4

4.

COLONIAL KNOWLEDGE AND
BUDDHIST EDUCATION
IN BURMA

Juliane Schober

Faith and power must always, however uneasily, take a stance
toward one another. The polity, more than most realms of human
action, deals obviously with ultimate things.

(Bellah and Hammond 1980: iv)

Education has long been associated with power and privilege. To this, one
may add the role of religion in education. Taw Sein Ko, the eminent scholar
of Burmese history and culture and Superintendent of the Archeological
Survey (1918–19) observed categorically that ‘education divorced from
religion is of little value’.1 Indeed, it is difficult to negate the role of religious
education in the formation of the self, in shaping moral values and even in
promoting social change from colonial hegemony to national sovereignty. And
there is perhaps no better vantage point to explore the intricate connections
between knowledge, religion, and power than in the contexts of colonial
education.

Education is a tool for mediating diverse, and at times contradictory, bodies
of knowledge concerning culture and world-view, modernity and tradition,
politics and religion, and temporal and ultimate visions of reality. It helps
shape conceptual structures of knowledge used to negotiate the fluctuating
boundaries of experience in the encounters of traditional and modern
societies, such as colonial Burma and colonizing Britain. This is particularly
apparent at those moments in history when colonial reforms of education
seek to integrate divergent bodies of local knowledge. Education therefore
also plays a role in shaping cultural notions of identity, national belonging,
and religious reasoning.

Colonizing forces tend to impose their forms of knowledge on newly
conquered territories by training local populations to become civil servants
and administrators in the colonial regime (Cohen 1996: 1–15). Colonial
education claims to convey objective facts through the rational methods of modern science and technology. The curriculum and language of instruction
in colonial education are significant instruments in the consolidation of
foreign rule (Altbach and Kelly 1991: 1). It teaches what Cohen calls colonial
forms of knowledge that comprise subjects such as historiography, geographic
surveys, ethnic practices and beliefs, surveillance, and so on. The colonial state
itself becomes a theatre for ‘experimentation, where documentation, certifi-
cation, and representation were . . . modalities that transformed knowledge
into power’ (Dirks in Cohen 1996: xi).

This essay casts into relief cultural and historical locations at which par-
ticular forms of knowledge can open access to power, while other forms
of knowledge lose relevance in the political context of the time. By focusing
on colonial knowledge and Buddhist education in Burma, I do not intend
to privilege any particular education, policy, or curriculum. Nor do I seek
to describe Burmese Buddhism as ‘compatible’ with or ‘hostile’ to ratio-
nalism, modernity, or secular knowledge. Instead, I hope to locate debates
about education within colonial histories to highlight selectively cultural
dynamics that motivate the continuing politicization of education in Burma.
Secular subjects were not novel to the monastic curriculum in Burma.
During the reign of King Bodawphaya (r. 1782–1819), monastic education
incorporated what might loosely be termed secular subjects of Indian origins,
including astronomy, astrology, military arts, boxing, wrestling and music
(Mendelson 1975: 151). Yet, in the mid-nineteenth century, when Burmese
monks encountered the colonial stipulation to include the teaching of
science as an instrument of colonial power, they largely refused to cooperate
with British education policy. My essay begins by describing the cultural
contexts in which the monastic opposition to teaching modern subjects
emerged, especially to mathematics, geography and drawing. The sangha’s
refusal was motivated largely by reactions against the colonial threat to
monastic authority, autonomy and ethics. The sangha’s position on edu-
cational reforms proved to have unintended and far-reaching consequences,
and eventually gave rise to millenarian resistance movements against colo-
nial rule, such as the Saya San Rebellion during the 1920s and 1930s
(Schober 1995).

A second focus is the emergence of nationalism advocated by the Young
Buddhist Men’s Association (YMBA), which was in many ways a colonial
organization. Founded in 1906, it was the first civil organization to raise
awareness about national identity. Its members were primarily products of
colonial education and included many of the country’s post-independence
leaders. The YMBA’s nationalist agenda focused in large measure on matters
of education. It advocated standards for instruction in secular subjects in
rural areas, while, at the same time, promoting government support for
instruction in religious and vernacular subjects like Buddhism, Burmese
language and classical literature in public schools where modern, secular
subjects and instruction in English formed the core of the curriculum.

Next, the discussion shifts to modern efforts to construct a fundamental
Buddhist rationale that encompasses and foreshadows modern science and
to missionize Buddhism among sympathetic western audiences in the 1950s
and 1960s. Here, a modern Buddhist discourse appropriates, seemingly with-
out contradiction, scientific rationalism, perhaps the hallmark of modern
western education. In this context, colonial knowledge is again subordinated
to a universal, yet modern Buddhist cosmology. The essay concludes with a
brief delineation of the ways in which Burmese governments have shaped
public debate about education since independence. Particularly noteworthy
in this regard are efforts by the military regime, since the 1990s, to employ
monasteries in the delivery of basic education in rural areas and particularly
among non-Buddhist tribal groups. Restrictions imposed on access to educa-
tion under military rule have motivated pro-democracy forces in Burma to
bring to the attention of the international community the widespread need
for education in shaping the future of civil society.

Colonial and cultural knowledge

To a significant degree, the Burmese experience of modernity commenced as
a colonial project. The encounter of what is now called ‘traditional Burmese
culture’ with historical forces that would link this country’s future to mod-
ernizing innovations was motivated by the concerns of colonial administra-
tion and propelled by particular historical conjunctures in this unfolding
development. Together, these forces eventually eclipsed traditional cultural
values, institutions, and life-ways.2 The collapse of traditional institutions,
initially only in Lower Burma and, after 1886, also in Upper Burma acceler-
ated the restructuring of Burmese society in the advent of modernity.

Colonial rule in Burma effectively dislodged military or secular power
from its Buddhist world-view in which it had been traditionally embedded.
By separating practical, physical and secular power from its Buddhist foun-
dations, the British followed a deliberate policy of non-involvement in the
religious affairs of the colony. This diminished colonial authority in the
views of traditional Burmese Buddhists, who expected the British to act like
righteous Buddhist rulers (dhammara ̄ja). At the same time, colonial rule
introduced alternate access to power that until then had not been a con-
ceptual possibility in Burmese cultural knowledge. British rule promoted
the rationalization of the state, modern values and western education, and
created administrative structures that furthered the economic and political
goals of the empire (Schober 2005).

The British encountered in Burma a firmly established and entirely different
system of formal education, with a relatively high rate of literacy among the
general population. Colonial sources report that basic literacy rates exceeded
those of India and matched those of Italy, Ireland and North America in
the mid-nineteenth century. Yet, British and Burmese notions of education were not commensurate. Colliding world-views and political projects charac-
terized debates about educational policy, access and reforms of education.
Education remained a contested issue throughout colonial and national
history, informing national identity, politics and religion, and serving as
flashpoints around which Burmese leaders rallied and mobilized public
opinion in the struggle for independence. From the British perspective, the
purpose of colonial education was to produce local administrators trained
to implement the colonial project. Colonial knowledge was primarily secular
in its orientation, although Christian missionaries played significant roles
in delivering a curriculum infused with a Christian ethos. It presumed an
ideology of cultural evolution that legitimated colonial rule over native
peoples and obligated colonizers to take on ‘the White Man’s Burden’ and
educate the colonized. In this western view of enlightenment, modern man
was able to master human progress through scientific rationalism. The 1854
British Dispatch on colonial education echoes these sentiments (Bagshawe
1976: 28–29). Accordingly, the government’s objectives for education in
India were to bring about intellectual and moral improvement; ensure the
supply of government servants, and safeguard the expansion of trade. It was
intended to produce an appreciation for ‘European knowledge’ by teaching
about the arts, sciences, philosophy and literature of Europe. English was to
be taught already in the elementary grades along with vernacular literacy.
Under the authority of colonial departments of Public Instruction, reforms
of local school systems were undertaken and institutions of higher educa-
tion were to be developed. Private and missionary schools observing these
government regulations would receive government funding.

The purpose of formal education (batha) in pre-colonial Burmese culture
was intrinsically religious. Education properly belonged to the domain of
Buddhist monks and monastic learning. Its premise rested on a Buddhist
understanding of the world wherein all phenomena, be they social, political,
cultural, are constituted by karmic action and regulated by the Universal
Law, the dhamma, the Buddhist Truth. Religious and other ultimate concerns
encompassed secular and temporal matters (lokiya) that were ultimately
meaningful only to the extent to which they were linked to notions of Buddhist
morality. Humans were not in control of nature, but subject to it through the
Universal Law. Practical or vocational knowledge was imparted primarily
through contextual learning and mostly in informal settings. Buddhist know-
ledge is also intensely personal and the insights it entails are believed to lead
to moral perfection (nibba ̄na). Such knowledge is embedded in lineages of
monastic teachers that can be traced, at least in principle, to the pristine time
of the Buddha.

Colonial rule and the demise of traditional
Buddhist education

In response to a growing European mercantile presence encroaching upon
its southern coast regions, the Court of Ava had followed the cultural mode
of its predecessors by retreating inward and temporarily moving the court
from Ava across the Irrawaddi River to Amarapura, near Sagain (Stewart
1975: 32ff). Embedded in the Burmese retreat was a fateful misapprehension
of European global trade networks and the political power protecting the
colonial enterprise. Although intermittent efforts to become familiar with
European knowledge and technical capacities had been initiated during the
reign of King Bodawphaya, the Kingdom of Ava was, by all accounts, at
the political and cultural apex of an imperial Theravada polity whose ruler
styled himself to be ‘The Master of the White Elephant’ and ‘The Lord of all
Umbrella-Bearing Chiefs’ (Myint-U 2000: 53). Through the aid of Barnabite
missionaries and Father Sangermano, the King of Ava requested the papal
court in Rome in 1723 to provide access to western knowledge, explaining
that ‘many teachers and technicians were needed’.4 While the Portuguese
had initiated some Christian missionary education along Burma’s southern
coastline since 1600, western education was carried out primarily by Roman
Catholic and American Baptist missionaries well into the first half of
the nineteenth century (Ba 1964; Kaung 1931, 1960a, 1960b, 1963). The
Reverend J. E. Marks, of the British Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel, established St James College in Rangoon in 1885, following several
years’ residence in Mandalay during the 1870s. Thant Myint-U credits two
members of the Burmese elite, the Myoza of Myawaddy and the Prince
of Mekkaya, as pioneering a renaissance of local scholarship during the
1830s and 1840s affecting:

. . . many and diverse fields of knowledge, including geography,
astronomy, history and the natural sciences. The arrival of European
learning also displaced India as the ultimate and natural source of
outside information, and marked the beginning of a long relationship
between modern science and Theravada Buddhism.

(Myint-U 2000: 101)

In 1824, the British commenced the first of three wars that eventually
led to the annexation of Burma in 1886. The First Anglo-Burmese War
(1824–1826) served to protect mercantile interests of the British East Indian
Company in the region and was declared against the Kingdom of Ava
and King Bagyidaw (r. 1819–1837), the reigning monarch of the Konbaun
Dynasty. A significant milestone of the colonial project, however, had been
achieved in 1826, when British land surveyors completed a map of the
geographic boundaries of the Kingdom of Ava (Myint-U 2000: 101).

Access to formal education in pre-colonial and early colonial Burma
continued to be largely shaped by a pre-modern, cosmological Buddhist
mentality and its cultural values. Religious education and literacy were
products of that mentality, and a monastic career was the primary venue for
gifted young men to realize educational goals and join the ranks of the liter-
ati. Prior to the First Anglo-Burmese War (1824–1826), literacy was acquired
through the study of religious subjects and firmly rooted in the monastic
mission to preserve the dhamma. Scholarship and teaching were natural
extensions of a religious vocation. Formal education was concerned with
‘general principles’ and timeless, ultimate knowledge. Its study was accessible
through the institution of the sangha, the teaching practices of monks, and
through knowledge engraved in palm leaf manuscripts that were catalogued
according to Theravada classifications and housed in monastic libraries. Taw
Sein Ko notes that basic multiplication was taught in monasteries alongside
the study of classic texts (Taw Sein Ko 1913b: 228). Khammai Dhammasami
(in this volume) also points to the use of basic mathematics as an aid to
memorizing Pali texts. The monastic curriculum further incorporated
subjects such as Burmese traditional law, history, astrology, military skills
and archery, taught by court Brahmins of primarily Manipuri descent to
children of the elite (Myint-U 2000). In dynastic times, too much erudition
among commoners entailed the risk of raising suspicion about a potential
incursion of power and possible revolts against royal power.

Buddhist monasteries functioned as primary educational institutions pro-
viding basic literacy for Burmese young people. British surveys taken in the
mid-nineteenth century confirm that monastic education was firmly estab-
lished throughout the country.5 Most males spent some time as students
(kyaun:tha) or novices residing in the monastery where daily routines made
study of the dhamma a central focus. Other male students attended monastic
instruction, but continued to live with their families. Taw Sein Ko (1913: 224)
bemoans the fact that the education of girls was generally left to ‘untutored
masters’, as teaching young girls was considered beneath the ‘holy dignity’
of monks and viewed as ‘unnecessary’ by much of the population. By 1869,
however, slightly more than 5,000 girls, who were not permitted to attend
monastic schools, enrolled in 340 lay schools located in homes set aside for
instructional purposes in some of the larger villages. However, attendance
at these home schools was intermittent, instructional periods were shorter,
and educational expectations were less rigorous.

Monastic examinations sponsored by kings offered monks access to higher
levels of education since at least the seventeenth century in Burma (Spiro
1970: 362). Following a hiatus after the fall of Mandalay in 1886, the British
Government reinstituted Pali examinations in 1895 (Taw Sein Ko 1913b: 248).
Scholarly achievements were honoured with monastic titles and continue to
be rewarded today. A curriculum of four levels, pahtama-nge, pahtama-lat,
pahtamak-gyi, and pahtama-gyan, led to the higher levels of Buddhist learning. Education began with simple recitation and memorization of the
Burmese alphabet, religious liturgies (the Three Refuges, the Precepts, the
Eightfold Noble Path, etc.), and formulae of homage and protection. At
higher levels, Pali language instruction complemented the memorization
of increasingly extensive selections of canonical texts taken from each of the
three baskets.7 In addition, monks were also taught the Man ̇ gala sutta, the
Lokan ̄ıti with its astrological focus, the Dhamman ̄ıti and Ra ̄jan ̄ıti.8 Cultural
knowledge was therefore found in monks as the embodiment of Buddhist
learning and in the palm leaf manuscripts housed in monastic libraries of
local communities that served as repositories for textual study.

Monks were expected to lead a life that was withdrawn from and above
worldly affairs (Mendelson 1975: 157). Monastic teaching styles affirmed
cultural expectations that one may not challenge the authority of monastic
teachers. Senior monks like local abbots tended to assume teaching roles and
hence enjoyed considerable authority and respect. They instructed students
in traditional methods such as reading aloud in unison and recitation from
memory and seldom offered explanations or interpretations of the materials
studied. As questioning a monastic teacher might be perceived as a challenge
to his authority, students would seek answers from parents and others in
the lay world. The work of interpreting or filling in gaps in basic religious
knowledge occurred mostly outside the sangha in the larger social circles of
the family.

Monastic education in nineteenth-century Burma relied mostly on scarce
copies of palm leaf manuscripts as the major material repositories of textual
knowledge. In her study on the local diversity in Buddhist learning in north-
eastern Thailand, Tiyavanich (1997) notes the advent of printed materials
helped facilitate concurrent reforms to standardize the monastic curriculum.
In the absence of detailed research on diverse Buddhist traditions in Burma
during the nineteenth century, we may nonetheless surmise that the introduc-
tion of print similarly served to standardize a heterodox tradition and a diverse
monastic teaching curriculum. In 1864, Bishop Bigandet, the Vicar Apostolic
of Ava and Pegu, was instrumental in producing the first printed version of
the Burmese Tripitaka.9 Although print culture flourished in Burma relatively
late, we can point to several hallmarks of an incipient print culture. The first
English newspaper, The Moulmein Advertiser, began publication in 1846,
serving the commercial interests of the East India Company and its local
representatives.10 By 1852, Rangoon had emerged as the centre for printing
and publishing,11 and by 1874, the Yadana Neipyidaw became the first news-
paper published in Burmese in Mandalay, King Mindon’s (r. 1853–1878)
capital in Upper Burma.12 Printed textbooks became available only after
the British sought educational reforms in the 1870s. In his exhaustive study
on books in Burmese used in the curriculum, Bagshawe (1976) notes the
impoverished literature on modern subjects available to schools.13 Moreover,
the availability of printed materials in Burmese developed at a relatively slow pace. The growing cultural currency of colonial bodies of knowledge in print
continually challenged the viability of monastic education, for which few
printed materials were used.

Soon after the First Anglo-Burmese War, the British government began to
develop educational policy for its Indian colonies. Subsequent educational
reforms during the late nineteenth century profoundly shaped the colonial
and national history of Burma. British policy to remake education in its
colonial rationality met with strong resistance among the sangha, as most
monastic schools refused to integrate western, secular subjects into the
curriculum taught at monastic schools. Indeed, disdain for local canons of
knowledge was expressed by the chairman of the Committee on Public
Instruction, Thomas Macaulay, who announced that:

. . . (w)e have to educate a people who cannot at present be educated
by means of their mother tongue. We must teach them – our own
language . . . We must form . . . a class (of) interpreters between us
and the millions we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and
color, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect.

(cited in Rives 1999: 122)

Against such pronounced objectives of the colonial project, the proposal made
by Sir Arthur Phayre, the British Chief Commissioner, in 1866 appeared
liberal and progressive.15 His educational reforms envisioned a collaboration
between government institutions and Burmese monastic schools. Phayre’s
goal was to ensure that colonial knowledge, so central to the concept of
a modern government, be taught through the existing infrastructures in
Burmese Buddhist monasteries. He sought to persuade the sangha to inte-
grate modern subjects, including arithmetic and geography, into the existing
monastic curriculum. His proposal offered financial incentives to Buddhist
monasteries to compensate monastic teachers, to employ government-certified
lay teachers to teach modern, secular subjects at monastic schools, and to
extend stipends to students.

The cultural chasm between Buddhist learning and colonial knowledge
soon became apparent as British conservatives and the Burmese monastic
patriarch both responded negatively to Phayre’s proposal. It was unpopular
among British conservatives because they saw it as contravening the Anglo-
Indian government’s policy not to become involved in the religious affairs
of colonies. Similarly, few monastic schools responded to Phayre’s initiative,
and the implementation of educational reforms was slow. In 1866, an educa-
tion department was established by the local government and a plan for
building a public education system was inaugurated. By 1871, five years after
Phayre’s initiative had been launched, only forty-six monastic schools were
authorized under the government’s policy. Two years later, in 1873, ‘the
number of authorized monastery schools had risen to 801’ (Ono Toru 1981:

111), a considerable proportion of approximately 3,438 monastic schools in
Lower Burma alone (Smith 1965: 59). By contrast, only 112 lay schools had
registered with the government by 1873.16

The slow acceptance of British education policy in Burmese monastic
schools was complemented by a concurrent and rapid increase in demand
for colonial education. Eager to promote its agenda of colonial subject
formation and train potential recruits for the Indian Civil Service, the
colonial government determined to increase its support to existing Christian
missionary and secular government schools. The demand for colonial
education, with English as its medium of instruction, also increased
rapidly. This trend was amplified after the annexation of Upper Burma in
1886.

Following the British annexation, the Taungdaw Sayadaw was the monas-
tic patriarch or thathanabain who had been appointed by Thibaw, the
last king of the Konbaun dynasty. Although he resided in Mandalay, he
assumed at least nominal authority over the entire Burmese sangha. When
he passed away in 1895, the office was left vacant until 1903, when the British
confirmed his successor, the Taunggwin Sayadaw, who resided in Rangoon.
Census and registration figures during the final decades of the nineteenth
century make clear that Phayre’s plan to involve monasteries in the delivery
of secular education subjects proceeded very slowly, and with considerable
resistance from the sangha until it was finally abandoned in the vernacular
Education Committee report of 1924 (Mendelson 1975: 159). The sangha’s
objections to Phayre’s attempt to deliver a modern secular education through
existing monastery schools centred on what would have amounted to a colo-
nial redefinition of monastic authority.17 The monks did not want to be
accountable to the colonial government concerning their roles as teachers
and resented British interference in what the sangha perceived to be concerns
internal to its organization. There was also resistance to accepting the pres-
ence in the monastery of government-certified lay teachers who had been
commissioned with the instruction of secular subjects, and there was some
perception that the presence of lay teachers in monastic schools constituted a
threat to monastic authority. In 1891, the thathanabain explicitly prohibited
monastic schools from implementing the colonial education curriculum,
specifically the teaching of arithmetic and geography.18 The presence of lay
teachers on monastic grounds was not permitted. Emissaries were sent out to
reinforce these orders with local abbots, who were enjoined not to employ
government-certified lay teachers (Smith 1965: 59). For the most part, the
sangha stood its ground throughout the decade-long vacancy in the office of
its patriarch, refusing to assume a monastic role in colonial education
reforms. However, a few monasteries, especially in Lower Burma, showed at
least nominal participation in the reforms by registering with the government
and by accepting government school books and other forms of support. It
was not until 1909 that a new thathanabain in his letter to the Director of Public Instruction indicated his willingness to assume a neutral position on
this issue, affirming his intent to work towards a resolution in matters of
mutual interests by delegating the decision to participate in the colonial
education project to local abbots.19 He stated that the acceptance of money
granted by the government to monks constituted a breach of vinaya rules as
the notion of ‘results grants’ and ‘salary’ was unsuitable for Theravada
monks, who may not accept money or work for pay. He further objected to
certain proposed subjects as unsuitable for monastic study. Indicating his
flexibility on some subjects proposed in the Education Code, he objected
firmly to instruction in drawing, and especially the drawing of maps.20 He
found the idea of starting education in kindergarten ‘quite unsuitable’ and
concluded by stressing that:

Special rules should be framed for the guidance of monastic schools,
and the indigenous curriculum should be adopted with such modifi-
cations as are necessitated by circumstances. In other words, only
such subjects should be taught as are consistent with the tenets of
Buddhism.

(Taw Sein Ko 1913b: 268 – emphasis added)

The sangha’s response to Phayre’s proposal proved detrimental to the
future of monastic education in colonial Burma. Over the three decades of
relative prosperity and stability between 1891 and 1918, there was a
rapid increase in secular government schools and a concurrent decline of
government-recognized monastic education throughout all of Burma.

The British saw the lack of Buddhist collaboration as undermining the
colonial project to educate a new class of civil servants. Christian mis-
sionary and government-funded schools soon attracted talented, ambitious
youths for whom instruction in English and western knowledge provided
new opportunities and life-ways. With profitable opportunities in the econ-
omy and in colonial administration afforded by a modern education, mis-
sionary and government schools soon recruited bright and ambitious young
Burmese.

This trend was especially pronounced in towns and urban centres, which
further deepened the cultural divide between urban and rural areas that
already characterized Burmese colonial experience. In contrast to pre-colonial
Burma, where elites sought out monastic teachers and mentors, monastic
education was relegated to the cultural and political backwaters in rural areas,
where monastic schools instructed rural youths with less ambition or talent.
This further weakened the intellectual vitality of Buddhist institutions in
colonial Burma. Monastic authority continued to be diminished by a rise in
lay meditation and lay religious education in the aftermath of the decline of
Burmese traditional culture. In short, the trend away from monastic educa-
tion created economic, cultural and intellectual divisions between British educated colonial elites and those who remained confined to a pre-colonial
Buddhist rationality.

The impact of colonialism and modernity on traditional Burmese culture
was not confined to monastic education. The British conquest of Upper
Burma was devastating to traditional life-ways and to social, cultural, polit-
ical and economic institutions (Myint-U 2000). Colonial rationality and
practice had dislodged secular uses of power from the Buddhist cosmology
that traditionally encompassed it. The colonizers looted and burned Manda-
lay Palace, the seat of power in Upper Burma. They exiled the Burmese King,
Thibaw (r. 1878–1885) to India, and relocated the Lion Throne, the seat of
royal power, to the Calcutta Museum. Mandalay Palace itself was trans-
formed into a British military garrison, Fort Dufferin, and Rangoon, the
mercantile centre of Lower Burma, now assumed still greater political and
economic importance. Though diminished in its influence and cultural vital-
ity, the institution of Buddhism, as embodied by the sangha, nevertheless
emerged as the only traditional institution to survive colonization.

The thathanabain’s refusal to allow monastic schools to become conduits
of colonial knowledge diminished the political and cultural relevance of the
sangha. Monastic leaders seemingly had not anticipated the historical and
political consequences this decision would hold. Nor did they foresee the
utility colonial knowledge held for an emerging class of Burmese civil servants.
Living within a world-view in which Buddhist rationalities encompassed
practical knowledge, the sangha could not foresee the authority colonial
knowledge would acquire within a modern way of living. From the perspec-
tive of a traditional sangha, practical, applied and vocational subjects tradi-
tionally had been taught in the informal contexts within the worldly realm.
Technical and practical education therefore did not fall with its educational
mission.

The patriarchal decision indicates more than a Buddhist rejection of secu-
lar rationalism and colonial knowledge. It constituted a defence of monastic
education as rooted in the vinaya and, more generally, a defence of the
monastic status vis-à-vis a colonial regime that had shown scant respect for
Buddhist monasticism. This stance placed the sangha in opposition to the
colonial regime, and eventually created an arena for resistance against colo-
nialism, secular power and knowledge. It located early Burmese anti-colonial
resistance movements within a pre-modern Buddhist context. Increasingly,
the sangha as an institution and monks as political actors became focal
points of anti-colonial resistance around which Burmese national identity
was affirmed and articulated through millennial movements and other forms
for neo-traditional Buddhism.

The thathanabain’s fateful refusal of Phayre’s proposal undermined monas-
tic authority as the source and embodiment of knowledge in the future. The
vacuum created by the disjuncture between Buddhist knowledge and colonial
education opened venues for cultural innovations of authority by Burmese lay teachers.22 Mendelson comments that the sangha’s retreat from modern
education transformed Burmese Buddhist practice and gave rise to new lay
associations:

The loss of the educational role, formerly the exclusive role of the
monk, has had profound effects upon the Sangha’s place in modern
Burmese society. The movement to place education into secular
hands was a legacy of colonialism that left a vacuum in Burmese life,
for the specifically Buddhist nature of the traditional learning pro-
cess was lost in the transfer to lay schools. Lay associations, formed
in the realization of such a loss, attempted to promote Buddhism to
make up the difference . . .

(Mendelson 1975: 161)

Colonial education and the rise of nationalism

The Young Men’s Buddhist Association (YMBA) was that kind of lay organi-
zation that spoke to the popularly felt need among urban and middle-class
Burmese at the time to enhance lay authority in religious matters. Perhaps
indicative of a popular disenchantment with modern life-ways, the YMBA
championed a modern rationalism and an educational agenda centred on
Buddhist and vernacular canons. It was an urban, colonial organization that
aimed to instil nationalist sentiments based on Buddhist principles through
mass education and public schools. It emerged independently from its Sri
Lankan namesake in Rangoon in 1906 as a religious, cultural and welfare-
oriented organization that served as an umbrella structure for a variety of
disparate groups (Taylor 1987: 177). The Buddha Batha Kalyana Yuwa Athin
(Association to Care for the Wholesomeness of Buddhism), as it was known
in Burmese, was explicitly modelled after modern organizational and social
objectives of the Young Men’s Christian Association. In particular, it aimed
to imitate the YMCA’s organizational form, and use of print materials
to mobilize the public and mass education ‘crucial to the development
of a Burmese nationalist organization’ (Taylor 1987: 162). It initiated an
organization to mobilize nationalist sentiments across Burma, and its agenda
was largely articulated around issues of education.

During its early development, the leadership of this Buddhist society was
decidedly pro-colonial. Both mirroring and reacting to the secular values
British colonialism had introduced, the YMBA initially adopted a civil and
religious charter that championed the project to define Burmese Buddhist
identity in contradistinction to the British elite. Implementing its charter to
uplift Burmese society in religious, social, cultural and economic ways, the
YMBA promoted four national objectives: namely to strengthen the national
spirit or race (amyo), to uphold a national Burmese culture and literature
(batha), and to advance Buddhism (thathana) and education (pyinnya). The last two items bear particular relevance to this discussion. Support for a
national language (batha) resulted from the fact that ‘knowledge of Burmese
literature [had] almost died out among the educated Burmese classes and
. . . Burmese speech tended to be confined to rural areas and the domestic
sphere . . . [A]t the beginning of the twentieth century, the greatest number
of Burmese students studied in Europe’ (Becˇka 1995: 399; Sarkisyanz 1965:
108). English had become the language of use, knowledge and instruction
among the Burmese colonial elite. Burmese language and literacy were
insufficiently taught, as the teaching of Burmese literacy and literature was
located in monastic education. Yet, the educational and cultural decline of
the sangha was pervasive and the declining knowledge of classical Burmese
literature also entailed a decline in cultural and religious values.

A reformed, modern perspective on Buddhism (thathana) pervaded the
YMBA’s mission. To reduce the economic burden in rural areas, the YMBA
petitioned the government to exempt monastic land from taxation (Maung
Maung 1980: 4). They discouraged traditional Buddhist rituals associated
with ostentatious spending such as funerals, weddings and novice initiations.
They encouraged moral self-reform among their fellow Burmans (Becˇka
1995: 40) and advocated the prohibition of intoxicants, including liquor and
tobacco.

The YMBA undertook many initiatives on education (pyinnya) to pro-
mote a modern educational system that incorporated instruction in Burmese
and in the fundamentals of Buddhism. Concerned about the pervasive
influence of western education on Burmese national identity,23 it promoted
schools where Buddhism was part of the curriculum and sought government
funding in parity with colonial support for Christian missionary schools
(Singh 1980: 30–31). It petitioned for the appointment of a Minister of
Buddhist Affairs and for instructors of Buddhism (dhammakatika) to teach
religious fundamentals in public schools. The YMBA further wanted national
schools where Burmese was the medium of instruction. It also agitated for
compulsory basic education enforced by the government in rural areas and
support for examinations in mathematics in rural schools (Maung Maung
1980: 5). Aware of the declining relevance of monastic education in shaping
Burma’s future, the YMBA pursued a religious and modern educational
orientation, implicitly acknowledging its preference for modern schools that
incorporated religious instruction by lay teachers over traditional monastic
education. The history of this organization thus represents significant modern
conjunctures of colonial and Buddhist education from which a spectrum of
nationalist movements would develop.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=YjR2cUKWHrw

Educating westerners: the scientific discourse about
the dhamma

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, rational and scientific
discourse was the primary lens through which orientalists and western con-
verts gained an understanding of the Buddhist dhamma. In Burma, as
elsewhere in the Theravada world, Buddhists engaged in the project of
educating colonizers about the Universal Law (dhamma) and history of
the dispensation (thathana) by using a ‘scientific’ discourse that appealed to
western audiences. Their efforts were successful amongst two kinds of western
audiences, namely colonial orientalists in the late nineteenth century and
western converts to Buddhism by the mid-twentieth century. For the colonial
scholar engaged in the discovery, classification and enumeration of Buddhist
doctrines, texts and histories, this rationalist discourse confirmed their goal of
defining the pristine origins of the tradition (Hallisey 1995). A rational system
of ethics, structured by causality, held a strong appeal for western converts.
Both of these projects displayed an intuitive affinity between Buddhist phil-
osophy and western intellectual inquiry and seemed to imply an unqualified
affirmation of modern rationalism in Buddhist terms.

A variety of modern Buddhist teachings may be adduced to support this
contention and several modernist Buddhist organizations developed
to bridge this divide.24 In a lecture delivered in 1958, the Honorable U Chan
Htoon, Judge of the Supreme Court of the Union of Burma and Secretary-
General of U Nu’s Buddha Sasana Council, addressed a Conference on
Religion in the Age of Science in Star Island, New Hampshire, in the follow-
ing way:

Scientific knowledge has shown itself not only negative towards
dogmatic and ‘revealed’ religion, but positively hostile to it . . . In the
case of Buddhism, however, all the modern scientific concepts have
been present from the beginning. There is no principle of science,
from biological evolution to the general Theory of Relativity that
runs counter to any teaching of Gotama Buddha.

(Chan Htoon 1958: 29)

Similarly, U Shwe Zan Aung (1871–1932) published an essay in the Journal of
the Burmese Research Society25 that explored the relations between Buddhism
and science. He asserted that Buddhism, while never departing from its ori-
ginal canonical texts, encompassed scientific discoveries, past and future, in
the way a philosophy of science foreshadowed scientific discoveries. In support
of his contention, Shwe Zan Aung pointed to shared comparative and ana-
lytical methods, and rules of criticism, between the two bodies of knowledge.
Both encouraged the study of phenomena and both rely on observation as
a method, with the Buddhist cultivation of insight as the highest form of observation. He asserted that Buddhism proclaims generalizations of the
highest order, such as the theory of ceaseless flux, the theory of kamma and
the theory of causality. Hence, Buddhism is held to have foreshadowed many
modern sciences such as psychology, geography, astronomy and geology,
cellular biology, chemistry, etc. His discussion likened key concepts in
each scientific discipline to a corresponding Buddhist notion. Asserting that
Buddhist explication proceeds sometimes allegorically, he even likened Mount
Meru to the axis of the Earth and the North Pole to the desired abode of
gods. He concluded that Buddhism was undogmatic and universal, and that
its philosophy underlies all of science. Thus, in the Buddhist education of
western converts, the Universal Truth of the dhamma frames the modern
discourse of science, rational inquiry and secular knowledge.

Buddhism and education in post-independence politics

The tension between traditional Buddhist and modern colonial knowledge
created a legacy of contestation in the Burmese struggle for national identity.
The rejection of colonial knowledge in monastic education in the late nine-
teenth century portended lasting effects and eventually contributed to a
politicization of education in the Burmese public sphere, where educational
policy has been pivotal since the advent of the colonial project. Student
strikes have been important junctures in the struggle for national indepen-
dence in Burma.26 State support for religious education, and especially for
Buddhist education, proved to be a deciding factor in the collapse of U Nu’s
government in 1960.

Disputes between the sangha and the democratic government of U Nu
over the place of the religious education for non-Buddhist Burmese nationals
precipitated the military take-over in 1962, ending more than a decade of
parliamentary democracy and the way to ‘Burmese Buddhist socialism’.
As Prime Minister of Burma from 1948 to 1962, U Nu promoted the Sixth
Buddhist Convocation (1952–1958) to revitalize Buddhist institutions and
practices, to lend religious legitimation to his political office, and to control
the public influence of the sangha. However, U Nu’s government was coming
under increasing pressure from the sangha to institute Buddhism as a state
religion. Following lengthy and complex negotiations, a constitutional amend-
ment was passed to adopt Buddhism as the state religion in August 1961. As
the State Religion Act defined non-Buddhists as second-class citizens, ethnic
and religious minorities were alienated from the nation-building project.
Negotiations between U Nu’s government and the sangha finally collapsed
over state support for non-Buddhist religious education in public schools,
despite U Nu’s significant support for Buddhist institutions and causes.
Although U Nu accommodated sangha demands for Buddhist instruction
as part of state-funded, public education, he failed to secure the sangha’s
acceptance of educational rights for non-Buddhist minorities. Although the government supported Buddhist education in public schools, monastic
leaders refused to accept policy provisions for non-Buddhist minorities that
would have entitled them to offer religious instructions on private property
with non-government funds (Smith 1965). As negotiations failed, the military
usurped the political vacuum in a move that weakened not only Buddhist
institution but all forms of education in Burma for the remainder of the
twentieth century. Against the background of complex tensions between the
government and ethnic separatists, the educational demands of the sangha
had again emerged as pivotal forces in the project of nation-building, subject
formation and modernization.

The collapse of U Nu’s government ushered in decades of military rule,
economic deprivation and cultural isolation. Ne Win’s government and its
successor regimes continued to politicize education through the strategic
closure of schools and institutions of higher education, appealing to a national
need to prevent or quell student unrest. Students at Rangoon University
emerged as leaders in the popular uprising in 1988. The failures of educational
policy and practice, and particularly of the prohibition against teaching
English in public schools during the 1970s, intensified Burma’s isolation
during Ne Win’s regime. While teaching English has been reintroduced into
the public school curriculum, the present regime continues to restrict access
to higher education. In the 1990s, the government augmented again the role
of Buddhist monasteries in delivering basic education, especially among
non-Buddhist tribal minorities.

Since then, various civil rights advocates, including the Human Right
Documentation Unit of the National Coalition Government of the Union
of Burma (NCGUB) and Aung San Suu Kyi have appealed to the inter-
national community to promote education at all levels in Burma, arguing
that four decades of military rule have had a negative impact on quality and
access to education in Burma.27 The lack of government support for educa-
tion, they argue, has disastrous effects on basic human rights, including politi-
cal participation in shaping civil society and public health care. Restricted
access to education, particularly to higher education, has indeed become
a major hurdle in the development of modern civil society in Burma.
Nonetheless, the enduring cultural value of education for many Burmese is
attested by the numerous private schools in towns and cities that opened in
an effort to compensate for the state’s restrictions to education.

Conclusions

The cultural history of education in colonial and independent Burma is not
a continuous narrative that distinguishes consistently between modernity
and tradition, secularism and religion, rationalism and Buddhist cosmology.
My aim in this essay has been to show that the unfolding of this history
defies categorical distinctions that contrast religious values in education with modern knowledge and secular rationalism and, instead, focuses our atten-
tion on conjunctures deeply embedded in cultural contexts. Religious and
nationalist concerns weave through the project of education during the
colonial period and the independent nation state in complex and often
fragmented episodes that link the agendas of local actors with the cultural
trajectories of institutions and the concerns for the greater good of civil
society. Education, it seems, is always someone’s project. Our attention there-
fore must focus on the cultural and political contexts and audiences at spe-
cific moments, when educational values and policy emerge as pivotal agents
of social change, profoundly shaping the course of Burmese colonial and
national history.

I began this essay with the assertion that the Burmese encounter with
modernity began as a colonial project in which knowledge and education
offered pivotal access to power and wealth. Implicit in this assertion are also
questions about the present conditions of modernity, Buddhism and civil
society. Recent studies on Buddhism and the nation state in Sri Lanka con-
tend that the modern nation state represents a continuation of the colonial
project (Abeyesekara 2002; Scott 1999). Similar arguments can be made con-
cerning the moral authority of the modern Burmese state that appeals to
neo-traditional Buddhist ritual to legitimate a military elite in power, particu-
larly in the absence of a national constitution. In analogy to its colonial
history, the Burmese sangha is similarly locked into a continuing dynamic of
co-optation by and resistance to modern state power. The monastic role in
public education continues to be multifaceted, ranging from state-mandated
meditation retreats for civil servants to the critical engagements with the
needs of modern civil society socially engaged Buddhists have undertaken.
There can be no doubt, then, that Buddhism in Burma, like religion in con-
temporary western and Middle Eastern societies, inserts itself into the public
sphere in ways that challenge received understandings of modern education
as a rational and secular project.

Notes

1. 1  Taw Sein Ko (1913b: 242). See Edwards (2004b) for an insightful appraisal of Taw
   Sein Ko’s role in brokering local and colonial knowledge.
   

2. 2  See Myint-U (2001) and also Cohen (1996), Furnivall (1943), and Moscotti (1974).
   

3. 3  Jan Becˇka (1995: 127, 210) points out that, prior to 1886, Lower Burma referred
   to the southern regions under British administration, namely the Irrawaddi
   Delta, Pegu, the Tenerassim and Arakanese districts, while Upper Burma
   designated territories under the control of the Mandalay court. Following the
   British annexation in 1886, Upper Burma comprised the administrative division
   

   of central and northern Burma, such as Magway, Mandalay and Sagain.
   

4. 4  Rives (1999: 106). Bishop Calchi, Vicar of Ava and Pegu and Bigandet’s predeces-
   sor, began to compile a first Burmese dictionary that later provided Judson with
   

   the foundation for his own dictionary work.
   

5. 5  Ono Toru (1981: 108) reports that a British survey taken in 1869 counted nearly 3,500 monastic schools in Lower Burma alone, with nearly 16,000 resident monks and almost 28,000 lay (male) students enrolled.
   

6. 6  See Ono Toru (1981: 108–9). Sein Ko (1913b) reports some concern among the
   

   British about the restricted access and lack of quality education for Burmese girls.
   

7. 7  Mendelson (1975: 367) lists Buddhist texts used for study at each of the progres-
   sive levels of monastic examination, beginning with basic vinaya rules and pro-
   gressing to include studies of Pali grammar and selected canonical texts from each of the three baskets, including the Abhidhamma.
   

8. 8  These Burmese texts, mentioned as part of the monastic curriculum by Sein Ko
   

   (1913b: 230), contain ethical and moral instructions on matters of lay life, law, and
   government. For a detailed discussion, readers may consult the compilations of
   Burmese Manuscripts by Bechert et al. (1979–1985).
   

9. 9  Royal Orders of Burma, AD 1598–1885, Part Nine AD 1853–1885, Than Tun
   (ed.) Kyoto: Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University, 1989: XX.
   

10. 10  Becˇka (1995: 166) states that the Maulmain (sic) Chronicle commenced publication
    in 1836.
    

11. 11  According to Cuttriss (1960: 45, 47), the Rangoon Chronicle commenced publica-
    tion in 1853 and was renamed the Rangoon Times, a bi-weekly paper, in 1858.
    

12. 12  See Becˇka (1995: 166). An English gloss would be ‘The Mandalay Citizen’, referring to the city’s classical name, Yatanaboun.
    

13. 13  The first book printed in Burmese, Alphabetum Barmanum, was a Burmese grammar
    published in Rome in 1776 by Bishop Percoto, a Italian missionary and
    recognized authority on Pali and Burmese (Rives, 1999: 109).
    

14. 14  Mendelson (1975: 158) writes that in ‘1867–1868, only 41 monastic schools
    were using the new textbooks, and only 91 students nominally studying them. In 1868–1869 . . . 170 books were distributed and 82 pupils were studying them.’
    

15. 15  Sir Arthur Phayre (1812–1885) resided in Burma from 1834 onwards. He was
    Chief Commissioner from 1862 to 1867 and headed several missions to Mandalay between 1862 and 1866.
    

16. 16  See Ono Toru (1981: 108, 109). Ono Toru reports that, according to a 1869 government census, 15,980 novices and 27,793 students attended 3,438 monastic
    schools in Lower Burma, while 5,069 students attended village-based lay schools.
    Mendelson (1975: 159) reports that, in 1891, there were 2,343 monastic schools
    and 757 registered lay schools, whereas in 1938, the numbers had shifted to 976
    monastic schools and 5,255 lay schools. The most comprehensive account is found
    in Furnivall (1943: 25–30). While the specific statistics differ in various sources,
    they concur in demonstrating a trend of decline in monastic education and a
    disproportionately greater growth in demand for a curriculum delivered in English.
    

17. 17  Report on Public Instruction in Burma, 1891–1892, Resolution, pp. 9–10; Upper
    Burma, pp. 12; 24; 35–36; 43–44 and 48–50.
    

18. 18  It is noteworthy that already in April of 1855, two ‘American missionaries, Kincade
    and Dawson, presented King Mindon with history and arithmetic books written
    in Burmese’, according to the Royal Orders of Burma (Part Nine, p. xvi). It is
    unclear why the instruction of arithmetic, given its general level of abstraction and
    potential affinity to mathematical calculations employed in astrology and related
    Indian forms of knowledge, should be especially objectionable to the Buddhist
    sangha.
    

    A plausible explanation may be its application to geography and colonial land-
    surveying techniques. Modern conceptions of geography were in clear contradic-
    tion with traditional Buddhist cosmology. It not only formed the conceptual
    foundation for a Buddhist understanding of the structure of the universe, it also
    formed the basis for calculating astrological constellations to foretell the future.
    

Astrological signs also informed military formations in battle. Given such radical
divergence from received ways of conceptualizing universal order, it is not sur-
prising that Buddhist monks would object to the teaching of modern geography
and drawing techniques, such as those used in land surveys.

19. 19  Taw Sein Ko (1913b: 263–268) offers insightful minutes of a meeting in August
    1911 attended by the thathanabain and his council, representatives of the
    Education Department and the Commissioner of Mandalay, Colonel Strickland,
    and his entourage.
    

20. 20  Cohen (1996) notes the important place modern land-surveying techniques held
    within colonial knowledge, for they were central to the colonial project. In
    contrast, traditional Buddhist cosmology imagined the geographic order of the
    universe in entirely different terms, with Mt Meru at the centre and surrounded by
    gigantic walls that contained the Southern island on which human beings were
    thought to live. For a particularly helpful discussion of Burmese cosmological
    representations, see Herbert (2002).
    

21. 21  See Cady, (1958: 179), where he writes concerning all of Burma: ‘In 1891–1892,
    government-recognized monastic schools numbered 4,324 compared to 890 lay
    schools. The numbers were: 3,281 monastic to 1,215 lay in 1897–1898; 2,208 to
    2,653 in 1910–11; 2,977 to 4,650 in 1917–1918. Lay schools were obviously taking
    over.’
    

22. 22  Taw Sein Ko’s discussion (1913b: 249–253) of cultural debates concerning
    appropriate demonstrations of respect for lay teachers aptly illustrates the ways in
    which the authority of lay teachers was initially contested.
    

23. 23  This was brought on in considerable measure by the rush towards the economic
    benefits of a modern colonial and secular or Christian education. It was also a
    reaction to the malaise that characterized monastic education and its retreat to
    rural areas and, finally, the decline in educationed expectations and levels of
    performance, and resulted from the monastic refusal to integrate scientific subjects
    into education, particularly geography and mathematics.
    

24. 24  Among them can be listed the Young Men’s Buddhist Association (YMBA), the
    Mahasi Meditation movement, U Ba Thein’s Meditation Center, the World Peace
    Congress, the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, the Mahabodhi Society, and others.
    

25. 25  See Journal of the Burma Research Society, 8(2): 99–106 (1918).
    

26. 26  As student strikes primarily revolve around issues of secular education, they have been largely left out of this discussion.
    

27. 27  See, for instance, the Burma Human Rights Year Book 2002–2003: Rights to Education and Health, Human Right Documentation Unit, NCGUB
    (www.burmalibrary.org/show.php?cat=333).
    

28. 
    
    
    
    
    
    

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRXFC0DO02Y

    Ambedkar’s views on Buddhism and Marxism

    Economic and Political Weekly

    5.61K subscribers

    Ambedkar
    gave a speech titled “Buddha or Karl Marx” at the Fourth Conference of
    the Buddhist World Fellowship in 1956, where he compared Marx, the
    architect of a political ideology, alongside Buddha, a religious figure;
    seemingly two incommensurable figures at the outset.

    However, Ambedkar did not feel anything odd about this comparison.

    This
    was because, for Ambedkar, both Buddhism and Marxism were representing
    “just social ends” and entailed a political project within themselves
    that is concerned with the emancipation of the exploited.

    http://bit.ly/2XayyW6
    

    
    

    epw.in

    
    

    Ambedkar’s Non-violence
29. 
    
30. https://youtube.com/watch?v=qcdyoO00S7Y
    
    Buddha or Karl Marx - B. R. Ambedkar
    SELF RESPECT
    Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Writings and Speeches from -
    https://mea.gov.in/books-writings
    COMPARISON BETWEEN BUDDHA AND KARL MARX
    A comparison between Karl Marx and Buddha may be regarded as a joke.
    Buddha or Karl Marx - B. R. Ambedkar

    Buddha
    or Karl Marx - Book by B. R. Ambedkar Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Writings
    and Speeches from - https://www.mea.gov.in/books-writings COMPARISON
    BETWEEN BUD…
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