fatwa (religious rulings). In Malaysia, Muftis are appointed by the Malay Rulers. Ideally, an alim (singular for ulama) must not blindly serve the interest of ruling elites; instead, they must be pious individuals who protect the interests of the religious community. Haji Abdul Karim's harsh words showed that he must have felt strongly that the Johor Mufti of his time had been falling far short of those ideals.

To be sure, Haji Abdul Karim and the then-Johor Mufti came from rival schools of thought. Haji Abdul Karim was a key player in the reformist/modernist movement in Sumatra, which called for Indonesian Muslims to return to the fundamentals of the Quran and the Hadith (sayings and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad). The movement appealed for “pure” Islam in Indonesia, one that was erased of local beliefs coloured with mysticism and irrationalism. The reformists’ position on theology, rituals and cultural practices was in fact quite similar to that held by Salafi-Wahhabi scholars. Salafism is a Sunni orientation that can be traced back to the theologian Ibn

Taimiyyah (b.1263–d.1328). It urges Muslims to return to Islam's pristine past, and considers the first three generations after Prophet Muhammad's death as the ideal period for Islamic societies to copy. Salafis believe that ideas and scholarship generated by savants of these three generations should therefore be applied in contemporary social and political life. One of the main tenets of Salafism is its rejection of Islamic innovations. Its followers can however be either progressive or regressive in their religious outlook. For progressive Salafis, reliving the system of the first three generations after the Prophet means the upholding of its values and principles.

This is the first book to provide a broad overview of the ways in which Buddhist ideas have influenced political thinking and politics in Myanmar. Matthew J. Walton draws extensively on Burmese language sources from the last 150 years to describe the 'moral universe' of contemporary Theravada Buddhism that has anchored most political thought in Myanmar. In explaining multiple Burmese understandings of notions such as 'democracy' and 'political participation', the book provides readers with a conceptual framework for understanding some of the key dynamics of Myanmar's ongoing political transition. Some of these ideas help to shed light on restrictive or exclusionary political impulses, such as anti-Muslim Buddhist nationalism or scepticism towards the ability of the masses to participate in politics. Walton provides an analytical framework for understanding Buddhist influences on politics that will be accessible to a wide range of readers and will generate future research and debate.

Summary

The economic, political, strategic and cultural dynamism in Southeast Asia has gained added relevance in recent years with the spectacular rise of giant economies in East and South Asia. This has drawn greater attention to the region and to the enhanced role it now plays in international relations and global economics.

The sustained effort made by Southeast Asian nations since 1967 towards a peaceful and gradual integration of their economies has had indubitable success, and perhaps as a consequence of this, most of these countries are undergoing deep political and social changes domestically and are constructing innovative solutions to meet new international challenges. Big Power tensions continue to be played out in the neighbourhood despite the tradition of neutrality exercised by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The Trends in Southeast Asia series acts as a platform for serious analyses by selected authors who are experts in their fields. It is aimed at encouraging policy makers and scholars to contemplate the diversity and dynamism of this exciting region.

Summary

Malaysia is a monarchy — albeit one that is sui generis. Rather than following a single line of succession, the kingship rotates among a group of traditional rulers — or sultans — who head nine of the country's thirteen states. Although some of the sultanates pre-date the arrival of Islam in the region, they are now closely associated with the religion and have been a part of the Malayan peninsula's political context for 600 years.

During the pre-colonial and colonial eras, the rulers had a wide scope of prerogatives but many of these were relinquished during Malaysia's transition to independence. At present, the sultans are ceremonial rulers, and executive power rests with the prime minister at the national level, and chief ministers and menteris besar at the state level. That said, they are responsible for religion and Malay culture within their respective states, while their historic and symbolic importance as well as a number of constitutional provisions allow their influence to extend significantly further.

Over the past few years, these rulers have begun to assume a more visible role in the country's political life. In some states, they have chosen to withhold their consent for the appointment of menteris besar and, in Perak in 2009, the sultan played a decisive role in toppling the coalition in power. Collectively, the sultans have also weighed in on national-level issues such as the quality of governance and rule of law.

Of the traditional rulers, the Sultan of Johor, Ibrahim Ismail, has been arguably the most notable. Part of his public persona revolves around his extensive collection of vehicles. He recently purchased a blue and gold 737 Boeing, which will be used to “promote Johor” and allow him to travel the world like his ancestors “who once travelled around in ships”. He has also given another plane to the Johor soccer team, which is owned by his eldest son, the Crown Prince.

The Sultan was also the first of the rulers to obtain a locomotive driving licence, and he piloted the last Malayan Railway train out of Tanjong Pagar Station in Singapore in 2011. A long-time automobile aficionado, he has a collection of some 300 units.

Summary

Concept of National Security

Vietnam has a distinctive concept of national security. Unlike most countries where national security relates to the survival of the state, to Vietnam it is, according to a senior Vietnamese diplomat, “the survival of the ruling regime that acts in the name of [the] country”.

Its latest defence White Paper, “Vietnam's Defence Policy at the beginning of the 21st Century,” while declaring that the country was ready to defend itself against “all aggression, threat against national security, infringement on its national interests”, insisted that the “preservation of a peaceful and stable environment for economic and social development, the achievement of industrialization and modernization under socialist orientation are the highest national interests”.

A major architect of Vietnam's defence diplomacy, Vice-Minister of Defence Senior General Nguyen Chi Vinh insisted that defence diplomacy is only an “important part of, and an instrument to implement the [broader] foreign policy of the Party and State in defence matters”. While asserting that defence diplomacy must contribute, and has contributed, to “the defence of the country's independence, sovereignty, unity, territorial integrity, and national interests”, he linked this traditional mission of the military to the mission of protecting the party and socialism. According to him:

Defence diplomacy contributes to the struggle against peaceful evolution and subversive violence, protects the Party and socialism and political stability to develop the country, and plays an important role in the mission of providing solid protection for the country's independence, sovereignty, unity, and territorial integrity.

His superior, former Defence Minister Phung Quang Thanh, made clear that: “Today, [the task of] protecting the fatherland does not only mean maintaining the country's independence, sovereignty, unity, territorial integrity, but also protecting the Party, state, people and the socialist regime …”

The Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) which prides itself for having led the successful struggle for the country's independence finds it impossible to separate the protection of national sovereignty and territorial integrity from the leadership of the party. Resolution No. 28-NQ/TW of the party Central Committee on 25 October 2013 stressed that “In both wars of resistance against France and the United States, our party always fought under two banners: national independence and socialism and have achieved complete victory. Realities have also demonstrated that [it was] only by persistently linking national independence to socialism that our country won true independence.”

Summary

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Summary

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Summary

Chapter 2 began with a quote from a public sermon given by the Burmese monk Ashin Eindaga in 2011: “Democracy means acting in accordance with taya.” That chapter laid out the various elements of the moral universe that I argue gives necessary context to the monk's claim and allows for the navigation of multiple ways of understanding a notion such as taya. Here I return to the monk's idea to interpret it further and to compare it with other conceptions of democracy that circulate in contemporary Myanmar. Since the political transition installed a quasi-civilian government in March 2011, the rhetoric of political figures not only in the opposition but also from the government and military has been suffused with references to democracy, yet what these groups have in mind when they speak of democracy is sometimes less clear. Because these varied (and sometimes overlapping) Burmese conceptions of democracy do not always clearly map onto Western, English language democratic models, an understanding of the logical framework of the moral universe is necessary in order to fully appreciate their nuances and implications.

Political discourse in Burma during the first half of the twentieth century was lively, with people espousing varying conceptions of democracy, drawing from Buddhist teachings, Marxism and liberalism. In contrast, during almost fifty years of military rule, the authorities severely curtailed public discourse and debate; until 2011, Burmese people had limited opportunities and outlets to discuss their ideas about democratic politics. Those who have talked about democracy since the beginning of the twentieth century have drawn from Western models, emphasizing freedom, participation, and the protection of basic human rights. However, they have also crafted their arguments using Buddhist concepts and values, with some attempting to cast democratic practice as an inherent part of Buddhist teachings. Others have developed arguments to limit democracy, couched either in skepticism of the ability of people to effectively govern themselves (explored in the previous chapter) or concerns regarding the negative effects of too much freedom. Even those who have explicitly espoused a more secular democracy have usually done so in ways that I argue are consistent with the logic and reasoning of the Theravāda moral universe they inhabit.

Summary

In the 1950s and 1960s, the political scientist John Badgley conducted research on politics in Burma at regional and local levels. He found that villagers were reluctant to use the phrase nain ngan ye (the common term for “politics”) to describe political activities in their own communities (1965, 71). Instead, they referred to traditional practices of cooperative action, compromise and reconciliation as a-yu a-hsa (beliefs) or a-tway a-hkaw (ideas). On the one hand, many of them saw national politics in the 1950s as sufficiently partisan and dysfunctional that they chose to disassociate themselves from nain ngan ye and its increasingly negative connotations. But additionally, most saw nain ngan ye as a state-centric, elite-level practice in which they were not included and that did not mirror their own daily practices, although many outside observers would likely classify them as “politics.”

Particular and bounded understandings of nain ngan ye still persist in Myanmar today. When conducting a discussion on the differences between politics and nain ngan ye with a class of Burmese university freshmen in July 2014, I asked them if there were any groups in the country that were not supposed to engage in nain ngan ye. Expecting the first answer to be monks (about which more in Chapter 5), I was taken aback when someone responded by saying “government workers.” These students understood nain ngan ye to inherently mean party politics, from which public servants were discouraged from participating. Over the course of our subsequent discussion, we identified many practices that they acknowledged might easily be classified as “politics” yet were certainly not understood by most people to be included in the category of nain ngan ye.

The idea that the word nain ngan ye inherently connotes party politics can also be seen in contrast with another popular term, a-myotha nain ngan ye, or “national politics.” It has been in circulation at least since the 1940s and it was common throughout the period of military rule for leaders to insist that this was the type of politics the military engaged in. Senior General Saw Maung, who led the State Law and Order Restoration Council after the 1988 coup, repeatedly said that he did not “know politics,” meaning the party politics that the military despised (Houtman 1999, 69).

Summary

In conducting initial field work in Myanmar between 2007 and 2011 for the dissertation on which this book is based, I was struck by the fact that I encountered very few people who were at all familiar with the textual tradition that has formed the basis for a large part of my analysis. This was true with regard to the Buddhist texts and commentaries that I have analyzed, but also true of more mundane sources such as articles and speeches from political figures in Myanmar's history. While in any culture the formal texts of political philosophy are probably not widely read beyond a small scholarly community, people in Myanmar have been particularly disconnected from most of their recent political and intellectual history.

The disastrous education policies and restrictions on speech and the press that former military regimes enacted are in large part to blame for this lack of connection. Very few of the non-scholars I interviewed for this book had read the work of the thinkers who figure prominently in it, simply because most of the writings that make up the intellectual tradition of Burmese Buddhist political thought have been virtually unavailable in Myanmar since the military coup in 1962. Among younger generations (those who were young children or not yet born in 1988), individuals such as U Hpo Hlaing and Thakin Kodaw Hmaing are little more than vague historical figures. Even the works of General Aung San, the hero of Burmese independence, had been tucked away in used bookshops as the former military regime disassociated from him in an attempt to counter Aung San Suu Kyi's claims to his political heritage. One veteran student activist from the 1988 protests who fled to Thailand related to me the revelatory experience of reading a book of Aung San's political writings given to him by a Western researcher. Most of the Burmese university faculty who participated in a political science curriculum development seminar I conducted in 2014 had read biographies of Aung San but had never read anything he had written. They were shocked when I suggested that his writings and speeches, along with those of U Nu and Aung San Suu Kyi (not to mention lesser-known but still insightful figures), could be read as examples of political thought.

Summary

This chapter provides a short account of Burmese political history from about the middle of the nineteenth century to the present. Although it necessarily gives a broad-brush overview, the purpose is to provide context for the actors and events in the following chapters. It also includes short descriptions of some of the individuals whose ideas about politics are analyzed throughout the book.

To the best of current knowledge of Burmese history, the region during the precolonial era consisted of a succession of kingdoms and smaller political units, whose nebulous areas of control expanded and contracted through warfare and intermarriage. The Burman king Anawrahta founded the Pagan Dynasty in the early eleventh century and Theravāda Buddhism and Burman language and culture gradually became dominant over the next few centuries. The rulers of the final Konbaung Dynasty (founded by King Alaungpaya in 1752) were forced to contend with the incursions of the British, losing territory in stages beginning in 1824 and ending with the British deposition of King Thibaw in 1885 and the formal annexation of the entire country in 1886.

The penultimate king of the Konbaung dynasty, Mindon, instituted a series of reforms in the economic, political, and religious spheres, designed to strengthen the Burmese state against the colonial threat, but was unsuccessful in this respect, especially as by that time he only directly controlled upper Burma (Koenig 1990 and Myo Myint 1987). Mendelson describes Mindon as “something of a bridge between the old royal order and the new world of the Europeans, and there is evidence that he was amply conscious of this” (Mendelson 1975, 83). Indeed, there were a number of innovative policies enacted during his reign that support this characterization, including an attempt to have greater control over the flow of information by publishing a newspaper (Charney 2006, 199).

Faced with a severely weakened political base, Mindon sought to shore up his religious standing through reforms in that field as well, although this should not be seen as a purely instrumental move, as most descriptions of Mindon present him as a genuinely pious and religiously engaged ruler. However, Mendelson suggests the possible explanation that, in seeking to enhance his direct control over monastic activities, Mindon engaged in a divide and rule strategy that allowed the previously central monastic authority to be dispersed and connected more directly to him (Mendelson 1975, 112–114).

Summary

Abhidhamma (Bur. Abidama) Along with the suttas and the vinaya, one of the three groupings of the Tipitaka, the Pāli scriptures; philosophical discussion of the characteristics of phenomena.

Abidama See abhidhamma.

Agati (Bur.) Bias, partiality, corruption; the four agatis are desire, anger, fear, and ignorance.

Aggañña Sutta Buddhist text from the Digha Nikaya; tells the story of human moral decline due to unrestrained craving and the subsequent installation of an authority figure to provide adjudication on conflicts; some Burmese Buddhists have interpreted it as providing legitimation for political authority, while others have seen it as evidence of the Buddha's endorsement of democratic elections.

A-kutho (Pāli a-kusala) Unwholesome action; demerit; opposite of kutho/kusala.

Anattā (Bur. Anatta) The common English translation is “no self,” although another Burmese understanding is “no control”; refers to the belief that what we commonly call the “self” is merely a collection of physical and mental processes that follow immediately after one another, creating the illusion of coherence; or that we can ultimately have no control over those physical and mental processes; along with dukkha and anicca, one of the three characteristics of existence according to Buddhist teachings.

Aneitsa See anicca.

Anicca (Bur. aneitsa) Impermanence; relates to an unavoidable entropic process that will affect all life but can also refer to a more specific understanding where all of existence comes into being and passes back into non-being in every successive moment; along with dukkha and anattā, one of the three characteristics of existence according to Buddhist teachings.

Arahant (Bur. yahan) Fully enlightened individual.

Aw-ga-tha (Bur.) Daily supplication of Burmese Buddhists affirming faith in the Buddha, dhamma, and sangha, and asking for protection from harm.

Bhāvanā (Bur. bawana) Meditation; can also refer to moral practice more generally.

Bawana See bhāvanā.

Bodhisatta See hpaya-laung.

Brahmavihāras (Bur. byama-so taya) The four sublime attitudes: mettā, karunā, mudita, and upekkhā.

Byama-so taya See brahmavihāras.

Cakkavatti (Bur. Setkya Min) Universal monarch; common figure in Theravāda tradition who will usher in the golden age of the future Buddha.

South-East Asian government, politics and policy

Refine search

Refine search

Actions for selected content:

1714 results in South-East Asian government, politics and policy

Johor Remains the Bastion of Kaum Tua

Summary

Buddhism, Politics and Political Thought in Myanmar

Foreword

Summary

The Johor Sultanate: Rise or Re-emergence?

Summary

Frontmatter

New Context of Vietnam's National Security Challenges

Summary

Frontmatter

The Johor Sultanate: Rise or Re-emergence?

Summary

Foreword

Summary

New Context of Vietnam's National Security Challenges

Summary

6 - Discipline, Rights, and Morality: “Democracy” in Contemporary Myanmar

Summary

Dedication

A Note on Language and Usage

Index

3 - On Human Nature and the Nature of Politics

Summary

Conclusion

Summary

1 - A Brief Political History and Cast of Characters

Summary

Appendix - Glossary of Burmese and Buddhist Terms

Summary

Acknowledgments

Bibliography

South-East Asian government, politics and policy

Refine search

Refine search

Actions for selected content:

Save Search

1714 results in South-East Asian government, politics and policy

Summary

Buddhism, Politics and Political Thought in Myanmar

Summary

Summary

Summary

Summary

Summary

Summary

Summary

Summary

Summary

Summary

Summary