Abstract
In things Burmese, as in other areas, concern for the ultimate has been called concern for inherently innocent things.1 It has been reiterated by Experts that “in almost all ... issues upon which Burmese political leaders write or speak, ideology played a very small role and was throughly subordinated to the realities ...”: The conventional axiom is that “the test of theory is in its application. In its actions the Burmese government has never worried overmuch about ideological basis.”2 The writer thought that even under these circumstances the “ideological basis” might be worth an investigation attempt.
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References
L. Pye, Burma’s search for identity, p. 189f.
John Seabury Thomson, “Marxism in Burma,” in: F. Trager (Editor), Marxism in Southeast Asia (Stanford, 1959), pp. 45, 49.
P. Mus, p. 602.
Richard A. Gard, “An introduction to the study of Buddhism and political authority in South and Southeast Asia” (Typescript), p. 4.
G. O. Totten, “Buddhism and Socialism in Japan and Burma,” in: Comparative Studies in Society and History, II, No. 3 (April, 1960), pp. 297, 303.
The refusal of The Journal of Asian Studies’ Editor to print the main points of this book was founded on these arguments : “... It seems best to ask you to consider some rather substantial revisions. Let me pass the referee remarks on to you verbatim as follows. His main thesis is not at all supported in my opinion by his data, and either the thesis should be changed, or it should be presented as a “data” paper. He claims that the historical in contrast to the Buddhist canonical evidence refutes Weber’s thesis that there is no nexus between Buddhist ideology and social action. He supports this contra-Weber thesis by showing that, in the medieval period Burmese kings, in official inscriptions, styled themselves in accordance with Indic-Buddhist ideals of royal behaviour. True, but there is no evidence presented that they behaved in accordance with these ideals. For the modern period, he supports this thesis by showing that leaders in the independence movement and in post-Independence socialist politics appealed to Buddhist concepts to support their programs. True, but the use of Buddhist idioms and symbols to gain mass support for a political program is not the same as a systematic relationship between social action and a religious motivational basis for such action — which is Weber’s point. In short the fact that U Ba Swe, or others, tried to make Marxism acceptable by showing that it is also good Buddhism is quite different from a man becoming a Marxist because Marxism stems from Buddhism. In sum, as a documentation of the role of Buddhist rhetoric in political life, and of the necessity which revolutionaries felt to cast their programs in a Buddhist idiom to win support from the masses (indicating thereby the importance of Buddhism in Burmese society) this is a useful paper. As a “refutation” of Weber, it fails. (Not that Weber is necessarily right, but this paper does not show that he is wrong). The paper should present some summary conclusions. The last paragraph is indefensible. The author ascribes too much importance to abstractions and too little to actual details of political organization and process. It would seem desirable in addition for him to refer more adequately to the work of contemporaries in this field. The literature on contemporary Burma seems to have been used only partially. There certainly should be some mention, for example, of the very significant Young Buddhist Association and The General Council of Buddhist Associations which appeared in the inter-war period. These and other important elements are presented in John Cady’s History of Modern Burma, among many other sources. The paper may be too dependent on citations from religious texts, and too little on intimate acquaintance with Burmese history and culture. For example, Burmese peasants are all practicing Buddhists, yet there has been no great enthusiasm among them for a policy of state socialism or of the sorts of things the author suggests should somehow be the case given the socialist elements in Buddhist theology. The land reform program has in fact been much less than a success in the areas where it has been applied. Finally, there is not a clearly developed argument which supports the paper’s thesis, and the material is not as coherently and logically presented as it might be. Some of this difficulty may stem from stylistic problems, but I suspect that a clearer organization would also help. No editorial board can of course claim to be omniscient, and I realize that you may prefer to submit your paper in its present form to another journal. . . Rhoads Murphey”.
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© 1965 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Sarkisyanz, E. (1965). Postscript. In: Buddhist Backgrounds of the Burmese Revolution. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-6283-0_29
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-6283-0_29
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