Cold War Monks: Buddhism and America's Secret Strategy in Southeast Asia 9780300231281

Citation preview

Cold Wa r Monk s

Y7216.indb i

7/20/17 9:50 AM

This page intentionally left blank

Cold War Monks Buddhism and America’s Secret Strategy in Southeast Asia EUGENE FORD

NEW HAVEN AND LONDON

Y7216.indb iii

7/20/17 9:50 AM

Published with assistance from the Kingsley Trust Association Publication Fund established by the Scroll and Key Society of Yale College and with assistance from the Louis Stern Memorial Fund. Copyright © 2017 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business, or promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected] (U.S. office) or [email protected] (U.K. office). Set in Electra LH type by Newgen North America. Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Control Number: 2017936594 isbn 978-0-300-21856-5 (hardcover : alk. paper) A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Y7216.indb iv

7/20/17 9:50 AM

For my mother and father

Y7216.indb v

7/20/17 9:50 AM

This page intentionally left blank

Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction

ix 1

One

The Buddhist World and the United States at the Onset of the Cold War, 1941–1954 13 Two

Washington Formulates a Buddhist Policy, 1954–1957

40

Three

Thailand and the International Buddhist Arena, 1956–1962

65

Four

Reforming the Monks: The Cold War and Clerical Education in Thailand and Laos, 1954–1961 104 Five

Thailand and the International Response to the 1963 Buddhist Crisis in South Vietnam 146

Y7216.indb vii

7/20/17 9:50 AM

c o ntents Six

Enforcing the Code: South Vietnam’s “Struggle Movement” and the Limits of Thai Buddhist Conservatism 185 Seven

Thailand’s Buddhist Hierarchy Confronts Its Challengers, 1967–1975 224 Eight

The Rage of Thai Buddhism, 1975–1980

256

Conclusion: From Byoto to Kittivudho

287

Notes 297 Selected Bibliography Index 363

347

viii

Y7216.indb viii

7/20/17 9:50 AM

Acknowledgments

F

or financial support during my dissertation phase, I’m grateful to the Advanced Studies in Thai program at Chiang Mai University and to the Yale Council on Southeast Asian Studies, which gave me two small but critical grants to help fund my research in Thailand and the United States. The Yale Graduate School’s dissertation write-up fellowship was another important source of funding that allowed me to proceed when other options fell through. The National Research Council of Thailand graciously handled my application to begin my work. In Thailand, I was fortunate to form a circle of colleagues and friends who were a source of good practical advice as well as good cheer. I’m grateful to Chalong Soontravanich for his mentorship and for his patient assistance with a difficult visa issue. I also recall with gratitude the helpfulness and hospitality of Puangthong Rungswasdisab Pawakapan and Niti Pawakapan. It was Puangthong who, in turn, introduced me to Kamoltip (Tip) Changkamol, my intrepid research assistant, whose competence I came to greatly respect and rely on. Tip transformed what might have been a lonely enterprise into a more enjoyable, shared undertaking in investigative history. I must also thank Jumana Dalal, Sinit Deesomsuk, Skylar Sukapornchai, and Mark Harris for making Bangkok seem, at times, almost like home. I’m grateful to Mahachulalongkorn University, where I received a warm welcome from Phra Suthithammanuwat (Tiab Malai), Dean of the Faculty of Buddhism, and formed a connection with Dr. Athithep Phatha.

ix

Y7216.indb ix

7/20/17 9:50 AM

A c k n ow l edgm ents

I benefited considerably from Dr. Phatha’s advice and help, which even included accompanying me on a series of oral interviews in northeastern Thailand and Laos and hosting me at his family home in Nakhon Phanom. I’m indebted to William Klausner for all that he has done to make this project possible during its long gestation. Though he was certainly under no obligation to do so, Bill took me into his confidence and treated me with great kindness while researching in Bangkok and during the entire writing phase. Along the way—in Bangkok and beyond—I’ve benefited from conversations and exchanges with colleagues and mentors who have taken time away from their own busy schedules to share ideas and respond to questions, provide feedback on early drafts, or help in other ways. I’d especially like to thank Ian Baird, Barnett Baron, Boonpisit Srihong, John Brandon, Jim Chamberlain, Patrick Cohrs, Kate Doyle, Seth Fein, Daniel Fineman, Glenda Gilmore, Christopher Goscha, Denis Gray, Tyrell Haberkorn, Paul Handley, Kevin Hewison, Patrick Jory, Charles Keyes, Kraisak Choonhavan, David Langbart, Samson Lim, Mary Lui, Mike Montesano, Matthew Phillips, Craig Reynolds, Richard Ruth, James Scott, Somboon Suksamran, Somparn Promta, Sulak Sivaraksa, David Steinberg, and Dr. Udon Chantawan. None of them, however, should be held responsible for any views expressed in this book or for any errors remaining in it. In New Haven, I was thankful for the comradeship of Haydon Cherry, Kevin Fogg, Charles Keith, Kevin Ko, ShawnaKim Lowey-Ball, Malcolm McLean, and Brian Turner, as well as the administrative help of Kris Mooseker and Marcy Kaufman. Quang Phu Van’s help allowed me to make use of an important Vietnamese-language source. Rich Richie and Roongtiwa Harlow of the Southeast Asia Collection at Yale’s Sterling Memorial Library made time for me in their office on a regular basis as I was in the throes of writing. This not only lifted my spirits, but gave me an invaluable source of help. Roongtiwa (Na Maam) advised me on a number of difficult translations and alerted me to new sources held at Sterling. To her I owe a special thanks. My editors at Yale University Press, Chris Rogers, Laura Davulis, and Heather Gold, production editor Mary

x

A c k n ow l e d gm ents

Pasti, and freelance copyeditor Glenn Perkins have all been very supportive. Bill Nelson prepared the useful map. Friendships, old and new, have provided much needed moral support and sometimes even more greatly needed diversions. I’d like to thank Todd Aydelott, Matthew Baker, Aaron Berns, Dominik Bartmanski, Margaret Carmalt, Avik Chatterjee, Daniel and Meagan Colvard, Paul Francke, Marc Hammond, Jean-Michel Hannecart, Ed Hershey, Adam Hill, Nathan Katzin, Scott Kaufman, Rishi Kotiya, Markus Labude, Russell Lacy, Christian Lentz, Jocelyn Olcott, Taryn Patterson, Elliot Paul, Richard Payne, Chris Perricone, Morgan Poulizac, Olivier Ruchet, Paul Schuler, Antonis Stampoulis, David Telfer, Sam Vong, Ethelbert Williams, Natasha Wunsch, and Qiangqiang (Philip) Zhang. Spencer and Stephanie (Baby) Cryder have stuck by me through thick and thin—and across two continents; their confidence in me has helped sustain this project from the beginning. Most of all, I’d like to thank my former adviser, Ben Kiernan, for his wisdom and attentiveness over the years. In his generous way, Ben has always pushed me to do my best, putting wind in my sails whenever I felt dead in the water. Ben’s impressive knowledge of Asian and global history is a tremendous asset for his students. Despite his many responsibilities, he has always made time for me, helping me work through conceptual puzzles while providing countless thoughtful comments on drafts. He has made direct and vital contributions to my work. I reflect on all that he has done with great appreciation. Thanks to my family—Tristram, Amy, Abigail, Nolan, Gavin, Leah, Eli, Misha, Valery, Al, Sue, and Cathy—the loved ones who form the core of my life and who encouraged me throughout. And, finally, I’d like to express deepest gratitude to my parents, Steven and Jeanne, to whom this work is dedicated. Through their love and support, and by instilling in me a respect for knowledge and a love of the written word, they allowed me to see the value in finishing a project I might otherwise have abandoned—and most likely would never have even begun.

xi

Y7216.indb xi

7/20/17 9:50 AM

This page intentionally left blank

Cold Wa r Monk s

Y7216.indb xiii

7/20/17 9:50 AM

This page intentionally left blank

Introduction

O

nly determined foreign travelers manage to visit the reclining Buddhas of Phu Po hill. A motorcycle taxi from the city of Sahatsakhan is one way to reach this remote site in Thailand’s northeastern Kalasin province, a region of dinosaur bones, parched rice fields, and the shrines of an ancient religion that remains vibrant and consequential today. Two Buddhas are carved on the “sacred hill,” both sheltered under naturally formed rock canopies.1 Visitors who climb to a shaded hilltop may then descend to the first overhang. Here they find a Buddha, five meters long, resting on his right side, sculpted into the rock face. The arch of the eyebrows suggests influences from Thailand’s Sukhothai period, dating from perhaps the thirteenth century. Older still is the Buddha at the foot of the hill, found at the end of a path. Though showing less detail and perspective, the carving, with its placid expression, captures the Buddha’s “inner peace” better than the one above.2 Its likely creators were artisans of the Dvaravati (Mon) civilization, a principal transmitter of high Buddhist culture into the Thai heartland from the sixth century until a thirteenth-century decline. Several visits to the sculptures at Phu Po while I was doing volunteer work in rural Kalasin impressed me with the antiquity of a religious tradition that is indeed set in stone at archeological sites throughout Thailand and its Southeast Asian neighbors. Such places can give the impression that Buddhism is a vestige of centuries gone by, merely a curious artifact of interest to scholars of the distant past. But the reality is that the stone monuments, for all their apparent immutability, call to mind an evolving tradition

1

Y7216.indb 1

7/20/17 9:50 AM

I n t r o du cti o n

deeply woven into contemporary Southeast Asia societies. This book is an attempt to map that evolution during an era in which Southeast Asian Buddhism became enmeshed in twentieth-century global politics. It focuses on the Cold War—the era of global competition between democratic capitalism and authoritarian communism that dominated world affairs roughly between the end of World War II and the Soviet Union’s dissolution in 1991.3 Curiosity about two interrelated questions sparked this project: How was the Cold War experienced within the secretive and staid world of Thailand’s Buddhist monkhood? And was it possible to write an international Cold War history from a Southeast Asian Buddhist perspective? Exploring these issues in both Thai and U.S. archives, I uncovered a substantial story waiting to be told, one that would unveil a new dimension of U.S. diplomatic history while expanding knowledge of modern Thai and Southeast Asian regional history and of the Cold War’s impact on local religious institutions. Through the course of my research, Thai Buddhism’s journey during this period came gradually into focus: against staunch conservative resistance, it had grown more diverse, more political, and more internationalized under Cold War pressures. The traditional Buddhist hierarchy did manage to retain its dominance of the Thai religious sphere, but only in the face of persistent internal challenges to its conservatism, and only by eventually abandoning one central feature of that conservatism—its closed, indeed closeted, approach to the world outside Thailand. The richness of the sources made available to me revealed the potential of explaining those trends in granular detail. I set out to reconstruct what actually happened on the ground in the form of a continuous narrative. I wanted not only to identify key players but also to document what they said and where they went. This is a story of twentieth-century Southeast Asian Buddhists engaging with one another and with the international world. At the same time, the book draws on previously unreported materials to provide a fresh look at U.S. efforts during the Cold War to use Buddhism as an anticommunist force as other powerful international actors worked to co-opt Buddhists for their own purposes. In particular, I use a series of studies documenting the Buddhism-related work of the San Francisco–based Asia Foundation, which previously had not come to light. The reports were

2

Y7216.indb 2

7/20/17 9:50 AM

I n t r o du c ti o n

prepared internally by the foundation’s Review and Development Department during 1965–68, and copies were made available to me—some apparently as final products, others as drafts. They offer an unprecedented look at programs undertaken in Ceylon, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam to form the crux of Washington’s engagement with Buddhism during the period. Buddhism, which some have called a philosophy but which might best be described as a “non-theistic faith,” had its start in India.4 The historical Buddha is shrouded in myth, but most scholars are convinced of the existence of a founder who lived between the sixth and fourth centuries BCE. From an obscure biography emerges the bare outline of a life as a wandering mendicant. A profound spiritual revelation produced a body of teachings (dharma) that gained followers in the proto-Indian ferment of the Ganges River valley. The Buddha, or Gautama, practiced asceticism. But it was a humane “middle path”—not the extreme self-deprivation common among religious renunciants of his day—that he preached to his disciples. This small community would branch into diverse traditions and lineages after his death. Buddhism’s spread eastward across mainland Southeast Asia was an eclectic and uneven process. The splitting of the faith into two broad sects— usually called Theravada and Mahayana—was one of many factors producing a complex pattern of conversion and religious syncretism during this early phase of Buddhism’s development. From a preclassical period, where the Theravada and Mahayana competed and coexisted, while also blending with a vitalistic animism and a culturally advanced Hindu-Brahmanism (an earlier import from India), a regional unity began to form. A Sinhala Theravada influence from Ceylon (Sri Lanka) dominated the entire region west of Vietnam (where the Mahayana instead took root). In courts, capitals, and urban centers such as Pegu, Chiang Mai, and Luang Prabang, the Sinhala Buddhist tradition supplied the symbols of kingship from Burma to Siam (Thailand) and Laos. Monastic orders and ruling elites forged such close ties that “symbiosis” is now the common scholarly description of how Buddhism and monarchy relate.5

3

Y7216.indb 3

7/20/17 9:50 AM

I n t r o du cti o n

From an early stage, then, Buddhism and statecraft have been joined in mainland Southeast Asia. This reality cuts against the grain of widespread perceptions of Buddhism as an “entirely other-worldly religion with a gnostic distaste for the worldly order”—a perception that, as Ian Harris writes, even many Buddhists share. Some monks, it is true, are solitary and meditative in the ascetic tradition. But most are not the forest-wandering ascetics or cave-dwelling sages of popular imagining. A large number reside in urban monasteries, close to centers of power. It is in these locales that, as Harris puts it, the “temptation to influence the political process in a direction conducive to the continued well-being of the Buddha’s teaching and the maintenance of stable Buddhist institutions has always seemed attractive to some.”6 Notionally a world-renouncing faith, Buddhism has nevertheless been a powerful force in the political arena since it first came into being. Yet “Buddhist politics,” in the modern context, has taken on many forms. Beginning in the seventeenth century, European encroachments into parts of mainland Southeast Asia applied new pressures to local religious institutions. Where colonial regimes took power, they perturbed, to varying degrees, the ancient symbiosis of religion and state. In Burma, the British took the extreme step of abolishing the monarchy altogether. By contrast, in French Indochina, monarchs were retained in figurehead roles. With Christian proselytization winning relatively few converts, except in Vietnam, Buddhism’s influence remained pervasive. Eventually, it supplied the cultural and intellectual touchstones for inchoate anticolonial movements. Burma’s “proto-nationalist” Young Men’s Buddhist Association, founded in 1906, exemplified a region-wide trend of Buddhism nurturing lay political opposition to colonial regimes.7 But colonialism also opened new pathways for Buddhist clergy, as well as lay activists, to become assertively involved in secular political affairs—and not merely to advance Buddhism’s institutional interests. Negotiating with colonial governments on behalf of lay citizens, monks gained legitimacy as political actors in their own right. The exception was Thailand, the only Southeast Asian country to escape formal colonization by a Western power. The kingdom by no means emerged from the colonial era unscathed: tariffs and treaties forcibly im-

4

Y7216.indb 4

7/20/17 9:50 AM

I n t r o du c ti o n

posed by Western countries deprived Thailand of tax revenues and led to the forfeiture of tributary states on the kingdom’s periphery. Thailand’s royal elite bitterly resented these losses. However, even as its sovereignty was compromised on the margins, Thailand did avoid colonial occupation—a distinction that in the twentieth century formed the basis for a nationalist narrative glorifying the monarchy as the preserver of the country’s independence. Sheltered from the colonial winds, Buddhism in Thailand held to a more insular course than elsewhere in the region. A strong conservative orthodoxy blocked Thai clergy from the kind of divisive political engagement (vis-à-vis government authority) that had become commonplace for monks of Thailand’s colonized neighbors. Politically conservative as Buddhism remained within the Thai kingdom, it held the door firmly closed to foreign influences whether conservative or not. An inward-looking, national, chauvinist outlook complemented its hierarchical internal worldview. Indeed, for prominent members of Thailand’s lay Buddhist leadership, the absence of Western colonialism in Thailand offered a powerful explanation for the distinctive—in their minds, more proper—character of Thailand’s monkhood. In a January 15, 1965, interview, Thailand’s top religious affairs official, Pin Mutugun, stressed the significance of what he viewed as Thailand’s uniquely noncolonial experience in shaping the clergy’s behavior. Oppositional political activism on the part of Buddhist monks in Burma, Laos, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, and (most sensationally) Vietnam was, for Pin Mutugun, not indigenous to local Buddhist traditions but an unfortunate outgrowth of foreign occupation, in particular colonialism. Monks in those Western-ruled countries had grown accustomed to assuming a divisive political role, he said, whereas such activism remained taboo in independent Thailand.8 Seconding Mutugun on these points was an even more influential lay Buddhist figure, the redoubtable M. R. Kukrit Pramoj—perhaps the foremost Thai intellectual, politician, and social critic of his day. The Oxfordeducated and blue-blooded Kukrit was a polymath and self-appointed custodian of traditional Thai culture. He was also a devout lay follower of the royally patronized Thammayut monastic order, whose reformist orientation did not signify a liberal program but rather a fundamentalist reaction to the

5

Y7216.indb 5

7/20/17 9:50 AM

I n t r o du cti o n

perceived laxity of Thailand’s other major monastic order, the Mahanikay. Kukrit was a well-known commentator on Buddhist affairs. He returned to this subject frequently in his prolific, often satirical, writings. These included, among other works of fiction, the 1954 novel Red Bamboo (Phai Daeng), a study of Buddhism’s confrontation with modernity in a rural setting, which appeared in English translation in 1961. Four years later, in a January 16, 1965, radio broadcast, Kukrit told his listeners that Mutugun’s interview had contained “a lot of truth.”9 The exceptional behavior of the Thai monkhood was, he agreed, related to Thailand’s status as Southeast Asia’s only continuously independent country. Kukrit could find fault only with what Mutugun had failed to mention to his interviewers: that the good (from a conservative perspective) behavior of Thailand’s clergy was also related to its own strong hierarchical administration. A parallel system of control was not in place in such countries as Sri Lanka. Partly as a result of lax supervision, monks in Sri Lanka and elsewhere were able to run amok, as it was perceived, in the political arena. Ironically, the Thai monkhood’s autocratic administration, discussed by Kukrit in January 1965, was a recent expedient. It was designed precisely to stifle signs that the old taboos enforcing a normative code of clerical behavior (taboos insisting on deference to secular government as well as to the ecclesiastical hierarchy, insularity against foreign influences, and a homogeneity of viewpoint) were at least partially breaking down—due in part to the modernizing forces Kukrit had written about in Red Bamboo. Kukrit was the consummate insider. He well knew the circumstances leading to this sharp shift toward autocratic rule of the monkhood, which had taken place in 1962 amid a thundering controversy. However, despite these repressive measures, Thai Buddhism was inexorably—if also very reluctantly— opening up to the contemporary world. And it was doing so in multiple ways. One harbinger of change had come in the form of an obscure Japanese scholar and monk identified as Professor Tsusho Byoto. Little is known about him. He exists only as a trace in the Thai archival record. What is known is that he was active in Japanese-occupied Bangkok by 1942, at the height of the Pacific War, with goals his Thai hosts—then allies of imperial

6

Y7216.indb 6

7/20/17 9:50 AM

I n t r o du c ti o n

Japan—were to find unnerving. Byoto was an advocate of another form of Buddhism that was completely alien to Thailand. His faith was a bellicose adaptation of Zen, a nationalistic doctrine that encouraged monks to support the Japanese war effort (as many Buddhists in Japan in fact did, as historian Brian Victoria has documented). Remarkably, Byoto attempted to introduce his bloodthirsty conception of Zen to Thailand—across national and sectarian lines—in order to enlist Thai monks in Japan’s quasi-fascist cause. Byoto’s recommendations were not well received by a wary Thai officialdom. But his vision of an internationalized Thai monkhood would in many ways prove prophetic in the decades following his disappearance from the Bangkok scene. Byoto and the famous Thai monk at the center of the 1962 controversy— a monk known for most of his clerical career as Phimolatham—surely never met. If they had, Byoto might have recognized him as a partial representation of his international ideals, though he would have found in him no traces of fascism—only a pacifistic liberalism. From humble beginnings in the poor northeast (he was born in a village in Khon Kaen province, not far from Phu Po hill), Phimolatham rose to prominence in the 1950s. He followed an unconventional path that frequently led him abroad, and into conflict at home. His unwelcome ties with Burmese Buddhists took on political overtones for members of an inward-turning Thai Buddhist hierarchy who perceived an association between socialist Burma and international communism. His involvement in the Moral Rearmament Army, a global peace movement with anticommunist leanings and headquarters in the United States, was also unsettling for Thai Buddhist chauvinists no more open to these equally suspect overseas contacts than to relations with Burma. Intersecting with these fears were Phimolatham’s connections to the northeast, a region whose ethnic Lao distinctiveness and prevailing anticentral-government sentiment sharpened his profile as an outsider. Phimolatham’s destruction was perhaps inevitable. Yet while rejecting international politicization under a maverick liberal confrere, Thailand’s conservative monkhood did open up to that process more readily under American government encouragement. This took place against the backdrop of the Thai government’s anticommunist alliance

7

Y7216.indb 7

7/20/17 9:50 AM

I n t r o du cti o n

with the United States, the main pillar of Thailand’s foreign relations after 1947. While Bangkok’s military-strategic partnership with Washington was rather straightforward, the monkhood’s religious conservatism combined with American legal inhibitions to make for a more elliptical relationship: Washington was political in its efforts not to appear involved in religion; meanwhile, the Thai monkhood went in reverse, trying to keep the faith by not appearing to be involved in politics. Washington’s interest in Buddhism had grown after 1950, when a new pan-Asian Buddhist community, exemplified by Phimolatham’s contacts, emerged. Each of the Cold War’s main antagonists considered the new Buddhist domain worth trying to influence, perhaps to win over, or at least deny to the opposing side. That the American ethic of a separate church and state was widely thought to have implications for foreign policy—lest the United States be perceived as hypocritical—hardly prevented Washington from entering this Asian religious theater with gusto. All it did was compel Washington to operate in secret. The CIA, for its part, had been quick to recognize Buddhism as an international political force. Indeed, the agency had, in 1948, gathered intelligence on several of Bangkok’s ethnic Vietnamese monasteries, and it had determined, rightly or wrongly, that these monasteries were substantial nodes in the communist-led Viet Minh’s revolutionary networks beyond Vietnam. The monastery near the intersections of Padsai and Yawarat roads was believed to be used “principally for political meetings,” while the monastery at Bang Phu, across the river from Sam Saen, was a “more important Viet Minh stronghold.” The recently renovated Wat Nang Leang, located near the sanatorium of the Seventh Day Adventists and the Nang Leang police station off Krung Kasem Road, was the third and “possibly most important” Viet Minh monastery. Wat Nang Leang’s importance stemmed from its alleged use by the revolutionary “clique” of Tran Van Giau, a Vietnamese communist leader with extensive connections in Thailand. Six Vietnamese monks lived at the monastery in August 1948, the CIA had found. Their reputed chief was the Cochinchina-born monk Buu An, who had come to Thailand in 1923.

8

Y7216.indb 8

7/20/17 9:50 AM

I n t r o du c ti o n

U.S. intelligence officials believed that Buu An had gained the “favor of the Siamese ecclesiastical authorities” and that he “supervise[d] the work” of Tran Van Giau’s Can Bo, although he had “no official position in the Viet Minh.”10 Of course, the CIA would not openly involve itself in Buddhist affairs, hence the need for a proxy. Its ties with the Asia Foundation made the foundation part of a global network of covertly funded cultural organizations.11 The CIA’s known ties with the various groups that composed its worldencircling covert web would last until their public exposure in 1966–67. By that time, the foundation, as part of its Asia-wide expansion, had made substantial inroads into the Buddhist establishments of Thailand and its mostly Theravada neighbors, opening sister programs in Sri Lanka, Burma, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Programs designed to broaden, reform, and diversify the Thai monkhood through community activities and international exposure had drawn the monkhood partially from its shell of traditionalism. Nowhere was this trend more apparent than in the 1961 U.S. tour of Thailand’s supreme patriarch, a monk best known by the clerical title Kittisophana. The arch-conservative Kittisophana was Phimolatham’s foil and would soon become one of his chief persecutors. Part of the animosity between the two monks stemmed from Kittisophana’s dim view of Phimolatham’s progressive international ties, which he saw as inappropriate. It then made for an ironic spectacle when Kittisophana himself traveled across the United States (and beyond) under foundation sponsorship, even partially retracing Phimolatham’s steps. The tour expanded Kittisophana’s worldview in unlikely new directions. And it drew the Thai Buddhist hierarchy even more securely into the U.S. fold. The conservative imperative had finally broken with the past closed approach to the outside world. The monkhood’s relations with Washington were based on a mutual keeping up of complementary appearances: that one side was avoiding religion while the other was staying out of politics. Despite appearances, the Buddhist clergy in fact grew more politically internationalized under the U.S. embrace. So, too, was Thai Buddhism growing more religiously internationalized through institutions such as the World Fellowship of Buddhists (WFB).

9

Y7216.indb 9

7/20/17 9:50 AM

I n t r o du cti o n

In a way, Phimolatham’s dealings with the Christian-influenced Moral Rearmament Army in the 1950s had been a part of this trend. But it was primarily under WFB auspices that Thai Buddhists grew better connected to other Buddhists, all constituents of the world Buddhist community that appeared to form in the aftermath of World War II. It was through involvement in this group, seen by some as a “miniature Asian U.N.,” that Thailand’s lay Buddhist leadership contended with the major international Buddhist issues of the day. By far the most important of these concerns was the Buddhist unrest in South Vietnam. For the members of Thailand’s lay Buddhist elite who eventually came to administer the international WFB, South Vietnam’s Buddhist troubles were evidence of the pitfalls of an activist political role for Buddhist clergy, a colonial pathology absent in Thailand. Yet, at home, the barriers that had kept Thai monks from political activism were also being worn down through channels that conservative Thai Buddhist elites themselves favored. Reform and diversification of the monkhood through community activism had been a long-term goal of the Asia Foundation; its aim had been to preserve the monkhood’s traditional abstention from politics by providing alternative forms of civic engagement. Not until the mid-1960s, when Thailand’s secular government took the initiative by having monks participate in community programs of an overtly anticommunist character, did the engineering of the monkhood’s social role threaten to backfire in a serious way. It was the Asia Foundation’s William Klausner who noticed that these programs, by having Thai monks serve as intermediaries between the secular government and disaffected lay citizens, cast the monks in roles resembling those of Buddhist clergymen facing colonial regimes. Klausner suggested that such activities might uncork the Thai monkhood’s latent political potential. The observations of an American who played a pivotal role in the foundation’s efforts to shape Thai and Southeast Asian Buddhist institutions darkly foreshadowed things to come. During the early 1970s, tensions within Thailand’s ecclesiastical establishment reached new heights as Thai society as a whole fell under extraordinary pressures. In neighboring Indochina, the 1975 communist victories

10

Y7216.indb 10

7/20/17 9:50 AM

I n t r o du c ti o n

seemingly brought the threat of foreign communist invasion to Thailand’s doorstep. At home, a vibrant but erratic period of civilian democratic rule spurred the right wing to retake control and crack down on the left-leaning groups of students, labor activists, and farmers that had made the effervescent civilian interlude possible. For Thailand’s conservative establishment, it was a frightening period, marked by grave uncertainty and worries of communist revolution. In the context of this unrest there arrived the monk known as Kittivudho, a Buddhist cleric who would have met the specifications of the long-forgotten Professor Byoto. With his emergence in the 1970s, Thai Buddhism’s postwar journey closed a circle. An artful rhetorician and charismatic leader, Kittivudho would become notorious for advising his Buddhist followers that killing communists ought not be considered sinful, and for sanctioning the violent repression of Thailand’s leftist movements whether communist or not. Kittivudho also lent institutional support to the right-wing paramilitary organizations that would carry out these bloody reprisals, allowing vigilante groups to use the Jittaphawan monastery, which he founded and directed in the seaboard province of Chonburi, as a training ground. Kittivudho’s melding of Buddhist doctrine with virulent anticommunism—and his alleged international ties to rightwing Laotian and Cambodian guerrillas—represented an uncanny realization of Byoto’s vision: that of an internationally politicized Thai monkhood enlisted in a violent quasi-fascistic cause. The Cold War had a major impact on Buddhism in Thailand. Under its pressures, a previously closed religious community slowly became more politically active while its hierarchical leadership attempted to maintain and largely succeeded in enforcing the traditional conservatism. But in the process, as the clergy displayed a growing international consciousness and became steadily more immersed in global political currents, Thai Buddhism also opened to the outside world. As Thailand entered the 1970s—the most tumultuous period in its modern history—traditional pressures could not constrain Kittivudho from taking up the active role in political affairs that Byoto had once unsuccessfully advocated. His controversial activism

11

Y7216.indb 11

7/20/17 9:50 AM

I n t r o du cti o n

would continue through the late 1970s, as neighboring Cambodia endured a nightmarish manifestation of communism’s Southeast Asian advance— developments to which his activities were keenly attuned. While this book, by virtue of its sources, pays special attention to developments in Thailand, it presents something broader and more multilayered than a history of contemporary Thai Buddhism. Its deeper purpose is to reveal the contours of a Buddhist political history in which Southeast Asia’s national borders are transcended by connections and perceptions formed among Buddhists of different nationalities, as well as other international protagonists. Thus it demonstrates the real mechanics of religious politics throughout the region during the four decades in question.

12

Y7216.indb 12

7/20/17 9:50 AM

One

The Buddhist World and the United States at the Onset of the Cold War, 1941–1954

O

ur story begins in Bangkok with an uneasy meeting of Buddhist minds in the first year of the Pacific War. In December 1941, Japanese forces occupied Thailand, an ally and a strategically vital gateway to Burma and India located in the heart of the Southeast Asian mainland. Next they sought to exert their influence over Thai culture. At the forefront of this effort was a Japanese expatriate scholar who conceived of an approach that would bend Buddhism, the Thai national religion, to suit Japan’s national goals. As the subsequent decades would show, this would be only the first such effort by a contending world power, notably including the United States, to influence Buddhism to its own international advantage. Professor Tsusho Byoto, a proponent of the militarized Zen Buddhism that had taken hold in his native Japan, wanted to impose it on the comparatively pacifistic and socially disengaged Theravada Buddhist school that prevailed in Thailand and neighboring countries.1 Born in 1903, Byoto was an ordained monk of Japan’s dominant Mahayana school and a prolific scholar of Buddhism. He studied at Santiniketan (“abode of peace”), an experimental school founded by the poet Rabindranath Tagore in 1901 at Bolpur, in West Bengal. In November 1938, he established the Japan-Thailand Cultural Research Institute in Bangkok.2 But despite his credentials as an authority on Thai culture, his ideas about Thai Buddhism—which incongruously displayed neither Tagore’s poetic humanitarianism nor Theravada disengagement—would not gain widespread acceptance among his Thai hosts.

13

Y7216.indb 13

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e B u d d h i s t W o r l d and the U ni ted States

Byoto had very likely lived in Thailand since the founding of his institute in 1938, perhaps earlier. In any case, he had resided in the kingdom long enough to formulate some strong opinions about Thai society—its religious institutions in particular—and in the aftermath of the arrival of Japan’s occupation forces he secured what probably was a semiofficial appointment as representative of the Japanese generals Nakata and Koboyatchi. He set to work quickly. In January 1942, Byoto arranged accommodations in Bangkok for some 45 Japanese monks and novices who had been conscripted into the army by imperial decree and attached to its regular divisions. These monks would accompany Japanese forces during their invasion of Burma, assisting with the “pacification” of local Buddhist inhabitants “suffering from the evils of war.”3 But in the meantime the Japanese monks were in need of housing. Byoto requested that they be distributed among six of the most prestigious Thai monasteries and—remarkably—that they be  ordained in the “yellow robes” of the Thai Buddhist monks and intermingle with them. In a January 6, 1942, letter, Byoto had proclaimed that Japanese and Thais “respect the same religion” and suggested that his proposal was in the interest of “promoting friendly relations between our two countries.”4 Officials at the Thai Ministry of Education found his case persuasive. They approved the request, as did the prime minister’s office, and the plan evidently went ahead according to Byoto’s specifications. His next task proved more difficult. In two polemical articles calling for systematic reform of Thailand’s Buddhist establishment, Byoto now hoped to sponsor a more active role for Thailand’s Buddhist monks in its own national affairs, following the militant Japanese pattern. He requested permission from Thai authorities to circulate his audacious writings to the broader public. In the context of the Japan-Thailand alliance, Byoto would require a delicate official Thai response. The Buddhism of mainland Southeast Asia, the Theravada form of that religion, which is predominant everywhere in the region but Vietnam, interacted in significant ways with Japan’s strategy in the Second World War. Most Japanese themselves were nominally Buddhists, though of the Mahayana school (like most Vietnamese). They appealed to sentiments of religious fraternity as part of their crusade to “liberate” the region from European

14

Y7216.indb 14

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e B u d d h i s t W o r l d a n d the U ni ted States

colonialism and replace it with their own colonial system: a Greater East Asian “co-prosperity sphere” dedicated primarily to benefit Japan. Thailand had quickly yielded to the superior strength of the Japanese forces and entered into a strategic alliance. The alliance was founded on the notion of a shared racial and religious heritage with Japan and a mutual interest in opposing European regional encroachments and pressures, and it was sealed with Japanese promises of territorial annexations that would enlarge Thailand at the expense of its neighbors. To advance the notion of a “co-prosperity sphere” that extended to Thailand, certain inconvenient truths were overlooked: that Japanese subscribed to Buddhism’s Mahayana variant, not the more orthodox Theravada school; that it was Shintoism, not Buddhism, that had emerged during the Meiji period as the more vibrant Japanese religious tradition; and that many Japanese in fact regarded the Thais as racially distinct and inferior to themselves—prejudices that contradicted the official rhetoric of pan-Asian unity that Tokyo took pains to emphasize. None of this had prevented the signing of an alliance treaty before the Emerald Buddha, Thailand’s “most revered religious image,” at Wat Phra Kaeo, the glittering royal monastery in central Bangkok, on December 21, 1941.5 The unprecedented consecration of a military alliance in this sacred religious setting, with senior Thai monks presiding, showed the Thais’ shrewd willingness to acquiesce in Japanese pretensions and anoint their erstwhile invaders as Buddhist allies. In November 1942, tensions emerged in this Buddhist alliance as Byoto’s request for the publication of his articles brought to light a new ambition in Japanese designs. Not content merely to associate themselves with Thai Buddhism, they evidently sought to transform it—from across the Mahayana-Theravada sectarian divide. The Japanese professor-monk submitted two pieces, both elaborating on the same themes. In the first, Byoto’s stilted English offered this critical appraisal of Thai monks: “In Thailand, monks are comparatively highly educated people, though we can’t call it the highest and modern [sic]. It is the great loss for the nation that majority of these intellectual and numerous people are unconnected with the actual society and only performing their mental training

15

Y7216.indb 15

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e B u d d h i s t W o r l d and the U ni ted States

for themselves shutting up in their monastories.”6 In his view, the Thai priests’ tendency to cloister themselves, seeking their own enlightenment at the expense of the secular society that lay beyond the monastery walls, compared unfavorably with the habits of Japanese monks, who had taken their secular engagement to an extreme—in effect making themselves clerical accessories to the imperial war machine. In his second piece, entitled “War and Buddhism,” the professor drove these points home. His approach took a more philosophical turn as he argued at length for a relationship between Buddhism and violence. Theravada Buddhists have difficulty, he said, in explaining: This paradox that, by what reason, buddhists, who are prohibited to kill beings, can join in fighting as a soldier for their Nation in purpose of fulfilling their duty. But, it is very clear and easy to be explained this paradox by Japanese Buddhism, which is the Mahayana. In Mahayana Buddhism, there are thoughts such as “to destroy the wrong views and to manifest the right thoughts” or “To take a sharp sword to attack demons (when Buddha is going to attain enlightenment under the Bodhi tree) or [to] bring a big worm to life, killing a small worm.” It is recognized as a good thing, by Mahayana thought, to strike down the evil people and to exhibit the righteous people. It is good to kill the evil, that is, an enemy of the Buddha’s doctrine, shaking a sharp sword to destroy demons in order to instrict our truth . . . and, there are a thought that it is good, sometimes, to kill a small being and few beings in [order] to bring round a big being and numerous beings. For Japanese buddhists, it is justfied to fight with evel enemy . . . The Chino-Japanese Conflict of this time is the holy war, for Japans, to exhibit Japanese Spirit, pursuating communism . . . Communistic thoughts which stand on historical Materialism is the enemy of doctrine for Japanese Buddhism.7 Melding Buddhism with a brutally utilitarian logic, and portraying Japan’s aggression on the Chinese mainland as a “holy war” against communism, Byoto prescribed a new role for Thai monks: “Thai monks, at this crisis

16

Y7216.indb 16

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e B u d d h i s t W o r l d a n d the U ni ted States

of rise and decline for nation, not only deliver their preachs and broadcasts, and sprinkle the holy water to soldier departing to the front or recite the scripture, but they, daring to take part in disasters of war adventitiously, should perform active enterprises to lead nations in return for Nation’s kindness . . . My proposal to Thailand Buddhism, here, divided into two main classes. That is one is that Thailand Buddhism must be be re-organized systomatically and metaphisically to be adapted to modern society, and second is that Thai monks should take part in the disasters of this War themselves adventitionsly, serve to [their] Nation and, moreover, they should lead her.”8 Byoto’s ideas were not entirely original. Certainly he was not the only exemplar of Japan’s militant Zen school who identified communism as the main enemy of the faith. Another was one of his World War II–era Japanese contemporaries, the Zen scholar Hatane Jozan. Like Byoto, Jozan had perversely interpreted Japan’s conquest of mainland China during World War II as a “righteous and moral war of self sacrifice”—one that saved China “from the dangers of Communist take over and economic slavery.” Jozan interpreted that “sacred war” as “incorporating the great practice of the bodhisattva.”9 Byoto shared some basic assumptions with his compatriots. Byoto had drafted his two pieces in his imperfect English. He then took the first article to the Bangkok Times, which published it. But when he submitted the second, the newspaper’s managing editor refused to print it, presumably having found the material too sensitive. The scholar-monk was undeterred. He had both articles translated into Thai with the intention of “widely distributing the material to the Thai people.”10 First, though, he submitted his writings to the Ministry of Public Affairs, seeking official approval before disseminating his work. Having Japanese monks reside in Thai monasteries and even wear the saffron robes of the Thai monastic order was permissible. But fundamentally changing the role of Buddhist monks in Thai society in emulation of more bellicose Japanese counterparts was a taller order that gave Thai officials pause. The professor had overstepped his bounds. But he was a representative of the occupying power, and therefore his commentary on Thai Buddhism required careful handling. Aside from those immediate concerns, Thai officials may have also weighed Byoto’s requests in the context of recent events in neighboring

17

Y7216.indb 17

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e B u d d h i s t W o r l d and the U ni ted States

Cambodia: In July 1942, Cambodian monks and lay nationalists had staged a large demonstration in Phnom Penh against French colonial rule (still in place despite Japanese occupation of the country, which had encouraged the protest organizers). In Thailand Byoto’s appeals may have been perceived as part of a region-wide Japanese effort to draw local communities of Buddhist monks into political affairs. But where Japanese officials might have inspired the more politicized monks of Phnom Penh, Byoto would fail in Bangkok. On November 17, 1942, the chief official at the Ministry of Public Affairs drafted his response to Byoto. “The Japanese views on Buddhism are drastically different from our own Thai views,” the minister cautiously observed. While venturing to express the opinion that “these writings could be beneficial in the area of cultural relations between the Thais and Japanese in the future,” he declined to make a recommendation on the professor’s requested distribution of his writings within Thailand.11 Instead, he passed the buck to higher ministerial authorities—to the Office of the Prime Minister. This must have seemed a prudent bureaucratic move given the sensitivity of the issues raised. The prime minister was a Thai nationalist strongman and close ally of Japan, Phibun Songkram. The secretary to the prime minister in turn advised that Professor Byoto had proposed nothing short of “fundamental change to the principles of Thai Buddhism.” He recommended that the issue be taken up by the “National Cultural Council,” an auxiliary body of the Prime Minister’s Office. The council reacted unfavorably to the Byoto articles. Thai monks could not fight. It was “inappropriate” for them to become active participants in war, or even to enter the army in order to “train or cultivate the spirit” of the regular troops. In the Thai context, these practices were unnecessary given that most Thai soldiers had in their youth ordained as monks—a customary practice for young Thai males—and thus the troops already “possessed the knowledge that could be derived from monastic training.”12 The council even concluded: “The person who has distributed this material could be charged with a crime . . . According to the Cultural Act of 2484 [1941], he who causes damage or decline to the institution of the Thai monkhood has committed an offense punishable by not more than one year

18

Y7216.indb 18

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e B u d d h i s t W o r l d a n d the U ni ted States

in prison.” Of course Thailand could not impose that on Byoto; circumstances demanded diplomatic compromise. Despite his articles’ possibly illegal content, “the situation was important for political reasons.”13 Byoto was thus allowed to circulate his writings in Thai.14 The Prime Minister’s Office and cultural authorities gave the well-connected Japanese professor a political pass, bowing to the pragmatic concerns of a nation in an alliance at war. In July 1943, Thai-Japanese religious bonds received further ceremonial validation. On July 1 the Thais transferred to a visiting Japanese delegation religious relics purported to be bones of the Buddha. Prime Minister Phibun Songkram himself presided over the exchange, receiving the container “encasing the holy relics” from a Thai Buddhist monk and passing it along to the Japanese ambassador.15 E. Bruce Reynolds reports that arrangements for this ceremony, which again took place at Wat Phra Kaeo, had been under way for more than a year. The elaborate transfer was a “scheme to impress the Japanese with Thailand’s sincerity as an ally,” assurances that were timely, as the Japanese position was already weakening under the Allied onslaught in the Pacific.16 Yet when it deteriorated further, the Thai elite would shift its commitments to the Allies. In 1944, Japanese influence in Thailand collapsed. Professor Byoto’s plans never reached fruition. After the war ended, Thailand faced international pressure to make reparations for its wartime alliance with Japan. The prominent Estonian Buddhist cleric Karl Tonisson and his devoted disciple, fellow Estonian national Friedrich Lustig, harshly criticized the conduct of the Thai Buddhist establishment during the occupation. In a bizarre “treatise” probably composed in 1946, the authors accused Thai Buddhists of cynically betraying their faith in the interest of forging an alliance with the Japanese. Their lurid portrayal of the December 1941 treaty-signing ceremony captures the piece’s vitriolic tone: Long and venerable history of Buddhism does not record such procedure, and not since the Middle Ages has a government made it a policy to use religion for aggressive purposes or ordered blessings to be given for extermination, enslavement and deportation

19

Y7216.indb 19

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e B u d d h i s t W o r l d and the U ni ted States

of innocent men and women. By having blessed the Axis war instrument the Thai High Priests, 25 of them, have acted as accomplices in the war crimes committed by the Siamese dictatorial cabinet of December 1941 . . . Wholesale slaughter of peoples, shooting of war prisoners, execution of hostages, the monstrosities of gas chamber experts . . . and many other things, the Siamese politicians and priests had knowingly or unknowingly approved by their pompous prayer in the Temple of the Emerald Buddha on December 21, 1941.17 The postwar American naval attaché in Bangkok, A. W. Gardes, saw some value in Tonisson and Lustig’s invective. In August 1947, he recommended to the chief of naval operations that “the enclosed treatise be bound and made required reading by officers proceeding to Siam for duty. At the same time  that officers are assigned this material, they should be warned that while the treatise appears very well documented and authoritative, it has been written from a very biased point of view.” Circulation of the document among personnel, he added, would “counteract all the available information which presents only the better traits of the Siamese people and ignores their faults.”18 Tonisson and Lustig’s accusations were not only “biased” but also overstated: the evidence suggests that, as far as Buddhist relations with the Japanese were concerned, the Thais had struck a difficult balance, cultivating religious ties and acquiescing in Japanese aggression while never falling under the active sway of Zen fanaticism, despite Japanese efforts to import and impose it. Thai Buddhism indeed was implicated in the Japanese war effort in both symbolic and concrete terms. Ceremonial affirmations of the ThaiJapanese military alliance relied heavily on Buddhist symbolism. That the Japanese army’s monastic retinue was allowed to reside at Thai monasteries, including the royally patronized monasteries at Wat Mahathat and Wat Benjamabophit, and to ordain in the Thai monkhood, reveals local Buddhist complicity. However, the internal handling of the Byoto affair also indicates strong official resistance to any more substantive corruption of Thai Buddhism

20

Y7216.indb 20

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e B u d d h i s t W o r l d a n d the U ni ted States

by radical Japanese influences. Although under political pressure Thai officials reluctantly agreed to have the professor release his writings in Thai to the public, the internal debate on them demonstrates a strong sense that his articles contradicted Thai beliefs that Buddhism and Buddhist monks should remain detached from secular society and from the conduct of war. Professor Byoto’s gambit to recruit Thai Buddhist monks for war was a precursor to a more subtle drama that would play out over the course of the next several decades, as one by one Thailand’s Buddhist neighbors won their independence from European colonial rule and the geopolitical conflict in Southeast Asia evolved into an important Cold War arena. Both sides in that conflict sought to enlist to their cause Buddhist hierarchies, including their lay and clerical establishments and rank-and-file monks. As we have seen, the reflexive Thai Buddhist posture was one of noninvolvement in secular affairs. Yet, in several instances, the Cold War’s powerful currents would soon draw Thai Buddhist clergy into contact with the secular political realm.

Thai Buddhism and the Cold War: Earliest Encounters Gardes’s 1947 dispatch from Bangkok coincided with the dawning of a new American-oriented epoch in Thailand’s foreign relations. The wartime alliance that Prime Minister Phibun had cunningly engineered with the Japanese had proved ill-advised, given the eventual triumph of the opposing side. Phibun was ousted from power by his more liberal and prescient rival, Pridi Phanomyong, wartime leader of the anti-Japan Seri Thai (Free Thai) movement. Pridi organized elections, and the Thais were able to restore, during a brief interlude of civilian rule, amicable relations with the Allied powers and even secure a postwar “peace settlement more lenient than anyone had hoped for.”19 However, Phibun returned to power in a November 1947 army coup. U.S. officials initially saw this as an inauspicious development. But Pridi’s masterful rapprochement with the West had already reversed much of the diplomatic damage caused by Phibun’s imprudent alignment with the Japanese. Ironically, this now favored the dictator back in power—Phibun. Despite his misbehavior during the war, support for Phibun among officials

21

Y7216.indb 21

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e B u d d h i s t W o r l d and the U ni ted States

grew with such rapidity that by May 1948 “the United States had embraced the former dictator as the best hope for both Thailand and American interests in Thailand.”20 It was a remarkable turnaround, establishing the basis for an enduring military-strategic alliance between the United States and a long series of repressive Thai military regimes. All this had very important ramifications for Thai Buddhists. The codification of the new Thai alliance reflected the broader regional context. The immediate postwar period was a momentous time. The Japanese invasion had ruptured the authority of the European colonial regimes, and the power vacuum that followed the Japanese defeat allowed numerous nationalist movements to emerge. In Indonesia, Malaya, Vietnam, and elsewhere, revolutionary nationalism found nourishment in MarxismLeninism, with that ideology’s anticolonial thrust. The counterrevolutionary wars colonial powers waged in costly efforts to reestablish control merged with the U.S.-led effort to “contain” communism. Thailand’s communists had already appealed to Buddhism as part of a postwar propaganda drive. Under Pridi’s leadership, the elected Thai parliament repealed the 1933 Anti-Communist Act on October 10, 1946. This opened a brief window during which the Communist Party of Thailand (CPT), reestablished in December 1942, and affiliated communist groups were able to operate publicly.21 A parliamentary representative from Surat Thani province in Thailand’s south, Nai Prasert Supsunthon, had played a prominent role in promoting the repeal.22 After that breakthrough he openly joined the “newly legalized” party and helped draft its “first public propaganda.”23 This was a January 13, 1947, release that asserted an eschatological congruence between Buddhism and Marxism-Leninism: “In a society of Buddhism much is said about the last stage of Buddhism, that is the Srisriya world. In its last stage, Buddhism will reach the zenith of its ideal, where men will live a life of equality, not rich, not poor, not oppressed or exploited. That is the ideal of Buddhism which ends in common with the ideal of communism. We Siamese have already in mind such an idea.”24 The CPT, having foresworn insurrection, concentrated instead on propagandizing, labor organizing, and gaining influence through legally sanc-

22

Y7216.indb 22

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e B u d d h i s t W o r l d a n d the U ni ted States

tioned channels in parliament.25 Meanwhile, left-leaning segments of Thailand’s urban intelligentsia entered a period of creative ferment, lending a “distinctly Left orientation to Bangkok public discourse” through the translation and propagation of key Marxist texts, the publication of numerous original works, and the establishment of leftist newspapers and periodicals.26 The CPT’s attempts to reconcile its political propaganda with Buddhism hardly worried Phibun himself—at least not at first. In July 1948, the Field Marshal expressed confidence that “the communist party was not an immediate menace to his country.” He also declared that “communism had little appeal to the Siamese, who he stressed were Buddhists and not receptive to materialistic Marxist doctrines.”27 Yet within two years the Thai government began to recruit Buddhist monks into its own anticommunist propaganda program, countering any inroads the left had made in this area. The 1949 victory of Mao Zedong’s communists in China’s civil war had in the meantime expelled remnants of the Kuomintang, China’s defeated nationalist army, into the northern reaches of Burma and Thailand and sharply eroded confidence that Thailand was safe from perceived internal and external communist threats. On March 6, 1950, Thailand’s Ministry of the Interior announced a new committee for “counter-Communist information activities.” Thai officials immediately drafted plans to “obtain the cooperation” of Buddhist monks and other government and local officials in this new initiative. Upcountry monks would now be asked to “teach respect for father, mother, King and State, and to make clear the distinction between Communism and Buddhism.” According to a Thai informant, “the majority of priests concerned are said to support this proposal,” and the cooperation of abbots in Bangkok “will doubtless be forthcoming.”28 By late 1950, as efforts to recruit monks for propaganda purposes got under way, the Phibun government had also begun to harass the press, attack labor groups, and deport ethnic Chinese suspected of involvement in political activity as part of a systematic tightening of the political sphere.29 Early the next year, prominent monks in the north of Thailand had indicated their willingness to toe the government’s anticommunist line. During February–March 1951 Robert Anderson, assistant attaché at the American

23

Y7216.indb 23

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e B u d d h i s t W o r l d and the U ni ted States

consulate in Chiang Mai, surveyed conditions in five northern provinces in an effort to “determine the present ability of the northern area to withstand political infiltration and/or military conquest by the Communists.”30 Anderson found his interactions with Buddhist clergy in these regions highly encouraging. The northern monks had, until recently, “naively” refused to discuss the “dangers of Communism.” But “pressure from the government” as well as “from the more worldly followers of Buddhism” had shifted their outlook dramatically, Anderson observed. The Buddhist hierarchy in Thailand’s northern regions were now willing to “lead the secular population in an effort to prepare the country against” communist take-over.31 U.S. officials had also begun to use Buddhist monasteries in Thailand’s rural frontier zones as sites for distributing United States Information Service (USIS) propaganda materials to local populations, as Anderson described. Phra Wirayarn Muni, chief abbot of Chiang Rai province, had “cooperated fully in arranging for increased USIS distribution,” helping to compile a mailing list that included the province’s monasteries along with its schools and various provincial notables. The chief abbot of Prae province, Phra Thep Muni, was also “cooperative,” joining the provincial education officer, Nai Sanit Thamaniyom, in calling for more extensive distribution of USIS literature “to local officials and to the people.”32 By April 1951, then, U.S. officials in Thailand had enjoyed some success in developing ties with Buddhist clergy in the north of Thailand, relationships that appear to have aided in the dissemination of pro-Western propaganda in that remote region. They had probably also established similar Buddhist networks elsewhere in the country. However, they still lacked a policy statement that provided a rationale and a plan for pursuing the establishment of such networks, either in Thailand or in the wider Buddhist world. This statement would develop later, as officials grasped both the potential Cold War benefits of engaging Buddhism and the peculiar constraints that would govern that engagement in the years to come.

The Rules of Engagement: A Burmese Laboratory The process moved forward when U Nu, the Buddhist prime minister of Burma, who since 1948 had been battling a domestic communist insur-

24

Y7216.indb 24

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e B u d d h i s t W o r l d a n d the U ni ted States

gency, encouraged officials to incorporate Burmese Buddhism into an anticommunist program. His request of July 1951 would prompt U.S. debate over the risks involved. The perceived need to respect the separation of church and state—even in U.S. foreign policy—was thought to impose certain limitations. One year later, a failed Soviet venture seemed to illustrate the pitfalls of overtly manipulating Buddhism for political purposes. Burma during 1951–52 was a laboratory in which an official U.S. approach to Buddhism reached a preliminary stage. The popular Burmese prime minister had become well known for his pious devotion and his efforts to introduce Buddhist philosophical principles into Burma’s domestic and foreign policies. In 1951, he commented to a group of Rangoon University students that “apathy to religion was the cause of at least 80 percent of Burma’s troubles.”33 During his frequent trips abroad, U Nu had shown equal zeal in promoting Buddhism internationally, earning a reputation as a “persevering proselytizer” of his faith.34 In July 1951, a State Department message to the U.S. embassy in Rangoon conveyed Washington’s reaction to U Nu’s recent proposal. The department was “favorably impressed” with the prime minister’s suggestions and “eager to take advantage of any feasible plan” to co-opt Buddhists into an anticommunist program.35 But a significant qualification followed. The U.S. government would “not be able to make financial contribution for any religious activities.” A key passage in official telegraphese prefigured future decisions: However, in view common objective of combating Communism a serious effort [should] be made to enlist assistance from private [American organizations] for any group of Buddhists dedicated to task of stopping Communism in [Burma]. Chief obstacle appears to be lack of [organization] among Buddhist capable of applying aid effectively. Therefore, suggest if no objection perceived [ambassador] again call on [the prime minister and] express [Department’s] gratitude for and interest in his suggestions, explain again restrictions imposed by our strict separation of church and state and explore possibility of [establishing] among Buddhist leaders an [organization] to devote itself especially to fight against

25

Y7216.indb 25

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e B u d d h i s t W o r l d and the U ni ted States

Communism through Buddhist channels. Such an [organization could] direct [general] policy of campaign, not as coordinating force, supervise anti-COMMIE activities of local [monks] throughout country, and supply material for local dissemination. If some such [organization] were able to [establish] machinery and program for effective anti-COMMIE campaign this [government would] make every effort to find private sources of financial support. Needs for this purpose [would] appear to be much less than [amounts] suggested by [prime minister]. Valuable help in form of material and advice [could] also be supplied by USIS.36 The 1951 memo to Rangoon highlights here a defining feature of U.S. policy toward Buddhism—and religion in general—at the time: U.S. officials recognized that enlisting the cooperation of Buddhists could be strategically advantageous. Even though the political or ethical imperative to maintain the strict separation of church and state constrained U.S. activities in this arena, the Americans were unwilling to forfeit the strategic gains that could be derived from co-opting Buddhists into their Cold War program. So they had found a detour. In Burma and elsewhere the solution seemed to lie in forging relationships with Buddhists through the covert channel of private organizations, obscuring official U.S. connections. While prompting U.S. officials to take action in the Buddhist arena, U Nu continued to prove an asset to them in other ways, protecting Burmese Buddhism from communist influences through the unique powers of his office. So it was that the prime minister found himself at the center of a dispute that was to yield, through the counterexample of an unsuccessful Soviet ploy, cautionary lessons to the Americans about how not to approach Buddhism politically. In August 1952, U.S. officials stationed in Rangoon reported on Buddhist affairs in some detail to Washington. In the Burmese public sphere, an ongoing discourse on the philosophical compatibility of Buddhism with dialectical materialism had been unfolding. The U.S. diplomats noted with disapproval that the “effort to reconcile Buddhism with Marxism is being carried out not only by communists and by fellow-travelers, but also by

26

Y7216.indb 26

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e B u d d h i s t W o r l d a n d the U ni ted States

Marxist Socialists within the government,” including even a high-ranking government official: the Burmese defense minister, Bohmu Aung.37 But U.S. officials reported that Bohmu Aung’s views had not achieved broad acceptance—and in fact had powerful opponents, including U Nu. The defense minister’s delivery and publication of a speech affirming Buddhism’s compatibility with Marxism provoked a strong public reaction. Most notably, the Burmese Review and Monday Times, a prominent weekly, began running a series of articles by a British-born monk, Francis Story, forthrightly entitled “Buddhism Answers the Materialist Challenge.” U.S. embassy officials reported that Story’s writings “presented effective anticommunist arguments” and implied that U Nu had sanctioned, if not directly arranged, their serial publication. Studying U Nu’s role in these debates, the U.S. embassy grasped the complex divisions within Burma’s most popular political party, the left-leaning Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League (AFPFL). The prime minister led a more moderate wing of the AFPFL, whose members, while studying Marx, had “never lost sight of the spiritual teachings of the Buddha.” Hence U Nu was personally attuned to the dangers of “the compatibility thesis.” That was an argument advanced not by U Nu and his faction but by “radical” elements within the party who had previously “discarded” Buddhism and who now sought to reconcile it with Marxist thought.38 In this context U.S. officials attached special significance to U Nu’s anticommunist posture. They believed it could exert a constructive influence at home and abroad. “The intrusion of the personality of U Nu into the debate is of importance,” they wrote, “not only because of his political position, and the popularity he enjoys, but also because he has become the most prominent Buddhist layman, active in Sasana [ecclesiastical] matters, and revered as a ‘good man’ by the Sangha [monkhood].” Yet it would become clear in time that U Nu, although no supporter of communism, favored a neutralist orientation in the Cold War. Those neutralist instincts notwithstanding, U.S. officials felt that U Nu could play a positive role in the ideological orientation of Thai monks, who showed less inclination than their Burmese counterparts to take any interest in secular political issues. “Prominent members” (as yet unnamed) of

27

Y7216.indb 27

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e B u d d h i s t W o r l d and the U ni ted States

the Thai ecclesiastical order had recently visited Rangoon, they reported, providing no additional details. The Americans interpreted that as a “hopeful sign that [U Nu’s] stand against what might, in western terms, be called the ‘materialist heresy’ will become known and emulated within the Thai clergy.”39 Meanwhile, in an important development, U Nu’s public “airing of the ‘heresy’ ” had provoked the Soviet legation in Rangoon. The Soviets reacted with their own public relations countermeasure, printing a handout in three Burmese newspapers under a grandiose headline: “Buddhism Thrives in Russia, Atmosphere of Religious Freedom.” These publications were “pro-West” in their orientation but agreed to print the Soviet release anyway with what U.S. officials supposed was an “expectation that few if any readers would fail to see through it.”40 The U.S. diplomats emphasized the ineptitude of this Soviet publicity ploy. The statement, employing inappropriate religious terminology, “obviously had not been reviewed by anyone familiar with Buddhism.” A U.S. embassy official apparently had discussed the handout with an editor at the Burmese-language newspaper Tamadvi. The editor agreed that “Burma’s reaction to such propaganda is a tolerant smile coupled with some apprehension lest the ‘whitefaces’ defile the Precepts in their attempt to use Buddhism for political purposes.”41 The editor’s remarks had cautionary implications for the United States as well. Exploiting Buddhism for political purposes—in this case for purposes of perceived national self-interest—was a hazardous venture, as the Soviets may have learned from their own heavy-handed effort to manipulate Buddhist opinion. U.S. embassy officials in both Rangoon and Bangkok had already reached this conclusion. Airing views that seemed inconsistent with the State Department’s 1951 dispatch to the Rangoon embassy—and echoing sentiments expressed in an earlier memorandum from the embassy in Bangkok—the Rangoon embassy officials expressed their awareness of greater similarity between Thai and Burmese Buddhism “than some Asian scholars are wont to admit,” meaning that neither Buddhist establishment was ripe for political manipulation by outside powers. They repeated that “efforts by representatives of the United States to use Buddhist monks for

28

Y7216.indb 28

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e B u d d h i s t W o r l d a n d the U ni ted States

anti-communist activity would probably backfire, causing the resentment of a majority of Buddhists, and the loss of prestige of the monks involved.”42 Despite such warnings, Washington would pursue strategic relationships with Buddhists more along the lines of the memo sent to Rangoon the year before. U.S. representatives now resolved formally but discreetly to recruit Buddhist monks for anticommunist activity. U Nu’s encouragement had been sufficient to spur U.S. action, whereas the negative example of Soviet failure, though instructive, offered more of an opportunity than a deterrent. Washington would pursue its confidential objective by establishing clandestine channels of influence through private intermediaries, as the memo’s authors—concerned about breaches of church-state protocol—had advised. The Burmese Buddhist laboratory of 1951–52 had thus yielded significant advances in the formulation of a U.S. policy toward Buddhism. Basic principles had been articulated and codified, especially the need for a private interface with Buddhist groups. A more coherent plan had yet to emerge, but developments already under way within the broader Buddhist world would soon accentuate, in U.S. eyes, the need for one.

Engagement’s Rationale: An Emerging Buddhist World By the time of the 1951 State Department memo to Rangoon, U.S. policy makers had ample reason to regard Buddhism as an emerging theater of international relations and Cold War competition. Advancements in communication and transportation technologies that were the hallmarks of a shrinking postwar world brought Buddhists of different nationalities into closer contact, bridging ethnic and geographical divides. Various modes of religious and cultural exchange, including pilgrimages, the ritualized transfer of religious relics, and the appropriation of artistic styles had for centuries sustained a Buddhist ecumene across especially the Theravada world. Now modern modes of transport and interaction compressed time and space, lending the Theravada domain even greater coherence than had been achieved through the religious missions of centuries past. Buddhism, in short, became increasingly interconnected, fostering a pan-Buddhist consciousness that even achieved global scope as it enveloped

29

Y7216.indb 29

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e B u d d h i s t W o r l d and the U ni ted States

far-flung Buddhist groups in Europe and the United States. With a more unified Buddhist community taking shape, the major Cold War players began to see greater incentives in attempting to wield influence over—and win the allegiance of—Buddhists in both international and domestic settings. The establishment of the first “truly international” Buddhist organization, the World Fellowship of Buddhists, amplified these trends.43 Its origins lay in the initiative of another national Buddhist organization—the All-Ceylon Buddhist Congress. A December 1947 meeting of the congress had led to a historic resolution: it would invite Buddhist representatives “from all parts of the world” to convene in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in order to prepare for the 2,500th anniversary of the enlightenment and death of the Buddha—an epochal event that would be commemorated in 1956–57 with simultaneous celebrations in various Buddhist countries.44 The WFB would be formally established during the 1950 preparatory conference. Two years later, however, little progress was evident. According to a U.S. official report, the proposal to hold the 1950 conference might have died a “natural death” but for the persistence of Dr. G. P. Malalasekera, a Pali scholar affiliated with the University of Ceylon and a prominent congress member. U.S. intelligence officials regarded him skeptically as a “major spokesman” for a group of “anti-Christian, anti-Western” lay Buddhists in Ceylon.45 He would be appointed as Ceylon’s first ambassador to the Soviet Union in May 1957.46 In 1949 Malalasekera had visited Honolulu to attend a Conference of Philosophers. His tour of the mainland United States and England after the conference led Malalasekera to view Buddhism as likely to spread in the West. Speaking to the Ceylonese press after his return in August 1949, he remarked: “Buddhism offers the people of the West a new way of life, which was what they wanted most just now and Ceylon is admittedly the only country which retains this philosophy in its purest form.”47 With the 1950 conference plan now “resuscitated” under Malalasekera’s leadership, invitations to attend received an overwhelmingly positive response. The U.S. embassy in Colombo noted that “the call to world Buddhists was answered more enthusiastically than was hoped for even by Dr. Malalasekara.”48

30

Y7216.indb 30

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e B u d d h i s t W o r l d a n d the U ni ted States

Thus it was that the first ever international Buddhist conference convened in Ceylon on May 25, 1950, with great “pomp and circumstance” and with “better attendance than anticipated.” An opening religious ceremony at Kandy’s Temple of the Tooth, a complex reputedly housing a sacred tooth relic of the Buddha, preceded the public reception held at the Colombo Racetrack. The “Buddha’s well known views on gambling” evidently had done nothing to discourage this choice of venue, a U.S. official joked. “Conch-shell horns and Kandyan drummers” lent a festive air to the “jam-packed and colorful assembly” dominated by the “saffron robes of Buddhist bhikkus [monks].”49 Dr. Malalasekera found the turnout highly gratifying. Working the crowd of Buddhist delegates with a politician’s deftness, he was observed “bursting with pride over the publicity aroused by the conference.” He was equally unrestrained in conversations with the U.S. official sent to report on the event. During these exchanges Malalasekera repeatedly insisted that this was the “biggest thing in the history of Buddhism.” His self-promotion unbecoming of a Buddhist devotee must have bolstered widespread perceptions that Malalasekera was too “energetic and ambitious” by half. Although admired for his energy, the professor was reportedly neither “liked nor trusted” by his colleagues at the university.50 He certainly seems to have discomfited some U.S. officials, who must have looked askance at his conviction that Buddhism offered an “alternative to communism and to Western ‘imperialism.’ ”51 The conference had occasioned a publicity bonanza, receiving press attention that a U.S. observer termed “of a quality and a quantity to arouse Barnum’s envy.” And the outcome of the event could not easily be dismissed. “It would be shortsighted,” the U.S. official concluded, “to dismiss the present conference as totally ineffectual and destined to be sterile of results. The possible ramifications of an organization such as the one which this conference has now brought forth are legion.” He added finally, with a slight sense of resignation: “While the total impression produced by the conference is certainly not one of sinister intentions but rather the contrary. It should be realized that for better or worse a new politico-religious organization with worldwide connections and a powerful appeal to the masses of Southeast Asia

31

Y7216.indb 31

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e B u d d h i s t W o r l d and the U ni ted States

has been born.”52 Moreover, it had been born under the aegis of an erratic Ceylonese figure whose Cold War political loyalties were uncertain at best. The WFB certainly represented the most significant institutional expression of a new postwar pan-Buddhist solidarity. The fellowship would now provide a regular forum for international Buddhist relations through a series of biennial conferences held in shifting locations throughout the Buddhist world—in Colombo, Kathmandu, Rangoon, and Phnom Penh, among other locales. Featuring a single inter-sectarian body of representatives, the organization centralized the organizations of Buddhism to an unprecedented, though still limited, extent. A comparison with the Vatican seems tempting, at first glance. But in fact the WFB, despite its lofty aims, would fail to achieve even a fraction of the Vatican’s global influence and never exercised any comparable degree of overarching authority in administrative or doctrinal matters between national Buddhist clergies. Indeed, the WFB had virtually no authority in these areas. Nor did it serve as a nexus of raw information in the same way that the Vatican does. In short, despite the creation of the WFB, Buddhism would remain without a centralized institutional structure or transnational religious head analogous in any way to Roman Catholicism. Yet the WFB’s founders hoped not only to organize the Buddhist community at a worldwide level but also to create a vehicle for the propagation of Buddhist doctrine. And to some this proselytization seemed predestined to succeed. Prominent Buddhist figures now anticipated a rise in Buddhism’s global stature. Some even predicted that Western societies would embrace Buddhist philosophy as means of defusing the tensions of a deepening Cold War. “Buddhism can solve the problems of peace and war,” proclaimed D. S. Senanayake, the Ceylonese prime minister, during his address to the assembled delegates at the Colombo Racetrack Grandstand. “Let us resolve to co-ordinate our resources and offer our joint efforts to the world in general.”53 The famous Italian-born and Columbia University–educated monk Phra Lokanatha Thero had emerged as a vocal prophet of Buddhism’s widespread adoption in the West. In remarks he delivered at the 1950 conference, Lokanatha predicted that “America will welcome the scientific doc-

32

Y7216.indb 32

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e B u d d h i s t W o r l d a n d the U ni ted States

trine of Buddhism.” The “mysterious” abbot considered this development a foregone conclusion due to the scientific disposition of the “American mind,” which would, he implied, naturally embrace Buddhist rationality.54 If U.S. policymakers did not need to worry about that, they did have concerns about the role of international Buddhism in Southeast Asia’s major international conflict. For Dr. Malalasekera, the West’s longing for a new form of spiritual fulfillment constituted only one of the factors that would contribute to a surge in the number of Buddhist adherents across the globe. Buddhism’s prospects for achieving greater global influence were, in his view, equally as much tied to the political fortunes of the largely Buddhist populations then asserting their right to national self-determination against a U.S. ally, France, whose military budget for Indochina mostly came from Washington. In particular, Buddhism in Vietnam was at this time undergoing its own institutional revival.55 Indeed, 1951 saw the founding “national congress” of the General Buddhist Association of Viet Nam, which advocated “national Buddhism.”56 On a tour of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia in that year, in his new capacity as the WFB’s first president, Malalasekera delivered a speech touching on these very themes. Addressing an audience of monks and students at the University of Hanoi on May 27, 1951, Malalasekera connected decolonization—a topic of obvious concern for his young Vietnamese listeners still under French rule—to what he discerned as Buddhism’s rising global profile. An observer from the U.S. consulate paraphrased his remarks: The chief of world Buddhism went on to say that long ago Buddhists led the world in the excellence of their culture, the advancement of their civilization, and as a force for good in the world. But the wheel of fate turned and the followers of the Buddha everywhere came to be dominated politically by the peoples of other faiths. Today the wheel is still turning and all indications point to a growing realization of long repressed desire for independence once again for Buddhist countries and peoples . . . As the peoples and nations of the Buddhist world continue to find their independence and ‘place in the sun,’ the Buddhist religion

33

Y7216.indb 33

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e B u d d h i s t W o r l d and the U ni ted States

will once again begin to increase its philosophical influence. Buddhist followers must realize this and prepare to accept new responsibilities amid the turmoil of the world and help shape the future along Buddhist principles. This can best be accomplished by unity and cooperation aimed at lessening political antagonisms between Buddhist groups which actually differ only in practice or emphasis of worship.57 Malalasekera’s exaggerated perception of Buddhism’s influence on the world stage, as presented in this 1951 speech, echoed the WFB’s founding resolution, adopted the year before at the inaugural Colombo conference. That resolution proclaimed an intent to promote Buddhism internationally as a means of achieving “peace and harmony amongst men and happiness for all beings.”58 This bore implications for U.S. policy makers. Expanding Buddhism’s role to adopt the quixotic goal of achieving “international peace and amity” subtly contradicted the WFB’s nominal posture of noninvolvement in secular affairs.59 Bringing an enlightened Buddhist perspective to bear on worldly issues such as the looming threat of nuclear war also conflicted with another important institutional directive: that the WFB should remain, in accordance with Buddhist doctrine, detached from national political issues or international conflicts. In short, the WFB’s advocacy of Buddhism as a means of transcending the problems of the secular realm would have an ironic outcome. Through its emphasis on Buddhism’s palliative applicability to secular conflicts, the WFB had created openings for divisive secular politics, often with Cold War overtones, to intrude into its conference deliberations.

Engagement’s Beginnings The Rangoon memo of July 1951 indicates that by that time the U.S. had adopted a policy of active covert engagement with Buddhists in Burma. The timing suggests that Malalasekera’s May 1951 speech in Hanoi may have played a role in precipitating this U.S. decision. Yet in the absence of more  conclusive evidence, we can only speculate on the relationship

34

Y7216.indb 34

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e B u d d h i s t W o r l d a n d the U ni ted States

between the July 1951 proposal and the subsequent beginnings of the new Asia Foundation’s program in Burma. A causal link seems possible but cannot be confirmed. At the invitation of the U Nu government, the Committee for a Free Asia (the committee, or CFA, would change its name to the Asia Foundation in September 1954) first became active in Burma in 1952. The CFA had been organized the previous year in San Francisco with funds supplied by the National Committee for a Free Europe (NCFE) to complement the activities of that Europe-centered group with initiatives in Asia. More specifically, the newly formed CFA, with import-export executive Brayton Wilbur serving as its first chairman, was to function as a “corporate parent” for Radio Free Asia, mirroring the NCFE’s corporate relationship with Radio Free Europe.60 Behind these convoluted and intertwined corporate genealogies was a common covert source of funds: the CIA. Yet, while joined by a common benefactor, the CFA and Radio Free Asia would be viewed as failures compared with their Europe-oriented counterparts. By 1952, it was already possible for detractors at the Advertising Council to comment that there was “no discoverable body of opinion which holds that [Radio Free Asia] or [its] corporate parent, CFA, knows what it’s doing or is going about it wisely or adeptly.”61 That tart assessment of 1952 notwithstanding, it was in the same year that the CFA was invited to open shop in Burma to help meet the material demands of the upcoming Sixth Great Buddhist Synod. This historic two-year-long conclave of monks and other foreign Buddhist dignitaries was timed to coincide, according to the Burmese calendar, with Buddhism’s 2,500th-year anniversary—a milestone that had no actual basis in Buddhist scripture.62 The meeting would commence with great fanfare in Rangoon in 1954. Because the event appeared as a grand expression of pan-Buddhist unity, it also resonated with the still recent founding of the WFB. Under U Nu’s leadership, planning for the event had begun in 1951, following a Burmese parliamentary declaration of support.63 The ostensible purpose of the gathering was purely religious. The synod’s Burmese sponsors promoted the event as a modern continuation of an ancient Buddhist

35

Y7216.indb 35

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e B u d d h i s t W o r l d and the U ni ted States

tradition. A disputed number of previous synods had been held at critical moments in Buddhism’s 2,500-year history—the first reputedly taking place shortly after the Buddha’s death and the most recent in 1871. These grand conclaves were major religious events convened to rejuvenate Buddhism and purge its Pali-language canons of scriptural accretions.64 At the time of this Sixth Synod, even after 80 years since the Fifth, “there seemed to be little need to change the canons and the rejuvenation of the religion hardly seemed a pressing need.”65 It is likely that Prime Minister U Nu was motivated in part by a sincere desire—a reflection of his extraordinary piety—to arrange what were meritorious, though perhaps unnecessary, new revisions of the scriptures. Also crucial, however, were a variety of motivating factors that shaded into more overtly political concerns. The synod amounted to a major international demonstration of Buddhist religious devotion. It was also, by extension, an expression of newly independent Burma’s nationalist pride—and an effort by the U Nu government to achieve greater popular legitimacy. Buddhism had become intimately intertwined with Burma’s independence struggle as Burmese monks assumed a prominent role in anticolonial movements. By glorifying Buddhism, the cultural wellspring of the country’s political independence, on such an impressive scale, U Nu established the authority of the new government “in a traditional and, to the Burmese, clearly understandable manner.”66 The synod involved elaborate and costly preparations, taxing Burma’s limited resources while making the whole venture all the more meaningful as a testament to the country’s religiosity. Burma’s Buddha Sasana Council, a governmental body established by parliament in 1950 to manage Buddhist affairs, oversaw most of the administrative details. Receiving approximately $6 million from a combination of government allocation and private donation, and supplementing these funds with additional “donated materials and labor,” the council began several ambitious construction projects.67 These included a printing press, a refectory, a small hospital and library, dormitories for the attendees, administrative facilities, and an assembly hall designed to resemble the fabled Satta Panni cave where the first synod was reputedly held.68 These plans resulted in a remarkable low-slung, nearly

36

Y7216.indb 36

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e B u d d h i s t W o r l d a n d the U ni ted States

windowless structure with an irregular gray (“cave-like”) exterior, and seating for 15,000. As the Sixth Synod convened in Rangoon in May 1954, the number of foreign Buddhist monks and other official representatives who attended was perhaps just high enough to justify these extravagant expenditures. Prestigious delegations from Burma’s Theravada neighbors, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Ceylon, lent symbolic legitimacy to the synod as a panTheravada event, providing what seemed like a crucial boost to Burmese aspirations. And Mahayana Buddhist abbots from Vietnam, Nepal, India, Pakistan, Japan, and other far-flung locales came as observers, nominally extending involvement across sectarian lines and swelling the ranks of clerical attendees to more than 2,500. After three days of opening ceremonies, however, their numbers diminished, finally dwindling to around 500.69 As most of the delegates departed, a smaller group of monks, designated for their expertise in Pali, the classical language of Buddhism—akin in its liturgical role to that of Latin in Catholicism—remained behind to lend ongoing assistance with the monumental, two-year task of revising the many volumes of scriptures. In reality the foreign presence at the Sixth Synod was more a symbolic veneer than evidence of wholehearted outside participation. Although it was ostensibly a world affair, the nationalist undercurrents detectable in Burma’s sponsorship of the event placed implicit limits on the extent of genuine foreign involvement. These crosscut against the idealistic rhetoric of pan-Buddhist unity that enshrouded the event and connected it to the semi-mythical synods of the past. An Asia Foundation report produced in 1965—nine years after the synod’s conclusion—offered this retrospective assessment: There was only token participation by other Buddhist countries in the Sixth Synod, apparently more or less by mutual agreement. All predominantly Buddhist countries take nationalistic pride in their particular form of Buddhism including their own interpretation of the scriptures which is related to their historical development. U Nu, recognizing this, said that the revised scriptures

37

Y7216.indb 37

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e B u d d h i s t W o r l d and the U ni ted States

approved by the Sixth Synod would include footnotes and appendices indicating where the Burmese version differed from other official versions. But for chauvinistic reasons, just as the Burmese wished to control the results of the Synod which they initiated and sponsored, other Buddhist countries did not wish to become too deeply involved in the Synod. The important thing is that the other Buddhist countries, Theravada and Mahayana alike, showed sympathetic interest in the Synod and avoided criticism of the manner in which it was handled and the results that came out of it.70 The Asia Foundation report also reveals the CFA’s extensive behind-thescenes involvement at the synod, which had presented this U.S. organization with an opportunity to gain a foothold in Burma. “It was upon the offer to provide elaborate and modern printing equipment to the Buddha Sasana Council that the then Committee for Free Asia was invited . . . to establish its resident program in Burma,” the 1965 report explained. By 1962, the CFA and its successor, the Asia Foundation, contributed “in excess of $300,000 in the form of original printing equipment, supplementary equipment, replacement parts, materials and technical advice.”71 Through these donations, the CFA provided vital assistance to the synod and endowed Burma’s Buddha Sasana Press so that it would be the world’s largest and best equipped “Buddhist publishing house.” The Asia Foundation described its predecessor as the “only foreign non-government, and the only non-Buddhist” organization to offer such assistance.72 After launching its Burma operation, the foundation set up offices under its new name in each of the mainland Southeast Asian countries and Ceylon, opening for business in Thailand in 1954. The founding of these offices would endow Washington with a Theravada region-wide platform for reaching out to the Buddhist world. Somewhat paradoxically, the means to carry out this plan had begun to develop before the plan itself: U.S. officials still had no fully formed policy framework for their operations in the Buddhist world, only the rudiments of one, devised through the exchanges in Burma during 1951–52. In simpler terms,

38

Y7216.indb 38

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e B u d d h i s t W o r l d a n d the U ni ted States

the cart—or parts of it—had come before the horse. The motivation to remedy this would come from top U.S. policy-making circles. Washington was turning toward non-Western religions, with far-reaching implications for the Buddhist establishments of Southeast Asia. These included the uniquely insular Buddhist community of Thailand, which by now had come under an unprecedented array of pressures. In the immediate postwar period, the Thai left had enjoyed a relatively permissive atmosphere in which authorities had tolerated a “certain volume of Leftist discourse.”73 However, by November 1952, under U.S. pressure to conduct a crackdown, the Phibun military regime had reimposed the legislative apparatus necessary for a purge of Thailand’s leftist activists, including journalists, labor leaders, and pro-Pridi politicians. One prominent victim of the intensifying repression would be Jit Phumisak, a young Marxist intellectual whose writings would earn him a formidable literary reputation, but also the less coveted status of political prisoner. Among his first works, published in 1953 in an early display of his prodigious talent, was an irreverent “historical materialist critique” of Buddhism.74 The window that had opened with the October 1946 repeal of the AntiCommunist Act was now partially closed. In an increasingly authoritarian political climate, the Thai police under Director General Phao Sriyanond, a notorious fixture of Thailand’s authoritarian leadership, had begun to incarcerate or assassinate the regime’s political enemies. The postwar “heyday” of the Thai left had not yet run its course.75 But the tide was turning as military rule in Thailand waxed into a more stringent phase.

39

Y7216.indb 39

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T wo

Washington Formulates a Buddhist Policy, 1954–1957

T

he Sixth Great Buddhist Synod that Burma’s government held during 1954–56 coincided with intensified efforts within the Dwight  D. Eisenhower administration to formulate a coherent policy toward religion. Religion’s bearing on the Cold War had emerged as a main preoccupation of the president. This was a concern that he shared with his immediate predecessor, Harry S. Truman—whose own vision of the Cold War featured fears of “godless” communism.1 In public statements, by March 1954, Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had both “on innumerable occasions emphasized the importance of religious values” in countering the Soviet communist threat.2 These views reflected a broad religious revivalism that was a distinguishing feature of American society at the time; the secretary of state, the devout son of a Presbyterian minister, himself embodied the popular sentiments.3 By 1956, such priorities would prompt serious consideration of Buddhism’s potential role in the Cold War struggle, and the drafting of a lengthy policy statement guiding religiously based U.S. government actions in Buddhist Southeast Asia. Yet the shift toward religious engagement was hardly limited to Buddhism: from the vantage point of U.S. policy makers, a global confrontation with communism necessarily implicated other global religions. It also involved the mobilization of religious constituencies, most of them Christian, on the U.S. domestic front. The comprehensive strategy for Southeast Asian Buddhism that would eventually emerge did not, then, represent an entirely new direction for U.S. officials. Rather, it was an approach that found numerous, if fragmentary,

40

Y7216.indb 40

7/20/17 9:50 AM

W as h i n g t o n F o r mu l at e s a Bu ddhi st Po li cy

precedents in earlier efforts to marshal faith, often through the use of religious rhetoric, against what was perceived as an atheistic Soviet menace. The American conception of the Cold War even took on aspects of a religious crusade, a mission deeply infused with Christian values. It was this “missionary mentality” that had inspired Senator Edward Martin to declare in 1950—in a typical religiously inspired flourish—that “America must move forward with the Atomic bomb in one hand and the cross in the other.”4 By 1951, the Psychological Strategy Board (PSB), established under Truman in April of that year, had commented on the “immoral and un-Christian nature of Communism” and identified religion as a key “cold war instrumentality.”5 Interestingly, as senior Washington planners attempted to “instrumentalize” the Buddhism of Southeast Asia as an anticommunist asset, they would also explore ways to exploit that same potential in one of the great monotheistic traditions—Islam. In December 1956, with an overarching plan for Buddhism already in development, a working group would be assigned the task of creating a comprehensive “inventory” of U.S. government and private organization contacts with Islamic groups overseas. The status report was preliminary. It was intended to lead to the “possible development of an Outline Plan for Operations regarding Islamic organizations.”6 However, while such an inventory was, in fact, compiled, it is unclear whether U.S. planners then proceeded to develop an operational framework for Islam to match the one for Buddhism.7 U.S. officials’ consideration of an Islamic strategy probably was abortive. By contrast, their efforts to harness Buddhism to U.S. Cold War strategy on a formal basis—the inspiration for their tentative, conterminous look at U.S. assets within the Islamic world—would ultimately go forward. But the Buddhism project was not without obstacles of its own, as the sheer breadth of the religious issue confounded attempts to define and rationalize it. Conceptual muddles and peculiar planning cul-de-sacs awaited Edward P. Lilly, Elmer Staats, and Colonel Byron Enyart, some of the officials most intensively involved in devising a U.S. Buddhism strategy as part of their work with the high-level Operations Coordinating Board (OCB).8 By 1954, Washington’s engagement with religion, in all its facets, already surpassed mere rhetoric in many instances and in diverse locales. In the

41

Y7216.indb 41

7/20/17 9:50 AM

W as h i n g t o n F o r mu l ates a Bu ddhi st Po li cy

broader global context, examples of U.S. involvement with religion proliferated. Since the Truman era, the United States had cultivated a close relationship with the Vatican, enabling the exchange of sensitive Vaticancollected intelligence on communist activities.9 Beginning in 1952, the State Department had distributed materials portraying “America’s spiritual heritage and religious values” in its 165 information centers around the world.10 Furthermore, since July 1953, Washington had overseen a “multicountry operation” to “bolster the anti-communist leaders” within the Orthodox Church. This program likely included “significant financial support” and was intended to counter alleged Soviet inroads into the Orthodox hierarchy.11 USIS’s 1951 propagandizing among the Buddhist clergy of northern Thailand was, then, just one example of similar propaganda work being done in varied religious contexts well beyond the Southeast Asian Buddhist milieu. Likewise, the 1952 opening of the Asia Foundation office in Rangoon to assist with the administration of the synod—a venture that, in an apparent paradox, predated a formalized Southeast Asian Buddhist policy—was a fragment in a broader picture of operational engagement with religion across the globe. For officials, such as the Catholic Edward Lilly, who favored an even more concerted U.S. religious offensive, such limitations were cause for dissatisfaction.12 “Although religion and most religious feelings are admitted by almost everyone to be an important driving force for human activity, American policy and psychological operations still have not developed any major activity along this line,” Lilly lamented in July 1953. “The policy of the Eisenhower administration, if the statements of the President and the Secretary of State are to be considered determining, can be considered as favoring greater emphasis on the religious factor in the American program against Communism.”13 It was not incapacity but rather a sense of restraint—born primarily of an ethic of church-state separation—that had so far kept religion on the back burner. But those parameters were on the verge of change, opening up new possibilities for more robust U.S. involvement in the religious arena.

42

Y7216.indb 42

7/20/17 9:50 AM

W as h i n g t o n F o r mu l at e s a Bu ddhi st Po li cy

U.S. Religious Strategy Unlimbered, March 1954 The sands had shifted with the approval of NSC Directive 162/2 in October 1953. The new policy “specifically called for mobilizing the spiritual and moral resources necessary to meet the Soviet threat.” While NSC 162/2 was not explicitly assigned to the OCB, Lilly, exercising a measure of bureaucratic license, declared in March 1954 that it nevertheless fell within the group’s “legitimate jurisdiction.” The gloves had thus come off for the OCB in the religious arena. The church-state protocol was dismissed as a “cliche”; an outmoded ethical imperative succumbed to forward-looking pragmatism.14 A second longstanding cause for a limited approach to religion had also been downplayed. Along with church-state inhibitions, fears that a U.S. religious strategy might run afoul of sectarian divisions within indigenous religious communities had also dampened official enthusiasm for a religious approach. Yet the new policy had now challenged the conventional wisdom that “sectarian divisions and disputations would make such an effort unfruitful.” Ironically, Washington’s future operations in the Southeast Asian Buddhist sphere, with its complex and sometimes rancorous divisions between Buddhist orders and sects, were to prove that this concern was not wholly misplaced. Lilly surveyed the newly opened programming avenues in a March 3 memo to Elmer Staats. Naturally, there was potential to further “exploit” the “religious factor” in the “Western world,” where belief in “theism” predominated. But he also looked to Asia, a vast terrain where, although monotheism did not dominate, there was “great emphasis, and not purely formalistic, on spiritual factors and their importance to a people and a nation.” Such crude characterizations of Asian spiritualism, a problematic concept in its own right, were the “essentialized” musings of a Cold War orientalist whose finest implement was a broad brush. But neither did Lilly entirely misconstrue the religious underpinnings of national identity in such countries as Thailand and Burma, where Buddhism was, in fact, a key fixture in the national firmament. For Lilly, church-state considerations were merely a “bug-aboo”—a secular piety of the bygone Truman era that could now be swept aside. This was an idea that generated buzz within the OCB ranks, even as Lilly’s blunt

43

Y7216.indb 43

7/20/17 9:50 AM

W as h i n g t o n F o r mu l ates a Bu ddhi st Po li cy

phrasing of key concepts left something—namely, more sophisticated diction—to be desired. On March 8 another memo arrived on Staats’s desk. Byron Enyart, a U.S. Air Force colonel, wrote to voice his “support” for Lilly’s proposal to grab hold of the “religious factor” with greater gusto than the Truman administration, with its church-state inhibitions, had managed. Enyart had seen Truman-era officials’ indifferent attempts to harness religion’s Cold War potential and had been unimpressed. “I do not speak entirely uninformed in this [religious] matter,” the colonel informed Staats. “I sat upon the State Department’s religious group which President Truman had appointed and which finally was released after nothing was accomplished.”15 Enyart pulled no punches in his stinging assessment of the group’s chairman, whom he held accountable for a tepid performance. The group’s failure, Enyart suggested, “was primarily due to the personality of the Chairman. He was an extremely well known Protestant, but his age and general debility was of such an extent that he actually was incapable of injecting any enthusiasm into anything.”16 Enyart concurred with Lilly’s view on the new NSC directive. It was a game-changer, which gave the U.S. government a firm basis for action in the religious arena, potentially absolving it of the old “bug-aboo.” “NSC 162/2 now furnishes a peg upon which we can hang our hat,” he wrote. “The Departments almost universally used the absence of such a document as an excuse for not doing anything in this field.” That unsatisfactory state of affairs could now improve.17 Staats was less enthused—and much more cautious. In a March 19, 1954, note to Charles H. Taquay, he approvingly related details from a meeting held the week before, in which Lilly had been criticized for his tactless phraseology. “Last Wednesday’s discussion was helpful,” he informed Taquay, “in so far as it dispelled some of the misapprehensions raised by the unfortunate use in the [Lilly] memorandum of the terms ‘factor’ . . . , ‘adjunct to normal governmental activities’ . . . , ‘exploited’ . . . , ‘use,’ etc. The authors and supporters of the memo clearly recognized the pitfalls of a ‘manipulative’ approach to relations between church and state, the dangers of making spiritual means serve worldly ends.”18

44

Y7216.indb 44

7/20/17 9:50 AM

W as h i n g t o n F o r mu l at e s a Bu ddhi st Po li cy

If Lilly’s choice of words had been unfortunate, Staats raised an even more fundamental objection to the concept of a “religious factor” as a basis for OCB programming. For it seemed to him that the various “factors” at play in the Cold War were almost infinitely divisible. Isolating any one for targeted programming by a “working group” would produce an absurd cascade effect on the division of labor. “If we establish a group for the ‘religious factor,’ why not one for the ‘military factor,’ and for the ‘diplomatic factor’?,” Staats wrote. “Functional divisions can proliferate ad infinitum.”19 The OCB had arrived at another hurdle in its pursuit of a comprehensive Cold War plan for religion.

Lessons of Dien Bien Phu As Lilly and his colleagues debated a more assertive religious strategy—and as the Rangoon synod assembled—French colonialism in Southeast Asia began to collapse. The synod’s opening in May 1954 coincided with the final stages of the French colonialists’ defeat in the battle of Dien Bien Phu, a large entrenched camp near the Lao-Vietnamese border. Well positioned in this heavily fortified village, the French considered their defenses virtually impregnable.20 After their Viet Minh opponents under the command of Vo Nguyen Giap managed to assemble heavy artillery pieces in a ring of hills surrounding these fortifications—dragging component parts through nearly impassable jungle terrain—the French forces unexpectedly found themselves exposed to a withering barrage. Soon their defeat seemed all but inevitable, unless the United States could be persuaded to intervene. The Eisenhower administration had its own priorities. And these did not necessarily prescribe further aid to the French at Dien Bien Phu. As the French position at the besieged base camp worsened, U.S. officials hotly debated the proper response. Fearing a progressive communist advance through the region, Eisenhower had committed the United States to supporting the French effort to reestablish control of Indochina in the aftermath of the August 1945 Viet Minh takeover. U.S. aid in the form of military hardware and other matériel had sustained the French campaign from its early stages.

45

Y7216.indb 45

7/20/17 9:50 AM

W as h i n g t o n F o r mu l ates a Bu ddhi st Po li cy

Yet the Viet Minh had more than stood its ground, and the level of involvement thought to be required for a decisive intervention in the battle at Dien Bien Phu—the introduction of U.S. combat troops, perhaps even the use of nuclear weapons against the Viet Minh forces entrenched in the surrounding hills, as John Foster Dulles allegedly proposed to French foreign minister Georges Bidault in April 1954—exceeded the administration’s resolve. One critical factor in this decision was U.S. public opinion in the aftermath of the Korean War. After that bloody three-year conflict, another land war in Asia was not expected to receive broad public or congressional support.21 As the monks prepared to gather in Rangoon, the French were left to their fate in the hills. On May 7, 1954, the French surrender of Dien Bien Phu paved the way for an Indochina-wide cease-fire. A postwar settlement was then negotiated at Geneva, where the Great Powers had convened in April. Although the Viet Minh had extended their military control over much of Vietnam, and had achieved unassailable political legitimacy there, the outcome of the Geneva conference, finally announced on July 20–21, hardly reflected Viet Minh strength—or French weakness. Consenting to Great Power pressures, the Viet Minh delegation reluctantly acceded to a supposedly temporary partition of Vietnam along the 17th parallel, truncating the country well short of the Viet Minh lines of control. Unification of the northern and southern parts of the country was postponed until July 1956, when countrywide elections were to be held. Those elections would never occur. In accepting a diplomatic outcome that did not fully correspond to their military gains, the Viet Minh delegation had succumbed, in part, to pressure from Moscow and especially Beijing. Although staunch communist allies of the Viet Minh, the Chinese had vested interests in a rapid settlement that would preclude American intervention in neighboring Vietnam, while the Soviets wished to demonstrate their own leadership and commitment to “peaceful coexistence” in Asia.22 Such priorities also converged with the Viet Minh leadership’s own concerns about the prospects of U.S. intervention, accentuated in light of the Viet Minh’s recent costly military exertions against the French. Viet Minh territorial gains were thereby down-

46

Y7216.indb 46

7/20/17 9:50 AM

W as h i n g t o n F o r mu l at e s a Bu ddhi st Po li cy

sized in return for the prospect of a 1956 nationwide election. Nevertheless, they provoked an outsized U.S. response. The United States was not a formal signatory of the Geneva settlement. Instead, in a “unilateral declaration,” the nation “took note” of the agreement, pledging to uphold the integrity of its territorial demarcations and electoral provisions—promises that would fall by the wayside in time.23 The Eisenhower administration had adopted a detached public posture from the results of Geneva. But the internal response was alarm. Communist gains had been curtailed, to some degree, at the negotiating table. But they were still dramatic. More worryingly to the Americans, any gains at all enhanced, by their domino theory logic, the likelihood of future communist success in the wider Southeast Asia region, where the dominoes seemed closely packed. In the days immediately following the Geneva settlement, U.S. officials sought explanations. In large measure, as an OCB report concluded on July 30, the failure resulted from shortcomings of the French Navarre plan, a policy that had not addressed “the political and psychological problems of identifying itself with the aspirations of the people.”24 However, the colonialists’ defeat was also seen as an indictment of U.S. policy in Southeast Asia, as encapsulated in a January 1954 policy document, NSC 5405.25 The Geneva conference “completed a major forward stride of communism which may lead to the loss of Southeast Asia,” the OCB found. “It therefore recorded a drastic defeat of key policies in NSC 5405 and a serious loss for the free world, the psychological and political effects of which will be felt throughout the Far East and around the globe . . . NSC 5405 requires extensive revisions in light of the present situation.”26 The perceived French neglect of psychological and political variables seemed to convey a cautionary message for the future: the United States could not make the same mistake of relying on military solutions in Southeast Asia in the absence of well-conceived programs focused on less tangible domains. Indeed, Washington now considered that “in building strength it is important not to concentrate exclusively on military types of action or assistance.” Rather, it was necessary to direct U.S. efforts “to combating some combination of infiltration, subversion and diplomatic deception by the communists, preying on moral, political and economic as well

47

Y7216.indb 47

7/20/17 9:50 AM

W as h i n g t o n F o r mu l ates a Bu ddhi st Po li cy

as military weakness.”27 Thus the nature of the French defeat appears to have lent added impetus to an all-encompassing anticommunist program for Southeast Asia, one that ranged well beyond strictly military affairs and that anticipated the later ascendency of “counter-insurgency” as a method of fighting in Vietnam. Religion was a lever the United States could use to wield influence of a nonmilitary or psychological nature, not least by emphasizing to local populations the supposed communist threat to their religious institutions. A revised version of NSC 5405 would soon reflect these new priorities.

The FRASCO Proposal Weeks later, attention fell on a private group’s plan to make Southeast Asian religion the centerpiece of a new operation. On September 10, 1954,Vice President Richard M. Nixon sent a letter to Undersecretary of State Walter Bedell Smith. Smith had been a close associate of Eisenhower during World War II, serving as Eisenhower’s chief of staff during his tenure as supreme commander of the Allied forces in Europe. In February 1953 Smith had completed a three-year stint as CIA director. Nixon enclosed with his letter to Smith a proposal from the Foundation for Religious Action (FFRA) calling for a “Spiritual Counteroffensive in Southeast Asia.” This recently formed group, later known as FRASCO, had received high-level attention as an organization whose religious program aligned with the priorities of the Eisenhower administration. Eisenhower himself would deliver the plenary address at the group’s inaugural conference in November 1954. Although FRASCO’s “counteroffensive” for Southeast Asia may have been a false start, the proposal’s regional scope made it a significant precursor to the Buddhism policy that would soon take shape under OCB auspices. The group’s co-founder and executive director was theology professor and Episcopalian minister Charles W. Lowry, a native Oklahoman who had earned a doctoral degree from Oxford. By 1953, after two decades as a minister and scholar, Lowry had resigned from his rectorate in order to, as he put it, “devote full time as a prophetic voice in the crusade against communism.”28

48

Y7216.indb 48

7/20/17 9:50 AM

W as h i n g t o n F o r mu l at e s a Bu ddhi st Po li cy

Lowry brought the same faintly evangelical inflections to the new FRASCO (FFRA) proposal. Here he proclaimed, in the exhorting tone of a minister, that “the crux of the world civil war now raging is ideologican [sic] and that the neglected key to ideological victory is theistic religion—belief in Good [sic] and in man as created in the Divine Image.” Despite the plan’s theistic emphasis, Buddhists were included in the proposed “religious crusade.” Along with Vietnamese Cao-Daists, Catholics, and other “men and women of conviction,” Buddhists were to become the “active agents” in a campaign against communism and “for a new democratic order.”29 In Thailand, FRASCO saw Police General Phao Sriyanond as a natural ally. Managing Phibun’s ruthless crackdown on the Thai left, Phao had distinguished himself as one of Thailand’s most fervent anticommunists. Phao was never particularly aligned with Buddhist activism, but he seems to have kept his eye on the main chance. The FRASCO proposal now identified him as a promising contact, outlining a grandiose regional itinerary for a foundation agent: “From Vietnam after a preliminary survey and the initiation of key lines of influence, the FFRA representative will proceed to Bangkok and will get into contact with the recently formed ‘Society for the Promotion of Buddhism’ of which Police General Phao Sriyanond is President. From Bangkok he would move back to Vietnam and thence on to Laos and Cambodia, depending on developments, to lay the groundwork for project operations.”30 In a foreshadowing of things to come, neither the likelihood of political repression nor the national boundaries dividing Buddhist Southeast Asia seemed to present an obstacle to the FFRA representative. Probably because the FRASCO proposal resonated with his prior experience in the region, it found an enthusiastic supporter in the vice president. Nixon entertained a special interest in Southeast Asia. A year before, in the late spring of 1953 (just months after his January inauguration), Eisenhower had asked Nixon to undertake a trip to Asia, urging him to visit as many countries as possible. Accompanied by his wife, Pat, Nixon embarked on an ambitious diplomatic tour. The vice presidential pair traveled abroad for more than two months. Following stopovers in Australia, New Zealand,  Indonesia, and Malaya, they spent six “fascinating and frustrating” days visiting Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam.31 Nixon’s impressions there

49

Y7216.indb 49

7/20/17 9:50 AM

W as h i n g t o n F o r mu l ates a Bu ddhi st Po li cy

reflected a prevailing sense among U.S. officials that the French, through their neglect of psychological factors, had failed to win Vietnamese hearts and minds. In Vietnam, his French hosts had escorted him by plane and then by jeep to the front lines in the mountainous jungles north of Hanoi. There Nixon observed the French and their Vietnamese subordinates as they conducted an artillery barrage against a Viet Minh division in the hamlet of Lai Cac. While inspired by the conduct of these fighters positioned “on the very outpost of freedom,” Nixon was, at the same time, discouraged by much of what he saw.32 The French themselves were the source of his “frustration.” Rather than motivating the Vietnamese to fully devote themselves to the anticommunist war effort, the French treated their colonial subjects with racist disdain, Nixon found. In his view, this behavior conflicted with the larger— and supremely important—aim of defeating the Viet Minh revolutionaries. Reflecting on his Indochina experience, and with the benefit of hindsight, Nixon concluded that the French “had failed primarily because they had not sufficiently trained, much less inspired, the Indochinese people to defend themselves. They had failed to build a cause—or a cadre—that could resist the nationalist and anti colonialist appeals of the Communists.”33 Nixon described his Asia tour as “highly educational.” Certainly it was one of his political career’s formative experiences, indelibly molding his outlook on international affairs and greatly enhancing his foreign policy credentials. With his distinctive “personal” approach to diplomacy, Nixon had returned to the United States in December 1953 convinced that he had achieved a special rapport with what he called the “common man” of Asia. He had also gained a keen appreciation for how the communist powers—the Soviet Union and communist China, an emerging colossus in the region—were making worrisome inroads into Asian societies through the effective use of propaganda. This was a disturbing trend that the United States “could not afford to ignore.”34 Nixon’s enthusiasm for the FRASCO plan in September the next year clearly flowed from his travels in the region. He explained in his note to Smith: “As you know, I have a deep and continuing interest in the peoples of Southeast Asia, as well as the firm conviction that we have not done

50

Y7216.indb 50

7/20/17 9:50 AM

W as h i n g t o n F o r mu l at e s a Bu ddhi st Po li cy

enough to convince the people themselves, as distinct from the government leadership, that their ideals and aspirations are very similar to, and held in common with, ours. I believe that the enclosed proposal would contribute substantially to such mutual understanding.”35 The secret FRASCO venture emphasized the need to conduct all “activities in the religious field as a private effort and not as an official government undertaking.” This echoed the 1951 memo to Rangoon, which had also insisted on a private cover. Nixon endorsed the subterfuge, remarking to Smith: “It seems to me that there is great value in an operation of this type, provided it is realistic and reliably sponsored. We can, at comparatively small cost, get an important and necessary activity performed by a private organization, if they can be given some initial assistance and encouragement.”36 Nixon also recommended that the plan be brought up for urgent consideration by the OCB. “I would appreciate getting the initial and personal reaction from the Board members at an early date,” he explained. The plan was schematic—not as “completely detailed as OCB would eventually want”—but the specifics would be worked out once the board agreed that the “proposal has merit.”37 Nixon must have recognized the timeliness and appeal of the FRASCO proposal. The plan seemed perfectly tailored to fit two attitudes that prevailed in the minds of U.S. officials in the wake of the French defeat: that thwarting communism in Southeast Asia would depend on psychological variables that the French had unwisely neglected and that religion was a still underutilized psychological tool in the U.S. anticommunist arsenal. But while the FRASCO organization grew in numbers and influence, partly due to Eisenhower’s high-profile sponsorship, there is no evidence that its plan for Southeast Asia went forward—at least none that has yet been declassified. FRASCO flourished as a domestic U.S. religious group while its Southeast Asian “counteroffensive” more than likely fizzled. From another perspective, the FRASCO proposal had validated Staats’s concerns about bureaucratic coordination. The U.S. foreign policy establishment was a large bureaucratic machine, with multiple gears spinning at once, and not at all in a coordinated fashion when it came to the question

51

Y7216.indb 51

7/20/17 9:50 AM

W as h i n g t o n F o r mu l ates a Bu ddhi st Po li cy

of how to approach Buddhism, let alone religion in general. So it was that Nixon had abruptly entered the picture, recommending to the OCB a proposal to deploy a private intermediary to recruit local religious leaders as anticommunist assets—an idea that he may have considered original but that overlapped with an already established approach. The duplication of effort revealed a disjointedness, a systemic lack of coordination, in U.S. officials’ attempts to grasp the religious issue. At Lilly’s prodding, the OCB had already gazed down a parallel path toward a more concerted engagement with religion. The FRASCO operational plan for Southeast Asia had been heading in the same direction, but its path led to a dead end—possibly due to its redundancy.

Parsing the “Religious Factor” By the spring of 1955 Lilly had made great strides toward having his “religious factor” (a term he persisted in using despite Staats’s objections) adopted into the OCB agenda. Under the auspices of an “Ideological Working Group,” a new body dubbed the “Ideological Subcommittee on the Religious Factor” met on May 18, 1955, in the OCB conference room, with Lilly presiding. It was the first of at least five meetings of this exploratory working group composed of U.S. military and civilian officials. The team attempted to lay the groundwork for a formal plan of international action in the religious arena. The results were mixed. At the time of the group’s fifth meeting on July 28, 1955, a draft progress report covering its activities from May 9 to July 8 was produced. The report explained a key principle in the religion-based Cold War strategy now in development: “In view of the sensitivities on the part of religious leaders and government officials, activities in this area of the religious factor must be developed so that the influence of the government is insignificant or unnoticeable and so that religious organizations have the impression that activities are undertaken at their initiative or on their own suggestion.”38 How the government would leave world religious leaders with the mistaken impression that secret U.S. designs were their own remained unclear. During its July 28 meeting, the OCB’s Ideological Subcommittee discussed this draft and reached a significant conclusion. The group agreed

52

Y7216.indb 52

7/20/17 9:50 AM

W as h i n g t o n F o r mu l at e s a Bu ddhi st Po li cy

that it was “premature to develop a real progress report and authorized the OCB representative to inform the Ideological Working Group that this subcommittee was making progress, that it had developed its underlying concepts, but that it needed more time to develop a useful operational plan for guiding activities in this sensitive field.”39 The subcommittee’s discussions had lost momentum, owing to the vagueness of the task at hand. The team had discovered that the very notion of a “religious factor,” in all its global implications, was too broad. To succeed in its work the subcommittee required a course correction. What followed next again reaffirmed Staats’s concerns over multiplying “functional divisions.” A state of bureaucratic mitosis set in when the Ideological Subcommittee, unsure about how to proceed, formed its own smaller subgroup to meet separately and examine the issue. A July 29 memo related: “There was extensive discussion of the scope of the subcommittee’s responsibilities, arising out of proposals for developing the proposed plan.”40 It was then agreed that Lilly would form yet another subgroup to “clarify the possible approaches.” The subgroup was scheduled to meet in the OCB conference room on Wednesday, August 3. These details may seem arcane. But the subgroup’s August 3 discussions proved important, as the participants settled on a more limited goal: “For this group’s study, it is agreed that it would be best at this time to limit our conversations to groups and activities in the Judeo-Christian tradition. This limitation does not imply that other religious groups are unimportant, but it is merely a recognition that we do not have the same direct contacts available with such other groups.”41 With some abruptness, then, the Lilly subcommittee had by August 1955 excluded all consideration of Buddhism as a potential OCB programming field. This narrowed the group’s responsibilities to what seemed a more manageable scale.

Drafting a Buddhist Policy The Lilly subcommittee’s decision might have precluded any further consideration of Buddhism’s Cold War role, but there were surprises in store. The narrowing of the Lilly group’s focus to the more familiar Judeo-Christian tradition left a vast strategic terrain unaccounted for—an omission that did

53

Y7216.indb 53

7/20/17 9:50 AM

W as h i n g t o n F o r mu l ates a Bu ddhi st Po li cy

not persist for long. By the spring of 1956 other actors within the government had restarted a study of Buddhism. This latter effort finally resulted in a lengthy and authoritative study on Buddhist affairs that would guide U.S. activity in this area for the foreseeable future. This policy plan now stands as the single most important document concerning the American Cold War engagement with the Buddhist world. Meanwhile, also in 1956, the Buddhist abbots still attending the Rangoon synod neared the end of their painstaking scriptural corrections. In the spring of 1956, Ceylon underwent a landmark general election in which the interests and privileges of the Sinhalese Buddhist majority was a core issue. The election had seen the emergence of Buddhist monks as influential actors in the country’s politics, building on precedents of secular activism established during the 1930s.42 An analysis presented by a CIA representative during a May 9 OCB meeting had emphasized that “the religious question had played a significant part” in the elections, which had resulted in the defeat of former prime minister John Kotelawala. It seemed an unwelcome loss. Those present at the meeting agreed that “potential sources of difficulty were presented in other areas having large number of adherents to the Buddhist faith.”43 That meant Southeast Asia. In light of these considerations, U.S. officials felt compelled to act. The State Department, USIA, and CIA would designate individuals to “collaborate in a study of the situation setting forth country by country, a statement of existing circumstances, current agency operating programs having a bearing on this situation, and what courses of action might be developed which would promote U.S. foreign policy objectives.”44 There was now general agreement on the “desirability of giving more consideration to the possibility of pointing out to a greater extent the inconsistencies between Communism and freedom of religion among all religious faiths.”45 The new, specially designated “Committee on Buddhism” first convened on May 29 in the OCB conference room at 700 Jackson Place to “discuss the preparation of an outline plan of operations dealing with the Buddhist factor in certain countries.”46 Participants included Dr. James L. Meader (USIA), Jane Young (State Department), and OCB representative Kenneth P. Landon.47 An unnamed CIA representative was also present.

54

Y7216.indb 54

7/20/17 9:50 AM

W as h i n g t o n F o r mu l at e s a Bu ddhi st Po li cy

The minutes of this meeting contain a crucial detail on how the team conceived of its assignment with respect to NSC policy. Lilly and Enyart had originally appealed to NSC 162/2 as justification for their joint advocacy of a religion-oriented foreign policy offensive. Now, however, the Committee on Buddhism referred to NSC 5405—the document that had come under scrutiny following Dien Bien Phu. A new version of NSC 5405, which had been revised in the wake of those events, now supplied a platform for work in the religious sphere: “It was noted that in the new revision of NSC 5405 a course of action had been included which would provide specific policy basis, when approved, for such an outline plan of operations as it envisaged the use of Buddhist clergy and lay organizations on an ecumenical basis in attempting to achieve U.S. policy objectives.”48 The “outline plan” remained a work in progress for a few months, incorporating input from several reviewers and growing more comprehensive and more nuanced with each new draft. By July 1956 the committee had completed a ten-page draft and settled on a title that would remain unaltered through the course of later revisions. The document would be called “Proposals Regarding U.S. Relations with Therawada Buddhist Countries.” The completion of the July draft occasioned a round of consultations the next month. Landon then arranged the distribution of a revised version “to the field in order to secure Country Team reactions.”49 In other words, after having been scrutinized at home, the plan was sent for review by those U.S. officials stationed in Southeast Asia who would need to assume the greatest responsibility for its implementation. With their more specialized knowledge of the region they were in a position to correct aspects of the plan and comment on the viability of the whole operation. And they did. A dispatch to Landon at the OCB from Kenneth T. Young Jr. conveyed the desk officers’ reaction, which was generally favorable. He attached a revised draft incorporating their modifications. Young, then in the early stages of a long diplomatic career in Southeast Asia, himself approved of the thrust of the proposal, commenting: “In line with the recommendations of the committee on Buddhism . . . I feel it is desirable to attempt to develop relations between Therawada Buddhist leaders and American spiritual leaders.”50

55

Y7216.indb 55

7/20/17 9:50 AM

W as h i n g t o n F o r mu l ates a Bu ddhi st Po li cy

However, he also emphasized the need to move forward carefully with the plan—a view held in common by the committee and the embassy staff. The U.S. government should remain behind the scenes. “In view of the cautions expressed in the memorandum,” Young wrote, “and also by the Embassies of the countries concerned, I believe that it is most desirable to channel this effort through private channels, e.g. the ‘National Conference of Christians and Jews.’ ” He then added his reasons for such a discreet, clandestine approach: I believe that the U.S. government should proceed cautiously commencing any program to be directed toward Buddhists on a modest basis. It is important that the U.S. government not overplay its hand in this delicate matter. There is the possibility, for example, that such a program may encounter serious criticism from U.S. religious groups which might raise the question regarding Congressional support for any appropriations which might be involved. It was largely because of this possibility that ICA found it undesirable to provide funds for the construction of a proposed Buddhist university auditorium in Phnom Penh and altered the project for construction of a municipal auditorium instead. In addition, more exploration and experience is required to determine the extent to which Therawada Buddhism may be a suitable channel for U.S. influence and how it may be utilized. Many of the priests of this religion are essentially reactionary and their tenets are strongly inclined against any competitive enterprise we favor and toward neutralist pacifism. These factors present obstacles to the U.S. efforts to utilize contacts with the Buddhist clergy for political purposes. Furthermore, we must take into account the fact that in all of the countries concerned the Buddhists are divided into at least two more or less antagonistic sects and U.S. efforts must be carefully designed to avoid the pitfalls of factional jealousies.51 There was a general sense that the United States was venturing into uncharted, potentially hostile waters. And in Young’s informed opinion, the pitfalls were twofold. If they came to light, efforts to build strategic ties with

56

Y7216.indb 56

7/20/17 9:50 AM

W as h i n g t o n F o r mu l at e s a Bu ddhi st Po li cy

Buddhists in Southeast Asia could run afoul of certain Christians’ sensibilities at home, given their preference for international outreach to other Christians. Publicity could just as easily offend Buddhist sensibilities. This was not only because of Buddhists’ supposed predisposition toward “neutralist pacifism.” It was also because, as Young explained, Buddhist ecclesiastical hierarchies were minefields of factional competition. That was particularly true in Thailand. The United States would attempt to negotiate these obstacles and complex relationships with difficulty. Young’s observations rang true for the committee, which recycled much of his memo directly into the next revision of its proposal. The September 7, 1956, draft became the most substantial version to date, with 43 pages of text, including detailed studies of “Buddhist organizations” in each of the Southeast Asian countries concerned. The committee had incorporated Young’s observations (in part verbatim) to stress the covert nature of the program: 1. . . . It is important, therefore, that the U.S. government aspect of any programs be played down and that emphasis be placed on the “people to people” aspect in most of the courses of action . . . 2. . . . Care should be taken to avoid any actions which could be construed as U.S. government efforts to exploit Buddhism as a political or psychological tool. Whatever is done should not appear to Buddhist leaders as a U.S. government “program” but rather as friendly gestures designed to be mutually helpful to Buddhist and American religious groups. U.S. government efforts vis-a-vis the Buddhist clergy should be covert to the extent possible; the general USIS program reaches the clergy as well as the broader public . . . 3. Informal consultation should be arranged with selected outstanding religious leaders in America, as needed, by the Religious Advisor to USIA, to secure guidance on questions arising in connection with present and contemplated projects, to motivate private religious groups to launch the sort of projects desired, and to seek out sources of funds for financing such projects.52 By the January 16, 1957, draft, which appears to have been the final version of the Outline Plan of Operations, this section had been revised and expanded to six items. But it retained some of the language from both Young’s

57

Y7216.indb 57

7/20/17 9:50 AM

W as h i n g t o n F o r mu l ates a Bu ddhi st Po li cy

and the September draft (highlighted below in italics), which provided a skeletal frame for the plan: 1. It should be recognized that the U.S. has limited capacities on either a private or government basis to effectively influence Buddhist organizations, clergy or lay. 2. Inter-Religious Relations. Care should be taken to by-pass the usual conflicts of divergent faiths by avoiding doctrinal or dogmatic aspects of religion which divide religious people and which create misunderstanding. Emphasis should be placed on subjects common to the Buddhist and the free world such as peace and humanitarianism. United States universities, theological seminaries and philosophical organizations, having scholars interested in Buddhism, might play an important role. 3. U.S. activities directed toward Buddhist leaders should begin cautiously and on a modest basis, and in general the initial target should be western-oriented lay Buddhists who might provide guidance in developing person-to-person projects. The overall program should be planned as a long-range effort. Care should be taken to avoid any actions which could be construed as U.S. government efforts to exploit Buddhism as a political or psychological tool. Whatever is done should not appear to Buddhist leaders as a U.S. government “program” but rather as friendly gestures designed to be mutually helpful to Buddhist and American lay and religious groups. U.S. government efforts vis-avis the Buddhist clergy should be as inconspicuous as possible and should be an integral part of overall activities and not identifiable as a special U.S. government program directed toward the clergy. 4. It is recognized that courses of action involving religious groups may encounter serious criticism within the American religious world, which, in turn, might raise questions regarding Congressional support for any appropriations that might be involved. It is important, therefore, that the U.S. government aspect of any programs be played down and that emphasis be placed on the “people to people” aspect in most of the courses of action. Wher-

58

Y7216.indb 58

7/20/17 9:50 AM

W as h i n g t o n F o r mu l at e s a Bu ddhi st Po li cy

ever possible, in fact, these courses of action should be brought to the attention of the Program for People to People Partnership which was launched under White House guidance and which administratively is being conducted within USIA. As the Buddhist clergy are divided into sects, U.S. efforts should be designed to avoid factional jealousies. Care should be taken to avoid the appearance of an American “campaign” addressed to Buddhists, or of using a “Buddhist approach” for political purposes. 5. Any publishing materials provided Buddhist clergy and lay organizations should be unattributed to the U.S. government, or sufficiently broad in subject, if attributed, to make them appear as part of the general U.S. information program. 6. Informal consultation should be arranged with selected outstanding religious leaders in America, as needed, to secure guidance on questions arising in connection with present and contemplated projects, to motivate private religious groups to launch the sort of projects desired, and to seek out sources of funds for financing such projects.53 These passages laid bare the inner workings of U.S. designs. While the United States would carefully avoid any outward indications that it hoped to manipulate Buddhism for political purposes, in fact that was precisely the intent. From the state of near-perfect obliviousness that had characterized U.S. official policy toward Buddhism during the Second World War, a strategy of considerable guile, sophistication, and determination had evolved. U.S. policy had arrived at a richly ironic place. American officials were well aware that Buddhist principles called for political noninvolvement. Nevertheless, the secret policy now on the verge of being implemented was to employ or leverage Buddhist influence as an anticommunist asset, casting Buddhists in a very political role. This effort was recognized as sensitive, so officials repeatedly emphasized the need to carry out these operations discreetly and covertly with respect to their targeting of Buddhist clergy. One current of irony folded neatly into another of even grander proportions. As it undertook these clandestine operations, the U.S. government was

59

Y7216.indb 59

7/20/17 9:50 AM

W as h i n g t o n F o r mu l ates a Bu ddhi st Po li cy

also engaged in a wide-ranging effort to impress Southeast Asian Buddhists with the virtues of U.S. religious freedom, including its strict prohibition on government mixing religious and secular affairs. This effort contrasted with warnings that international communism would attempt to control Buddhist religious practices and customs (as was often true). Yet the covert U.S. program specifically focused on involving Buddhists in the political struggles of the Cold War—involvement that ran contrary to the traditional Theravada detachment from secular matters and that also jarred with the U.S. government’s own public espousal of church-state separation. In the urgency of the moment, these inconsistencies were not of the remotest concern. The United States considered that Southeast Asia’s Buddhists were drawing closer together—by creating institutions like the WFB, and organizing events like the Synod. The perception of their emerging unity, especially in the region of the fiercest Cold War competition— Indochina—made their “vulnerability” to “political exploitation” seem all the more dangerous to the United States. For these trends meant that the political allegiance of an international Buddhist collective was increasingly at stake, or so it appeared to U.S. observers. The January 1957 Outline Plan of Operations brought these themes to the fore in two key passages: 3. Religious Organizations in International Relations. Inadequate consideration has been given to the role of religion and religious organizations in international relations. Most other aspects of the life process involving diplomacy, military relations, economic relations, international law, international communications, and international information programs have received considerable study and development. The field of religion has been avoided perhaps because of its sensitivity, involving as it does the deepest emotions of mankind in regard to man’s relation to the universe and his fellow man. 4. International Buddhist Relations. The Buddhist world is already engaged in international Buddhist relations, as evidenced by the Sixth World Buddhist Council which opened in Rangoon May 17, 1954, and closed in May 1956. Attending were 2,500

60

Y7216.indb 60

7/20/17 9:50 AM

W as h i n g t o n F o r mu l at e s a Bu ddhi st Po li cy

monks from the Therawada Buddhist countries, who participated in the working sessions. In addition, Buddhists of other varieties attended as observers from India, Nepal, Malaya, Vietnam, Japan, Indonesia and the United States. The Fourth Conference of the World Fellowship of Buddhists convened in Kathmandu for a week during November 1956. Similar international gatherings of Buddhists will occur in Southeast Asia during the next year in connection with the 2,500th anniversary of the Buddha.54 In U.S. perceptions, Buddhists’ political “vulnerability” was not merely theoretical. Chinese communists were already active participants in the Theravada Buddhist arena, working to establish ties of religious fellowship. U.S. officials feared a major Cold War setback if the U.S. government failed to respond with an effective Buddhist offensive of its own. The plan reported with alarm: Over the past two years Chinese Communists have devoted increasing attention to extending their influence in the Buddhist countries of Southeast Asia. Statements of Chinese Buddhist officials have emphasized the world unity of Buddhists, whether Mahayana or Therawada, and have called for an interchange of Buddhist culture with other countries. Delegations of Chinese Buddhists have visited Southeast Asian countries, usually bringing some Buddhist relic as a gift, while Buddhists from those regions and India have been invited to visit Buddhist institutions in China. Reports indicate that many of these delegations have returned favorably impressed by Chinese Communist treatment of Buddhists. The Chinese Communists also have increased their participation in Buddhist gatherings in other countries. In 1956 they attended Buddhist celebrations in Rangoon, participated in the Fourth Congress of the World Fellowship of Buddhists at Khatmandu and, together with the Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama, participated in Buddhist festivities in New Delhi. At these meetings the Chinese Communists have come into contact with

61

Y7216.indb 61

7/20/17 9:50 AM

W as h i n g t o n F o r mu l ates a Bu ddhi st Po li cy

representatives of the entire Buddhist world. The Communists have met with some success in enlisting Buddhist clerical groups in the World Peace Congress, which is a Communist Front.55 The seemingly imminent threat of a communist advance along this previously neglected cultural front of the Cold War now made Buddhism a high priority for the U.S. government. Although USIS would play a central role in the response, the government would be unable to rely exclusively on its own agencies due to the special church-state constraints that required a more “delicate” operation. Instead, as the plan made clear, the state would have to rely on certain private organizations “to make positive contributions which accord with the objectives sought.” Several organizations, including the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations and the recently formed Asia Society, would make limited contributions to this effort. But to a degree that far surpassed any other “private” entity, the Asia Foundation had already established connections within the Buddhist world—as well as a physical presence in Buddhist countries—and so was uniquely positioned to collaborate from the outset. The OCB had finally created a general policy framework for Buddhism.

Implementing a Buddhist Policy Within six weeks of the January 1957 draft’s circulation, concrete measures had been taken to put the plan into action. By late February copies of the plan had been distributed within the State Department and to U.S. embassies in Ceylon, Burma, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia. Officials in the field were asked to report on what actions were being taken to implement the plan within 30 days.56 And a special “Buddhist Committee” was established within the State Department to assist with the implementation. The new group mirrored the OCB-affiliated committee headed by Landon (we have no evidence to suggest it had been disbanded in the meantime).57 A courtship of private partners was also undertaken. “Contact has been made,” a February 27 memo reported, “with the Asia, Rockefeller and Ford Foundations. Each of these organizations has agreed to have a representative discuss with the Department’s ‘Buddhist Committee’ ways in which the foundation might be of assistance.”58

62

Y7216.indb 62

7/20/17 9:50 AM

W as h i n g t o n F o r mu l at e s a Bu ddhi st Po li cy

The newly established Asia Society had also been brought into the fold following a February 27 meeting with a society representative. Founded in 1956 by John D. Rockefeller III, the society was still “in its infancy” and had “so far concerned itself primarily with promoting knowledge of Asia within the United States.” Despite its domestic orientation, the society’s activities could nevertheless be made to conform with the overarching goals of the OCB plan. A February 27 memo reported details of that day’s meeting: “The Society will be of assistance in stimulating interest and knowledge of Buddhism within the United States and seeing that Asian scholars of Buddhist persuasion in New York City (chiefly at Columbia University) are afforded opportunity for close personal contact with Americans. The representative of the Society also indicated that his Society would entertain sympathetically the bringing to the U.S. of one or two leading Buddhist scholars, if suitable candidates can be found. The Department will assist in the search.” Remarkably, then, with this seemingly extemporaneous addition to the OCB plan, the U.S. government now not only aspired to influence Buddhists abroad but also to do so by popularizing this foreign religion at home.59 The State Department filed its February 27 progress report with the OCB staff while the CIA was scheduled to report on its involvement orally. USIA filed its report on March 8, detailing moves to implement the plan through the agency’s own internal channels. Like the State Department, USIA had begun by distributing copies of the proposal to its field staff. Among other measures, USIA had also appropriated funds for the 1958 fiscal budget year to provide continuing support for projects concerning Buddhism.60 The U.S. officials who had nurtured the OCB proposal through its months-long gestation must have regarded the finished product with satisfaction. They certainly felt that the plan they had devised was a study in the carefully calibrated application of what has since become known as “soft power.” Convinced of their own powers of discernment, the Americans had developed a strategy to manipulate Buddhists discreetly—unlike their less competent Soviet antagonists, whose bungling propagandizing among the Buddhists of Burma had only managed to provoke a public outcry. Cleverly devised, the OCB plan was also timely: U.S. officials had a clear policy agenda as the Buddhist world moved toward its momentous

63

Y7216.indb 63

7/20/17 9:50 AM

W as h i n g t o n F o r mu l ates a Bu ddhi st Po li cy

2,500th  anniversary, an event that most Buddhist countries lavishly commemorated in 1957, just after the plan was adopted. The question now, however, was to what extent the U.S. strategy would succeed. As Southeast Asia’s Cold War continued to unfold, events would repeatedly show that Buddhist affairs followed a logic of their own. The OCB plan was perhaps well conceived, but some of the region’s Buddhists would prove less pliable to U.S. influence than the plan’s creators might have supposed. Nowhere was that more true than in South Vietnam, whose government rejected the nationwide elections scheduled for July 1956. By the next year, unification of the northern and southern parts of the country had been indefinitely postponed. The 17th parallel had hardened into an international boundary line between the Viet Minh North and the U.S.-backed South, now under the stewardship of the Catholic Ngo Dinh Diem. Civil war within the South was slowly escalating, and the Vietnamese Buddhist revival continued. The stage was set for the second installment of the Indochina War, and events that would reverberate throughout the Buddhist world.

64

Y7216.indb 64

7/20/17 9:50 AM

Thre e

Thailand and the International Buddhist Arena, 1956–1962

T

he international festivals commemorating the 2,500th anniversary of the death of the Buddha, which took place over a two-year period (1956–57), accentuated the contradictions of a Southeast Asian Buddhist world that displayed signs of both increasing unity and persisting division. Responding to indicators of growing unity, Washington had by March 1957 formalized a Buddhism policy for influencing Theravada Buddhists as a political collective. Yet the drafters of the policy had also prudently considered that tensions were riven through what might have appeared, to less careful observers, as a well-consolidated Buddhist bloc. The upcoming festivals would showcase to the Americans the potential rewards of a coordinated, region-wide approach to Buddhist diplomacy, drawing on support from ostensibly private partners (the Asia Foundation) to contest advances from communist China. However, the events would also highlight the continuing need to consider the hidden fault lines of the Buddhist terrain. More prominently than any other mid-twentieth-century Thai religious figure, the famous monk best known as Phra Phimolatham traversed the warp and weft of the postwar international Buddhist field. This was a fabric stitched together by growing international contacts but distorted by the weight of nationalistic and theological disputes—which grew still heavier under the Cold War. Phimolatham’s story not only intersects with the controversial planning of Rangoon’s Great Buddhist Synod but also places on the global Cold War stage a Thai religious leader scarcely known in the West. The complex tale of his persecution occludes simple explanations. But it yields a central lesson: Thailand’s ecclesiastical hierarchy would not countenance progressive internationalism in a senior monk whose career

65

Y7216.indb 65

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e I n t e r nat i o nal Bu ddhi st Ar ena

also challenged its preference for autocratic rule of the monkhood and the political conventions of Cold War conservatism. For these reasons, Phimolatham’s saga is a counterpoint to developments that would occur decades later in Thailand’s Buddhist sphere.

Cold War Politics at the Buddhist Festivals Respecting different calendars, the festivals in India, Ceylon, and Burma preceded by one year those in Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos.1 The Burmese synod entered its final stages in May 1956, as 1,600 hours of recitations of the revised scriptures drew to a close in the auditorium designed to resemble the Satta Panni cave. This had been timed to conclude with the landmark anniversary festival in Rangoon (May 22–27).2 For the U Nu government, these anniversary celebrations represented the final, cathartic push to bring the synod to a successful finish and draw down the administrative effort—and budgetary strain—that it had required since the early 1950s. For the communist government of Beijing, the festivals offered points of entry into the Buddhist establishments of neutralist Burma and Cambodia, as well as the opportunity to approach representatives of the poorest of Buddhist countries, Laos. Delegates from communist China attended the Rangoon festival. U.S. officials had in 1951 touted U Nu’s anticommunist credentials, sharpened in the midst of his contest with Burma’s domestic communist insurgencies. But the festival’s inclusion of Chinese representatives six years later better reflected U Nu’s core instincts, which favored Burma’s neutralist nonalignment in the Cold War. The Chinese presence also appeared to confirm U.S. apprehensions of Chinese communist encroachments in the Buddhist arena. In particular, U.S. embassy dispatches took note of Chinese overtures toward the visiting Lao delegation, headed by Boun Oum, prince of the Champassak region of Laos. Two Chinese representatives disclosed to the Lao delegates Beijing’s intention to host celebrations of the Buddhist anniversary in spring 1957, suggesting that “all Buddhist countries will be invited.”3 However, the Lao representatives greeted the Chinese diplomatic advance with little enthusiasm.

66

Y7216.indb 66

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e I n t e r nat i o na l Bu ddhi st Ar ena

While fending off the Chinese advance, the Lao delegates were also growing more aware of the challenges that would be involved in staging a festival of their own. Witnessing the Burmese anniversary spectacle that doubled as a grand finale to the synod, the Lao delegates realized that a similar festival in Vientiane would severely strain the Lao government. Indeed, for the Lao, the synod was a daunting showcase of the logistics involved in a large international gathering. The “magnitude of preparations necessary to receive visitors” had greatly impressed the Lao delegation, the chargé d’affaires at the American embassy in Vientiane would report in June. The festival “will represent an enormous problem for Vientiane, which is strained even to receive a dozen foreign visitors at one time.” Vientiane even lacked a “suitable headquarters building” to house the Buddhist High Council.4 Originally scheduled for May 1957 to coincide with the Cambodian and Thai celebrations, the Lao event would be postponed until November 4–8, possibly due to construction delays. The attendance of Chinese representatives at the Rangoon festival and their efforts there to promote Beijing’s 1957 celebrations should be seen as part of a broader Chinese offensive on the Buddhist front that rolled over into the next year—and for many years thereafter. U.S. officials were not being paranoid when they concluded, as they would in the 1957 OCB report, that Beijing was trying systematically to project a permanent presence among Buddhists, even in the midst of serious, escalating Chinese communist repression of Buddhist Tibet. In another assertive move for visibility or influence among Southeast Asian Buddhists, Beijing would also send representatives to attend the Cambodian celebration in Phnom Penh. This gained greater significance as Cambodia, in 1957, moved toward adopting a policy of Cold War neutrality, as well as new government rhetoric about “socialism” that would later include an adjective: “Buddhist” socialism. U Nu’s Burmese Buddhist neutralism was a variation on a theme. In the lead-up to the Phnom Penh event, as State Department officials there and in Washington debated how the United States should take part in the Cambodian festival, the expectation that the Chinese would be well represented there was a convincing reason for increasing the size of the U.S.

67

Y7216.indb 67

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e I n t e r nat i o nal Bu ddhi st Ar ena

delegation from two people to three. As Carl W. Strom, U.S. ambassador to Cambodia, explained in a March 26, 1957, memo, a U.S. delegation consisting only of a “representative Buddhist and one public figure would lack distinction in comparison with people CHICOMs and Indians will probably send.”5 The Cambodian government was “agreeable” to the change. Yet the Cambodian invitation’s precise phrasing had put the Americans in a difficult position. As Strom explained, “unlike the Thai and Ceylonese Governments” Phnom Penh had not extended an invitation “through US Government” for “prominent Americans” to attend the Buddhist ceremonies “but rather has invited US government [to] send two delegates.”6 The Cambodians, perhaps revealing a degree of diplomatic naïveté compared to their more careful Thai and Ceylonese counterparts, had requested an official American presence at their commemorations. In Washington, the request triggered a predictable response. Citing its rule against mixing matters of church and state, the State Department apparently advised Strom to decline the invitation altogether. American diplomats could not attend a religious festival in an official capacity. But the ambassador persisted: “I . . . doubt Cambodians will understand US government inability [to] send official delegation [to] represent United States at functions commemorating important anniversary of their state religion. They will almost certainly consider our refusal [to] be [a] slight. In requesting Department reconsider its position note that all observers anticipate strong Communist delegations. By refusing we leave Communists open field in highly sensitive and influential Buddhist area[,] Cambodia.”7 Strom’s cautionary words had the desired effect. The State Department reconsidered its recommendation to withhold delegates from the festival. At this juncture, Washington’s recently formalized partnership with the Asia Foundation demonstrated its usefulness. A solution to the dilemma took shape with news that Richard A. Gard had agreed to take part. Strom greeted this development favorably: Gard’s credentials as a scholar of Buddhist history and philosophy were widely respected, and he had already acted as an American emissary to a Buddhist commemoration held in Kathmandu in 1956. He had joined the Asia Foundation as its special consultant on Buddhism that same year—a position he would hold until 1963. He ad-

68

Y7216.indb 68

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e I n t e r nat i o na l Bu ddhi st Ar ena

vised the foundation’s country offices on their Buddhist programming. Gard would emerge, through the course of his work, as one of the key intermediaries between Washington and the Buddhist world. State quickly added Seishin Yamashita, a Japanese-American Buddhist closely associated with Gard, to the delegation. Yamashita was valued for his abilities as an anticommunist operator. As Strom was told, “Yamashita was with Gard at the Kathmandu ceremonies last year. He was reportedly helpful in countering communist attempts to distort those ceremonies to their own advantage and we believe he will be very useful in Phnom Penh.”8 Strom welcomed Gard and Yamashita to the delegation, but asked for more, considering a group of three a “minimum level.”9 But when no other suitable representatives were found, Strom decided to round out the delegation himself. Washington would accept without comment the inconsistency of the ambassador himself joining an ostensibly unofficial group. The delegation proved more than satisfactory. On June 6 Strom wrote to report on the Cambodians’ positive reception of the U.S. group and to express his “personal gratitude for the presence” of Gard and Yamashita. “They met the requirements of American representation at the festivities ideally. Their advice, counsel and support during the Buddhist Festival were at all times most helpful and welcome to me personally. The Asia Foundation did the Embassy a real service in bringing them here.”10 Washington’s close cooperation with the foundation had served a vital purpose in Cambodia, as it had the previous year in Kathmandu, supplying the ambassador with much-needed diplomatic manpower. The State Department had relied on its connections with the Asia Foundation to handle the diplomatic demands of the festivals, which had proved considerable. Washington’s cooperation with its foundation partner exhibited a high degree of collegiality and a sense of common purpose. The solutions produced were ad hoc yet effective. The Asia Foundation had allowed the Americans to put on a respectable diplomatic showing, ceding no ground to Beijing, while still observing—at least nominally—the code of church-state separation.

69

Y7216.indb 69

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e I n t e r nat i o nal Bu ddhi st Ar ena

Thailand and Burma: Buddhist Kingdom and Buddhist Republic Invitations to the festivals in Rangoon and Phnom Penh must have pleased Chinese officials eager to gain influence in mainland Southeast Asia, China’s traditional tributary backyard. By contrast, it was likely a source of annoyance to Beijing that the Thai government failed to follow suit in the administration of its 1957 festival: it appears that Bangkok declined to invite representatives from the PRC. Instead, in a move that reflected the tightening of the Thai-U.S. Cold War alliance, Bangkok welcomed eight delegates from Taiwan.11 Thai officials even requested a U.S. presidential message of support for the celebrations—a request that the State Department advised the Bangkok embassy to decline for reasons related to “our tradition” of separating “church and state.” Such a message would represent an ill-advised public commitment of presidential prestige. And, perhaps more importantly, it might upset the Burmese Buddhist establishment, which had not received any sort of presidential message for its festival the year before. U.S. involvement in Southeast Asian Buddhism had to remain discreet, if not covert, as well as sensitive to the nationalist tensions that beset a region of Buddhist coreligionists. In withholding presidential messages of support (as would later be done for the November festival in Laos), the State Department carefully sought to avoid favoring one national Buddhist establishment over another.12 Washington’s concerns over inciting international jealousies were well placed. The Theravada Buddhist arena, despite external signs of increasing unity, remained riven with internal tension, and this required well-coordinated diplomacy. The Thai-Burmese relationship was uniquely fraught. Ironically, this would not have been apparent to a casual observer of the May 1957 festivities in Bangkok. Featuring grandiose displays of religious friendship between Thailand and its western neighbor, the celebrations contained no trace of the relationship’s less than amicable undercurrents. These tensions— historical, ethnic, and political—would not remain hidden for long. They would soon factor into the riveting, highly publicized scandal surrounding

70

Y7216.indb 70

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e I n t e r nat i o na l Bu ddhi st Ar ena

Phimolatham, a controversy with added Cold War overtones that would prove deeply unsettling to Thailand’s Buddhist hierarchy. The festival the Thai government staged May 12–18, 1957, gave U Nu an opportunity to reciprocate for what had appeared, on the surface of things, to be full-fledged Thai support for his own synod the previous year. Departing from Rangoon aboard a specially chartered flight, the Burmese prime minister and his wife, along with a large contingent of government officials and ecclesiastical representatives, arrived at Bangkok’s Don Muang Airport in the heat of midday on May 11. Meanwhile, foreign Buddhist dignitaries from twelve other countries of both Mahayana and Theravada affiliation filtered into the Thai capital to take part in the celebrations.13 The visiting monks, housed mostly at Wat Mahathat and Wat Benjamabophit, would then convene at Sanam Luang. A royal decree had designated this broad public square in Bangkok’s historic district as the festival’s main venue.14 Thailand’s prime minister Phibun Songkhram, the reinstated former wartime dictator and Japanese ally, formally dressed in a white uniform with epaulets and a standing collar, arrived at the airport with his own official entourage to greet U Nu. His guest came down from the plane in traditional Burmese garb—a white cap and flowing sarong, and he brought an important gift. U Nu stood with Phibun and other white-clad Thai officials— including the Thai foreign minister, Narateep Ponphapan—as three men hoisted a wooden chest from the plane. This contained copies of the newly revised Buddhist scriptures—the hard-won fruits of the recently completed synod. In an intensively rehearsed ceremony at Sanam Luang on May 13, U Nu would donate the texts to his Thai hosts.15 This donation symbolically completed the circle of religious exchange that had begun with the 1954 dispatch of Thai monks to assist with the synod’s work. U Nu’s reception at Don Muang was an event of great “pomp and circumstance.”16 With units of the Thai navy and air force assembled in formation, Phibun and U Nu conducted a joint review of the troops, a rite punctuated by a cannon salute. Escorting the trunk that held the scriptures, the two leaders then viewed a group of monks perform a welcoming prayer ceremony. Phibun adorned his smiling Burmese counterpart with a flower garland—a customary Thai greeting.

71

Y7216.indb 71

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e I n t e r nat i o nal Bu ddhi st Ar ena

The speeches given by U Nu and Phibun at the airport reception contained celebratory rhetoric to match the scale of the pageantry. Phibun set the tone in his opening remarks, expressing his “tremendous joy in having the Prime Minister of Burma come to participate in Thailand’s Buddhist anniversary celebrations.” Adding emotive substance to his address, Phibun then commented: “the Thais and the Burmese are neighboring nations bound together in a close relationship by their shared [Theravada] Buddhist heritage, which is the national religion of both countries.”17 U Nu, in turn, raised the rhetorical ante, offering a gracious revision of Phibun’s statements. “With respect to the relationship between the Thais and Burmese, it is not that we are merely close neighbors,” he said. “In my view we are of the same blood, our two nations like siblings of the same family.”18 The pomp and circumstance continued on May 12. At a dinner that Phibun and his wife hosted that evening at Government House, a palatial, neoclassical structure in central Bangkok, the silver-haired Thai prime minister addressed an audience of foreign delegates. U Nu almost certainly attended. “We invited Buddhists from many other countries to attend our celebrations,” Phibun said. “We did this to demonstrate that our aim is not only to spread and strengthen Buddhism among the Thai population, but also around the world, because the propagation of Buddhist doctrine is what the world needs at present.”19 Events on the following day, May 13, were the culmination of the festival. A ceremonial procession brought the Burmese scriptures from Wat Benjamabophit down Ratchdomnern Boulevard, one of the Thai capital’s main thoroughfares. Passing a large formation of soldiers, airmen, and students, the procession arrived finally at a large tent that had been constructed on Sanam Luang to shelter festival activities. Here the scriptures were placed on a raised stage along with other donated articles.20 U Nu used the occasion, in a speech he probably delivered on that day, to reemphasize the strong religious ties that he saw binding the Thai and Burmese people—and to exhort his listeners to focus their mental and spiritual energies on achieving Nirvana, the “ineffable” state of perfection that is the final destination of the Buddhist path.21 “The Thai and Burmese

72

Y7216.indb 72

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e I n t e r nat i o na l Bu ddhi st Ar ena

populations, both Buddhist, are together attempting to attain a common goal—that of Nirvana,” the Burmese leader said. Through the strict practice of Buddhist teachings, he added, “we must try our very hardest to attain Nirvana in this life. But if it so happens that we fail to do so in this life then we must resolve to attain it in the next.”22 The foreign monks being hosted at Sanam Luang “expressed their admiration” for the anniversary celebrations, and their satisfaction in seeing the “durability and strength” of Thai Buddhism. Some wanted to hold an audience with Thailand’s supreme patriarch.23 U Nu himself arranged such an audience on May 15 at Wat Bowonniwet Vihara, the Bangkok monastery most closely associated with the Thai royal palace, where he offered a substantial cash donation.24 This meeting represented an important parting gesture to the Thai ecclesiastical hierarchy before the prime minister’s May 17 departure back to Rangoon. Support for Burma’s synod had been returned in kind. As the festival wound down, it seemed that the Thai government had succeeded in staging a highly internationalized commemoration, earning accolades from its foreign guests. U Nu was the center of attention—an emblem of the festival’s international inclusiveness—with his movements receiving extensive coverage in the Thai press. The Thai government’s reception of the prime minister appeared to cement a profound religious kinship between the Thai and Burmese people. But the rhetoric surrounding the prime minister’s visit must have struck some observers as profoundly ironic. A sense of historical amnesia hovered over the festival proceedings, combining with the heat of mid-May. In their remarks, Phibun and U Nu had both indulged in a romanticized form of revisionism. In his escalation of Phibun’s effusive statements, U Nu had described the Thais and Burmese as something akin to blood brothers, not mere neighbors. Yet U Nu’s own remarks might have invited qualification from anyone familiar with the most basic outline of Thai history. For if the Thais and Burmese regarded each other as “brothers,” then the relationship was probably best characterized not as a happy fraternity, as U Nu had implied, but as an often tempestuous sibling rivalry. Ethno-nationalist tensions and

73

Y7216.indb 73

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e I n t e r nat i o nal Bu ddhi st Ar ena

armed conflict over land and other resources emerge as the twin historical themes of Thai-Burmese relations. Indeed, few events figure as prominently in Thai history as the sacking of Siam’s premodern capital, Ayutthaya, by invading Burmese forces in 1767.25 In that notorious incident, a subject of contemporary lore, the Burmese army razed the prosperous and cosmopolitan city to the ground and massacred or deported virtually all of its inhabitants. The Burmese also thoroughly looted the city. Buddha images were among the many materials they carted away as spoils of war to their own capital, Ava. Unsurprisingly, U Nu omitted these facts from his fulsome commentary on Thai-Burmese religious ties. Contrary to the idealized rhetoric of the festival, a shared Theravada religious culture had not provided a framework for enduring friendship between the Thais and Burmese. Rather, in a more complicated and ambiguous fashion, Buddhism had been an aspect of Thai-Burmese antagonism as well as a source of mutual affinity.

Phimolatham and Burma Against this historical backdrop, Phimolatham, a prominent Thai cleric, had developed exceptionally strong ties with the Burmese Buddhist establishment, forming one of several transnational links that were soon to become controversial in Thailand and intersect with the Cold War’s impact on the kingdom. Phimolatham had served since 1947 as the Lord Abbot of Bangkok’s historic monastery Wat Mahathat, where visiting foreign monks stayed in May 1957. Since 1949 he had also held the influential position of minister of ecclesiastical administration in the national Buddhist hierarchy. Having already visited Burma on previous occasions in the early 1950s, Phimolatham was not only the leading Thai representative to attend the May 1956 synod in Rangoon, but his close relationship with Burmese Buddhism also cut to his spiritual core, arising from his lifelong interest in the vipassana insight meditation that was practiced in Burma. It was there that the vipassana technique, with its special emphasis on “mindfulness” as a pathway to transcendent mental states, had undergone a revival starting in the

74

Y7216.indb 74

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e I n t e r nat i o na l Bu ddhi st Ar ena

early eighteenth century after having largely fallen out of practice within the Theravada school.26 In the mid-twentieth century, Sayagyi U Ba Khin, an accomplished Burmese civil servant and a famous lay practitioner and teacher of vipassana, began to further popularize the technique in Burma. This gave rise to a religious movement whose influence soon spread beyond Burma’s borders, a reflection of Buddhism’s globalized postwar reach. With the founding of the International Meditation Centre (IMC) in Rangoon in 1952, the movement gained an institutional base that attracted both Burmese and foreign pupils.27 For Phimolatham, vipassana was not only a basis for personal spiritual growth but a desirable addition to the whole of Thai Buddhist practice. He traveled to Burma to study the method, most probably interacting with U Ba Khin and other prominent IMC practitioners. There he became immersed in a vibrant spiritual school featuring a distinct praxis, charismatic and widely renowned pedagogues, and a cosmopolitan community of adherents—including many from the West. In Thailand, he took steps to promote vipassana, becoming publicly identified with the method and its Burmese masters. At Wat Mahathat, he founded a training center patterned after the IMC and helped to establish similar centers in various Thai provincial locales. One such training center was opened in Chantaburi province on June 12, 1954, in a ceremony that Phimolatham, a senior Burmese cleric, and 38 other monks attended.28 Burma’s vipassana community overlapped with the networks of governmental, lay, and clerical personnel involved in the planning of the 1954–56 Rangoon synod. U Ba Khin himself was a primary point of contact. He assumed a leading role in the organization of the event, serving as an executive member of the Buddha Sasana Council, the synod’s primary governmental planning body, and accepting a position as the event’s honorary auditor. These duties extended Ba Khin’s distinguished career in the Burmese civil service, which had included a stint as Burma’s accountant general.29 Phimolatham’s Burmese connections with Ba Khin and others in Rangoon had formed the backdrop for his role as the leading Thai representative to the synod. This role had first entailed a series of three preliminary visits to Burma at a stage when preparations for the synod—including the

75

Y7216.indb 75

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e I n t e r nat i o nal Bu ddhi st Ar ena

feverish construction of the cave and the various other facilities—were still in progress.30 The third, and possibly the last, of the “goodwill” missions took place in May 1953—a year in advance of the synod’s start. On the morning of May 23 Phimolatham arrived at Rangoon’s Mingaladon Airport with a retinue of six other Thai monks and nine official or lay representatives. The lay contingent included M. Foong Srivicharna, secretary of the Department of Religious Affairs, and Luang Prinya Yogavibulaya, a representative of the lay Thai Buddhist Association. The two previous visits apparently had not dampened Burmese enthusiasm for receiving these Thai observers. Burmese “of all classes” welcomed the delegation with “stately pomp.” Escorted from the airport to Rangoon’s Shwe Dagon Pagoda, where they paid homage at the iconic gilded structure, the “exalted members” of the Thai monkhood received flowers and refreshments while en route.31 Yet trouble was brewing, though none of the public coverage of these events reveals any sign of dissension. Phimolatham’s 1987 memoirs, published to commemorate his 80th birthday, provide an inside perspective on these events but are unclear on some aspects of the chronology.32 He alludes to tense deliberations within Thailand’s ecclesiastical cabinet on whether Thai monks would even participate in the synod once it commenced—and, if so, who would lead the Thai delegations. When were these important and possibly divisive discussions held? Most likely the meetings had taken place in 1954, not long before the synod began. Other evidence suggesting that Thai clerical authorities remained noncommittal on the question of Thai participation until a very late stage supports this conclusion. This could explain why in early May 1954, only weeks before the May 17 opening, a special delegation arrived in Bangkok bearing a letter from Dr. Ba U, the president of Burma himself.33 Addressed to Thailand’s monarch, King Bhumipol, the president’s letter appealed to the “government and the people”—and especially to the Thai Buddhist hierarchy—for support.34 The letter might have merely been a formality, settling arrangements already agreed on through informal channels. Alternately, it could hint at a last-ditch effort to reach an agreement. There is also the possibility—impossible to verify—that it was this letter that prompted the Thai ecclesiastical cabinet meeting.

76

Y7216.indb 76

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e I n t e r nat i o na l Bu ddhi st Ar ena

In any case, the timing of the meeting is less important than the substance of the discussion. This exposed a remarkable degree of Thai resistance to Burma’s call for support. The prevailing attitude among Thailand’s most highly ranked ecclesiastical ministers was that the Burmese government had overstepped its bounds. Some of the cabinet ministers emphasized that the country had only recently achieved independence (implicitly contrasting Burma with Thailand’s success in avoiding colonization), insinuating a presumptuousness on the part of an inexperienced Burmese government now intent on staging a grand international event. Most of the ministers expressed the view that Thailand should not even send monks to participate. A smaller contingent recommended that monks should be sent, but only as observers. A xenophobic current was in the air. Phimolatham’s 1987 autobiography must be read with due regard for the self-aggrandizing tendencies of personal memoirs. Even so, his recollection of his own participation in the discussion rings true, if faintly melodramatic. Phimolatham alone, according to his own account, advocated full Thai participation, arguing to his fellow clerics: “The Synod is for Buddhism and for this reason it is extremely meaningful. It is an event dedicated to the revision of the scriptures, which are Buddhism itself.”35 Phimolatham’s more liberal, transnational views were at odds with the Thai-centric condemnations of his fellow clerical ministers. His genuinely pan-Buddhist outlook, which embraced the Buddhist establishment of Burma without reservation, reflected a broader commitment to internationalism that was a defining feature of his clerical career. Later, this would prove dangerous to him. Phimolatham successfully persuaded his colleagues to send a Thai delegation, but his victory was partly Pyrrhic in that it earned him enmity. His statements probably came across to some powerful Thai clerics as quixotic, perhaps even embarrassing. Resentment of Burmese presumptuousness evidently ran so high among his fellow ecclesiastical cabinet ministers that most might have preferred to simply ignore the gathering. Nevertheless, arrangements were made for Thai clerical representation. The reasons were clear: from a diplomatic point of view, the case for nonparticipation was unrealistic. Burmese officials had presented their invitation for Thai representatives not only to the ecclesiastical leadership but also to the Phibun-led government, enhancing the sense that the synod

77

Y7216.indb 77

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e I n t e r nat i o nal Bu ddhi st Ar ena

represented an important matter of state-to-state relations as well as a historic religious conclave. Aware of the diplomatic stakes, the government “resolved” to have Thai monks participate at least in some nominal fashion—a resolution that the ecclesiastical cabinet was obliged to fulfill despite the misgivings its ministers had voiced within their private chambers. Thailand’s monkhood would not be allowed to opt out.36 It was probably a foregone conclusion that Phimolatham would head the various Thai delegations given the extraordinary dynamics at play behind the scenes. The other ministers were unwilling to take the step. Phimolatham would later recall that his duties as Thailand’s chief representative entailed no fewer than 12 trips to Burma (presumably over the course of the synod’s two-year duration).37 These frequent visits enhanced his profile in both Thailand and Burma. Photographed, with large clerical and official entourages, boarding specially chartered Thai Airways flights bound for Rangoon, Phimolatham presented the unlikely image of a globe-trotting abbot, his growing reputation even acquiring a patina of celebrity. Phimolatham’s presence in Burma preserved a public facade of Thai cooperation, obscuring the Thai Buddhist hierarchy’s true inclinations—although these probably remained apparent to well-informed observers. Burmese gratitude was immense. As a gesture of appreciation, the Burmese government presented Phimolatham with a special clerical title—that of akkomhaabandit, or “supreme scholar.” The new title referred to his expertise in Pali and his assistance with the scriptural revisions. Incidentally, the Burmese also bestowed this honor on the ecclesiastical prime minister of the Cambodian monkhood.38 The occasion marked the first known instance of a Thai monk receiving such a credential, which amounted to a foreign-bestowed enhancement of, if not a promotion from, Phimolatham’s monastic rank. Burmese authority had accorded him this rise in status, but because Burma was a fellow Theravada country—though one with a separate clerical hierarchy— Phimolatham’s new status would carry over to Thailand. He now embodied an internationalization of Buddhist hierarchies.39 Back in Bangkok, Phimolatham’s activities and successes disturbed the conservative senior echelons of the Thai monkhood. His frequent peregri-

78

Y7216.indb 78

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e I n t e r nat i o na l Bu ddhi st Ar ena

nations to Rangoon, which appeared as grandstanding to some of his peers, were a source of annoyance to them. And his involvement with the Burmese was not the full extent of the problem. In addition, certain clerics found Phimolatham’s promotion of foreign exchange for young Thai monks unsettling. One such exchange had directly followed his May 1953 goodwill mission to Rangoon. On June 6 most of the Thai mission returned to Bangkok. Phimolatham, in his peripatetic style, “proceeded on pilgrimage” to India and Ceylon with three other Thai monks. Two of the abbots accompanying him would remain behind—one in India and the other in Ceylon—to pursue their religious studies. At the end of the month, on June 30, Phimolatham returned briefly to Rangoon, leaving for Bangkok that same day. Before his departure, he installed a pair of Thai novice monks in residence at two Burmese monasteries.40 A fragmentary, though highly significant, anecdote filters through his memoirs: Phimolatham was preparing to send abroad a group of his young student monks. Their exact destination is not disclosed, but it was probably one (or more) of the four locales Phimolatham favored for educational exchange: India, Ceylon, Burma, and Japan. Before their departure, Phimolatham brought them before the prime minister of the Thai ecclesiastical cabinet to receive his blessing. But the encounter took a surprising—and humiliating—turn. The ecclesiastical prime minister, Plot Kittisophana, withheld the blessing.41 Worse, using an overfamiliar, therefore impolite, form of address, he sarcastically remarked in a voice so that the young monks could overhear: “Phimolatham, how much good do you want to do? The Buddhism we have here in our country of Thailand is already the best.” With uncustomary directness, the ecclesiastical prime minister had made clear his disapproval.42 Later, he even would block Phimolatham from succeeding him to the ecclesiastical prime ministership.

Phimolatham and the Moral Rearmament Army Phimolatham’s transnational connections were not limited to Asian Buddhism. His involvement in the Moral Rearmament Army (MRA) also ruffled feathers. Rooted in the American evangelicalism of its founder,

79

Y7216.indb 79

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e I n t e r nat i o nal Bu ddhi st Ar ena

Pennsylvania-born Lutheran minister Frank Buchman, the MRA underwent multiple “reinventions” after its establishment in 1938.43 From a small network of activists based mostly in the UK (widely known as the Oxford group) it evolved into an international, nondenominational movement dedicated to a grandiose goal: the spiritual regeneration of mankind through the moral uplift of individuals. The organization’s eclectic philosophy, though essentially antimaterialist, amounted to bricolage; its kaleidoscopic politics, avowedly anticommunist, were subject to interpretation. In the aftermath of World War II, the MRA helped broker reconciliation in Europe from its headquarters in the restored Caux-Palace hotel in Caux, Switzerland, a village overlooking Lake Geneva. Meanwhile, the organization expanded its influence in Asia. A 74-member Japanese delegation led by Kensuke Horinouchia, a former ambassador to the United States with Washington-based MRA contacts that predated the war, visited Caux in 1950. The MRA also made advances in China—where Buchman’s contacts within the Christian community that he had developed during his years as a missionary there included Chiang Kai-shek.44 The MRA leadership considered their group a worthy Cold War ally of the U.S. government. But some U.S. officials disagreed. A March 3, 1950, State Department report conveyed the ambivalence with which the movement was regarded in Washington circles, taking it to task on a number of points. The MRA, to its discredit, had advocated a policy of appeasement with Nazi Germany prior to the war, the report began. Furthermore, the movement’s leadership exaggerated its potential as an anticommunist asset. With no “extensive following either among urban or agrarian workers” the MRA’s prospective inroads into the communist movement were limited: “the most . . . the MRA can hope to do is serve as an alternative ideology for certain disaffected members of the middle classes who might otherwise drift to Communism.” The report concluded skeptically, “Its own pretensions notwithstanding, MRA’s effectiveness as an anti-Communist force is negligible, and its potentials for the future are limited.”45 American official ambivalence, however, hardly proved an obstacle for the continuing MRA expansion in Asia, which now extended to the countries of Southeast Asia in the hope of sponsoring peace and cooperation there. The “Southeast Asia Conference for Moral Re-armament” staged in

80

Y7216.indb 80

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e I n t e r nat i o na l Bu ddhi st Ar ena

Bangkok from December 1953 to January 1954 at the invitation of the Phibun government marked a pivotal moment.46 An eruption of fighting in neighboring Laos, near the Thai border, had occasioned the meeting, the first full-scale MRA conference held anywhere in Asia.47 The Phibun regime may have sought MRA influence as the November 1953 commencement of the Laotian civil war, marked by the outbreak of armed conflict between the Viet Minh–backed Pathet Lao and the French-backed Royal Lao Government, seemed to threaten Thailand’s borders. The battle of Dien Bien Phu, leading to the collapse of French rule in Indochina, loomed on the horizon. Meanwhile, escalating tension between Phibun and his two powerful subordinates, Police General Phao and Field Marshall Sarit Thanarat, dominated Thai political life and portended Phibun’s overthrow amid an atmosphere of deepening political repression.48 MRA representatives from 14 countries attended the conference at Bangkok’s prestigious Chulalongkorn University.49 The meeting spread awareness of the movement’s multifaith orientation and its strategies for reducing international political tensions, pacifistic aims that found acceptance within the new Buddhist milieu. A conference press release included one unidentified monk’s endorsement: “If the Lord Buddha were still alive, I am certain he would be most pleased. The absolute moral standards correspond to the principles of Buddhist Dharma. People who practise them, practise Buddhism.”50 The MRA won a second endorsement when the conference delegates paid a visit to Wat Mahathat, the Bangkok monastery of which Phimolatham was chief abbot. Phimolatham reportedly said little during that meeting—probably his first direct contact with the MRA. But while hosting the delegation he did express his appreciation for the “four absolutes” that lay behind the movement’s work: absolute honesty, purity, selflessness, and love. There was a congruence with Buddhist principles, he suggested.51 Phimolatham was already attracted to the MRA at the time of his preparations for attending the Rangoon synod. By 1955 the afterglow of the MRA’s success in Bangkok had begun to fade. The Conference of Afro-Asian states held in Bandung, Indonesia, in April 1955 persuaded Buchman that the time was ripe for another major MRA initiative in Asia. The resonances between MRA philosophy and the

81

Y7216.indb 81

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e I n t e r nat i o nal Bu ddhi st Ar ena

aspirations of the recently decolonized countries of Asia to overcome the stark divides of the Cold War were not lost on the MRA founder. The foreign minister of Iraq, Dr. Fadhil Jamali, one of Buchman’s many personal contacts, had alluded to these connections on the conference floor, exhorting the Bandung delegates to “work on the basis of moral re-armament” to transform the world “into one integral camp, with no Eastern or Western camps.”52 U Nu had been among the conference’s convening organizers, cementing his neutralist reputation on the world stage and shedding further light on the involvement of representatives of communist China in Rangoon’s Buddhist festival of the next year. The new initiative that Buchman would dub the “World Mission” had as its centerpiece an MRA-produced musical called The Vanishing Island. Buchman proposed that the production embark on a three-month tour of 19  overseas cities.53 The tour would begin in Manila, range as far east as Cairo, and conclude in Switzerland. The play was first performed at the MRA’s American base of operations on the southeastern edge of Lake Huron’s Mackinac Island, where the organization had acquired land in 1954.54 The “world premiere” was held at Washington, D.C.’s National Theater on June 7, 1955. Written by Peter Howard and choreographed by Nico Charisse, the musical addressed the theme of a divided world through the depiction of two fictitious island nations. Transparently allegorical in its concern for the philosophical dilemmas of the Cold War, the play was also characteristic of the MRA in its quixotic attempts to resolve them. Since its Washington debut rumors had swirled in the press and in official circles about the musical’s subversive message. Nevertheless, after strings were pulled in Congress, three air force cargo planes were provisioned to help meet the production’s multinational transportation needs.55 This implicit U.S. government endorsement of the play seemed troubling in light of its content, which one U.S. observer thought questionable: “The [play’s] attack upon Western thinking, upon freedom as we understand it, upon business, politics and statesmanship of the West, was savage and unrelenting until the regeneration scene. Properly speaking, there was no attack on the Soviet bloc at all. Its hatred, the danger arising from its threatened attack, the very curse of the island and its vanishing were all treated as the

82

Y7216.indb 82

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e I n t e r nat i o na l Bu ddhi st Ar ena

natural result of Western indifference, selfishness, complacency, sterility of ideas and ideals. The only positive thinking, of course, was the proposition that people who change themselves through adherence to the principles of Moral Rearmament can alone be saved and save the world.”56 In Bangkok, the U.S. reception had also been unfavorable. The Bangkok embassy concurred with the report from Manila: “Embassy reaction is that the play points up Communism as strong, vigorous, on the march; democracy is washed out, effete, its ideals were hollow symbols.”57 Tepid or unfavorable reactions, however, were less troubling than the play’s success in Rangoon. There it had resonated—in a way U.S. officials considered negative—with the audience’s Buddhist values. The Rangoon embassy commented: “MRA Mission’s visit to Burma was obviously a great success, largely because the Burmese were able to identify MRA principles and the ‘Vanishing Island’ allegory with their own Buddhist ethics and neutralist world views.”58 Despite this official U.S. skepticism, the MRA enjoyed similar success in some neighboring Southeast Asian countries. In 1956, Buchman followed on the World Mission with a personal tour through Asia. He may have intended to “supplement what The Vanishing Island had achieved in these countries by spending time with certain individuals.” In South Vietnam, this meant President Ngo Dinh Diem, who expressed interest in Moral Rearmament’s potential role in Asia. Thailand’s Phibun, who had himself visited Caux, hosted Buchman when he arrived in Bangkok and arranged for the MRA leader to receive a special decoration in the name of the king. Buchman went to Burma in May, his visit roughly coinciding with the Buddhist anniversary celebrations that concluded the synod. There he met with U Nu and with U Thant, secretary general of the United Nations.59 The MRA’s heightened visibility in the region—with Buchman’s contacts with Southeast Asia’s political leadership now spanning the mainland and beyond—was the backdrop for Phimolatham’s own involvement in the movement. His connection with the MRA, probably sustained in some fashion since its Bangkok conference in 1954, prompted a flurry of press attention in May 1958. During that month, Phimolatham embarked on his own world tour with several companions.60 The itinerary included a stopover in the United States, where his group attended a celebration at the Mackinac Island center marking Buchman’s 80th birthday. The MRA-funded,

83

Y7216.indb 83

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e I n t e r nat i o nal Bu ddhi st Ar ena

Phra Phimolatham at Mackinac Island, Michigan, United States, 1958. Courtesy of Wat Mahathat.

three-month-long mission, later made the subject of a documentary film, cemented Phimolatham’s globetrotting persona. Indeed, his route through the Philippines, Japan, the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and India entailed circumnavigating the globe. He was received at the MRA’s Michigan island headquarters as a distinguished foreign guest. There Phimolatham assumed a role that hybridized cleric and statesman. His status as Thailand’s ecclesiastical minister of administration—with responsibility for 200,000 monks, it was noted—was widely touted. His tour of 13 European cities included visits to Caux and Rome, where he was given an audience with Pope Pius XII. Throughout his travels, he demonstrated a wide-ranging interest in national secular affairs in conversations with various policy makers. Never before had a Theravada Buddhist monk toured Europe in this capacity.61 After a three-hour meeting with the prime minister of India in New Delhi, reporters asked Phimolatham to comment on the geopolitical problems confronting the Middle East. The solution could be found in the

84

Y7216.indb 84

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e I n t e r nat i o na l Bu ddhi st Ar ena

MRA’s four absolutes, he suggested, echoing his 1954 espousal of these four principles. He left India and returned to a triumphant reception at Bangkok’s Don Muang Airport. Phimolatham had now attained considerable fame. There were few public figures in Thailand, either secular or clerical, who could match his worldly experience.62 The year was 1958. Phimolatham’s MRA activism would entail another international trip in 1959. But his next MRA sojourn, the most extensive of them all, would not take place until 1978—19 years later. What had happened to Phimolatham in the meantime is central to the Cold War’s impact on Thailand.

Phra Phimolatham (second from left) photographed with African Moral Rearmament Army (MRA) delegates between meetings at Caux, Switzerland, 1958 or 1959. Courtesy of Wat Mahathat.

85

Y7216.indb 85

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e I n t e r nat i o nal Bu ddhi st Ar ena

Cold War Fever in Bangkok In September 1957, developments on the Thai political scene portended major changes for the administration of the Thai Buddhist clergy. The coup in Bangkok on September 16, 1957, of that year—just four months after Phibun had presided in style over the city’s Buddhist festival—expelled Phibun and police director Phao Sriyanond from the Thai political scene forever. Both fled abroad.63 Phao spent the remaining three years of his life in exile in Switzerland; Phibun died in Japan in 1964. With the palace’s sanction, their rival, Field Marshal Sarit, had assumed power. The 1957 upheaval inaugurated a new era of harsh military rule. Adopting a fiercely anticommunist posture and strengthening ties with the United States, Sarit would oversee the dismantling of Thailand’s democratic institutions, dissolving parliament and banning political parties. The state began to exert greater control over the Thai public sphere while undertaking a restoration of the monarchy, whose influence had waned under the more antimonarchical strongman Phibun. The repression targeted dissidents and opposition figures, including the Marxist writer Jit Phumisak. His most influential work, a subversive Marxist historical analysis of the “feudal” underpinnings of Thai society, had been published in early 1957, amid the “euphoric atmosphere” of the Buddhist festivals.64 In 1958, the book, commonly referred to among Western readers by its shortened English-language title, Thai Feudalism, was banned and Jit was imprisoned. Before long the monkhood, too, was swept up in the Sarit regime’s antidemocratic retrenchment. This followed a pattern in which the administration of the monkhood itself mirrored shifts in Thailand’s secular government. These developments would represent just the latest installment in a slow-burning conflict that stretched into the deeper recesses of Thai history. The mid-nineteenth-century founding of the reformist Thammayut order of monks had introduced a permanent cleavage into the structure of the Thai Buddhist establishment. The creation of an elite, royally patronized group of monks who entertained a self-image as stricter practitioners of the Buddhist monastic code caused resentment among their more numerous colleagues of the popularly aligned Mahanikay order. This had set in mo-

86

Y7216.indb 86

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e I n t e r nat i o na l Bu ddhi st Ar ena

tion an ongoing competition between the two orders for influence and position within the ecclesiastical administration. Phibun had championed Mahanikay interests. In 1941 he overturned an earlier legal framework for the governance of the monkhood that had worked to the Mahanikay order’s disadvantage. This framework had been laid down in the Sangha Administration Act of 1902, part of a broad program of modernizing reform undertaken by King Chulalongkorn (r. 1868–1910), the fifth monarch of Thailand’s Chakri dynasty. Under the 1902 law, the monkhood’s administrative structure had been centralized. The new system allowed the Thammayut order near complete control over the entire Thai sangha. A key feature of the new system was the Mahatherasamakhom, the Council of Elders. The supreme patriarch presided over this Thammayut-dominated clerical governing body comprising four regional governors and four deputy regional governors—all of whom the king appointed directly. The decisions the council reached on religious matters were considered final, “admitting no further appeal or protest.”65 Tempered in the heady days of the 1932 coup that had overthrown Thailand’s absolute monarchy, Phibun’s anti-absolutist instincts were keenly honed. He targeted the monkhood for democratic reform, sponsoring legislation to supplant the 1902 framework. The 1941 Sangha Act did away with the Council of Elders. It provided for a tripartite administrative structure mirroring the secular government. The supreme patriarch’s position now corresponded to the king’s titular role as head of state. The ecclesiastical cabinet, headed by an ecclesiastical prime minister, duplicated the executive branch. The 1941 act also created an ecclesiastical judiciary, and a legislative assembly, known in Thai as the sangkhasapha, composed of not more than 45 monks selected on the basis of clerical rank and seniority.66 The sangkhasapha guaranteed the numerically preponderant Mahanikay order an absolute majority. The Phibun-sponsored reforms had realized long-standing Mahanikay demands for more democratic representation. Until then Thammayut clerics had managed to block these demands, countering a Mahanikay reform movement that had taken shape in the wake of the 1932 coup.67 But the legislation of 1941 hardly amounted to a permanent settlement. Instead, it

87

Y7216.indb 87

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e I n t e r nat i o nal Bu ddhi st Ar ena

ushered in a period of intensified conflict between the two orders, as senior Thammayut monks, in concert with the Thammayut-aligned royal palace, maneuvered to have the law abrogated. After 1957 under the authoritarian Sarit, they would accomplish this goal. Phimolatham, the leading clerical victim of Sarit’s reforms, was a member of the Mahanikay order, an affiliation that matched his social origins. He had been born in 1903 with the lay given name of Ard Duangmala in a small village called Bahn Don in the rural northeastern province of Khon Kaen, far from the centers of political and military power in Bangkok. Like the other 16 northeastern provinces (the region known as Isan), Khon Kaen was largely inhabited by Lao speakers.68 While Phimolatham’s birthplace had all the signifiers of low social station, his northeastern beginnings would help him achieve great renown in Laos, particularly among followers of the majority Mahanikay order in central and southern Laos. Indeed, Phimolatham’s reputation in Laos even surpassed his popularity in Burma, forming, along with his involvement in the MRA, a third dimension of his transnational profile. However, his background also made his rise to public prominence in a Thai society stratified by intertwined notions of class, ethnicity, and regional origin a somewhat unlikely ascent. Phimolatham never fully overcame his northeastern pedigree, which would contribute to his outsider status in the eyes of aristocratic Thammayut segments of the ecclesiastical establishment in Bangkok and their associates within the lay secular and royal elite. Individual monks from northeastern Thailand sometimes gained widespread esteem as meditation adepts. They also often rose to high positions within the centralized ecclesiastical hierarchy. This included frequent ascensions to the Council of Elders. But what Justin McDaniel terms the “Lao mystique” in Thai religious discourse was a protean quality with valences of positive and negative meaning.69 The “prestige” it could confer on northeastern meditation masters was genuine. However, it was also born of a “stereotypical” notion of preternatural meditation competency, which Thai Buddhist urbanites ascribed to their country cousins. It was within the framework of these relationships that Phimolatham became a tenacious proponent of Mahanikay interests, spearheading Maha-

88

Y7216.indb 88

7/20/17 9:50 AM

T h e I n t e r nat i o na l Bu ddhi st Ar ena

nikay resistance to attempts at reconstitution of Thammayut control after Phibun’s 1941 law went into effect. His role as a Mahanikay guardian helps explain his fraught relations with other senior clerics. Details of his strained dealings with other high-ranking monks filter through a number of Western academic studies. Among older cognoscenti of the Thai monkhood they are still within living memory. An important break took place in 1954, the year the Rangoon synod began, when Supreme Patriarch Somdej Wachirayanawong reappointed a Thammayut monk, Phra Mahawirawong (Juan Utthayi), to the position of ecclesiastical prime minister over several suitable Mahanikay replacements. The decision raised alarm within the majority Mahanikay order. Phimolatham, as the ecclesiastical minister of administration, called for an internal investigation. This led to a reversal of the appointment and the installation of Phra Wanarat (Plot Kittisophana), a Mahanikay monk, in the position. For this, Phra Mahawirawong, who under Sarit would become ecclesiastical prime minister in 1960 and then supreme patriarch in 1965, reportedly held a grudge against Phimolatham.70 Phimolatham had indirectly enabled Kittisophana’s rise to the premiership, but it is doubtful that Kittisophana felt any gratitude either. Kittisophana and Phimolatham had been on bad terms since an incident sometime prior to 1954. The best account comes from Peter Jackson: while serving as ecclesiastical minister for education, Kittisophana had coveted Phimolatham’s more influential position as ecclesiastical minister of sangha administration. He proposed that they switch jobs, but Phimolatham declined. Kittisophana’s deep dislike for Phimolatham became a subject of widespread rumor. Indeed, he was the monk who, while serving as ecclesiastical prime minister in 1953, withheld his blessing from Phimolatham and his group of young monks setting out on a foreign exchange, on the grounds that Thai Buddhism was “already the best.”71 Phimolatham’s bad blood with the fellow Mahanikay-affiliated Kittisophana shows that the web of personal enmity that surrounded Phimolatham did not map neatly onto the Thammayut-Mahanikay divide. Inter-order tensions were a factor in the equation, but they alone do not explain his subsequent persecution. Personal grievances, including jealousy of the popular

89

Y7216.indb 89

7/20/17 9:51 AM

T h e I n t e r nat i o nal Bu ddhi st Ar ena

and charismatic Phimolatham, as well as competition for rank, were also in play. That another prominent victim of the impending crackdown was the Thammayut monk Phra Satanasophon—a monk with whom Phimolatham would become closely associated in subsequent years as supporters protested jointly on their behalf—further highlights the diffuse character of the onslaught. Phimolatham was a former associate of the ousted liberal leader Pridi.72 Yet he had managed to win the patronage of Phibun, Pridi’s rival, once Phibun had returned to power in his November 1947 army coup. However, while Phimolatham’s former pro-Pridi allegiances did not preclude a close connection with Phibun at the outset, U.S. State Department memoranda also suggest that Phibun and Phimolatham later fell out. A report filed in 1962 by Philip Axelrod of the U.S. embassy in Bangkok recalled that Phimolatham had become acquainted with Phibun, and that this acquaintance had blossomed into a relationship that proved vastly beneficial to Phimolatham’s career. Phibun “brought him to Bangkok, built Wat Mahathat, and installed [him] as its Lord Abbot,” Axelrod wrote, referring to Phimolatham’s 1947 appointment. The two men’s association coincided with a strengthening of ties between the Phibun government and Wat Mahathat, Phimolatham’s institutional home. The monastery now “became the ‘official’ temple of numerous high-ranking government officials, including many of the military, and its influence within official circles was, and still is, significant.”73 Aspects of this report were oversimplified. Phibun had not “built” Wat Mahathat, a historic monastery whose establishment long predated his birth, nor was he in a position to unilaterally “install” Phimolatham as abbot. Yet the thrust of the dispatch—that in 1947 Phibun and Phimolatham became allies—is instructive. In the campaign to democratize the administration of the sangha and promote Mahanikay interests, Phibun and Phimolatham’s aims converged. A behind-the-scenes partnership could well have taken shape. If a partnership did form, it did not last. The Axelrod report alludes to a “break” in ties. It is possible to speculate on the nature of the falling out. The Phibun government’s antileftist crackdown, intensifying under U.S. pres-

90

Y7216.indb 90

7/20/17 9:51 AM

T h e I n t e r nat i o na l Bu ddhi st Ar ena

sure in the 1950s, included a move to bar communists from ordination in the monkhood. Phimolatham argued that this amounted to discrimination that ran contrary to Buddhist doctrine. As ecclesiastical minister for sangha administration, he “deliberately delayed” implementation of the new law, defiance that led the authorities to label him “anti-establishment”—and at least tacitly pro-communist.74 Axelrod reported that by 1957 Phibun had even “initiated steps to have Phimolatham removed as Abbot of Wat Mahathat.” Ironically, Sarit’s 1957 coup preempted these moves and the ax fell on Phibun first. This forestalled Phimolatham’s demise, but he entered the more authoritarian Sarit era with powerful enemies among the monkhood, an outsized international profile, and a reputation for what the anticommunist Bangkok government considered heterodox thinking on matters of Cold War politics. Things would not go well for Thailand’s most prominent Buddhist leader.

The Leaflets and Books Scandals The hidden tensions within the Thai Buddhist establishment erupted into open conflict in 1960. The atmosphere, featuring interlocking scandals, allegations of communist leanings, and sensational show trials, evoked similarities with the McCarthy period. The apparent revelation of communist infiltration of the sangha transfixed the public and received extensive coverage in the Thai press. These were serious matters for those accused. At the center of the storm was Phimolatham, no longer Thailand’s most famous globetrotting abbot but increasingly a persecuted figure destined for a long imprisonment. Other monks caught in the police dragnet would share his fate, spending years in detention on false charges. Interpretations of these complex developments vary. It is best to begin with a single key fact: there was not just one scandal but three. Discrete yet closely intertwined— and unfolding more or less simultaneously—each controversy revolved around Phimolatham and Wat Mahathat. In the weeks prior to the April 26, 1960, cremation of the late supreme patriarch, the Thammayut monk Somdej Wachirayanawong, authorities at the Santiban—Thailand’s political police, whose senior officers were often

91

Y7216.indb 91

7/20/17 9:51 AM

T h e I n t e r nat i o nal Bu ddhi st Ar ena

sent to the United States for training with the FBI—found themselves in the grips of a mystery: who had been distributing anonymous pamphlets, numbering in the thousands, attacking Kittisophana, Wachirayanawong’s presumptive successor? During the two-year interim between Wachirayanawong’s death in 1958 and his cremation in 1960, Kittisophana had served as the acting supreme patriarch. Now the circumstances surrounding his formal appointment to the vacant post, which would take place on May 4, and the make-up of the new ecclesiastical cabinet, which would be appointed on May 12, had become hugely controversial. “Vicious” and “intemperate” in tone, the leaflets accused Kittisophana “of seeking votes for his appointment and the government of planning to appoint him in violation of accepted procedures.”75 The first of three scandals, which became known as the “Priests’ Leaflets” case, had begun. The leaflets must be placed in context. Behind the scenes, Kittisophana had engaged in Machiavellian backroom dealing that had angered those within the monkhood who were privy to what he had done. Two secondary accounts, while in some ways contradictory, agree on a crucial point: Kittisophana had guaranteed that he would become supreme patriarch by promising unspecified benefactors that Phimolatham would not, in turn, occupy his vacated position as the ecclesiastical prime minister.76 Kittisophana and his co-conspirators evidently went one step further, not only blocking Phimolatham from the ecclesiastical premiership (the position instead fell to Juan Utthayi) but denying him any position at all in the new cabinet, despite his long ministerial experience. This amounted to an egregious snub. There was more to the story. The pliant Kittisophana had also agreed to bring the sangha into closer alignment with the antidemocratic political forces that now prevailed in the country since Sarit’s 1957 coup. Following the May 12, 1960, appointment of the new ecclesiastical cabinet, new policies were announced: The clerical leadership would root out “communist” infiltrators within the ranks of the monkhood. And the cabinet would abrogate the 1941 Sangha Act and re-centralize the monkhood’s administration along the lines of the royalist act of 1902. The sangha tilted away from the democratic framework that had favored the Mahanikay order toward a more

92

Y7216.indb 92

7/20/17 9:51 AM

T h e I n t e r nat i o na l Bu ddhi st Ar ena

authoritarian mode of governance, marking the resumption of aristocratic minority Thammayut control. To whom had Kittisophana offered these secret assurances? Sources differ on these details. According to Jackson, Prince Dhani (Krommamyyn Bidyalabh), a member of the royal family who was also head of the government’s Council of Ministers, brokered the deal. Alternatively, Handley finds evidence that Pin Malakul was also involved. In his account, Pin Malakul and Prince Dhani jointly represented the palace to make the arrangements with Kittisophana.77 The anonymous leaflets, produced in a series over the course of several weeks, criticized Kittisophana’s shady dealings on the make-up of the new cabinet, his moves to repress the Mahanikay majority, and his open alignment with the Sarit regime. Among other barbs, the pamphlets called Kittisophana “crazy” and accused the ecclesiastical ministers of being government “lackeys.”78 A public meeting to censure Kittisophana’s recent appointment was proposed for his birthday, but the government released a statement forbidding the meeting and it was never held.79 The Santiban investigation proceeded apace. An abundance of circumstantial evidence implicated Phimolatham, but the authorities failed to turn up proof of his involvement. Searches of his personal dwelling at Wat Mahathat, including one inspection on June 15, yielded no “important documents whatsoever.”80 Did the police expect that Phimolatham would have left copies of the incriminating pamphlets in his own living quarters? The police had already found the machine that produced the leaflets at a print shop adjacent to Wat Mahathat. This suggested that the leaflets came from Phimolatham’s monastery. Investigators summoned the owner of the shop for further questioning.81 Axelrod’s report, relating these events two years later, analyzed the mood at the height of the scandal. Some observers, it noted, had viewed the developments strictly in terms of monastic politics. Others—those of a more conspiratorial mind-set—had cast them in the sinister light of the Cold War. These two interpretations split Thai authorities into separate camps, the report explained: “One theory generally held by most official government spokesmen such as the Minister of the Interior was that the leaflets were

93

Y7216.indb 93

7/20/17 9:51 AM

T h e I n t e r nat i o nal Bu ddhi st Ar ena

designed to create dissension and disunity among the clergy. The other, generally held by the police and the press, was that the leaflets were distributed in accordance with a Communist plan to undermine the Buddhist order, one of the institutional pillars of Thai society.”82 A kind of feedback loop between the police and the press surely boosted the second explanation. For the press, the possibility of communist involvement made the story all the more sensational. For the police, it made their investigation a matter of national defense, and therefore all the more important. Both, then, embraced the theory—for reasons that were different yet mutually reinforcing. Meanwhile, a second scandal developed. This case, handled separately from the leaflets investigation, also proved detrimental to Wat Mahathat. Two monks in residence there—one the acting secretary general of Mahachulalongkorn University, the monastery’s educational arm—had been found in possession of communist propaganda books from China. Both of the monks had visited communist China, most likely in 1956, and had allegedly made pro-communist broadcasts on Radio Beijing during their stay. University officials explained to the Asia Foundation that the materials had been found in unopened bundles in a university administration building where one of the monks had his living quarters. They also reported that the books had been arriving from China on a regular basis since the 1956 visit.83 It remains unclear whether they were destined for the university’s library. The police proceeded rapidly, drawing this case to a close even while the leaflets investigation continued. On June 8, 1960, the monks were taken into custody and accused not only of possessing communist propaganda materials but also of “communications with communist countries and communists within Thailand.”84 Within two weeks the police had decided to take legal action against them. The ecclesiastical cabinet quickly gave its permission for the disrobement procedure that would strip the two monks of their status. Put in civilian clothes and returned to the police facility, both monks were kept in detention for four years, apparently without trial. Finally, in 1964, they were released for lack of evidence. In an act of protest, they had continued to observe their monastic vows throughout their imprisonment. But once released they returned to lay life.85 Thus ended the communist books case.

94

Y7216.indb 94

7/20/17 9:51 AM

T h e I n t e r nat i o na l Bu ddhi st Ar ena

The eventual outcome of the earlier leaflets case similarly discredited the police. The investigation had continued through June and had involved the interrogation of at least ten monks. Finally, on July 1, 1960, four monks were disrobed at the request of the police and then “placed under formal arrest on charges of involvement” in the case. The Asia Foundation reported: “Three were from the Wat Mahathat and one was from Wat Chakrawat, the latter a temple known to be popular with Northeastern monks and the residence of two Lao monks assisted by [the] Asia Foundation office in Laos who were rumored to have pro-communist connections in their home country.”86 The Asia Foundation account concludes with the July 1 arrests, omitting an important twist in the case that came years later: investigators eventually disclosed what they might have known all along—that the four monks they had arrested in July 1960 were also, in fact, innocent. The presumed culprits in the leaflets case—two other Wat Mahathat–affiliated monks, both former pupils of Phimolatham (who had evidently remained silent as the others were accused)—were not publicly identified until July 1963.87 They reportedly confessed under interrogation and agreed to disrobe. However, no charges appear to have been tested in court. In addition to police bungling and a concern for subversive written materials, the two scandals were linked by a xenophobic suspicion of monks whose contacts allegedly ranged beyond Thailand. In the first case, the ties were to communist China; in the second, there were connections supposedly linking Wat Mahathat to Thailand’s northeast and to communistaligned groups in Laos, delineating a northeastern axis of communist influence. These common threads made the two minor cases of the leaflets and books fitting accompaniment to what became the major attack. This would target the maverick monk who led Wat Mahathat and who represented to Thai authorities international engagement, northeastern and Lao identification, and pro-democratic liberalism.

The Phimolatham Scandal Phimolatham’s own plight formed the third and thickest stratum of a multilayered drama. He would not be incarcerated until April 20, 1962, but his persecution spanned a longer period, dating from as early as August 1959.

95

Y7216.indb 95

7/20/17 9:51 AM

T h e I n t e r nat i o nal Bu ddhi st Ar ena

The opening salvo had come that year in an August 1 letter signed by Kittisophana, then still the ecclesiastical prime minister. Kittisophana charged Phimolatham with various infractions of the monastic code and forthrightly added, “It would be a great relief to me if you would disrobe.”88 But Phimolatham would not oblige him. Things came to a head the next year. On May 4, 1960, Kittisophana became supreme patriarch, having secured the appointment by promising to block Phimolatham’s promotion in the clerical ranks. The far-reaching anti-Phimolatham conspiracy intensified. The arrests of the six innocent monks (five of them from Phimolatham’s monastery) followed quickly in June and July 1960. Next, the new supreme patriarch and his collaborators resorted to smear tactics to force the disrobement of Phimolatham that Kittisophana had frankly requested in 1959. A high-ranking committee had met on August 30, 1960, at the Thammayut monastery Wat Makut to discuss Phimolatham’s case. Attendees included the new ecclesiastical prime minister Juan Utthayi (Kittisophana’s main co-conspirator within the hierarchy), representatives of the police, and two other ecclesiastical cabinet members.89 The police presented a witness, a former novice monk at Wat Mahathat named Wirayut Watthananusorn. On July 28, Wirayut had been called in for questioning during the course of a police investigation of Phimolatham’s conduct that had been under way since June. Wirayut’s testimony on August 30 provided the pretext for the resolution which was then relayed to the supreme patriarch: Phimolatham “could no longer remain a monk.”90 In fact, the police had found two witnesses. On June 9, 1960 (the day after arrests were made in the case of the communist books from China), police had interrogated a second monk named Phra Maha Phae Yanawaro, also of Wat Mahathat.91 The combined testimony of Wirayut and Maha Phae formed the basis for one of the most serious accusations made against Phimolatham: that he had had sexual intercourse, a crime warranting automatic expulsion from the monkhood. Wirayut claimed before the cabinet ministers on August 30 that Phimolatham had had anal sex with him. However, Wirayut would later recant his statements, suggesting that his confessions had been made under police coercion.92

96

Y7216.indb 96

7/20/17 9:51 AM

T h e I n t e r nat i o na l Bu ddhi st Ar ena

The implication that Phimolatham was homosexual did not constitute grounds for expulsion; sex with any other person or animal would have qualified him for this punishment. Yet the allegation of homosexuality made the incident appear all the more scandalous in the public eye. This was probably by design. Homosexuality was thus used as an implement of Cold War persecution in Thailand, as it was in the United States.93 Phimolatham disobeyed a September 8 order from Kittisophana to disrobe. He protested that the supreme patriarch lacked the authority to issue such an order—that expulsions from the monkhood were the sole prerogative of the ecclesiastical judiciary, which had not ruled on his case. Meanwhile, his supporters at Wat Mahathat launched a counteroffensive. On September 24, 465 monks affiliated with the monastery collectively vouched for Phimolatham’s ascetic purity, forwarding a statement to that effect to the supreme patriarch, the ecclesiastical cabinet, and the Sarit government. On September 26, Phimolatham sent a letter personally addressed to Sarit pleading for fairness in his case.94 These appeals were in vain. Phimolatham must have already known that Sarit backed the movement against him. Further moves to repress him followed. On October 25, 1960, he received a letter bearing Kittisophana’s signature removing him from his position as abbot of Wat Mahathat, the post he had held since 1947.95 He would not regain the position until 1981. The order, reinforced by separate notices from the Department of Religious Affairs, the secular authority in clerical matters, was effective immediately. Relentless and methodical, Phimolatham’s enemies soon took the next logical step. On November 11, 1960, Phimolatham and Phra Sasanasophana, the prominent Thammayut monk who had similarly run afoul of “state policies” and the “conservative outlook of the establishment,” were simultaneously stripped of their clerical titles and of the clerical fans that symbolized their status.96 Thereafter, Phimolatham would be referred to in the Thai press and in official correspondence not by that lofty title, which he had earned as a clerical administrator, but by variations on his lay given name, Ard Duangmala. In the meantime, Phimolatham’s case also entered the courts. The outcome of this judicial process on December 20, 1960, was not widely

97

Y7216.indb 97

7/20/17 9:51 AM

T h e I n t e r nat i o nal Bu ddhi st Ar ena

publicized: Wirayut withdrew his accusation against Phimolatham, stating that the monk had committed no violation of the Buddhist monastic code, sexual or otherwise, and begging for his forgiveness.97 The case against Phimolatham went into abeyance for the time being and he was released. But he returned to Wat Mahathat only as a rank-and-file monk without reinstatement of his title or his position as abbot—and with his reputation still in tatters. A lull in the action seemed to follow. Axelrod, writing in 1962, reflected on the events of the previous year: “The affair dragged along without drastic action during 1961.” He then added, in deference to the police: “The government was moving slowly and cautiously, and accompanied such activity as questioning suspects with the careful explanation that all priests were being treated with the utmost respect during interrogation.” That was untrue: the police investigation in fact relied on intimidation and fabricated evidence, as Wirayut’s courtroom spectacle of December 1960 made clear.98 While Phimolatham had been stripped of his status and administrative powers, his enemies within the ecclesiastical hierarchy had so far failed to strip him of his robes—their ultimate goal. This had allowed him to remain, during the year-long remission of 1961, a resident monk at Wat Mahathat, where he provided “a focus of agitation against Sarit’s authoritarian government and moves to abolish the 1941 Sangha Act.”99 Phimolatham’s refusal to disrobe now called for the application of secular authority—along with the fabrication of new charges—to force his expulsion from the monkhood. It was 12:30 in the afternoon on April 20, 1962, when the police came to arrest him at Wat Mahathat. He would later recall of this frightening experience that a senior police officer wielded his weapon during a siege of the monastery grounds. Phimolatham was now accused of “communist activity, and crimes against the internal security of the kingdom—crimes that rose to the level of terrorism.”100 The police encircled the area to demarcate a crime scene and led Phimolatham away. In a radio broadcast, they announced the arrest.101 At the police station where he was taken, Phimolatham was forcibly disrobed by two ecclesiastical cabinet ministers, reportedly under orders from Field Marshal Sarit. The anti-Phimolatham conspiracy had finally achieved

98

Y7216.indb 98

7/20/17 9:51 AM

T h e I n t e r nat i o na l Bu ddhi st Ar ena

its major objective—his excommunication. This marked the beginning of Phimolatham’s four-year prison sentence. The authorities had brought the third of the three scandals to a close. The imprisonment of Thailand’s foremost Mahanikay monk paved the way for changes in the monkhood’s administration. Conservative elements had long desired a restoration of the pre-1941 Thammayut-dominated system—one more conducive to Sarit’s authoritarianism. With the Mahanikay stronghold of Wat Mahathat now undermined, these changes could be made without much resistance. And this, in fact, is what occurred with the July 1962 passage of a new Sangha Administration Act, ferried through the National Assembly by the Sarit government—and with Supreme Patriarch Kittisophana’s sponsorship.102

Incarceration On November 8, 1962, Phimolatham wrote a letter describing conditions in his Bangkok jail cell. He wore white robes and continued to observe the 227 rules of monastic discipline—attire and behavior that symbolized to the public his “rejection of the process of his disrobement.”103 He struck a tone of Buddhist equanimity, listing the perquisites of incarceration. There are reasons to be happy, he explained: “I stay here for free. I have free electricity, and free water. The police take care of me for free, and if I die my coffin and my cremation will be paid for . . . How could I not be anything but happy and relaxed?”104 Phimolatham’s patience would be tested in the years to come. If there was a positive side to his imprisonment, it was the ample time he now had to reflect on the reasons he found himself in jail—reflections that his memoirs would later record in detail. Phimolatham’s donning of white robes had another shade of significance. In addition to charges of communism, Phimolatham had been accused of violations of the Buddhist monastic code through improper dress. Following his April 1962 arrest, the police released a series of blurry photographs purporting to prove this claim. In one, a slight figure identified as Phimolatham, though not quite recognizable, reclines on a beach with two male companions in what appear like bathing trunks.105 In another, four

99

Y7216.indb 99

7/20/17 9:51 AM

T h e I n t e r nat i o nal Bu ddhi st Ar ena

men—one again identified as Phimolatham—pose against the background of a white tiled room wearing scarves and heavy white garments. A caption informed readers that the figures in the second photograph “were traveling overseas [in Europe] while they were monks, but dressed themselves like ordinary civilians.”106 Actually, they wore protective gear while touring an industrial facility where such dress was obligatory for safety reasons. The photographs were richly symbolic. Phimolatham’s itinerant internationalism had always pressed against the conventional boundaries of what a Thai monk could and should do. His hybridized role as monk and statesman fused the clerical with the secular. A picture showing him in civilian clothes while traveling in Europe visually captured his secular dabbling and demonstrated to some that his glamorous excursions to the West, a privilege that only the elite of Thailand enjoyed, had led him astray from the Buddhist path. This gave his detractors a basis for criminalizing his behavior, which in their view had always seemed vaguely inappropriate. The sartorial aspect of the Phimolatham scandal also resonated with a fundamental theme in Buddhism’s intertwining with the Cold War. Monks in Thailand and elsewhere were a ubiquitous, somewhat anonymous, and highly influential constituency. Most males in Buddhist Southeast Asia spent a period of time in the monkhood. The boundary between lay and clerical life was always permeable. From the state’s perspective, the risks of communist infiltration of the monkhood were therefore as high as that of the general population. This presented the recurring specter of the “political” or “false” monk—a radical disguised in robes—who passed easily into the omnipresent clerical ranks in order to sow dissension from within. The robe’s equal potential to function as a cloak gave rise to a vexing problem of administration for right-leaning Southeast Asian governments. Phibun’s proposal to put in place a screening process to prevent communists from ordaining (the plan that Phimolatham had opposed on doctrinal grounds) grasped at a solution, though one that was obviously impractical. The problem could also be described as one of “legibility”—the perceived need to systematize the local social practice of ordination in order to increase the capacity of the state to monitor it.107 Photographed in civilian clothes, Phimolatham had been caught out of disguise and ostensibly ex-

100

Y7216.indb 100

7/20/17 9:51 AM

T h e I n t e r nat i o na l Bu ddhi st Ar ena

posed for what he really was—a false monk, an infiltrator. This, too, was an important subtext of the allegation of improper dress. The attacks on Phimolatham arose from a confluence of factors. As the leader of Mahanikay resistance to the recentralization of the sangha’s administration, he naturally provoked the conservative, antidemocratic elements within the senior monkhood, the Sarit government, and the palace—the triad of forces that worked in concert to crush him. But focusing narrowly on these factors domesticates a conflict that was, to an even greater extent, an outcome of Phimolatham’s activities and connections on the international stage. Phimolatham himself explained his persecution in these terms. In his memoirs, he lists three reasons for his arrest: 1) he sent monks abroad for religious studies; 2) he arranged for a prominent Burmese cleric to assist with religious instruction in Thailand; 3) he promoted the Burmese vipassana meditation technique in Thailand, first at Wat Mahathat and then in the provinces. He then elaborates on other contributing factors, all of which pertain to his international outlook. Phimolatham mentions his fostering of religious ties with Malaysia, and a program he developed for Thai monks to proselytize Buddhism internationally—specifically in Laos, Cambodia, the UK, and India. He also refers to his involvement in the MRA. And it is here—in his explanation of his arrest—that he describes his role in the Rangoon Buddhist synod and his acceptance of the special Burmese honorific clerical title. Indeed, Phimolatham’s bonds with the Burmese were the single most problematic aspect of his internationalism. For one thing, his good relations with Thailand’s western neighbors outshone his hidebound colleague Kittisophana. Phimolatham’s acceptance of a new title under Burmese authority beset Kittisophana with a simple—and not very Buddhist—human emotion: jealousy. This probably explains why, after he became supreme patriarch in May 1960, arrangements were made for Kittisophana to receive a special title of his own. But, as Phimolatham explains, Kittisophana refused the same akkomhaabandit credential that the Burmese had already given him. Betraying a petty sense of competition, Kittisophana insisted on a slightly different title—one that came with an arbitrarily added flourish that

101

Y7216.indb 101

7/20/17 9:51 AM

T h e I n t e r nat i o nal Bu ddhi st Ar ena

raised his status a degree above his rival’s.108 If Kittisophana lacked Phimolatham’s imagination, he was second to none in ambition. He subscribed to the conventions of hierarchy and status. Phimolatham endangered himself by running afoul of those conventions through his dealings with his Burmese friends.109 Within the context of the Cold War, Phimolatham’s connections with Burma, a society in which Marxism had a far more pervasive intellectual influence than in Thailand, also raised suspicions about his political loyalties. His politics were already considered questionable due to his nonconformist stance on Phibun’s anticommunist program for the monkhood. Heightening the disquiet of Thailand’s conservative ruling elite, Phimolatham formed close ties with a rival Buddhist country whose neutralist government had even invited representatives of communist Chinese to participate in its 1956 Buddhist festival—a telltale sign of its unreliability as a Cold War ally. Suspicions of Burma—and of Phimolatham—also came to the fore in wary attitudes toward the vipassana meditation method. A lengthy court document concerning Phimolatham’s case dated August 30, 1966, the year of his release, described the paranoid fears of vipassana that had fueled some of the attacks against him. These ascribed a mystical power to the technique and even suggested that Chinese communists had introduced it into Burma as a means of mind control. This depiction cast Phimolatham, Thailand’s chief promoter of vipassana, as the agent of an occult Chinese communist conspiracy intent on brainwashing the Thai population.110 The reality of Phimolatham’s career was not so outlandish. Trapped in a hall of mirrors, Phimolatham’s character had become distorted by falsehoods and Cold War hysteria, his features distended into a sinister caricature of a lax homosexual communist. In truth, Phimolatham was simply an internationalist and a progressive. But neither of these qualities were acceptable to his attackers, a group bound by traits of traditionalism, Thai xenophobia, and hierarchically oriented, antidemocratic nationalism. In a less focused way, Phimolatham’s enemies also cohered around an antagonism toward the populist Mahanikay order and an aristocratic suspicion of the farming communities of Thailand’s poor and ethnically suspect Laospeaking northeast.

102

Y7216.indb 102

7/20/17 9:51 AM

T h e I n t e r nat i o na l Bu ddhi st Ar ena

The most important aspect of the Phimolatham scandal is what it reveals about the Thai Buddhist establishment during the Cold War. Far from being a monolithic constituency, as it might have appeared at first glance, Thai Buddhism was seriously divided along multiple axes. These hidden fissures included the Mahanikay opposition to the Thammayut and the conflict between local or orthodox meditation practices and vipassana. In addition, parochial or even national chauvinist outlooks conflicted with internationalist ones, including those receptive to noncommunist Burmese and MRA influences. Finally, there was the tension between anticommunist monks and those considered insufficiently anticommunist, such as Phimolatham. Each of these qualities pitted Phimolatham against his fellow Buddhist critics within the hierarchy. They explain the extremity of the allegations made against him and the serious nature of his persecution. Dissension within the Thai Buddhist ranks also had implications for U.S. policy in Thailand. In an increasingly war-torn region, the Americans saw a connection between the relative stability of their Thai ally Sarit’s new government, which they highly valued, and the country’s Buddhist institutions. Preserving the Thai Buddhist establishment in the face of both internal divisions and external pressures became a matter of U.S. concern. Here the Asia Foundation assumed a central role.

103

Y7216.indb 103

7/20/17 9:51 AM

Four

Reforming the Monks The Cold War and Clerical Education in Thailand and Laos, 1954–1961

I

n mid-November 1958, more than three years prior to his arrest, Phimolatham had visited Khon Kaen, the northeastern province of his birth, with a young American attached to his party. Phimolatham was then at the height of his influence. His arrival with his entourage at the provincial capital’s central train station called for a major official reception. The provincial governor and the district chief, along with various community leaders, came to greet the popular abbot, a native son of the “Isan” region whose achievements in Bangkok—and exploits abroad—were a source of local pride. In the days that followed, Phimolatham’s hosts would spare “no effort” in “giving service” to him and his companions.1 Their hospitality extended to the American member of the party, William Klausner. He would soon send his contacts at the Asia Foundation a lengthy report on Phimolatham’s activities in Khon Kaen. Klausner’s information was valuable to the foundation. As the head abbot of Wat Mahathat and chairman of the board of governors of that monastery’s educational extension, Mahachulalongkorn University, Phimolatham had come to play a prominent role in the foundation’s Buddhist programming in Thailand. Already attuned to the inter-order tensions that would eventually contribute to Phimolatham’s downfall, Klausner described at length the fraught relations between the grassroots and largely rural Mahanikay order and the more aristocratic and mostly urban Thammayut in Phimolatham’s home province. Phimolatham was “very conscious of the rivalry between

1 04

Y7216.indb 104

7/20/17 9:51 AM

R e f o r mi n g t he M o nk s

the Mahanikay and Thammayukti sects,” Klausner began, and has “devoted much time to strengthening the influence of the Mahanikay order throughout the country.”2 In Khon Kaen, however, because of Phimolatham’s overwhelming prestige there, Mahanikay influence could hardly have been made any stronger. Despite a sizable population of Thammayut monks—second only to Ubon among the 16 Isan provinces—Khon Kaen represented the northeast’s foremost Mahanikay stronghold. Klausner observed that, because of Phimolatham, even Khon Kaen’s “wealthy and influential” families tended to patronize the Mahanikay, though it was generally perceived as the commoner’s order. By contrast, in other urban provincial centers, powerful families usually favored the aristocratic Thammayut minority. Only special occasions that demanded inter-order representation—an important meritmaking festival, or a visit by the king—brought Khon Kaen’s Mahanikay monks into contact with their “quiet” and “removed” Thammayut peers.3 The fact remains, however, that the Thammayut’s presence in the northeast had also developed a distinctively nonurban feature. Klausner may have chosen for simplicity’s sake to describe a broad pattern of urban-rural segregation between the orders rather than detailing the complexities of the northeastern Thammayut influence—or at this early stage in his career he may not have fully grasped these nuances. From the late nineteenth century, the Thammayut had spearheaded Bangkok’s drive to reform and centrally administer northeastern Buddhism.4 The goal was to correct perceived Lao-inflected deviations from the new Thammayut Buddhist orthodoxy. Thammayut monk administrators were to extend state authority over the region’s clergy.5 The cluster of northeastern Thammayut monks who, by the early twentieth century, had formed a modern lineage of “forest monks”—the highly venerated Phra Ajan Man notable among them—were part of that statesponsored program. But, as Justin McDaniel explains, the wandering monks of the northeastern Thammayut owed their popular following in the region not to being representatives of state-sponsored or canonical Buddhism but to their reputations as “powerful healers and usurpers of the magical power previously associated with the Lao, Khmer and Thai lay magicians.”6

105

Y7216.indb 105

7/20/17 9:51 AM

R e f o r mi n g the M o nk s

Klausner’s inclusion in Phimolatham’s homecoming entourage illustrates the extent to which the Americans had managed to establish good relations with him and other senior members of the hierarchy by 1958—only four years after the foundation’s Bangkok office opened its doors. The scene also illustrated subtler dynamics between the Americans and their Thai Buddhist partners. The railway excursion to Khon Kaen was Phimolatham’s own affair—his activities there dictated by his own objectives and extensive local connections. And as Phimolatham set his own agenda, so, too, did the other lay, governmental, clerical, and palace-based constituencies that made up the overall Thai Buddhist establishment. Multifaceted though it was, the Thai Buddhist community appeared more harmonious and stable—and more resilient to the exogenous pressures of the Cold War—than the Buddhist establishment of neighboring Laos, just to the east across the Mekong from Khon Kaen, Ubon, and other Isan provinces. By 1958, Cold War tensions in Laos had already escalated to an intensity never experienced in Thailand. A civil war loomed. U.S. officials, undertaking a series of Buddhist programs on both sides of the Mekong under separate USIS and Asia Foundation auspices, sought to ensure that the clerical establishments of both countries would serve their interests in the Cold War fight. But in Laos, for complex reasons, the Americans contended with a very different situation—and for them far more daunting. If the Americans saw trouble in Laos, they could at least take comfort in the four-day World Fellowship of Buddhists gathering in the Thai capital in late November 1958, shortly after Klausner’s trip. The conference drew together 199 lay and clerical delegates from 16 countries. A special November 29 audience with King Bhumipol in the Grand Palace’s glittering Amarind Vinichai Hall offered guests an impressive finale. Every country represented was noncommunist. U.S. fears that the Bangkok gathering would replay experiences at Kathmandu, site of the 1956 fourth conference—where the “maneuvers” of a Chinese delegation over the Tibet issue had stirred controversy—proved overblown. Although ten observers and delegates from Hong Kong and Macao did attend the 1958 event, there were evidently none from the PRC, despite expectations of a communist Chinese presence. A rumored Soviet delegation had also failed

106

Y7216.indb 106

7/20/17 9:51 AM

R e f o r mi n g t he M o nk s

to materialize.7 In the absence of communist representation, the 1958 proceedings in Bangkok had conformed more closely with the WFB’s idealistic disavowal of divisive politics.8 But the next WFB conference would prove less to the Americans’ liking.

An Asia Foundation Career Witnessing Phimolatham’s November 1958 homecoming, Klausner observed the famous monk in his element, in the northeastern heartland where his following was strongest. Klausner’s own career was just under way. His detailed and informed report to his foundation colleagues was well received in Bangkok. There the foundation’s chief Thailand representative, Harry H. Pierson, forwarded the memorandum to the home office in San Francisco with approval, as an “example of the kind of reporting we can expect from Mr. Klausner should he be employed as Rural Program Assistant,” an appointment that he implied might prove “very helpful.”9 Klausner’s bright career prospects with the foundation were unsurprising: his credentials fit the foundation mold. Born in New York City in 1929, he had first come to Thailand in September 1955. He joined a modest postwar influx of American academics specializing in Thai studies. Tall, thin, with a crest of dark hair narrowing in front, Klausner had begun studying Thailand as a Yale undergraduate, when he wrote a research paper about a country that “seemed a million kilometers away,” still known to many as Siam.10 As a graduate student, also at Yale, he had earned a degree in law and a master’s in Southeast Asian studies. A course with the eminent French scholar of Southeast Asia Paul Mus presented to him a “breathtaking intellectual challenge” and formed the basis of their “lasting close friendship.”11 A conventional legal career beckoned, but Klausner preferred an unconventional path: he accepted a Ford Foundation grant to a conduct a year of ethnographic research in Ubon province, a decision that changed his life. A simple fact defined the country where Klausner would forge his career: a 1960 census would find that 93.4 percent of the country’s 27.2 million inhabitants subscribed to some form of Buddhism. Non-Theravada Buddhists, almost exclusively restricted to Thailand’s urban ethnic Chinese

107

Y7216.indb 107

7/20/17 9:51 AM

R e f o r mi n g the M o nk s

population (who mostly adhered to Buddhism’s Mahayana school), were a vanishingly small minority: fewer than 1 percent of Thailand’s Buddhist clergy and monasteries were not part of Thailand’s Theravada Buddhist community (though they remained under the nominal legal control of the Theravada Buddhist ecclesiastical administration).12 The Theravada clergy, its network of around 21,000 monasteries spanning the country, was embedded in devout local communities.13 Yet the number of monks in proportion to the general population appeared to be decreasing, dropping from approximately 1 percent in 1961 to 0.78% percent in 1965.14 Devotion to Buddhism carried profound implications for Thai politics and statecraft. Ancient monarchs had patronized the faith as a means of establishing their legitimacy, while Buddhism, in turn, intermingled with elements of Brahmanism to form the ritualistic basis for their absolute rule. Modernizing reforms in the early twentieth century saw Buddhism enshrined as a “civic religion,” promoting it alongside nation and throne as one of the three symbolic pillars of the Thai state.15 Thailand’s colonized Buddhist neighbors all saw their religious and monarchical institutions—and the symbiotic linkages that mutually sustained them—disrupted or even dismantled by colonial regimes. But no such disturbances befell independent Thailand. There, Buddhism’s fundamental role in the Thai state was repeatedly reinforced and reformulated through indigenous initiative—and through the course of repeated convulsions of the civil sphere caused by a series of coups. Klausner’s year of research proved a formative experience. He lived in a small village, marrying a village woman with whom he would raise two children, and began learning the local Lao dialect (having already gained proficiency in Thai at Yale). He had limited contact with the outside world, relying for access to English-language newspapers mostly on a USIS library located in the provincial capital, Ubon city, which he visited on weekly shopping trips. At that remote northeastern outpost, the USIS staff represented the vanguard of the American-led anticommunist effort in rural Thailand, which focused on Isan as the country’s largest and poorest region, most susceptible to communist influence. Klausner’s impressions of Ubon’s USIS team were not favorable. He suspected the officers of direct involve-

108

Y7216.indb 108

7/20/17 9:51 AM

R e f o r mi n g t he M o nk s

ment in intelligence work. He criticized their “narrow political views”— their simplistic anticommunism and their screening of propaganda films in nearby villages. He considered them ignorant of “rural realities,” noting especially their tendency to “overplay the importance” of the rural communist threat, which he rated as low.16 A self-described “New Deal Democrat” motivated by a “family and Yale-inculcated sense of service,” Klausner was of a thoughtful, liberal frame of mind.17 His research had already profoundly shaped his understanding of religious life in rural Thailand, leaving lasting impressions that would later guide his work as the coordinator of the foundation’s Buddhist programming. Klausner’s ethnographic study focused on popular Buddhism—as opposed to its “high culture” nibbanic or philosophical form. He observed that folk religious practices in the village often departed from Buddhism’s textual injunctions. He saw how local animism and Brahmanism sometimes merged into the Theravada firmament while ordination procedures diverged from scriptural prescriptions. In short, away from centers of doctrinal authority, individualistic and syncretic modes of religious adherence had long flourished. Modernity, too, was “slowly impinging” on the Thai village, the young ethnographer also observed, with important ramifications for rural Buddhism.18 Klausner understood that rural monks had traditionally played a “pervasive role” in village society. Monks had assumed a “leadership position” in both “secular and religious affairs,” their monasteries doubling as both sites of religious observance and “focal points” of village life.19 As religious leaders, the monks served as meditation adepts, moral exemplars, carriers of scriptural knowledge, and masters of religious ceremony. On the secular side, they had customarily played a variety of roles—as architects, healers, custodians of village funds and libraries, caretakers of orphans, travelers and delinquents, and educators of village youth (almost exclusively of village boys). Such social roles were part of the key to Buddhism’s local influence and prestige. Klausner, however, noticed a disturbing contemporary trend: the encroachment into rural areas of modern “government services”—a growing network of schools, training programs, clinics and a transport grid—

109

Y7216.indb 109

7/20/17 9:51 AM

R e f o r mi n g the M o nk s

appeared to be displacing the monks’ role in the village communities and eroding this pattern of clerical secular involvement. His findings pointed to the onset of a silent crisis for Thai Buddhism—a crisis of social competition and declining influence. In a rural society increasingly connected to the outside world—and disconnected from its parochial, traditionally minded past—villagers’ “secular dependence” on local monks would, Klausner predicted, undergo a “slow attrition.”20 It seemed that Thailand’s rural Buddhist clergy could either adapt to modern conditions or see their social role enter a state of atrophy. Klausner had identified a problem that would intersect with U.S. Cold War aims and become a central preoccupation of his career with the foundation.

Origins of the Asia Foundation The foundation had been active in Thailand for only a year when Klausner arrived in Bangkok, where he began to cultivate a social circle mostly made up of Thai and foreign academics, members of the diplomatic community, and Thai bureaucrats and judges.21 Following a separate but parallel track, the foundation’s American planning team would reach conclusions about Thai Buddhism that overlapped with Klausner’s independent village-level observation. The foundation’s Buddhist programming in Thailand began a long evolution in 1954, when the organization (then still known as the Committee for a Free Asia) had first entered the country. Foundation planners knew of no other foreign group, either churchly or educational, operating in Thailand or in neighboring Buddhist countries that had made Buddhism a focus of its work. They also understood that U.S. church-state prohibitions notionally placed the “whole apparatus” of this Asian religion “entirely out of bounds” for U.S. government agencies.22 Although USIS’s religiously based anticommunist activities evidently ignored that directive, Buddhism nevertheless seemed to foundation planners a virgin programming terrain. Ironically, as others have reported, the Asia Foundation was a U.S. government venture. The organization was in fact a proprietary body of the CIA. It had been established under the CIA’s Office of Policy Coordina-

110

Y7216.indb 110

7/20/17 9:51 AM

R e f o r mi n g t he M o nk s

tion (OPC) as part of a family of front organizations including Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, and other youth, student, and labor programs. The OPC, formed in September 1948, was housed under the CIA but received policy direction primarily from the secretary of state. This governmentbacked reality evidently failed to filter down to the rank-and-file foundation staff, who worked without any direct knowledge of their ostensibly private employer’s covert connections.23 Robert B. Sheeks, the foundation’s representative in Malaya, was the first to convey to the home office in San Francisco a proposal that Thai Buddhism could be a promising field for foundation activity. Sheeks conducted an “exploratory visit” to Thailand in April 1954. He favorably assessed the foundation’s prospects in Thailand and identified Buddhism as an “important area of programming.”24 His report to San Francisco laid out a schematic plan for how the foundation should proceed in this area. During the earliest stages of its Thailand operation, the Asia Foundation, in its initial guise as the Committee for a Free Asia, took an interest in Buddhism primarily as a means of approaching the seemingly more urgent problem of Thailand’s ethnic Chinese minority, which then weighed heavily on American officials. It is unsurprising that Sheeks’s preliminary report reflected deep anxiety over the perceived danger of the overseas Chinese. That threat loomed large in the perceptions of the Malaya representative, whose journey from Kuala Lumpur had likely taken him across the battle zones of the continuing Malayan emergency. The insurgency there had broken out in 1948, when the predominantly ethnic-Chinese Malayan Communist Party (MCP) adopted a policy of armed struggle against the British colonial regime that had reestablished itself after the Japanese wartime interregnum. Among American officials, the violence in Malaya heightened fears of similar Chinese communist subversion in the British colony’s relatively stable northern neighbor. Thailand and Malaya shared an overland border crossing the Malay peninsula. It was a porous demarcation cutting through a forested zone with a historical reputation for banditry and smuggling. And especially after the Chinese communist takeover of Beijing in 1949, the widely dispersed and not fully assimilated Chinese community in

111

Y7216.indb 111

7/20/17 9:51 AM

R e f o r mi n g the M o nk s

Thailand—especially Bangkok—struck American observers as a “potential fifth column.”25 The U.S. ambassador to Thailand, Edwin F. Stanton, had alerted the Psychological Strategy Board to these concerns in a meeting in Washington in June 1952. Stanton, speaking bluntly, told his listeners that “Thailand’s problems today stem chiefly from the existence of the Chinese minority.” The “skillful” propaganda of the China-oriented Communist Party of Thailand (CPT), which reportedly owned or influenced “most of the local Chinese periodicals,” intensified the threat. So, too, did communist recruitment efforts, which were increasingly directed toward the ethnic Thai population, including students, teachers, and agricultural laborers. Yet, in a telling aside, Stanton also mentioned that a recent attempt to “win over” the Buddhist clergy had proved “unsuccessful.”26 In keeping with the stridently anticommunist posture of the foundation in its previous incarnation as the committee, the goals Sheeks set forth for the organization in 1954 consisted of bolstering anticommunism among Thailand’s inhabitants, especially the Chinese. Sheeks proposed that anticommunist indoctrination of “overseas Chinese students, educators and youth” be the organization’s first priority. Only in order to establish a “climate” in which “major emphasis could eventually be placed on Chinese affairs” in Thailand would the foundation first seek to strengthen Thai lay Buddhist organizations.27 Those priorities rapidly shifted. The Asia Foundation adopted its new name in September 1954. The transition probably reflected widespread sentiment that the organization was in need of a reboot: by February 1953 the Committee for a Free Asia had been deemed “by all accounts a complete flop,” raising the question of “what, if anything, should be done?”28 Rebirth as the Asia Foundation, marking a shift from an anticommunist stance to a more “constructive” and “developmental” rationale, evidently was the answer seized upon. The foundation discarded the goal of using organized Buddhism to lay the groundwork for anticommunist propagandizing among the Chinese. Now, within its new and more sophisticated “developmental” framework, the group assigned “primary importance in both substance and timing” to Thai Buddhist education.29

112

Y7216.indb 112

7/20/17 9:51 AM

R e f o r mi n g t he M o nk s

The new focus dovetailed with the findings of Klausner’s ethnography. A consensus emerged among foundation staff: Thailand, particularly in urban areas, was experiencing a nationwide “drift away from the Church.”30 Meanwhile, in his village in Ubon province, Klausner was documenting local manifestations of this trend. Like him, foundation observers perceived these changes as an outcome of the internal and external pressures associated with modernization. Communism was not the cause; it was merely considered consonant with these pressures, or at least capable of manipulating them. In order to ease the country’s adjustment to these new conditions, the foundation, in a display of considerable hubris, set out to strengthen traditional Thai Buddhism by increasing its capacity to confront modern social problems.

The Asia Foundation and Buddhist Education in Thailand Thailand’s Buddhist education system, which like the ecclesiastical government mirrored its secular counterpart, included limited networks of Buddhist secondary schools, some known as the “Pali-Mathayom” schools, partly because their curriculum included Pali, the language of Buddhism’s classical texts. These secondary schools, usually attached to local monasteries, had been established in Bangkok and in a small number of provincial locales. Buddhist higher education consisted of two Buddhist universities, or seminaries, located a short distance apart in central Bangkok. The first, Mahachulalongkorn University, was an extension of the Mahanikay-affiliated monastery Wat Mahathat, where Phimolatham forged his career. Mahachulalongkorn was managed by a board of governors headed and appointed by that monastery’s chief abbot (Phimolatham, until his removal from the position in October 1960). The second, Mahamakuta University, was an extension of the Thammayut monastery Wat Boworniwet. The Thammayut order administered its university differently and more closely—as a branch of the Mahamakuta Educational Council, a body chaired by the highestranking cleric of the Thammayut order. The universities were not under the supervision of Thailand’s Ministry of Education, but they did receive annual subsidies from the Department of

113

Y7216.indb 113

7/20/17 9:51 AM

R e f o r mi n g the M o nk s

Religious Affairs, a branch of that ministry. Neither institution, better characterized as junior colleges than universities, had achieved high academic standards. Both would figure prominently in the foundation’s efforts to assist the Buddhist hierarchy in reforming clerical pedagogy to better suit modern conditions, Mahamakuta initially more so than Mahachulalongkorn.31 A joint program of reform had seemed to the Americans a constructive response to the strain that social changes placed on Thai Buddhism. At this stage, the foundation team accepted as an article of faith that Thailand’s national unity depended in large part on the vitality of its religious institutions. A 1955 foundation assessment even asserted that Thailand’s lay and ecclesiastical Buddhist organizations “may be capable of becoming the mortar solidifying the whole social structure.”32 The grandiose claim captured the tone of the foundation’s discourse on Buddhism, which often attempted to characterize the ancient philosophy’s present-day influence with sociological precision to fit a program of “nation-building.” Although the premise would later come under attack, Buddhism’s supposed role as a social coagulant exerted a powerful influence over the outlook of the foundation team, motivating its initial steps into the Buddhist arena. The foundation had carefully distanced itself from the blatant anticommunism of the Committee for a Free Asia, its predecessor organization. Yet even within the new developmental framework, the foundation’s sponsorship of Buddhist educational reform still reflected a distinctly Cold War agenda. According to the foundation’s sociological models, Buddhism’s decline would diminish Thailand’s social cohesion and stability, which U.S. observers saw as its defenses against communism. A moribund Buddhism therefore carried a major risk of communist subversion while a robust Buddhism protected the country against the same. Given the aloof nature of the Thai Buddhist hierarchy, U.S. assistance to Buddhist education could not have taken the form of a unilateral intervention. The hierarchy protected its integrity by abiding by a set of rules. The Americans perceived that the Buddhist clerical leadership observed a doctrinally prescribed detachment from international or even Thai domestic politics. Because the clergy was unreceptive to taking any “active part in international political combat,” overtly political associations with the

114

Y7216.indb 114

7/20/17 9:51 AM

R e f o r mi n g t he M o nk s

Americans were out of bounds. The clergy was wary of involvement with foreign governments and was equally skeptical of any “foreign organization which might come bearing gifts with ideological strings tied to them.” The ecclesiastical establishment pursued its own interests according to its own methods. It rejected any modification to suit “would-be benefactors.”33 But the foundation also recognized an important loophole. Under one condition the hierarchy would show an openness to foreign aid—namely, if the foreign group “tactfully” offered its assistance in order to promote the hierarchy’s own, independently defined interests.34 Only on the basis of this narrow caveat could the foundation’s Buddhist programming proceed. Buddhism’s uncertain future in a country besieged by what were interpreted as powerful and pervasive modernizing forces did concern Thailand’s clerical leaders, who had a vested interest in preserving the monkhood’s traditional influence. The push for educational reform, which would initially focus on introducing secular subjects into the training of Buddhist seminarians, first came not from the foundation but from these concerned elements within the Thai hierarchy. A congruence of objectives emerged. Foundation assistance for Buddhist education would meet the requirements of the loophole. However, both parties had yet to confront the possibility of divergence between conservative goals and modernizing methods. By 1955 a framework for cooperation with the hierarchy appeared to have taken shape. Foundation records disclose that by no later than this year, and possibly earlier, the ecclesiastical leadership had officially embraced a policy of reform. The new “Buddhist Church Policy” called for a “major campaign of education for Buddhist priests to enable them to more effectively combat a drift away from the Church, and substitute for it a religious revival.”35 Secular training at the university level formed the crux of the new Buddhist reform movement. This followed on the theory that young monk graduates would prove better adapted to modern conditions if they received a modern secular education in addition to traditional religious instruction. That would equip them to regain the monkhood’s longstanding community leadership role. The program seemed to coincide exactly with foundation aims. A foundation assessment found that “any diffusion of such knowledge to priests—

115

Y7216.indb 115

7/20/17 9:51 AM

R e f o r mi n g the M o nk s

heretofore trained only in the scriptures and ceremonies of the Church, and often without even the rudiments of Western secular knowledge—can clearly be of vast assistance to TAF [The Asia Foundation] purposes.”36 On this basis, foundation assistance for higher education reform began with a $40,000 grant to Mahamakuta, probably awarded in late 1955. The grant was a sizable commitment, representing 18.7 percent of the $213,866 that the foundation designated for Buddhism expenditures during fiscal year 1955–56.37 After the Mahamakuta grant was awarded, the foundation’s relationship with the Thammayut order’s university became “closer and more direct.”38 Flush with a burst of financial aid, university administrators took the initiative in further strengthening their ties with the Americans. By late December 1955 arrangements were being made—at the request of Mahamakuta officials—for Richard Gard, the foundation’s special academic adviser on Buddhism and a professor of Buddhist studies at Yale, to personally assist the university. An agreement was reached: Gard would spend eight weeks in residence at Mahamakuta during April–May 1956 (one year before he would attend the Buddhist festival in Cambodia). He would be asked to teach three courses and provide advice on an overhaul of the university library. However, with this tightening of the relationship, tensions emerged. Granted special access to the university, Gard formed negative impressions of how it was being administered. After completing his eight-week term, Gard put his views on paper. His May 19, 1956, evaluation of the university’s organization and educational practices “questioned them severely” and found that they would “require considerable revision” if the university was to “utilize Foundation aid properly.”39 His hosts were not spared the brunt of his criticisms—deliberately or unfortunately, Gard’s report found its way into the halls of the university administration. Mahamakuta officials appeared at first to respond gracefully. They agreed in principle—and in writing—to his recommendations. Asia Foundation oversight of Mahamakuta’s administration escalated in the wake of Gard’s report. It may have been with the intention of guiding the university’s response to Gard’s criticisms that the foundation installed one of its consultants, Robert Fasson, as an in-house adviser at Mahamakuta. That assignment would later be revealed as a serious misstep.

116

Y7216.indb 116

7/20/17 9:51 AM

R e f o r mi n g t he M o nk s

Three years later, assessing developments in the interim, Gard would explain that the extension of aid to Mahamakuta since 1955 had been based on two assumptions: First, that the university authorities had a clear sense of their administrative mission—that they understood how to plan and manage an institution of higher learning. Second, that the university’s graduates would be “motivated and willing to return to rural areas for teaching and public welfare activities.”40 The disruption of the foundation’s ties with Mahamakuta had in the interim cast these assumptions in doubt. What had happened? Fasson had not enjoyed much success in his role as the university’s administrative adviser, a job he probably took up in late 1956. By May 1959 Gard still doubted that the Mahamakuta authorities even grasped the concept of a Western-style “university.” The institution still suffered from a range of other problems, including a lack of competent administrators and teachers and a shortage of classroom space. Even more troubling, university officials still refused to adopt what Gard called the “inevitable” and “impending” changes that would affect the Thai monkhood and Thai society at large as a result of “modern influences.” The Thammayut clerics, consistent with the generally conservative orientation of their order, had shown a (to the foundation) disturbing “traditionally-minded resistance to change.”41 The actions of the Mahamakuta administration in fact lent credence to charges of “resistance.” Not only had the officials failed to act on Fasson’s recommendations, they had even successfully maneuvered to have him removed. By 1959 Fasson’s presence had grown intolerable to the university authorities. Only after a letter appeared on the desk of the foundation representative indicating that the university wished to stop receiving foundation assistance did the full story come to light: The monks believed the foundation had “overstepped the bounds of discretion in placing an employee within the university to exert a stronger influence on the administrative and academic practices of the institution, then considered less than satisfactory.” They further charged Fasson with attempting to “call the tune,” threatening to withhold funds if the university failed to reform, and calling into question the clergy’s “dignity” and “independence.”42 The Americans had damaged, though not irreparably, their relations with one of the country’s most important Buddhist institutions by violating

117

Y7216.indb 117

7/20/17 9:51 AM

R e f o r mi n g the M o nk s

their own rules, spelled out in their programming procedures only a few years before. They had relearned an important lesson: the incident had “graphically illustrated” the pitfalls of “tying strings” to grants—and of entering too obtrusively into the cloistered and resolutely independent and conservative clerical world.43 Illustrative of the monkhood’s wariness of foreign manipulation, Mahamakuta’s intractability also highlighted the clergy’s second key characteristic—its internal fragmentation. Despite the formulation of a “Buddhist Church policy” ostensibly mandating reform for the clergy as a whole, administrators at the Thammayut-dominated seminary had demonstrated a remarkable degree of noncompliance with that policy. Not all monks participated enthusiastically in the restructuring of Buddhist education. Meanwhile, a separate but related problem—one that the difficulties at Mahamakuta also highlighted—loomed steadily larger in the foundation’s field of vision. It had extended aid to the university with the expectation that young monk graduates equipped with more secular knowledge and skills would return to play constructive social roles at rural monasteries in their own provincial communities. This was the second of the core assumptions Gard identified in 1958. However, graduates usually failed to meet that expectation, tending instead to remain in Bangkok, where many left the monkhood altogether. In such cases, modernizing the monkhood conceivably threatened its continued existence. These worrying trends would lead the foundation to make significant course corrections.44 In Gard’s view, the reluctance of Mahamakuta graduates to return to rural areas pointed to systemic flaws in the foundation’s approach to Buddhism. The theory that Buddhism promoted social unity and even national cohesion had sustained the foundation’s efforts from the beginning. Yet based on his observations in Bangkok and in Thailand’s rural areas, Gard found the conventional wisdom lacking: Buddhism’s unifying influence was in fact “negligible,” he argued, and to some degree it even contributed to social fragmentation.45 Gard’s counterintuitive position hinged on his view of relations between country and city. He perceived that rapid growth of the Thai capital, Bangkok, exerted strong centripetal forces on the country as a whole, siphoning

118

Y7216.indb 118

7/20/17 9:51 AM

R e f o r mi n g t he M o nk s

away economic and human resources from rural areas. The student monks at both universities, the majority of whom came from the impoverished northeast, had already participated in this rural exodus. As the situation at Mahamakuta demonstrated, migration to Bangkok for years of monastic education at all levels seldom ended with a return to village monasteries. Following this logic, Gard concluded that support for higher Buddhist education in the capital missed the mark. He suggested that rather than contributing to Thailand’s unity or stability, enhancing Bangkok’s centers of higher Buddhist education had the opposite effect—worsening the ruralurban tensions that already strained the Thai social fabric. Gard’s comments of May 1959 prompted a lengthy response from Fasson several months later. Fasson mostly agreed with the critique, confirming Gard’s account of how foundation aid to the university had originated, and buying into the idea that countering rural flight deserved to be an important consideration in designing the Buddhist programs. But he also raised substantial qualifications. Fasson was a changed man after his direct exposure to the Buddhist seminary. His experience had swept away any illusions he might have entertained about the clergy. Rejecting the attitude of a “starry-eyed visionary,” he now peered through the monks’ “outward facade of deep piety and rigid religious observance and discipline.”46 The majority of the clerics, he apparently had come to believe, were not mystic sages but rather ordinary men—satisfied with their entitlements, complacent in their attitudes toward reform, and not as devout as they might appear. Despite his disillusionment with the general character of the monkhood, Fasson’s newfound jadedness had its limits. He still believed that the monkhood included “many very good and sincere members.” And he held fast to the foundation’s original objectives, suggesting they had been misrepresented in Gard’s remarks. “I too do not ‘think Buddhism is one of the strongest unifying factors in Thailand,’ ” Fasson wrote, quoting Gard’s May memo to set up a crucial distinction of verb tense. “But I do think that it can be one of the strongest if not the only one with a real unifying potential . . . In effect, the purpose of the Buddhist education program from the beginning was based in my opinion on the essential need for developing the

119

Y7216.indb 119

7/20/17 9:51 AM

R e f o r mi n g the M o nk s

potential of what appeared to be the most promising unifying factor to be found in Thailand.”47 The possibility of realizing that potential, Fasson insisted, still supplied a valid platform for the foundation’s work. He illustrated its continuing fascination with nation-building by “unifying” Thai society. But the perceived problem of a rural exodus still gripped the two Americans. Fasson did not dispute Gard’s earlier assessment that the oneway migration of “better students” to the capital for advanced and even elementary education constituted a “serious sociological-psychological problem.”48 These were now considered deeply rooted patterns of behavior. Only if the foundation, in collaboration with the ecclesiastical authorities, could lift morale among young college graduates, making them more likely to return to the villages, could the situation be improved. Foundation personnel began to sense that this would require reform not only of Buddhist higher education but also—perhaps more promising—of provincial Buddhist secondary schools.

Rural Buddhist Education Since as early as 1956 the foundation team had considered from “several angles” the case for extending support to rural secondary schools.49 The drawn-out deliberations reflected the many difficulties the new initiative involved. A tentative proposal to channel this expansion of foundation aid through provincial branches of Mahamakuta quickly raised red flags. Exclusive collaboration with the Thammayut order and its seminary, the foundation team soon decided, was not a suitable approach for a program targeting provincial areas, such as Isan, where the Mahanikay order was larger and had greater influence. Balancing the competing interests of the two orders would prove challenging during this phase of the foundation’s work. Strong inter-order rivalry in secondary Buddhist education was an outcome of its decentralized administration, which also complicated the Americans’ efforts to find suitable organizational channels for their work. The provincial Buddhist schools, generally located on the grounds of local monasteries and directly administered by each monastery’s monks, did not fall under the umbrella of a single unified school system. They were not

120

Y7216.indb 120

7/20/17 9:51 AM

R e f o r mi n g t he M o nk s

technically classified as government schools, though Thailand’s Ministry of Education did include within its jurisdiction the two types of schools that were most numerous. The country’s 31 Rongrian Rat Khong Wat (RRK) schools, a network of schools administered by monks but open to lay students as well as monks and novices—and which did not offer Pali language instruction as part of their curriculum—were under the supervision of the ministry’s Private School Division, a specialized branch of its Department of Secondary Education. By contrast, the 11 Pali-Mathayom schools that were registered by early 1959 fell under the supervision of the ministry’s Department of Religious Affairs. More squarely dedicated to clerical education, the Pali-Mathayom schools excluded lay students. They offered instruction in Pali as well as secular subjects. The Asia Foundation’s proposed expansion into secondary Buddhist education received mixed reactions in interviews with Ministry of Education officials during the spring and summer of 1959. Thailand’s education bureaucracy had no coherent policy toward the Buddhist secondary schools. The minister of education, M. L. Pin Malakul, expressed interest in improving the secondary schools in a meeting with foundation staff Pierson and Klausner on April 9, 1959, but made it clear that he favored aid to those of the RRK type. A subordinate of Malakul’s thought the same. “If the [Thai] government were to help at all,” the official said, “this help should go only to the RRK schools, which include lay students.”50 Elsewhere within the Education Ministry, however, viewpoints differed sharply. Khun Foong Srivicharn, the director general of the Department of Religious Affairs, a frequent foundation contact and a member of Phimolatham’s May 1953 goodwill mission to Burma, informed a foundation representative of his “long range policy” to eliminate the RRK schools altogether, shifting all clerical secondary education to the Pali schools.51 His plans, which favored an enhancement of ecclesiastical assets, reflected his closer association with the Buddhist clerical leadership than other officials within the ministry. It must have accentuated the ministry’s hall of mirrors quality, in the eyes of the U.S. team, when Foong’s subordinate, Khun Chote Thongprayoon,

121

Y7216.indb 121

7/20/17 9:51 AM

R e f o r mi n g the M o nk s

later contradicted him. Chote Thongprayoon, showing the typical deference of a Thai bureaucrat to his superior, had remained silent as Foong explained his policy of dismantling the RRK system. But in a separate meeting later held in private he counseled that Srivicharn’s long-range plan was sure to aggravate internal tensions within the ministry. A wholesale shift of support from RRK to Pali schools, he said, would “probably lead to other departments of the Ministry (and even the Minister) feeling offended” and would “lead to opposition on their parts.”52 Chote, for his part, recommended that the RRK system be assisted in some fashion. The Americans found the ecclesiastical authorities just as prone to advancing their own vested interests as their governmental counterparts. Functioning with little or no direct oversight from the clerical hierarchy in Bangkok, the provincial schools represented something of a blind spot in the monkhood’s internal administration. An early foundation study had even found that the monkhood “actually has no policy on secondary education for monks.”53 This left room for disagreement as the foundation began to lay the groundwork for its new initiative. A meeting between Pierson and Kittisophana held prior to his appointment as supreme patriarch, probably in the summer of 1959, hinted at the potential for conflict. Kittisophana was still serving as both the ecclesiastical prime minister and the ecclesiastical minister of education when Pierson called on him to discuss the foundation’s budding interest in Buddhist secondary education. Kittisophana’s insufficient English most likely required that a translator be used. On the issue of secondary education, Kittisophana seemed out of touch, perhaps in part because of the language barrier. Pierson was surprised that Kittisophana at first even seemed “unaware” of the existence of the provincial secondary schools, though his ministerial duties would have placed all aspects of clerical education within his brief. Later he seemed to have recalled having “heard of them” but explained they were of no concern to him because the schools “were under the control of individual [monasteries] and not under the Sangha.”54 At first appearing oblivious, and then uninterested, Kittisophana went on to express strong opinions about the secondary schools. When asked for

122

Y7216.indb 122

7/20/17 9:51 AM

R e f o r mi n g t he M o nk s

advice on the foundation’s proposal to revamp the rural secondary system, he recommended that it pursue a “branches of the universities” approach, establishing new provincial schools as “feeders” of both Bangkok seminaries and dismantling both the current Pali and RRK systems. Yet, more significantly, he also warned that it might be more prudent if the foundation did not proceed at all. “The Foundation should be cautious about aiding such schools,” the soon-to-be supreme patriarch reportedly said.55 Why did Kittisophana adopt this strangely cautionary tone while discussing a project as seemingly benign as school reform? The documentation provides no specific explanations. Yet it seems fair to speculate he sought to steer the Americans away from a venture that threatened to draw them even more deeply into the monkhood’s inter-order politics. Kittisophana undoubtedly knew that in order for the Americans to bring their new project to fruition they would need to intensify their relations with the one monk who had already launched his own rural Pali school network and also— more than any other figure within the hierarchy—had by then become a lightning rod for inter-order tensions. He may have even known that Pierson had scheduled his next consultation with Phimolatham himself. That meeting probably took place at Wat Mahathat, in Phimolatham’s private offices. Also present was Phra Maha Manat, the acting secretary general of Mahachulalongkorn University, Phimolatham’s trusted lieutenant and one of the two monks who would be accused of receiving communist materials from China the following year. Phimolatham had already made significant investments in Buddhist secondary education, having developed a limited network of secondary Pali schools that he now considered part of his Mahachulalongkorn-based fiefdom. Pierson found Phimolatham’s stance unhelpful: it quickly became apparent that the Mahanikay order’s leading proponent saw the foundation initiative as an opportunity to expand his own influence at the expense of his Thammayut rivals. Displaying a “very possessive” attitude toward his own Pali-Mathayom schools, Phimolatham also made “very critical” statements about those provincial schools that fell outside of his jurisdiction. There was little need to debate which organizational channels would best suit the foundation. The solution, Phimolatham suggested, was clear: to improve

123

Y7216.indb 123

7/20/17 9:51 AM

R e f o r mi n g the M o nk s

secondary education, the foundation should aid him in expanding “his own schools further into the provinces.” With no sense of embarrassment, Phimolatham frankly maneuvered for a closer association with the foundation and for greater access to its financial patronage.56 Yet Phimolatham’s Thammayut competitors, like his Mahanikay nemesis Kittisophana, had behaved with no greater restraint. Pierson, at the time of his discussion with Phimolatham, had already held a meeting with Phra Mahawirawong (Juan Utthayi) about the secondary school initiative. Head of the Thammayut order, Mahawirawong was the monk whose animosity toward Phimolatham had been an enduring feature of the clergy’s political landscape since Phimolatham blocked his ascension to the ecclesiastical premiership in 1954, paving the way for the Mahanikay-affiliated Kittisophana. Like Phimolatham, he viewed the foundation’s new proposal through the lens of his own order, leading him to the “same idea” of securing Foundation patronage only for his order’s very small number of Pali-Mathayom schools. With weary resignation, Pierson would conclude that the positions of these two men illustrated that rivalry between the two orders was the “major problem” facing the foundation’s expansion into Buddhist provincial education.57 In reality, the foundation had more to contend with than just the divergent aims of the two orders, or the internecine Mahanikay rivalry between Kittisophana and Phimolatham. Conversations at the Ministry of Education had revealed an even more fundamental split, one that divided governmental and clerical interests. Officials at the ministry, with the one exception of Foong Srivicharn, had advocated foundation aid to the lay-inclusive RRK schools. The alternative, preferred by clerics of both orders, was to boost the Pali-Mathayom schools, but only those of their own order. In the event, the foundation tilted toward the Pali-Mathayom system, gratifying the Buddhist hierarchy and presumably leaving the RRK system to wither on the vine. This decision also earned the support of Foong and his Department of Religious Affairs, strengthening the foundation’s connection with this important Thai official, which would continue to prove useful. But in choosing the Pali-Mathayom route, the foundation gained no favor with the remainder of the Education Ministry, which never gave the program its “wholehearted backing.”58 Preserving good relations with the

124

Y7216.indb 124

7/20/17 9:51 AM

R e f o r mi n g t he M o nk s

clergy, even at the expense of some official goodwill, must have seemed the prudent move. Fasson, for his part, had endorsed it. Seconding that endorsement was William Klausner, the organization’s rising star.

Buddhism and Community Development: From Thailand to Laos The Asia Foundation had plans for Klausner. His conversion to Buddhism was not a cause for alarm, though San Francisco had raised that possibility. If Klausner had become somewhat culturally hybridized, Pierson assured the home office that his Buddhist faith had in no way compromised his objectivity. “We understand the concern behind this question,” he wrote, “but can say emphatically that our experience to date is that Klausner is very objective in his approach to our Buddhist programs.”59 The foundation’s senior ranks had also debated the exact terms of his employment. It was understood that his assignment would officially attach him to the Bangkok office. But San Francisco had also been convinced of an urgent need to make him available to the office in Vientiane. Klausner’s fluency in Lao—the major language of Thailand’s Isan region—and his personal connections there made him well suited to play a dual role in both Thailand and Laos, serving as a roving assistant linking Bangkok across the Isan plateau to its younger sister office in Vientiane. In Laos, now an emerging Cold War battleground, the reported influence of the communist Pathet Lao over the Buddhist sangha deeply alarmed U.S. official observers and their anticommunist Lao allies in the Royal Lao Government (RLG). These conditions lent a sense of urgency to the foundation’s expanding role there, which complemented increasing CIA involvement in the country’s political and military affairs. It was Leonard Overton, the foundation’s representative in Cambodia, who now requested Klausner’s services in Laos.60 During 1958, Overton was helping lay the groundwork for the new Vientiane program during extended visits there from Phnom Penh. Pierson, Klausner’s sponsor in Bangkok, raised no objections to sharing him with Vientiane—a collegial gesture made despite his sense there was more than enough work to keep Klausner

125

Y7216.indb 125

7/20/17 9:51 AM

R e f o r mi n g the M o nk s

in Thailand on a full-time basis. He recognized the situation in Laos as dire, and that the “urgency” of developing a program across the Mekong required Klausner’s expertise. Yet in exchanges with Overton and Robert Blum, the foundation’s president, he stipulated that Bangkok must remain Klausner’s home base, that he only be “loaned for certain periods” to the Lao program.61 Kept in the dark about these negotiations, Klausner received an urgent summons to the foundation’s Bangkok office in the morning of November 26, 1958, to have the “whole problem” surrounding his employment explained.62 Klausner agreed to assist Vientiane and to go on the foundation payroll as a full-time programming assistant in rural development and Buddhist affairs from around March 1, 1959. In the interim—from December 1958 through February 1959—he would have the status of a part-time consultant. Having only just returned, possibly the previous night, from Phimolatham’s homecoming expedition to Khon Kaen, Klausner’s career with the foundation now seemed secure. So, too, did the position of the foundation itself. Weeks after Klausner came on board at an entry level in Bangkok, the organization came under scrutiny at the highest levels in Washington. On January 22, 1959, President Eisenhower met with senior officials, including CIA director Allen Dulles and the cancer-stricken secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, in the Cabinet Room of the White House. Their purpose was to discuss foreign intelligence matters. First on the agenda was a presentation by Cord Meyer, the CIA’s deputy director of plans, on the work of the foundation. Its activities received high praise. The group was based “on a very fine type of operation” and was being “conducted on very sound principles and a firm basic concept,” said George Allen, a business executive and personal friend of Eisenhower’s (who was evidently included in the official confab on the strength of those credentials alone). Also reassuring was Allen Dulles’s confidence that the foundation’s “cover had been maintained very successfully.”63 In January 1959, the foundation was in little danger of either losing its covert backing or having it publicly exposed. Klausner’s many observation tours that year involved frequent crossings of the Mekong. Chauffeured down jungle roads in a foundation Land

126

Y7216.indb 126

7/20/17 9:51 AM

R e f o r mi n g t he M o nk s

Rover, fording streams and even building bridges when necessary, Klausner moved through the Thai-Lao border zone—often with his wife and adopted daughter in tow. His reports from Thailand’s rural areas, now also including the country’s northern and southern regions, opened a pipeline of information that helped the Bangkok office adapt its work to better suit local needs. On that basis, Klausner’s input would help bring about another mutation in the foundation’s Buddhist programming. The foundation’s purpose, always mutable, was again shifting—now toward a more holistic concern for the social service function of monks. The organization’s original goal of reforming Buddhist education was not supplanted or erased by the new emphasis on social action, but rather folded into it. The revised agenda meshed with Klausner’s own understanding of the rural clergy’s most pressing needs, shaped during his early days as an ethnographer, and it would quickly take on political overtones reflecting Cold War instability in the wider region, especially in Laos and, later, South Vietnam. The unfolding debate over how the Asia Foundation could best support Buddhist education reform had drawn Klausner into the mix, putting his instincts on display. Fasson had asked for his feedback while laboring over his admittedly “long-winded” response to Gard’s May 1959 memo. The foundation was right to include in the scope of its work provincial Buddhist education, Klausner suggested. But he also made a correction, or rather emphasized a theme that Fasson had not: Buddhist education in outlying areas was needed as “a means of helping to establish a stronger role for the monks in community development”—a need that was especially acute in “district centers.”64 Presumably monks who played such a role would compete effectively with communist attempts to win local influence by focusing on socioeconomic improvement. Fasson wholeheartedly agreed that this idea warranted special emphasis. He appended Klausner’s remarks to the final draft of September 29. Klausner had returned to Bangkok only on September 8, having been on loan to Vientiane since early July. Since being hired in March, he had divided his time about equally between Thailand and Laos. Now he settled in for an extended stay in Thailand until November 14. But it would not be a completely sedentary period spent in the Bangkok office. He had another

127

Y7216.indb 127

7/20/17 9:51 AM

R e f o r mi n g the M o nk s

tour planned for October—his fifth that year in Thailand. During the fiveday trip to Isan’s Ubon province (October 15–19), Klausner assessed the situation among Ubon’s clergy through a series of interviews. There he would confirm that the evolving thrust of the foundation’s Buddhist programs corresponded with a “growing realization on the part of the rural clergy that it was necessary to upgrade their skills if they were to maintain their traditional role.”65 Upon arrival, Klausner sought out Ubon’s leading Thammayut cleric, the “influential” and “revered” Chao Khun Thep, the order’s ecclesiastical governor for that province, who was also abbot of Wat Supat.66 Chao Khun Thep’s prestige also reflected his membership on the Provincial Community Development Committee, a body composed of Ubon’s highest-ranking Ministry of Interior official, the provincial governor, and various other officials and civic leaders, as well as Thep’s counterpart, Ubon’s Mahanikay ecclesiastical governor. Through his involvement in this group, which convened once monthly, Chao Khun Thep could speak with authority on the government’s community development efforts in Ubon and the monkhood’s potential role in them. Klausner found the mere fact of Chao Khun Thep’s high-level involvement encouraging. The senior monk was by no means a grudging participant in the committee but professed to find the work “stimulating” and even “fun.” Because of his status as a high-ranking Thammayut cleric, Klausner considered Chao Khun Thep’s stance a “promising sign” of broader Thammayut openness. Certainly, Thep’s promotion of community development among his Thammayut peers—at yearly conclaves of Isan’s highest-ranked Thammayut clerics, and at more regular meetings of the order’s officials in Ubon—enhanced that possibility. For the present, however, Chao Khun Thep’s cooperation with provincial officials on development projects—including sermons to village communities on such subjects as health, sanitation, and occupational training—remained the exception that proved the rule. Village monks, as he explained to Klausner, though “very amenable” to playing an “active role,” had not yet become systematically involved. And despite Chao Khun Thep’s own efforts to promote community activism within the senior clerical ranks, he

128

Y7216.indb 128

7/20/17 9:51 AM

R e f o r mi n g t he M o nk s

conceded that high-ranking monks in towns and district centers had not demonstrated “much understanding of this community development issue nor was much initiative shown in taking a leading role in community development projects.”67 The efforts of Ubon government officials to include Chao Khun Thep and his Mahanikay counterpart as clerical advisers to their secular planning body were also exceptional. Elsewhere, provincial officials were not as inclined to cooperate with the clergy. As Klausner confirmed through a later interview with Chao Khun Sridham, the Mahanikay ecclesiastical education officer for Ubon province and abbot of Wat Klang, government development officers generally kept the clergy as a whole at a distance, an aloof posture that some monks resented. Striking a bitter note, Sridham informed him that the government “has not appreciated the knowledge and influence of the priests and has avoided seeking their cooperation.”68 Klausner returned to Bangkok and reentered the stream of urban office life. For months, a writing project—a scholarly summing up of his ethnographic research—had preoccupied him. By early November 1959 he finished his study of “Popular Buddhism in Northeastern Thailand” and turned his attention, probably at Pierson’s request, to a follow-up project—a memorandum applying his findings to the Buddhist programming of the foundation in Thailand. The outcome was an important crystallization of his views that earned Pierson’s endorsement as a kind of foundation manifesto. Modernization challenged the Thai sangha to adapt, Klausner wrote in his November 10 assessment. Displacement and decline, and resulting social instability, were the key dangers. But, he added, these could be avoided—and progress and stability ensured—through concerted measures to preserve the monkhood’s leadership role.69 The foundation would play its self-ascribed part. But improved cooperation between the sangha and the relevant Thai government agencies was also essential. Beneath the benign intentions, an attitude of cultural arrogance was perhaps palpable: Thai Buddhism could be saved from itself only if its indigenous Thai stewards overcame their own dysfunction to become competent partners of the foundation. Seen from one angle, the program was innovative, even revolutionary. The secularization of clerical education—the linchpin of a joint strategy to

129

Y7216.indb 129

7/20/17 9:51 AM

R e f o r mi n g the M o nk s

keep the monkhood relevant and involved in local communities—would transform the clerical outlook, casting off the blinkered scripturalism of an earlier pedagogy. But from another vantage point, and as Klausner repeatedly emphasized, the program amounted to maintenance and preservation, not revolution; the monkhood’s leading role in rural secular affairs, which it sought to protect, was a traditional, even timeless, prerogative.

Buddhist Southeast Asia in the twentieth century.

130

Y7216.indb 130

7/20/17 9:51 AM

R e f o r mi n g t he M o nk s

The foundation’s rationale for pursuing this agenda was multifaceted. But, increasingly, the Americans viewed their aims in relation to the unfolding Cold War crisis beyond Thailand’s borders. The unconstructive clerical involvement in secular affairs they observed elsewhere in Southeast Asia— already in Ceylon, Burma, and Laos, and soon in South Vietnam—was a troubling possibility in Thailand as well.

Lao Buddhism Since the coming of war to Laos with the arrival of Japanese troops in 1940 and the deterioration of the French colonial position there after 1945—and especially with the resumption of hostilities in neighboring Vietnam several years after the 1954 Geneva Accords—concern over the state of the Lao sangha had grown among Royal Lao Government, U.S., and international Buddhist observers. The U.S. discourse surrounding Thai Buddhism drew in part on a vocabulary of backwardness, deterioration, and decline. In Laos, the same narrative was thought to apply—only with greater severity. U.S. observers came to widely perceive moral laxity, intellectual torpor, the physical decrepitude of Laos’s monasteries, and its monks’ reputed vulnerability to communist infiltration as the defining features of the Lao monkhood. As in Thailand, Buddhism had a pervasive influence in Laos, where it was introduced in the fourteenth century by Khmer monks who brought with them the Prabang Buddha—one of the most famous Buddha images of the Theravada tradition. However, among the many points of contrast between Thai and Lao Buddhism, Buddhists were not the majority in Laos: only approximately one-half of the country’s 2,210,000 citizens counted in a 1958 census had formally adopted the religion.70 The country’s hill tribe groups, which in some cases were ethnically distinct from the Lao majority that generally inhabited the lowlands, favored various forms of animism and spirit worship, largely resisting Buddhist conversion. According to Lao official estimates there were 17,023 monks and novice monks in Laos in 1957, but the figure fell to 15,746 by 1964.71 The number of monks in proportion to lay Buddhist devotees (around 1.5 percent) remained slightly higher than it was in Thailand. But the size of both monkhoods appeared to be shrinking

131

Y7216.indb 131

7/20/17 9:51 AM

R e f o r mi n g the M o nk s

in relation to the lay Buddhist populations that sustained them through merit-making donations of robes, food, and other articles. As late as November 1955, U.S. officials at the Vientiane embassy had remained confident about prospects for Lao clerical support in the escalating Cold War contest for the country. There is “no question,” one report earnestly exclaimed at that time, of the clergy’s “anti-Pathet sympathies.”72 This referred to the Pathet Lao (PL)—the former ragtag appendage of the North Vietnamese army that was now transforming, under the effective guidance of its Vietnamese communist sponsors, into a viable political and administrative force in its own right.73 In an important development, as the French withdrew, the Geneva Conference of 1954 had placed the northeastern provinces of Phongsali and Xam Neua not under RLG but under PL control. Reported persecution of monks in these “regroupment zones,” where monks were in some instances expelled from their pagodas and forced to perform agricultural labor, had convinced U.S. embassy observers that clerical antipathy to the PL was all but guaranteed.74 They had yet to grasp the background of the anticolonial movement in Laos or the nature of the PL’s nationalist appeal for many Lao clerics. American attitudes toward Lao Buddhism soon devolved from confident to concerned, as evidence of the monkhood’s decadent state fueled fears of PL “infiltration.” New pathways of intelligence opened with the expansion of Asia Foundation activities. Robert Blum, the foundation’s president, had first raised the possibility of a new foundation program in Laos in a May 1955 letter to Leonard Overton. It may have been Overton’s administrative duties in Phnom Penh, where the foundation presence was less than a year old, that kept him from acting on Blum’s proposed expansion until January 1956, when his first scouting mission to Laos took place. Receiving the American visitor, the Lao cabinet ministers of Religious Affairs and of Education shared their negative assessments of the country’s religious institutions with perhaps surprising candor, setting the tone for the unfolding U.S. discourse on Lao Buddhism. Lao Buddhism has “considerably relaxed its discipline during the past few decades,” Overton reported, relaying descriptions made by these two officials. “It now faces a serious crisis of either pulling itself back to its former position or of seriously jeopardizing its influence upon the people. A compelling need is a better educated clergy.”75

132

Y7216.indb 132

7/20/17 9:51 AM

R e f o r mi n g t he M o nk s

Overton’s 1956 visit coincided with the publication of a brief tract on Lao Buddhism that would crystallize impressions of its decline for a wide audience. The author, Thao Nhouy Abhay, had served in the frequently rotating position of minister of education. He was also a member of that ministry’s “Literary Committee.” Having been first published in French in 1956 in Saigon, Abhay’s monograph decried the “ignorance” of Lao monks in a stilted English translation released as a small pamphlet in 1958.76 An improved translation published the following year better captured his critique. In a derisive but improbable comparison, which partly reflected the author’s elite secular French education, Thao Nhouy Abhay likened Lao monks, with their poor command of Pali, to “the physicians of Molière.” Much like those literary figures of foolishness, Lao monks believed they could “explain everything by quoting more or less correctly sentences in Pali or some references to which common people have no access.” As well as lacking proficiency in Buddhism’s classical language, the platitudinous and intellectually shallow monks of Laos were also lax in their discipline, “slackening” in their performance of religious rites, and prone to botching their prayers.77 Yet rather than a debased form of Buddhist high culture, Abhay might simply have been describing a local religious culture, perhaps not so different from the one Klausner had studied in Ubon, just across the Mekong from Laos. His writing perhaps also refracted the derogatory views of French colonialists who, during an earlier era, had associated Lao Buddhist monks with their perceptions of the country’s “ignorance, disorganization and illiteracy.”78 Thao Nhouy Abhay’s piece stood as a passionate appeal from an eminent Lao scholar-official for the “reformation of Buddhism.” Yet while likening himself to a “new Luther” (he was no Molière), Thao Nhouy Abhay delegated responsibility for actually effecting reform to other parties. He called for the formation of a “small group of enlightened monks” that would supervise Lao Buddhism’s rehabilitation. This elite clerical cadre, he proposed, could serve as an example of monastic discipline and erudition and enforce higher standards of conduct. It was a quixotic solution at best, and not one that came to fruition.79 In any case, Thao Nhouy Abhay’s writings did inform the discursive U.S. assessments of Lao Buddhist decadence. The research of American

133

Y7216.indb 133

7/20/17 9:51 AM

R e f o r mi n g the M o nk s

anthropologist Joel M. Halpern, carried out in Laos in 1957 and 1959, transmitted Thao Nhouy Abhay’s theme of decline. Halpern drew extensively on the writings of this little-known figure in his own trenchant analysis of Lao Buddhism. The RAND Corporation, a think tank formed in 1948 to offer research and analysis to the U.S. military and defense establishment, sponsored Halpern’s study, which Yale published in its final form in 1964. Halpern quoted at length Thao Nhouy Abhay’s pessimistic portrayal of a Lao sangha “on the steep slope of decay” and relayed his call for clerical reformation. It was in order to help explain the “seeming paradox” of the Pathet Lao’s success in winning clerical support (even while allegedly persecuting monks in its zones of control in the northeast) that Halpern referred to this obscure Lao commentator’s work. Here Halpern echoed an already well-established consensus among U.S. officials, who also drew a connection between the Lao clergy’s intellectual and moral dissolution and the PL’s reportedly successful recruitment within its ranks.80 U.S. concern over the political allegiances of the Lao monkhood intensified by 1958, the year that Thao Nhouy Abhay’s piece appeared in its first clumsy translation. This was a momentous year in Lao politics. Signaling growing sophistication and discipline under Vietnamese tutelage, in January 1956 the PL had formed a national front organization, the Neo Lao Haksat (Lao Patriotic Front), creating a platform for participation in electoral politics. While not exactly triumphant, the results of the partial Lao national elections of May 1958 showed that the PL, which carried more than a third of the vote, was popular and could perform well in the electoral fray.81 It won 9 of the 21 seats up for election, and an allied party gained another four. Against the backdrop of these disheartening results, reports that a majority of Laos’s 17,023 monks sympathized with the PL—and that an estimated 2,000 of them were “actively spreading” communism—reached U.S. officials. A partial explanation they considered was that “infiltration” at the very top of the Lao ecclesiastical establishment had enabled the PL to extend its influence down to the monkhood’s foundations, winning such widespread support. The formation of a coalition government in September 1957 had already yielded unwelcome results for right-wing interests. In a calculated move to advance the communists’ Buddhist agenda, the PL requested the

134

Y7216.indb 134

7/20/17 9:51 AM

R e f o r mi n g t he M o nk s

cabinet post at the Department of Religious Affairs.82 The post was assigned to a PL minister, Phoumi Vongvichit. The cabinet would fall in July 1958. But the nine-month interval, according to foundation observers, gave the “communists a golden opportunity to exert direct influence on the Sangha.”83 Their assessment was true: the communists did exploit the cabinet post of the PL-affiliated Phoumi through various means. This included the use of the sangha hierarchy, to which Phoumi now had access, as a “ready-made communication network” through which instructions could be passed independently of the civil administration.84 Equally troubling to the Americans, however, was the political status of Phra Koune Manivong, the Lao ecclesiastical prime minister—second in rank only to Laos’s supreme patriarch. Phra Koune’s seemingly erratic behavior is puzzling. It was in May 1958, probably in the lead-up to the elections, that Phra Maha Khamtam, editor of the Lao Buddhist newspaper Siang Praphutatham, had reported to USIS officials that the clergy included around 2,000 active communists.85 In June, in a separate encounter, Phra Koune evidently corroborated—or perhaps just repeated—Khamtam’s earlier estimate, urgently requesting USIS assistance in responding to the threat. Yet U.S. officials were at this very time firmly convinced of Phra Koune’s own communism and were privately debating over its source. Could it have been, as one report speculated, that Phra Koune was “simply an unscrupulous, ambitious person from a poor South Laos background who has used the clerical life as a way of getting ahead—a sort of latter-day Southeast Asian Cardinal Wolsey”? Or was the ecclesiastical prime minister “simply a half-baked sort who, like [the 1960 coup instigator] Kong Le, was dissatisfied with the way things were going in Laos and turned to Communism as perhaps a way of bringing change for the better”?86 The enigma of Phra Koune may present the Cold War’s only example of a monk who was also a mole, although for which side remains unclear. Like the PL’s electoral success, the Phoumi ministerial appointment has been well documented as a debacle for U.S. interests in the Lao Buddhist arena. Left undocumented, until now, are the suspicions that surrounded Phra Koune, revelations that also shed new light on the royal ordinance of May 25, 1959. This sweeping legislation revamped the administration

135

Y7216.indb 135

7/20/17 9:51 AM

R e f o r mi n g the M o nk s

of the Lao sangha in favor of tighter government control, even anticipating the Sarit-sponsored Sangha Act of 1961 in Thailand. The clergy’s autonomy contracted as the government proclaimed new powers. Not only would the state now reserve the right to approve or endorse ecclesiastical appointments at every level, but it would also insist, even more intrusively, that most ecclesiastical correspondence pass through official government channels.87 Among other changes to the upper levels of the Lao hierarchy, the position of ecclesiastical prime minister was abolished. This move was apparently intended to remove the supposed leftist incumbent Phra Koune from his “place of influence.”88 Behind the scenes, Americans pressed for even more assertive measures. Mere administrative restructuring was not enough to counter PL influence. To win clerical hearts and minds, a more systematic program of anticommunist galvanization was also needed. The emerging plan, which Gard helped devise, called for a major seminar. This “national Buddhist conference” would indoctrinate monk participants in anticommunism, orient them as to Laos’s precarious position in the global politics of the Cold War and their own important role in it, and offer practical training, including instruction in the upkeep of monasteries and in first aid. But the time was not yet ripe. Such an ambitious production would require the wholehearted backing of the Lao Ministry of Religious Affairs. While the PL-affiliated Phoumi headed the ministry, the plan could not go forward. This obstacle dissolved along with Laos’s first coalition government, which collapsed in July 1958. A new cast of ministers under the right-wing, U.S.-sponsored government of Phoui Sananikone proved more cooperative. In particular, Koranhok Souvannavong’s appointment as secretary of state for interior guaranteed official collaboration. Souvannavong professed to feeling “very disturbed” about communist influence within the sangha.89 Meeting with USIS officers, he endorsed the conference proposal, and delegated the director general of religious affairs, Kruong Pathoumxad, to oversee the planning. The Americans were pleased. They held Kruong, a loyal RLG supporter, in high regard. What unfolded after a year of preparation, over July 4–11, 1959, was Cold War theater of a high order. The seminar convened in a caravan of official

136

Y7216.indb 136

7/20/17 9:51 AM

R e f o r mi n g t he M o nk s

cars, police escorts, and buses that “blossomed with the saffron color of monks’ robes” in the afternoon of July 3. The meeting took place at Prabat Phonesan (the shrine of the Buddha’s footprint), a verdant rural setting across the Nam Ngum River some 80 kilometers from Vientiane, near Paksane. Lending his prestige to the conclave of 103 monks drawn from throughout the country, the Lao supreme patriarch attended the opening of the event. Daily instruction began at 6:00 a.m. Nightly film screenings supplemented daytime discussions. An embassy dispatch depicted the conference as “successful beyond expectations”—success gauged by the supposedly vehement PL response. Communist efforts to discredit the gathering with malicious rumors—including charges that the supreme patriarch personally disapproved of the meeting and had left early, and that conference organizers had embezzled “lavish sums” of U.S. aid intended to fund the conclave—suggested the event had seriously threatened PL interests, the report claimed. The conference had developed a new “practical formula” for anticommunist indoctrination of the clergy that could be applied elsewhere. Enthusiasm for further meetings in other locales reportedly ran high.90 This rosy evaluation may now be read against the grain in light of other sources. The September 1959 report omitted signs that the seminar had backfired. Not all the monk participants had been won over by the summer camp atmosphere, by the hands-on technical training, or by the token gifts handed out during the closing ceremonies—including certificates of completion, new monastic robes, and complimentary copies of the Life of the Buddha (an in-house USIS publication first produced in Thailand and adapted for distribution in Laos). Some monks denounced the seminar as an “Americandirected political maneuver,” which of course was true. USIS involvement was by no means hidden; it was rather obvious.91 Officials with that agency had not paid heed to the church-state divide they were supposed to observe. Their activities, transparent to all observers, now had had a substantial blowback. All this lent added significance to the deepening role of the Asia Foundation, an organization whose government ties remained invisible, even to most of its own employees. As the negative reaction to the national Buddhist

137

Y7216.indb 137

7/20/17 9:51 AM

R e f o r mi n g the M o nk s

conference had shown, and as an internal foundation history would later state, USIS activities in Laos were inevitably “looked upon by the [Lao] Sangha as politically motivated” and were for this reason problematic and frequently even counterproductive. It was believed that the foundation, by contrast, could operate with more discretion and greater effectiveness because of its “private character and non-political” approach.92 Formally establishing an office in Vientiane in March 1959, the foundation had drafted its objectives in the country three months before. The dry technical language contrasted with Thao Nhouy Abhay’s nostalgic tone. But it did share his perspective on Lao Buddhism’s decay and on its urgent need for rejuvenation: “During the past several decades . . . the sangha has undergone a qualitative decline which is beginning to impair Buddhism’s status . . . the sangha and the teaching have become a priority target for the communists . . . Recognizing these dangers the Foundation is primarily concerned with helping Buddhism in Laos regain its former eminence through programs designed to reform and strengthen Buddhist education, improve administrative techniques, encourage international exchange, and perfect internal communication.”93

Thai-Lao Buddhist Exchange: An Asia Foundation Project “International exchange” referred especially, though not exclusively, to Thailand. The Buddhist clergies of Laos and Thailand shared a long history of interaction, particularly along the fluid, linguistically intermingled Mekong border zone, though an even more enduring connection reportedly existed between the monks of Laos and Cambodia.94 Friendlier LaoCambodian religious ties reflected the absence of an imperial history of the sort that (like the eighteenth-century wars between Thailand and Burma) had infused Thai-Lao relations with distrust—and Thai-Cambodian relations, too. Repeated Thai invasions and seizures of Lao territory, including areas on the Mekong’s eastern bank, had in the nineteenth century involved forced deportation of local Lao populations that kindled continuing resentment of Thai aggression. The Mahanikay-Thammayut divide, which also reached into Laos, projected these tensions into the religious realm. Lao relations with the

138

Y7216.indb 138

7/20/17 9:51 AM

R e f o r mi n g t he M o nk s

grassroots Mahanikay order that predominated in Thailand’s Lao-inflected northeast were positive, reflecting affinities of class, history, language, and culture. Significantly, these connections transmitted another current of Phimolatham’s transnational influence and fame. Though Thailand’s foremost Mahanikay monk, he also enjoyed a large following in Laos, augmenting his reputation in Burma and beyond. The scandals that surrounded him and his institution, Mahachulalongkorn, in 1960 would also have an impact across the Mekong. Lao monks of Thammayut affiliation constituted a small minority who lived in only 32 of Laos’s 2,084 wats and were almost exclusively restricted to the southwestern province of Champasak, a territory formerly under Thai control, where by 1955 they maintained 30 pagodas.95 Widely perceived as agents or representatives of Thailand’s royalist-inspired “colonization” of the country, their relations with the Mahanikay majority, which in Laos (unlike Thailand and Cambodia) included even the royal family, were deeply strained. The tensions were greater than in adjacent Thailand, where interorder conflict was of a political and sometimes social nature.96 In Laos, by contrast, there were incidents of violence between the orders. Rumors of these reached Klausner during his May 11–15, 1959, tour of Pakse, the capital of the Champasak province where the Thammayut minority was mostly based. Traveling conditions were typically rugged. Klausner crossed the border along rutted roads in the Land Rover and began a series of interviews with local clerics, including one with Phra Maha Bun, abbot of the Thammayut monastery Wat Tad. The Thammayut monks of Champasak had been subjected to “discrimination” and “unfair treatment,” Maha Bun informed his Lao-speaking American guest. Recalling past incidents preserved in local memory, Maha Bun mentioned instances where Thammayut monks entering Pakse from Champasak town “had been apprehended by police at Mahanikai priest’s bidding and chased away into the forest or across the river.” The inter-order feud even reached into the local lay community, another informant explained. Lay followers of one order would not intermarry with those of the other. Furthermore, monks’ attendance at merit ceremonies was strictly segregated by order.97 These tensions were of more than academic interest to U.S. officials. They regarded inter-order divisions—which in Laos had a special volatility

139

Y7216.indb 139

7/20/17 9:51 AM

R e f o r mi n g the M o nk s

due to the added anti-Thai element—as yet another soft spot in Lao Buddhism’s anticommunist defenses, compounding both the weaknesses they associated with its intellectual decay and their fears of the Cold War consequences of national “disunity.” These perceptions were not unjustified, as one Lao Thammayut monk would confirm, reflecting back on the success of the PL revolution from the vantage point of the late 1970s: “[Interorder tension] was a weak point at which the Communists could strike and thereby destroy the Sangha,” he said. “It conflicted with the principle of national unity and cohesiveness.”98 Given these dynamics, Lao government policy toward Buddhism evolved in remarkably self-defeating directions after the fall of the First Coalition in July 1958. A right-wing government, closely allied with the United States and excluding all PL elements, now came to power. Martin Stuart-Fox reports that in the interval between July 1958 and the neutralist Kong Le coup of August 1960, “ideologically committed” Lao-speaking Thammayut monks from Thailand’s northeast were invited to preach anticommunism in Laos. The RLG took these steps under U.S. pressure “to use the Sangha and Buddhism as an ideological counterweight to the nationalist appeal of the LPF.” Predictably, the effects were the opposite: the sermonizing of Thai Thammayut outsiders played into communist hands, giving the PL added leverage over a divided Lao clergy by further aggravating inter-order as well as national tensions. As a sign of internal splintering due to the controversial Thai Thammayut intervention, a secret clerical faction formed during this period. This shadowy group was called the “Movement of Young Monks against the Thai Thammanyut [Thammayut] Monks.”99 As the United States recruited Thai monks to preach anticommunism in Laos, so, too, were Thai resources being brought to bear—also under U.S. auspices—on the set of problems related to reforming Lao monastic education. This followed a well-established precedent of Thailand’s Buddhist establishment lending various forms of support to Buddhist education in Laos and Cambodia. In July 1954, Thailand’s supportive regional role in clerical education had been strongly reinforced when an accord was reached between Thai, Cambodian, and Lao Buddhist hierarchies. Authorized by the Thai government, the agreement had established procedural guide-

140

Y7216.indb 140

7/20/17 9:51 AM

R e f o r mi n g t he M o nk s

lines for the admission of Cambodian and Lao monks into Thailand for training. Completing the circle of international exchange, the agreement also formalized procedures for making Thai monk instructors available to teach in both of Thailand’s eastern neighbors. Deepening American concern over the intellectual decay of Lao Buddhism now formed the backdrop for a series of foundation-sponsored initiatives to draw on Thai Buddhist expertise in the rehabilitation of Laos’s supposedly decadent clerical establishment, especially through reform of Buddhist schools. Their activities worked within the grooves of a well-worn pattern of exchange.100 But this time the United States would avoid the heavy-handed mistake it had made in dispatching Thai Thammayut monks to Laos. In Bangkok, the Asia Foundation’s troubled relations with the Thammayut seminary, Mahamakut, had pushed the Americans into a closer relationship with Mahachulalongkorn University, its more progressive, Mahanikayaffiliated rival. It was a sign of the increasing confidence the Americans had begun to place in Mahachulalongkorn that they recruited two of that university’s top administrators to serve as outside consultants on the reform of the Buddhist education system in Laos, then under way under joint U.S.-RLG direction. In late February 1960, Klausner once again crossed from Thailand into Laos. On this occasion, he escorted Phra Maha Manat, acting secretary general of Mahachulalongkorn, and Phra Maha Soda, another of the university’s clerical administrators. The purpose of this latest tour, which would include stopovers in Vientiane, Savannakhet, and Luang Prabang, was to allow the two visiting Thai clerics to take stock of Lao Buddhist education and propose new approaches to reform. The condition of Lao Buddhism’s educational infrastructure reputedly came as a “shattering revelation” to the Thai visitors.101 Attuned to the nationalistic tensions in the Thai-Lao relationship, the two Thai clerics saw their role as a delicate one. They concluded that inadequate instruction in Pali was one of the most important problems facing the Lao Buddhist education system. But they hesitated to recommend to their American hosts that Mahachulalongkorn establish a model Pali school in Laos staffed with teachers and administrators from their home institution in Bangkok. That level of Thai intervention into Lao Buddhist affairs could spark resentment.

141

Y7216.indb 141

7/20/17 9:51 AM

R e f o r mi n g the M o nk s

As Klausner noted in his report, “Maha Manat and Maha Soda realize the difficulties in having Thai aid offered to Laos. There may be some resistance in terms of face saving and prestige.” A Thai-administered Pali school could be beneficial, Klausner would conclude, but only if “properly handled.”102 Although this tentative proposal would not come to pass, Klausner felt that the tour had been “extremely valuable.”103 Manat and Soda had conducted themselves well. They impressed the Americans with their seriousness and sensitivity and their judicious and intelligent observations. The foundation staff felt reassured that they had not miscalculated in bringing the pair to Vientiane. As late as March 1960, the Americans still believed that collaboration with the monks of Mahachulalongkorn could assist them in the vital task of improving Buddhist education in Laos.

The Phimolatham Scandal: International Repercussions Within five months, however, Klausner would find himself drafting a detailed report on the Bangkok arrest of one of his former traveling companions. Having earned the Americans’ high esteem through his competent performance as an administrator at Mahachulalongkorn—and through his excellent suggestions on the Laos tour—Phra Maha Manat was now under detention in a police compound, accused by Thai investigators of possessing communist reading materials. The foundation had not anticipated the crisis at Wat Mahathat which led to Manat’s arrest. Its personnel now feared the possible fallout for their own operations. Concerned by their close association with the now-beleaguered Mahanikay monastery, the Americans took steps to distance themselves and to renew their ties with Mahamakut University, the more conservative Thammayut seminary that remained untouched by allegations of communism. Preparations for a visit by Richard Gard, under way in June 1960, revealed the foundation’s suddenly aloof posture from the institution it had regarded as a reliable and intimate partner. Gard’s Bangkok itinerary would not include an appointment with Phimolatham at his monastery. Pierson explained the omission to Joel Scarborough, the foundation’s assistant representative in Thailand and his immediate subordinate: “You will notice that I have not

142

Y7216.indb 142

7/20/17 9:51 AM

R e f o r mi n g t he M o nk s

listed Chao Khun Bhimoladhan [Phimolatham] or anyone else at Wat Mahatadtu [Mahathat]. Whether we visit there or not depends of course on the circumstances at the time, and I am not sure it will be a wise thing to do.”104 Yet time would be allotted for Gard to pay his respects to Chao Khun Bram Muni, a senior monk of Wat Boworniwet, the Thammayut monastery that also served as the institutional home of Mahamakut University. Scaling back contact with Phimolatham proved an effective means of damage control. On July 8, Scarborough commented with a sense of relief that despite the extensive coverage the scandals had received in the Thai press, the foundation’s name had not yet been mentioned “in any form” in connection to the events.105 It feared being implicated. But in the absence of more penetrating press coverage of the crisis, the foundation’s ties to Mahachulalongkorn remained comfortably in the background. The Bangkok office would manage to avoid a public relations crisis. Nevertheless, while finding themselves able to avoid any public entanglements, foundation observers saw that the university’s fall from grace would have serious repercussions for them in Thailand. Mahachulalongkorn’s now “seriously damaged” reputation compromised U.S. investments in the university.106 There was little hope that Mahachulalongkorn would soon recover its former prestige. Suspicions of the university ran at a fever pitch among Thailand’s ruling, anticommunist elite, as rumors of a punitive merger with Mahamakut were relayed to the Americans through private channels by the leading intellectual and publisher Kukrit Pramoj, editor of the widely circulated newspaper Siam Rath.107 During the rainy months of June and July 1960, it seemed to the Bangkok-based staff that a working relationship with Mahachulalongkorn and its disgraced parent monastery would not easily be restored. The crisis was also troubling, Klausner believed, because it diminished Mahachulalongkorn’s stature beyond Thailand’s borders, which the foundation team had highly valued and sought to enhance. Referring especially to Laos, Klausner predicted that the “University’s influence . . . within neighboring countries . . . will be forfeited to a large degree” due to the arrests. Manat’s disappearance from the scene was, in this respect, especially unfortunate. Klausner lamented the loss of his “programming initiative and

143

Y7216.indb 143

7/20/17 9:51 AM

R e f o r mi n g the M o nk s

administrative expertise,” alluding to the contributions he had made in Laos during his visit in February 1960.108 Mahachulalongkorn’s sudden implosion confronted Klausner and his colleagues with a wholly unexpected reversal for their Lao program: far from fulfilling expectations that it might somehow assist with educational reform in Laos, thereby contributing to their overarching (but implicit) goal of diminishing communist influence in that country, the university itself had now been exposed as an alleged hotbed of communist “subversion,” undermining its standing in Thailand as well as its potential role across the Mekong. Assessing the situation from the wintry remove of North Haven, Connecticut, in January 1961, Gard assumed the role of a cooler head, allaying fears of a disaster. The foundation may be “overly-concerned” about the troubles at Mahachulalongkorn, Gard wrote. Professorial in his approach, he saw little risk of embarrassment in a situation that was, after all, part of a normal pattern of disciplinary intervention by the Thai state into clerical affairs. The foundation unavoidably ran the “calculated risk,” Gard counseled reassuringly, that communists might “enter, subvert or control Buddhist groups which are recipients” of its assistance. The situation in Thailand was unexceptional and unsurprising in light of experiences elsewhere: “Certain aspects of the Thai picture are suggestive of the manner of Communist activity in the Lao Sangha since 1957,” he concluded.109 Gard’s sense of calm was well placed. Concern that the controversy would redound to the foundation’s discredit subsided. Relations with Mahachulalongkorn would soon be restored. The crisis, meanwhile, ran its course, demanding further updates from Klausner, now well established as the foundation’s leading commentator on Thailand’s “Buddhist sphere.” Since March 1960 he had held the status of a permanent employee, finishing a 15-month recruitment process and shoring up his finances for the foreseeable future. A trip in March–April 1961 symbolically closed the circle of this first phase of his career. He returned to the northeastern province of Khon Kaen, where a railway journey with Phimolatham in November 1958 had provided the substance of his debut dispatch to his future employers. This time, however, he came to report not on an enthusiastic official reception for the famous monk but on local an-

144

Y7216.indb 144

7/20/17 9:51 AM

R e f o r mi n g t he M o nk s

ger over his persecution. Phimolatham remained an immensely influential figure. His fame in the northeast had now taken on the added element of martyrdom. Klausner listened as local notables denounced the governmental and ecclesiastical authorities behind the “discriminatory actions” taken against the Mahanikay order’s most revered monk. Meanwhile, plans were already under way for the foundation to bring Supreme Patriarch Kittisophana, Phimolatham’s nemesis and chief persecutor, to the United States.110 Later remembered as the “capstone” of the foundation’s Buddhist programming in Thailand, the June 1961 tour would cultivate an unprecedented level of goodwill with the Thai Buddhist hierarchy’s most powerful figure.

145

Y7216.indb 145

7/20/17 9:51 AM

Fi v e

Thailand and the International Response to the 1963 Buddhist Crisis in South Vietnam

A

half-dozen newspaper photographers greeted Kittisophana and his entourage on the observation deck of the Empire State Building’s 86th floor. The “benign-looking,” bespectacled Thai supreme patriarch took in the New York City panorama, submitting to the photographers’ demands with an “amused tolerance for the frivolous.”1 His U.S. tour had begun in Honolulu on June 9, 1961, and included stopovers in San Francisco; Chicago; Madison, Wisconsin; and Washington, D.C., prior to the five-day visit in New York. Now that the journey was nearing an end the 72-year-old monk had acquired a firsthand knowledge of the United States. “I have seen many people in this country who are interested in Buddhism, but not too many,” Kittisophana reportedly said while he and his party posed for more pictures in an 80th-floor drawing room. Although the U.S. Buddhist community remained very small, the supreme patriarch perceived that the numbers of attendees at Buddhist monasteries was “increasing.”2 Asia Foundation personnel had gone to great lengths to arrange for this extended visit of Thailand’s highest-ranking Buddhist cleric, his party of seven lay and monk attendants, and William Klausner, the group’s American interpreter. Kittisophana’s remarks showed they had succeeded in broadening the horizons of their visitor, acquainting him with the United States and with Buddhism’s small but apparently growing role there. Plans for the tour had taken shape in Bangkok during a July 13, 1960, audience with the supreme patriarch. Kittisophana responded favorably when Richard Gard, accompanied to the private meeting by Pierson, Klausner, and Foong Srivicharn, broached the possibility of a visit to the United States.

146

Y7216.indb 146

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t C r i s i s i n So u th Vi etnam

Pierson quickly saw the diplomatic potential.3 Lobbying for approval of the plan in San Francisco, he noted that the “visit could also be conceived of as a further link of friendly, understanding Thai-American relations coming not too long after the King’s visit to America,” which had taken place in 1960. Those benefits, however, would accrue to the Americans only if they were able to manage the tour’s logistics. They needed to prove to Thai observers their grasp of the supreme patriarch’s prestige, as well as the unique demands of his office. Pierson recognized the stakes involved: “We realize . . . that we will be judged by our ability to handle the visit with sensitivity and understanding . . . and probably in the larger context America itself is being tested as to its ability to receive and properly care for a personage of such a revered position in the Buddhist hierarchy.”4 These concerns compelled the U.S. dog to repeatedly indulge its wagging Thai tail. As the supreme patriarch’s arcane travel needs were impressed upon his foundation hosts, the “sudden whims” of those Thai officials advising the foundation on Kittisophana’s accommodations fostered a “grin and bear it” attitude among the Americans.5 Meanwhile, frictions arose among foundation staffers as they compared notes on the finer points of monastic protocol. Weighing in on the question of where Kittisophana would sleep, Gard commented on the proper height of his bed in a dense memo referencing an obscure Buddhist text. “Must we be subjected to this pedantic fluency every time we send Gard a piece of correspondence,” Jim Greene fumed in a confidential exchange. “Quite frankly, and I write for many of those who read his efforts, we are becoming a bit edgy about his poor and purple prose.”6 Despite these tensions, the tour went forward to Kittisophana’s satisfaction. “Intellectually alert” and “curious,” the supreme patriarch reportedly “wanted to see everything.” He seemed most impressed with the variety and grandeur of U.S. museums. But it was the apparent quality and extent of academic study of Buddhism in the United States that made a “definite impression” on him.7 By the time of his July 5 visit to the Empire State Building, Kittisophana had already toured the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where a Ph.D. program in Buddhist studies had recently been

147

Y7216.indb 147

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t C r i s i s i n So u th Vi etnam

established (prematurely according to Gard, who objected that the Wisconsin program existed “in name only” and did not deserve the supreme patriarch’s attention).8 After New York, the delegation would stop in New Haven and Boston before a July 11 flight to London. For Klausner, returning to Yale with his clerical guests in tow promised a surreal collision of worlds—of his past collegiate life and his current one. The New Haven itinerary, which Gard had arranged, included tours of Sterling Memorial Library and the American Oriental Library, lunch at Mory’s with Edwin Stanton (now a former U.S. ambassador to Thailand), and receptions at the Divinity School and at Woodbridge Hall by Yale’s provost designate, Kingman Brewster. For Kittisophana and the other Thai tour participants, seeing Yale (and later Harvard) would reinforce impressions formed in Madison “of the serious academic work in Buddhist studies being carried out” by Western scholars at these universities—positive impressions that nevertheless contained an improbable kernel of concern.9 It was the supreme patriarch himself who, early in the tour, voiced the fear that the West could overshadow Thailand as a center of Buddhist learning, setting a “pattern of thinking” for others in the tour group.10 This was not something that the slightly xenophobic cleric greatly welcomed, and his sense of apprehension explains a significant outcome of his U.S. experience: Kittisophana, as Klausner reported, now showed an “increased interest in the work of the Buddhist universities” (Mahachulalongkorn and Mahamakut) as well as a (for him) new “desire to undertake reforms in the [Thai] Buddhist educational sphere.”11 These reforms, Kittisophana now thought, could preserve Thailand’s standing on the world stage of Buddhist scholarship. A now more worldly Kittisophana edged toward educational progressivism. Discussion of Mahachulalongkorn served as an unwanted reminder of Phimolatham, who had presided over that university prior to his recent demotion. Events in London conjured still more uncomfortable associations with the now disgraced monk. It was with reluctance that Nai Foong Srivicharn and others in the party granted a pair of London-based Moral Rearmament Army (MRA) representatives, Archie MacKenzie and Woolridge Gordon, a 15-minute audience with Kittisophana. Foong Srivicharn had been included in the supreme patriarch’s entourage as its most promi-

148

Y7216.indb 148

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t C r i s i s i n So u th Vi etnam

nent lay member. He served as Klausner’s close confidant, advising him on matters of protocol and helping to manage the supreme patriarch’s private appointments. The MRA duo were made to understand that their meeting with Kittisophana, in light of the situation in Bangkok, required delicate handling. Praising Thai Buddhism while drawing Kittisophana’s attention to purported MRA achievements in Asia, they came with a carefully scripted appeal for a greater Thai Buddhist role in the group’s conferences in Caux, Switzerland. MacKenzie and Gordon mentioned that Burmese monks had attended a recent MRA meeting. But they omitted any reference to the monk who had until recently been Thailand’s most prominent MRA participant—and had attended a conclave at Caux. It was clear to Klausner that the two MRA representatives had been “well briefed as not a word was said about Chao Khun Bimoldhamma [Phimolatham].” Indeed, the incidents at Wat Mahathat, and Kittisophana’s rivalry with Phimolatham, were conveniently “forgotten.”12 MacKenzie and Gordon’s discretion failed to pay off. Kittisophana and his party remained “very non-committal” about greater Thai Buddhist involvement in a global peace movement whose Cold War allegiances many in Washington questioned. Perceiving that the group employed cultlike recruiting tactics, exaggerated the success of its peace-brokering efforts, and idolized MRA-founder Frank Buchman to an excessive degree, the Thai clerics, too, regarded the organization with distrust. They rebuffed the MRA pair, leaving Klausner with the impression that “[b]oth because of the Thai Government’s attitude and that of the Sangharaja [supreme patriarch] and those surrounding him it probably will be a long time before Thai priests again become involved in MRA activities.”13 Through a separate meeting with Christmas Humphreys, a Cambridgeeducated British barrister, the Thai delegation’s London experience again intersected with the politics of the Cold War. President of the Londonbased Buddhist Society, Humphreys, a zealous Buddhist convert, worked to popularize the faith in the UK and abroad. He played a prominent role in the emerging community of world Buddhism through participation in the World Fellowship of Buddhists (WFB). At Gard’s request, Humphreys also played host to the supreme patriarch and his party during its four-day

149

Y7216.indb 149

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t C r i s i s i n So u th Vi etnam

London stopover, giving rise to an abortive discussion of contemporary politics. Humphreys was the first on the tour to raise the subject of communism, commenting to his clerical guests that Thai Buddhism, considering its “strength,” could be an effective anticommunist force. Yet while nodding in tacit agreement, the Thai clerics declined to “publicly discuss the issue further.” The Buddhist barrister had touched a nerve—and received a predictable response. Klausner was not surprised that the Thai monks remained reticent about communism in public, even as they acknowledged to him in private that they perceived the political ideology as a “threat” to their faith. The visitors considered the Thai monkhood exceptional among other national Buddhist clergies due to its stringent adherence to the monastic code of conduct, including especially the “non-involvement in politics” that Theravada Buddhist doctrine traditionally demanded. For this reason, Humphreys’s questions seemed to them inappropriate for public discussion. It was a theme the Thai delegation had repeatedly emphasized during their tour. Extolling the strictness of Thai monks, they had often made unfavorable comparisons with their counterparts in other Buddhist countries. Now these themes resurfaced in London, as the monks pointed out to Humphreys—as they had to other Westerners—that the “Thais were much more strict in personal discipline than their Buddhist neighbors, even those of the Theravada sect, and that the Thai priests were not politically involved in secular matters as was the case in Ceylon, Burma and Laos.”14 If Kittisophana and his entourage held Thai monks apart from their Theravada peers, they were even more dismissive of monks subscribing to the Mahayana tradition that prevailed in Tibet, other parts of eastern Asia, and—of special significance in the years to come—Vietnam. Kittisophana’s international tour had involved frequent interactions with monks of the Mahayana school—in Japan, Hawaii, and San Francisco. Thailand’s supreme patriarch approached these meetings with diplomatic aplomb. He professed to embrace those Mahayana monks he met as fellow adherents to the Buddhist dhamma (teaching). In private, however, the Thai clerics “questioned the credentials” of monks whose differing interpretations of Buddhist doctrine allowed them worldly indulgences unheard of in the more austere

150

Y7216.indb 150

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t C r i s i s i n So u th Vi etnam

Theravada tradition. Known to drink sake and even take wives, it was Japanese monks’ sometimes more permissive attitude toward participation in secular political affairs that set the stage for a new clash of cultures within the international Buddhist community that would rival the very different tensions between Japanese and Thai Buddhists during World War II. Signs of such a clash would appear on the horizon soon after Kittisophana’s 1961 tour abroad. Yet few international observers would notice these early indications of mounting discontent among the Mahayana Buddhists of South Vietnam.15 A July 15 flight from London to Cologne launched the continental segment of Kittisophana’s European tour. This partially retraced Phimolatham’s steps in Europe in 1958, with visits to Switzerland and Rome. In Switzerland, however, Kittisophana and his party avoided Caux and instead visited Lausanne, another city overlooking Lake Geneva. In this picturesque resort town where Thailand’s reigning King Bhumipol had mostly been raised, Kittisophana visited the king’s mother, who still lived there. The meeting, arranged through the Asia Foundation in a last-minute alteration of Kittisophana’s itinerary, showcased the supreme patriarch’s warm relations with the royal family, contrasting with Phimolatham’s estrangement from the palace. The meeting also demonstrated the foundation’s own positive relationship with the crown—the details of which would soon be discussed in Rome during a private talk between Klausner and Prince Wongsanuvatr, Thailand’s ambassador there. Klausner found the Thai diplomat already familiar with the foundation’s activities in Thailand. Indeed it was Wongsanuvatr who had prepared for Bhumipol “documents of information” detailing the foundation’s work. The dossier was given to the king in advance of a confidential meeting he held, on an unspecified date, with Blum and Pierson. The foundation’s contacts in Thailand now rose to the height of Bhumipol himself.16 The party returned on July 20 to an enthusiastic Thai reception in Bangkok. With the Thai public eager for details, members of the delegation— including Kittisophana himself—granted numerous interviews. “The sight seeing was not a matter of walking, but running,” Kittisophana enthused to

151

Y7216.indb 151

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t C r i s i s i n So u th Vi etnam

reporters in an August 4 interview.17 With the foundation’s sponsorship of the tour pointed up along with Kittisophana’s good-natured commentary on his experiences abroad, the Americans enjoyed a publicity coup. A venture they had initially considered an enormous risk had paid off in equal measure. Privately, the Americans credited the successful outcome to Klausner’s “diplomatic skill” and his good rapport with other members of the party.18 Within three months, Klausner’s diplomatic capacities would again be called on—this time in Phnom Penh, site of the sixth conference of the WFB. Richard Gard, Leonard “Bud” Overton, and Klausner made up a small team of foundation-affiliated observers at the conference. Significantly, it was here—at this gathering in Cambodia—that the first international rumblings of the Buddhist crisis in neighboring South Vietnam could be heard. Yet the three-person Asia Foundation contingent did not register these tremors. Most notably, they failed to provoke any comment even from Gard, whose role in Phnom Penh stood out for his direct involvement with the South Vietnamese Buddhist delegation. Developments in Saigon would later reveal the significance of South Vietnamese maneuverings at the conference, which had apparently gone unnoticed.

The Asia Foundation and the Roots of South Vietnamese Buddhist Politics More than a decade of Vietnamese involvement in the WFB had preceded the 1961 conference. These years had also spanned momentous change in Vietnamese politics, including an event of far-reaching impact: the 1954 Geneva Conference’s effective partition of the country, which had placed southern Buddhists under the authority of the Catholic-dominated government of Ngo Dinh Diem and his close circle of associates. Diem’s exceptionally devout Catholicism was of special importance to his U.S. backers, a group that had expanded from clergymen and other individuals active in Catholic religious circles to include such policy makers as Secretary of State John Foster Dulles—whose own Christian religious views made Diem appear to him as a reliable ally in the anticommunist fight.19 Employing both overt and covert means, Washington had helped engineer a mass mi-

152

Y7216.indb 152

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t C r i s i s i n So u th Vi etnam

gration of Catholics from Vietnam’s north to its southern provinces.20 The exodus, dubbed the “Passage to Freedom,” significantly altered the religious balance of the country by increasing the size of the minority Catholic population in the South from 461,000 to 1,137,000.21 Diem’s government had then refused to allow the nationwide elections that the Geneva Conference had also stipulated should be held throughout Vietnam by 1956. How was the character and organization of Vietnamese Buddhism evolving during this period? And what was the true nature of the Diem government’s relationship with its majority Buddhist constituency? The outcome of the 1961 WFB conference should be seen in the context of earlier efforts by U.S. officials to answer these key questions—efforts to which Gard himself had made significant contributions. One salient trend was the consolidation and growth of Buddhist associations at both local and national levels. The birth of the international WFB in 1950 coincided with the establishment, in the same year, of the new Saigon-based Buddhist Studies Association of southern Vietnam.22 A lay group formed under the guidance of the Buddhist scholar Mai Tho Truyen, this association galvanized southern Vietnam’s lay community, which had faced challenges since the 1920s, especially in rural Cochinchina, with the formation of the influential, eclectic Cao Dai and Hoa Hao Buddhist movements. Then, in a further sign of the Vietnamese Buddhist “revival,” under way according to most sources since the early 1930s, a national Buddhist congress convened at the Tu Dam pagoda in the ancient imperial capital of Hue on May 6, 1951. Approximately 50 lay and clerical delegates attended, representing Buddhist associations from each of Vietnam’s northern, central, and southern regions, including Mai Tho Truyen’s Saigon group. Among other important measures, the congress voted to unify the participating groups in the General Buddhist Association of Vietnam, reorganize the Vietnamese sangha, provide for the religious instruction of lay youth and adults, and “codify” Buddhist religious rites. And, in another historic vote, the congress ratified Vietnamese membership in the WFB.23 Deepening religious bonds abroad mirrored those of local and national unification at home. Vietnamese ties to the WFB were bolstered in 1952

153

Y7216.indb 153

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t C r i s i s i n So u th Vi etnam

by an international gesture that inspired profound sentiments of Buddhist fellowship within a broad swath of the Buddhist population in Vietnam. While en route to the WFB’s second conference in Tokyo in September of that year, a delegation of Ceylonese monks bearing purported relics of the Buddha to Japan stopped in Saigon for 24 hours. A “solemn reception” greeted their arrival, reportedly attracting a crowd of more than 50,000. The occasion was an emotive mass encounter not only with the sacred religious artifacts, transported by their Ceylonese bearers with elaborate care, but also with a pan-Buddhist consciousness that the WFB supposedly embodied.24 As a related effect, the encounter with the Ceylonese mission lent added momentum to Vietnamese Buddhism’s “modern revival.” Reflecting on the “impressive spectacle” in a thick 1959 volume compiled under the direction of the French author René de Berval, Mai Tho Truyen would describe the visitors’ invigorating effect on Buddhism throughout the country. In the tangled skein of Vietnamese folk religious culture, with its intermingled elements of Buddhism, animism, Taoism, Neo-Confucianism, and other more eclectic doctrines, the reception in Saigon had also asserted the dominance of urban orthodox forms of Buddhist practice.25 To the extent that this had “eclipsed or overshadowed sundry sectarian groups,” Mai Tho Truyen, a leading figure of the urban Buddhist elite, had considered the gathering advantageous—as well as consonant with a decades-long process of Buddhist renaissance that supposedly recovered and codified an “authentic” Buddhist orthodoxy.26 When partition came in 1954, it disrupted the national consolidation of Vietnamese Buddhism. Contact between Buddhists in the north and their counterparts in the south virtually “came to an end” as the status of organized Buddhism in the north became a subject of rumor. Although the communist government repaired several important Buddhist monuments that had sustained damage during the anti-French war, including the iconic One-Pillar (Mô.t Cô.t) pagoda of Hanoi, it was generally understood to harbor an antireligious agenda, and by 1960 reportedly “many fewer” pagodas remained open in the north.27 By contrast, in newly established South Vietnam, the catholicized Diem government presided uneasily over a Buddhist constituency growing in

154

Y7216.indb 154

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t C r i s i s i n So u th Vi etnam

levels of self-consciousness, social activism, and institutional cohesion. By several numeric indices, South Vietnam’s Buddhist community developed impressively between 1956 and 1962. Of the country’s 4,766 pagodas, 1,295 were renovated and 1,275 constructed during this period, while the number of higher schools for monks more than doubled and membership in lay associations increased by a third.28 Consistent with the overall pattern of expansion, the General Buddhist Association of Vietnam, based at Saigon’s Xa Loi pagoda after 1958, also grew. Some 1,800 monks and 1,227,000 lay members made up the association when it convened for its triennial congress on September 5–7, 1959.29 By 1962, its ranks had reportedly increased to 3,000 monks and it also claimed 3 million lay members, including 70,000 to 90,000 in youth groups.30 If institutional growth formed one major trend, then a turn toward social engagement delineated a second and perhaps related pattern. New modes of social activism were gaining acceptance within South Vietnam’s clerical ranks—especially among younger monks whose receptivity to secular involvement distinguished them from many of their older peers. As Prados writes of this generational split, “The older, entrenched hierarchy of the General Association were conservative and maintained the contemplative stance of traditional Buddhism, but younger, dynamic and assertive bonzes (monks) were increasingly moved by the notion that Buddhism could play a constructive role in Vietnamese society.”31 They seemed ready for the Asia Foundation. The lay Buddhist community, too, was embracing social activism. It was no less an authority than Paul Mus who had noticed a pattern of “increased social involvement” among prominent lay Buddhists.32 This was an observation he made during his trip to the region in summer 1957 (the Yale- and Asia Foundation–sponsored trip mentioned previously). In August 1957, in a letter to Robert Blum, Mus relayed details of his visit to Saigon. Meetings there with members of the Buddhist Studies Association of South Vietnam had made an impression on him. In the three years since Vietnamese independence, the association had reportedly raised $100,000 in private donations for its “social action programs,” which it coordinated through 25 “loosely connected” provincial

155

Y7216.indb 155

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t C r i s i s i n So u th Vi etnam

centers. “I had expected to find Buddhism in Saigon as you know it was, and has been as far back as I can recollect—degenerate, despised by the intelligentsia, connected with all kinds of Taoist and magical practices at the village level,” Mus wrote to Blum. Yet the activities of the association seemed on track to displace notions of Buddhist degeneracy with a new image of reform-minded social action. Reporting on the association’s various social welfare projects, including the construction of new pagodas and support for schools, dispensaries, and overseas religious training for monks, Mus praised its leadership as “well organized men of the world with a strong religious and social purpose.”33 For Richard Gard, lay social engagement presented one of several pathways for a greater foundation role in Vietnamese Buddhism. Gard visited the country in February 1959 and again in July–August 1960 on separate foundation-funded trips. Surveying prospects for an expanded Buddhism program, Gard strongly recommended that the foundation step up its activities in this area. His early case for greater collaboration with South Vietnam’s Buddhists appears to shed considerable light on his later role in the Phnom Penh conference of 1961. At the time of Gard’s second visit to Vietnam in 1960, the foundation’s Saigon office was three years old, but little was yet being done to influence Buddhism. Notably, several of the modest efforts being made in this area had directly benefited Mai Tho Truyen, whom the Americans identified as the leading southern layman. One 1957 grant had supported the social work of his Buddhist Studies Association; another had sent him to Tokyo for a 1958 religious conference. A third project had offered $1,000 toward the publication costs of an “enormous special issue” on Buddhism—none other than the Berval volume featuring Mai Tho Truyen’s scholarly article on Buddhism in Vietnam.34 The second, ten-day tour brought Gard to Hue, the coastal city of Nha Trang, and the mountain resort town of Dalat, nestled in the southern reaches of the central highlands. Arriving finally in Saigon, he visited the prestigious An Quang and Xa Loi pagodas and met with foundation staff in the Saigon office to restate his case for an expanded Buddhist program. Assistance to Buddhist “social welfare” programs was only one of several avenues he saw for an enhanced program. “Vietnamese Buddhism is deserv-

156

Y7216.indb 156

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t C r i s i s i n So u th Vi etnam

ing of . . . assistance,” Gard counseled, “and there is no substantial reason why the [foundation] should not develop a notable Buddhist program in Viet Nam.” Here Gard approached the critical issue of the Diem government’s treatment of the majority Buddhist population. This was an issue that, as Gard’s remarks reveal, had weighed heavily on foundation planners, so far constraining their work in Vietnamese Buddhism. In a key statement—one intended to support his argument for an enhanced foundation role—Gard explicitly dismissed allegations of official discrimination against Buddhists. One of his objectives during the 1960 tour had been to assess the “political status” of Buddhism in the country. Contrary to the rumors of political persecution that Gard had heard, interviews with local officials convinced him that there was “no official antiBuddhism policy.” Charges of anti-Buddhist discrimination struck Gard as incredible for reasons he explained in detail: “I have heard stories about political discrimination against Buddhist groups but they were not always reliable—possibly Catholics were trying to discourage Foundation’s interest in Buddhist affairs and/or Buddhists were trying to evoke the Foundation’s sympathy.”35 It was on this basis that Gard challenged the foundation’s rationale for limiting its involvement in Vietnamese Buddhism, a hesitation that, as he indicated, hinged on perceptions of a volatile interreligious climate where an overly close association with Buddhists might redound to the foundation’s discredit. “Assistance by the Foundation to deserving Buddhist groups in no wise embodies or implies anti-government movements,” he wrote. “In short, I would think that the premises upon which the Foundation has delayed its Buddhist program work in Vietnam should be re-examined.”36 Other evidence suggests Gard’s point of view was, at the time, a still reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous reality. Instances of savvy Diemgovernment diplomacy on the religious issue appeared to conflict with more sinister depictions of its policies toward Buddhism. The triennial congress of the General Association of Buddhists in September 1959 represented one such instance. Thirty monks and fifty lay delegates from various Buddhist associations attended the gathering. Also present on the opening day were senior Diem government representatives, including Vice President Nguyen Ngoc Tho,

157

Y7216.indb 157

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t C r i s i s i n So u th Vi etnam

five cabinet members and other government officials. U.S. embassy official Joseph A. Mendenhall commented on the significance of this sizable official delegation. Although the “impressive first-day attendance,” Mendenhall wrote, was not equal to Diem government support for the Catholic Marian congress (held in February 1959), it did “reflect GVN [Government of (South) Viet Nam] awareness of the importance of showing attention to Buddhist activities.” The large official showing, he added, was “doubtless motivated in part by a desire to counteract any feeling that the government is Catholic-oriented because of the religion of several of its principal personalities.” Such comments implied the Diem government’s policies toward the Buddhist community were more sophisticated and supple than was widely understood. Though discrimination certainly did occur, at this stage it seemed that charges of systematic persecution were by no means clear cut.37 Perhaps it was more than coincidental that Mendenhall’s account of the  Buddhist congress dovetailed with Gard’s more sanguine take on Catholic-Buddhist relations in South Vietnam. In fact, Gard’s reports on Vietnamese Buddhism had directly influenced Mendenhall, as indicated by a separate memo filed on August 30, 1959—just eight days prior to the start of the congress. Mendenhall’s higher-ups in Washington had evidently filed a request for more information on Buddhist organizations in Vietnam. He responded with a survey of Vietnamese Buddhism from earliest times to the present. He included details on Buddhist institutions and commented on the likelihood of their functioning as “vehicles for [communist] subversion.”38 The Mendenhall memorandum was, in fact, mostly a repackaging of two sources, both of which it explicitly referenced. The bulk of its structure and content was plainly derived from Mai Tho Truyen’s 1959 survey of Vietnamese Buddhism. To the extent that Truyen, through this direct transmission of his scholarship to the Washington policy-making establishment, influenced U.S. official conceptions of Vietnamese Buddhism, his role mirrored that of another elite native interpreter of Buddhism. A bond of synchronicity strengthens the connection between Mai Tho Truyen and his Laotian counterpart and contemporary Thao Nhouy Abhay: like Truyen’s article on Vietnamese Buddhism, Thao Nhouy Abhay’s study of Buddhism

158

Y7216.indb 158

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t C r i s i s i n So u th Vi etnam

in Laos—including his critical portrayal of its decadent monkhood—also appeared in the 1959 book edited by Berval.39 Gard’s reporting also informed the Mendenhall memorandum. Consistent with Gard’s subdued assessments, Mendenhall placed only slight emphasis on strained relations between Catholics and Buddhists. He noted in an understated fashion that “Vietnamese Buddhist attitudes toward nonBuddhists are marked by tolerance although there are sometimes reports of feelings of competition between Buddhists and Christians.” Still, the cable advised the U.S. government to err on the side of caution when it came to religious politics in South Vietnam. It was necessary, Mendenhall advised, for the government to avoid being “openly identified with programs having the objective of influencing Buddhists in Viet Nam as one specific religious group in a country where there are others.”40 The perceived need for discretion in dealing with Buddhists called for the usual solution: as elsewhere in the region, in South Vietnam the U.S. government would have to rely on its covert surrogate, the Asia Foundation, to operate where it could not—at least not openly. Mendenhall recapitulated this widely applied policy, recommending that the government encourage “private American organizations such as the Asia Foundation” to establish “discreet contact between reputable U.S. Buddhist scholars and Vietnamese Buddhists.” Only through the foundation, he advised, could the Americans discreetly “increase awareness among Vietnamese Buddhists of U.S. interest in Buddhism and Asian culture generally.” Unwilling to risk running afoul of religious sensibilities in South Vietnam, official policy makers would instead urge the foundation to assume the delicate burden of dealing with Buddhism. Ironically, precisely the same inhibitions had so far prevented even the foundation from fully bearing this load in South Vietnam—where it seemed to carry a special weight.41

The WFB Conference in Cambodia Communist countries had not been represented at the November 1958 WFB conference in Bangkok. But with the sixth conference in Phnom Penh approaching, U.S. apprehension over communist involvement in

159

Y7216.indb 159

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t C r i s i s i n So u th Vi etnam

the fellowship again began to build. This time, realizing fears of a reprised Kathmandu, the 1956 conference where a Chinese delegation had caused controversy over Tibet, there would be an active and well-coordinated communist-led Buddhist contingent composed of Soviet, Chinese, Mongolian, and North Vietnamese delegations. Their presence took on added meaning in light of repeated allusions to the Cold War made during the conference proceedings. Cambodia’s ruler, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, touched on a related ideological theme in his inaugural address to the delegates on the morning of November 12, 1961. Assembling for the first time in the Conference Hall, a circular structure ringed with striking white gables and stadium-style seating, representatives of 26 countries listened as Sihanouk, dressed in a crisp white suit, explained his country’s postcolonial domestic policy of “Buddhist socialism.” It was this innovative application of Buddhism, Sihanouk told his audience, that provided a formula for addressing Cambodia’s social problems in the “spirit of fraternity and mutual aid.” Cambodia, under Sihanouk’s guidance, followed a path of “national effort” he described as both “straight and true.”42 Sihanouk’s address highlighted Cambodia’s unique application of Buddhism to national development. Other conference speeches—as well as messages from in absentia world political figures—stressed Buddhism’s still more profound potential role in fostering world peace. A message bearing Ho Chi Minh’s signature expressed his “warmest greetings” to the delegates and proclaimed Vietnam’s aspiration to live in peace—in accordance with Buddhist ideals. An improbable echo came from the White House, where a presidential note to the conference had been sent. In a message appealing to the “spiritual force of Buddhism” in the quest for “world peace and justice,” President Kennedy himself appeared to stake out common rhetorical ground with his Cold War adversary in North Vietnam.43 Late in the afternoon, U Chan Htoon, the WFB’s president and an associate supreme court justice in his native Burma, approached the Cold War theme more directly. Htoon’s closing remarks vividly depicted a world teetering on the edge of nuclear “holocaust.” Referring to his concept of Buddhist eschatology, Htoon described a nuclear threat that challenged even the Buddhists’ equanimity. “Even we, as Buddhists,” the WFB presi-

160

Y7216.indb 160

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t C r i s i s i n So u th Vi etnam

dent said, “who know that the continuity of life is something that cannot be broken, even by the destruction of universes, stand appalled by the prospect of suffering that would be let loose against living beings by such [an] act of man.”44 Htoon’s dire warnings anticipated one of the conference’s most important and controversial resolutions: an appeal to the United Nations for a nuclear test and weapons production ban. It was significant that a Japanese delegate, Rev. Riri Nakayama, presided as chairman of the humanitarian committee, the body that drafted the proposal during its first meeting, on November 15. Acting in a special capacity—as representatives of those who had suffered from the first-ever nuclear blasts—the Japanese delegation had made the proposal.45 The committee met for more than two hours. Euphemistically described years later as a “lively debate” revealing “shades of political ideology,” what the meeting had in fact showcased for U.S. observers was a level of communist participation in the WFB that discomfited them. Since the conference’s opening day, on November 12, the Asia Foundation team had closely watched the communist delegations as they worked in concert to influence the deliberations. Making matters worse for the Americans, communist activities had involved a great deal more than the wrangling over precisely how the antinuclear resolution would be phrased.46 In addition, as would later be revealed during a debriefing session with Gard in San Francisco, PRC delegates had introduced a measure to expel Taiwan from the organization, winning votes from Nepal and India as well as unanimous support from the communist bloc. Displaying a thorough knowledge of parliamentary procedure, communist bloc representatives had also lobbied hard, but unsuccessfully, for Beijing’s selection as the site of the next WFB conference. But it was the activity of the South Vietnamese delegation in Phnom Penn that the Americans would eventually recognize as even more significant than these communist activities—though South Vietnamese participation reportedly garnered little or no attention from U.S. observers during the conference, or during the debriefing session in San Francisco that soon followed. Transfixed by the activities of the communist delegates,

161

Y7216.indb 161

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t C r i s i s i n So u th Vi etnam

the foundation’s Buddhist affairs insiders had simply taken little interest in South Vietnamese Buddhists’ reports of discrimination by the Diem regime. Only through an account of the conference written years later, in July 1965, do details of these disclosures emerge. Mai Tho Truyen, a vice president of the WFB, also led the 31-member South Vietnamese delegation. It was he who must have supervised, or at least authorized, the delegation’s efforts to raise awareness of the Diem government’s alleged persecution of Buddhists. Remarkably, these efforts were reportedly the first organized attempt that Vietnamese Buddhists had ever made to describe “to the outside world the discrimination and suppression being carried out by the Diem regime.”47 Phnom Penh, in short, marked the first moment of internationalization for a nascent Buddhist political movement that would have far-reaching implications on the world stage. These efforts were not wholly successful, as the “complaints did not reach the conference floor.” But the South Vietnamese did win an important supporter in U Chan Htoon by providing him with 38 letters documenting specific instances of the Saigon government’s “anti-Buddhist activity.” Further impressing on Htoon their allegations of repression, the South Vietnamese delegates announced that they would “not cooperate [with Diem] unless social, religious and economic reforms were instituted and the Buddhist majority consulted about the policies of the government.”48 The allegations genuinely worried Htoon. So great was his “concern,” in fact, that he flew to Saigon “immediately” after the conference to investigate the situation himself. Arranging for an audience with Diem, the WFB president found him “personally unapproachable on the subject” of Buddhist affairs. “Thoroughly alarmed” by Diem’s evasiveness and by what he had seen in the country, Htoon reached a prescient conclusion. He had realized that the “fate of Vietnam would be determined by the Buddhist segment of the population.”49 The U.S. delegation in Phnom Penh had missed the writing on the wall.

Cutting Ties with the WFB? At the time of Htoon’s visit to Saigon, Richard Gard was very likely already back in San Francisco. During a meeting there on November 25 with senior

162

Y7216.indb 162

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t C r i s i s i n So u th Vi etnam

foundation personnel, he relayed details of communist involvement in the WFB conference as Overton and Klausner meanwhile prepared separate reports. Gard rated the overall quality of communist bloc representation as “excellent.”50 His impressions of effective, confident communist representation caused anxiety over the future political status of the fellowship, which increasingly appeared as a liability to U.S. interests. Whether the foundation should continue its secret financial assistance to the organization’s secretariat—then based in Rangoon, but soon to be relocated—now became a matter of debate. Few among the Americans would have disputed that the WFB, despite its lofty rhetoric, had only the faintest real-world influence. Established in 1950 with grand ambitions—aspirations of becoming an important international body—in the 11-year interval it had failed to chalk up a single substantive achievement (perhaps other than its own series of conferences). It was not known to sustain any significant programs or activities between these biennial gatherings; little was being done on an ongoing basis to realize the fellowship’s stated goals. Further, without legal authority, the “resolutions” it drafted carried little weight. These were banal proclamations bespeaking Buddhist naïveté to many outside observers. Comparisons with the awesome power of the Vatican only highlight the Buddhist fellowship’s institutional weakness. Yet even if the WFB was ineffective, could it be abandoned to the “other side”?51 Gard’s intelligence from Phnom Penh fostered a “grim” view of the WFB’s long-term prospects. A group of eight foundation employees listened to his November 25 presentation. Gard’s audience included the Polish émigré Jerzy Jan Lerski—formerly an airborne commando for Poland’s World War II resistance forces and now a University of San Francisco professor of Central European history. Lerski had become involved at a senior level in the foundation’s Review and Development Department. It was in this capacity that he weighed in on Gard’s report, predicting that the WFB “probably will be taken over by the communists within the next five years.” Gard seconded that “gloomy” projection. Whatever solutions the foundation team devised for the WFB problem would have to succeed within this time horizon.52 Yet there were no clear solutions—or even a clear sense of resolve. It fell to John Sullivan, the foundation’s director of programs, who had also been

163

Y7216.indb 163

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t C r i s i s i n So u th Vi etnam

present on November 25, to clarify a murky situation. “It would be tragic indeed,” he wrote on November 30, following up on the earlier discussion, “if after our recent sad experience with the Radio Kabul music program, another of our financially major and even more important programs would be taken over.” Dampening to some degree fears of a “tragic” strategic loss was the uncertainty surrounding what kind of strategic asset the WFB really was: “should we consider the WFB as a miniature Asian U.N.—a platform of the cold war struggle?,” he questioned, ironically weighing the value of one front organization to another. If neither assessment of the WFB was true, a rational argument for simply abandoning the organization to a communist “take over” presented itself.53 That argument notwithstanding, beating a tactical retreat on the WFB front in November 1961 seemed premature—at least to Sullivan. He considered that the United States had a continuing interest in the organization, if only a negative one—namely, “keeping it out of communist hands.” Laying out a provisional plan of action, he recommended, among other measures, that more ought to be done to “strengthen” the WFB’s Rangoonbased secretariat and that more Buddhists from neutralist countries (particularly Burma, Ceylon, Cambodia, and Nepal) be brought to the United States. In addition, while the communist delegations to Phnom Penh had proposed Beijing for the next conference, the foundation staffer much preferred Hawaii. As always, discretion was required, and it would be necessary to remind Gard of the “danger to our desirable image by being too much in the front line of open struggle with the communists.”54 This reminder underscored the foundation’s complex and often strained relationship with its special consultant on Buddhist affairs. Though earnest and industrious, Gard carried out his duties to mixed reviews. Phnom Penh, however, had offered a kind of redemption: Gard seemed to have done well there. Overton wrote to commend his “enormous and valuable contribution,” lauding the instrumental role he had played “in preventing the Conference from becoming a political setback for the non-communist Buddhist world.”55 His presentation on November 25 had also been well received, winning him praise from Sullivan: the meeting, he noted, had gone “better than most of us could anticipate.”56

164

Y7216.indb 164

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t C r i s i s i n So u th Vi etnam

By the winter of 1962 Gard was again ensconced at his Connecticut home, a world apart from the sweltering conference halls of Phnom Penh but close enough to New York to remain useful, on at least one occasion, to the foundation. Dr. Malalasekera, the Ceylonese founder of the WFB, was apparently residing there.57 During an intimate luncheon discussion with Malalasekera in his New York apartment on February 25, Gard listened as his host surveyed the world Buddhism scene over bowls of Ceylonese curry. Malalasekera took a dim view of the foundation’s work in Ceylon, which he considered “too politically minded” and unlikely to “last long.” But Malalasekera’s views on communist bloc activities in the WFB were far more “comforting” to Gard, as he evidently downplayed the possibility that the fellowship would be taken over, at least in the near term.58 This was information that Gard dutifully passed along to San Francisco two days later, in a memo that also asked about his employment prospects at the foundation after July 1962. Gard was planning for the future, but the foundation would prove noncommittal. Not until spring would a consensus begin to emerge on the WFB problem—a major preoccupation within the foundation’s senior echelons. A request on May 21 had asked that each country representative formally lay out his views on the foundation’s future relationship with the organization. The results boded ill for the floundering WFB: with the exception of the representatives from Cambodia and Burma, all expressed the opinion that the foundation “should discontinue assistance to the WFB Secretariat.”59 A majority had voted against Sullivan’s plan to boost this assistance. Communist subversion was perceived as the main risk of withdrawal. But as one representative commented, in a statement more or less consistent with the views of his peers, “our support of the Secretariat would not be justified simply from the negative aspects of denying the organization to the communists.” Although it would cede the fellowship to possible communist control, this move was not as fatalistic as it appeared. In fact, it concealed a more sophisticated strategy, for as the unidentified representative also shrewdly observed: “if the communists succeeded in controlling the WFB it would probably serve the free world’s purpose better as a means of demonstrating to Buddhists throughout Asia the political purposes of communism

165

Y7216.indb 165

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t C r i s i s i n So u th Vi etnam

in participating in international religious organizations.”60 Of course if that were so, it would mean that the world’s only international Buddhist organization had been rendered ineffective, but there was apparently little discussion of whether that outcome served the same purpose. Sullivan brought Gard up to speed on these decisions, among other matters, during a phone conversation the morning of July 11. Because Gard planned to see Malalasekera in New York again the following week to discuss the WFB’s status, it was important that he understood the strict confidentiality of the foundation’s planned withdrawal, which would now affect the U.S. posture toward a new proposal for relocation of the WFB secretariat. Almost certainly in light of the domestic instability in Burma resulting from General Ne Win’s coup of March 2, 1962, Htoon—who would personally run afoul of Burma’s new military regime—now wanted the secretariat moved from Rangoon to Bangkok. But Harry Pierson, the foundation’s representative in Bangkok, had recently deemed that idea “premature.” It was this information Sullivan “specifically requested” that Gard treat as confidential. His discreet handling of the secretariat’s potential transfer to Bangkok was particularly important given that “Thai Buddhists apparently have not been aware of the fact that the Secretariat had been supported by Asia Foundation funds.”61 Sullivan had another reason for placing his July 11 call to Gard, aside from relaying the foundation’s new position on the WFB: he also needed to inform Gard of his prospects for reemployment in the coming year. Another foundation-sponsored trip to Asia was a possibility, but Sullivan could offer no firm commitment on the use of his services. Gard had other irons in the fire—a part-time position at Yale on standby, and applications with the federal government pending—and Sullivan advised him not to “hesitate in accepting a position at Yale or elsewhere in hopes that we would be able to send him on an extended tour of Asia during the academic year.” Gard appreciated Sullivan’s forthrightness. His career had reached a crossroads, and his connections with the foundation would soon dissolve.62

166

Y7216.indb 166

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t C r i s i s i n So u th Vi etnam

Htoon’s Arrest Having predicted the Vietnamese Buddhist crisis, Htoon now fretted over his response to its outbreak. At a May 17, 1963, reception in Rangoon the WFB president confided to an American embassy official his growing apprehension over the tense situation in South Vietnam and the possible complications it raised for the fellowship. Nine days had passed since the crisis erupted in Hue over a seemingly trivial dispute. The Diem regime had not routinely enforced a long-standing ban on the display of religious flags—not until the Buddhists of Hue tried to fly their flag as part of their May 8 celebration of the Buddha’s birthday. The clash resulting from arbitrary enforcement of this rule (while the Catholics of Hue had been allowed to fly their Vatican flags during a recent celebration) caused at least eight deaths and many more injuries. Government claims that a Viet Cong hand grenade had caused the bloodshed failed to square with evidence from the scene: film footage showed government troops firing on the crowd.63 The Buddhist movement whose dissidence Htoon had noticed in 1961 now matured into a more organized campaign. Buddhist relations with the Diem regime would rapidly deteriorate. Htoon sought out the American chargé d’affaires and spoke with him “at length” about international Buddhist politics. He shared his concerns that the WFB might soon fall under communist control. The next conference should be held in Hawaii, Htoon advised, in order to dampen communist influence, but he wanted to carefully vet the communist delegations to prevent “subversives” from gaining entry into the United States. The escalating Buddhist crisis in South Vietnam only compounded his fears of a communist takeover in the near future. Htoon disclosed that elements within the WFB were urging him to take a stand on the crisis and that he considered it desirable “to indicate the solidarity of the WFB with members of the Buddhist clergy in South Vietnam in their hour of crisis.” Yet a well-intentioned statement to that effect could have unforeseen consequences, as any public comment “of this nature would inadvertently play into the hands of the communists who were exploiting the situation.” The U.S. embassy in Rangoon informed Washington that as of June 5 Htoon had not yet “taken any action in the matter.”64

167

Y7216.indb 167

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t C r i s i s i n So u th Vi etnam

If Htoon was stalling, perhaps in the hope that the crisis would somehow subside, events the next week would have come as a disappointment. He would now have to act. Tensions in South Vietnam reached a fever pitch with the June 11 self-immolation of the Venerable Thich Quang Duc at a busy Saigon intersection. Captured in photojournalist Malcolm Browne’s iconic images, the 73-year-old monk’s suicide by fire on Phan Dinh Phung Boulevard caused a global sensation. To many Western observers, it was a scene of “medieval horror” tinged with a distinctive Oriental atavism.65 The incident also provoked a strong reaction from Htoon and other foreign Buddhists observers, who now joined a chorus of international condemnation of the Diem government. Nowhere was the reaction more strident than in Cambodia, where Sihanouk had by mid-June begun a campaign to discredit Diem and win international favor for South Vietnam’s Buddhist movement. Reports from Phnom Penh on June 15 referred to Sihanouk’s appeals for U.N. intervention into the crisis. And they captured the potency of his anti-Diem rhetoric. In his cable to U.N. secretary general U Thant, the Cambodian head of state declared that the South Vietnamese Buddhist community had been “suffering the most cruel religious persecution.” He added that Cambodia, as a Buddhist country, was “upset” and “anguished” over conditions in its eastern neighbor.66 It was also on June 15 that Sihanouk reportedly received thousands of Buddhist protesters at the Royal Palace’s Chanchhaya Hall as part of a massive anti-Diem demonstration. It had never been his wish to “interfere in South Vietnam’s internal affairs,” Sihanouk told the crowd, but he “could not remain silent before Saigon’s racial crimes against the Khmer minority, thousands of whom had been forced to flee to Cambodia.”67 By August 27 his government would break off all diplomatic relations with Saigon.68 Sihanouk’s appeals had no impact in Saigon, however, where they seemed to fall on deaf ears. For Htoon, Phnom Penh’s failed diplomacy provided context for his own commentary on the crisis. This finally appeared in print in Rangoon’s English-language newspaper, The Burman, on July 2—to the satisfaction of his WFB constituency. The Cambodian government’s “repeated representations” to President Diem for “redress,”

168

Y7216.indb 168

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t C r i s i s i n So u th Vi etnam

Htoon wrote, “had met with no response.” If these appeals from Phnom Penh were insufficient, then the international Buddhist community as a whole, he implied, would need to bring pressure to bear on Diem. But Htoon recognized the limits of the WFB’s institutional clout, and so he explicitly lowered expectations for WFB assistance in the crisis. “Any direct help is not possible,” he wrote. Instead, he prescribed an oblique—if not insubstantial—role for WFB centers, suggesting that they might stir the world’s “moral conscience,” while petitioning governments (and the United Nations) to intervene. Between the lines, Htoon acknowledged the WFB’s virtual powerlessness on the international stage.69 Ironically, it was from the government of his native Burma that Htoon could least expect a proactive response to the crisis. It was on June 11—the day of Thich Quang Duc’s suicide—that U.S. embassy official Alexander Schnee, meeting with high-ranking officials at the Rangoon Foreign Office, learned details of the new Burmese military government’s foreign policy. This was in the process of retrenchment. Foreign Minister U Thi Han left Schnee with the strong impression that Burma was turning inward, eschewing a broader regional role in favor of “putting its own house in order.” Spokesmen for the new regime made this position unambiguous. They indicated that “at present Burma had no interests beyond its own borders.”70 With long-term repercussions, the Burmese dictatorship was adopting the reclusive guise that would become its hallmark. Rangoon’s withdrawal from the regional scene bore immediate implications for policy on South Vietnam. Consistent with the regime’s go-it-alone stance, it would not join the multilateral push for U.N. intervention being led by Cambodia and (through a separate initiative) Ceylon. U Thi Han candidly explained on June 11 that Burma “does not approve of mixing religion and politics.” This explained why Rangoon now considered raising the South Vietnam issue before the U.N. a “mistake.”71 Schnee suggested this was compatible with the U.S. position, which also took a dim view of U.N. involvement. The U.N. had enough problems already, he said. On the South Vietnam question, Rangoon had fallen out of step with the wider Buddhist world, and it would not fall back in line in the coming weeks. Rangoon withheld any diplomatic demarches to Saigon. This silence

169

Y7216.indb 169

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t C r i s i s i n So u th Vi etnam

did not sit well with Burma’s former ruling group, the Union Party, which had been formed in 1960 under the leadership of Burma’s devoutly Buddhist (and now deposed) prime minister, U Nu. On August 27 the Union Party would “urge” the new military strongman Ne Win to “take suitable action” against the government of South Vietnam.72 Yet Burma’s military regime stayed out of the picture. An unforeseen incident, which, according to the available evidence, had probably taken place in late July or early August 1963, seems to shed new light on the regime’s unwillingness to pressure Saigon. In July a U.S. official had observed that the Ne Win government was “currently having its own problems with the Buddhist clergy here [in Burma].”73 The official was suggesting a connection between Burma’s politically active and fractious monkhood and the Ne Win regime’s hands-off diplomacy toward South Vietnam. The new government in Rangoon—much like its counterpart in Saigon—had reason to regard Buddhist leaders, both lay and clerical, as politically threatening. Ne Win may have been especially reluctant to condemn Diem’s actions abroad if he himself was considering a crackdown on Buddhist leaders at home. Thus it was the antagonism of Rangoon’s military junta toward its own Buddhist constituency that now led to an improbable turn of events: the arrest and imprisonment of WFB president U Chan Htoon himself. His arrest compounded the problems facing the international Buddhist community. Responding to the crisis in South Vietnam was now the least of Htoon’s concerns. Anticommunist Buddhist affairs insiders scrambled to help the fellowship regain its footing as Htoon languished in jail and conditions in South Vietnam worsened. A transfer of the WFB secretariat to Bangkok was in the offing.

Thai Buddhist Reactions Contrasting with the maelstrom in South Vietnam, Buddhist affairs in Thailand had been unfolding at a more deliberate pace through the first half of 1963. Following his return from the United States, Kittisophana had widened his international contacts with a 1962 trip to India. He vis-

170

Y7216.indb 170

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t C r i s i s i n So u th Vi etnam

ited Calcutta, the Taj Mahal, and several Indian universities specializing in Buddhist studies.74 Then, within a year, he died suddenly. The monk who had helped imprison Phimolatham partly because of the latter’s outreach to international centers of Buddhist learning—including some on the subcontinent—had, through his own forays abroad, covered some of the same terrain as his globe-trotting victim. Kittisophana died at a relatively young age. Thailand’s ecclesiastical establishment now faced the delicate task of selecting his replacement. It settled on Phra Buddhakosacharn of Wat Saket, a Mahanikay-affiliated monastery in Bangkok. Nearly 90 years old, Buddhakosacharn was Thailand’s most senior cleric of the Somdej rank—the Theravada Buddhist equivalent of a Catholic cardinal. His rise to the position of acting supreme patriarch coincided with the early 1963 formal promulgation of the Saritbacked Sangha Act of 1962, which made democratic governance within Thailand’s monkhood a thing of the past.75 As we have seen, the legislation streamlined the ecclesiastical administration, consolidating power under the supreme patriarch and dismantling the ecclesiastical cabinet and legislature. It was then, as South Vietnam’s Buddhist clergy mobilized against the Diem government, that Thailand’s power brokers, following an opposite track, restored a high degree of centralized control over the Thai sangha. The timing was convenient. Against a backdrop of escalating regional strife, Thailand’s lay and clerical policy-making elite now had the administrative means to enforce a rigid code of discipline on the country’s monks. Buddhakosacharn’s appointment was an important part of this strategy of stability. Yet his promotion involved certain trade-offs. Coverage in the Thai press of Buddhakosacharn’s official appointment on May 5, 1963—just days before the violence in Hue plunged South Vietnam into chaos—introduced the public to a smiling, diminutive, wizened elder. As a younger monk, Buddhakosacharn had achieved impressive credentials as a Pali expert and had risen quietly through the ranks of the Mahanikay order.76 But he was an uncontroversial and still relatively unknown figure. He had not displayed the ambition and penchant for political infighting of his predecessor, Kittisophana. Buddhakosacharn’s Mahanikay affiliation and benign public profile distinguished him from the clearest alternative

171

Y7216.indb 171

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t C r i s i s i n So u th Vi etnam

candidate, a younger and more charismatic Thammayut-affiliated monk. Many within the establishment, in fact, preferred this monk, known as Phra Mahawirawong (Juan Utthayi), over the superannuated Buddhakosacharn. Mahawirawong had participated in Kittisophana’s attacks on Phimolatham, and he probably shared his Machiavellian streak. Yet the stars had aligned in Buddhakosacharn’s favor. Mahawirawong was passed over—for the time being. Behind the scenes, shrewd calculations justified Buddhakosacharn’s appointment. It was well understood that the elderly supreme patriarch would not be able to handle the administrative duties of his office. These were now increased and concentrated by the Sarit regime’s dissolution of the ecclesiastical cabinet and legislature. Nor was much faith placed in Buddhakosacharn’s secretary, whose help might otherwise have made up for his infirmity. For administrative capacity, the dynamic and efficient Mahawirawong was the obvious choice—one the king himself and other high-ranking government officials were believed to favor. Trumping all of these considerations, however, was the fact of Buddhakosacharn’s Mahanikay affiliation coupled with the expectation that he would not “live much beyond another few years at the most,” making way for Mahawirawong.77 This interim appointment would placate Mahanikay interests, ease inter-order tensions, and ensure the monkhood’s stability—benefits more greatly valued than administrative expertise. Thai authorities anticipated that after Buddhakosacharn’s death the more capable and “politically aware” Mahawirawong could replace him with little Mahanikay resistance.78 In fact, this did occur. Around mid-May 1963 Klausner met with the lay religious official Foong Srivicharn for a debriefing session on religious affairs, including Buddhakosacharn’s recent election. Foong believed that it had “gone off smoothly.” In the months prior to Buddhakosacharn’s official appointment, there had been some “static” between the two orders, but this had now subsided. The Mahanikay leadership was naturally pleased with the appointment, while the Thammayut appeared to have accepted the “principle of seniority” in Buddhakosacharn’s case. The hierarchy could now take satisfaction in its choice of the aged cleric, despite his many shortcomings. Buddhakosacharn’s administrative inefficiency was the “price of peace.”79 Though Thai-

172

Y7216.indb 172

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t C r i s i s i n So u th Vi etnam

land’s two monastic orders were by no means completely reconciled, in May 1963 tensions between them seemed at a low ebb. The truce was timely, as unrest in the wider Buddhist world required, above all, unity at home. By mid-August, Klausner met with Foong again. Discussion quickly turned to U Chan Htoon’s recent arrest in Rangoon. Foong interpreted the arrest as a sign of Ne Win’s “concern with the possibility that Buddhist groups would present a political opposition force.”80 The arrest upset him especially because he knew Htoon personally. And it made the transfer of the WFB secretariat to Bangkok almost a foregone conclusion, though precisely when the move would take place remained unclear. Foong divulged that his Department of Religious Affairs had already requested funds from the Thai government to defray secretariat expenses. He was evidently unaware that the Asia Foundation usually supplemented local funding for the WFB headquarters. Klausner himself may not have known. The unfolding events in South Vietnam were another major concern. Foong was personally skeptical of South Vietnam’s Buddhist movement, suspecting on the basis of a top-secret report from the Thai embassy in Saigon that the “third hand” of communist subversion lay behind the Buddhists’ failure to reach an accord with Diem. Consistent with Thai government policy banning “political displays” among Thai monks, he strongly disapproved of the antigovernment activism of South Vietnamese Buddhist clergy.81 Foong had already taken steps to ensure that Thailand’s ecclesiastical authorities would continue to uphold a policy of political noninvolvement for the monkhood, avoiding any spillover effects into Thailand’s Buddhist domain from its war-torn eastern neighbor—a much dreaded possibility. Two bizarre incidents had already made that specter appear almost real. The self-immolations of two Thai monks in late July 1963 had naturally attracted attention from the Thai press corps. Newspaper reporters at first entertained the possibility that sympathy for South Vietnam’s Buddhist movement had motivated the two suicides by fire, which had occurred separately in Prathumthani and Rajburi provinces.82 Further investigation, however, led to more unlikely conclusions that were less troubling to the authorities:

173

Y7216.indb 173

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t C r i s i s i n So u th Vi etnam

both monks had been suffering from mental illnesses. One was reportedly depressed, and the other may have shown signs of schizophrenia. The suicides, it seemed, had not been politically inspired, though a connection to South Vietnam could not be discounted: news of the self-immolations there could have “triggered” the two deaths through what Klausner termed a “subconscious suicide impulse.”83 To this extent, the surreal incidents showed the potential for the South Vietnamese contagion to spread. It was in this context that Foong relayed to Klausner details of an important meeting he had held with the ecclesiastical Council of Elders. Supreme Patriarch Buddhakosacharn headed this small governing body, which, according to the recently promulgated Sangha Act, now exercised total authority over the monkhood. The purpose of the confidential meeting was to discuss the Buddhist situation in South Vietnam and to settle on guidelines for how Thailand’s clergy would publicly react to the crisis. In short, there would be no reaction at all. Addressing the council, Foong had stated that “it was most important that the Thai Sangha did not become involved in politics and any official statements from the ecclesiastical authorities concerning the situation in Vietnam could be construed as political and treated as such by both sides in the dispute as well as others.” He emphasized that it was the Thai government’s “position that the Thai Sangha should avoid political involvement of any sort.”84 The Buddhist elders strongly agreed. Staying true to the Thai Sangha’s ostensibly apolitical traditions, clerical involvement in the South Vietnamese crisis was deemed taboo. The rule applied to the monkhood’s senior echelons as well its rank-andfile, but it did not apply to the Buddhist Association of Thailand, the country’s flagship, royally patronized lay organization. The association functioned as a “safety valve”—an outlet for public concern over an issue the monastic community had been instructed to ignore. The arrival of an urgent telegram from Saigon on August 17 now deepened the association’s role in managing the Thai response to South Vietnam’s Buddhist problem.85 The telegram reportedly came from the Intersect Committee for the Defense of Buddhism, based at Xa Loi pagoda, and had multiple international recipients, including President Kennedy and U Thant.86 Thailand’s Buddhist Association was one of several foreign Buddhist associations that also

174

Y7216.indb 174

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t C r i s i s i n So u th Vi etnam

received the plea for foreign intervention. The leadership at Xa Loi had reportedly timed their message to coincide with a renewed Ceylonese push for a special U.N. session on the crisis. In what skeptics at the semiofficial Times of Vietnam depicted as an “obvious propaganda move,” they had included details intended to shock an international audience. Thich Quang Duc’s self-immolation had been followed by four more suicides by fire, the telegram reported, while two “young adepts” had performed acts of selfmutilation. Diem’s Xa Loi–based opponents accused his government of “bloody aggressiveness” and warned that its persecution of Buddhists would only grow more “savage” unless there was international action.87 The official response was at first carefully measured. Thailand’s deputy prime minister Thanom Kittikachorn captured the hesitant official mood in an interview with Thai reporters in Bangkok on August 19. Thai support for a special U.N. session was appropriate, Thanom indicated, while also stipulating that this was only his personal opinion and that the Thai cabinet had not yet met to discuss the apparently “deteriorating” conditions in South Vietnam. No official action had yet been taken. “We are not sure of the situation,” he frankly explained.88 Within days, however, the government would stake out a more forceful position. Meanwhile, the Buddhist Association made independent moves, though behind the scenes its leadership was consulting with senior government officials, including Prime Minister Sarit himself. Immediately after receiving the August 17 telegram at its office on Bangkok’s Phra Athit Road, the group had announced two meetings on the crisis. The first was a closeddoor meeting at its headquarters on August 22; the second, a larger general Buddhist meeting scheduled for August 31.89 Briefing the press on the group’s first meeting, Nai Pui Rochanapuranonda, the association’s president, disclosed during an August 23 interview that some members of the Buddhist Association doubted the accusations being made against the Diem government: “It’s possible that the Buddhists themselves are causing the chaotic situation in the country,” Rochanapuranonda said, alluding to intelligence gathered by the Thai embassy in Saigon to which he purportedly had access.90 Nevertheless, the association had drafted a strong statement of support for the Buddhist movement, which

175

Y7216.indb 175

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t C r i s i s i n So u th Vi etnam

it addressed to Prime Minister Sarit. Because it was a Buddhist religious organization, the group considered itself ethically bound to avoid more direct involvement in the South Vietnam crisis, in its view a fundamentally political dispute. Yet the larger meeting the group had planned for August 31 would escalate its involvement to another level of international visibility. Sarit himself had entered the fray on August 22. Thanom’s uncertainty of August 19 had by now given way to a hardened official consensus that the Buddhist protests in South Vietnam threatened Thai national security— that it was a region-wide problem in need of a rapid and permanent solution. Sarit explained the connection in no uncertain terms to a group of reporters: “I am afraid the current strife might be an opening for the communists to cause more trouble in Vietnam,” he said. “If the communists win in South Vietnam it will bring communism nearer to Thailand. We must be careful.”91 Not content merely to make statements to the Thai press, Sarit also directed his concerns to South Vietnam’s ambassador to Thailand, Cao Thai Bao. Through the ambassador, Thailand’s premier sent an unambiguous message to Saigon: the South Vietnamese government “should control the situation,” he said, “as the Thai Government could not prevent local Buddhists from expressing their strong feelings for their coreligionists in Vietnam.”92 The protest movement should therefore be suppressed at its source, in South Vietnam. Sarit was being somewhat coy—he had more influence over Thai Buddhist opinion, embodied first and foremost in the Buddhist Association, than he let on. Behind the scenes, he was communicating with the organization, whose elite leadership overlapped with official and palace circles. Klausner learned details of Sarit’s back-door influence over the association during a luncheon meeting probably held on August 28 with Judge Sanya Dharmasakti, the association’s vice president. The aristocratic and professorial Sanya, an influential political figure in his own right, personified the group’s linkages to Thailand’s power-brokering set. Sanya had spoken with Sarit about South Vietnam on August 26. The prime minister “approved of the general position and actions taken by the Buddhist Association but had counseled the Buddhist leaders to have jai yen (cool hearts),” a Thai

176

Y7216.indb 176

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t C r i s i s i n So u th Vi etnam

colloquialism for exercising restraint. The association was keeping Sarit informed about its plans on a “continuing basis,” Sanya said. The prime minister was pleased with the group’s role; he had again mentioned its “safety valve value.”93 At a still greater remove from the public eye, the one figure in Thailand whose stature surpassed Sarit’s was also in touch with the association about South Vietnam. This was none other than King Bhumipol. Sanya told Klausner that the king had “expressed much interest in the Buddhist crisis in Vietnam but cannot openly make statements concerning the issue.”94 While avoiding any public comments, Thailand’s inquisitive monarch was keeping himself up to speed in private. He had invited Nai Pui Rochanapuranonda for a confidential luncheon discussion about the Buddhist crisis on August 28—the same day Klausner likely met with Sanya (Nai Pui’s deputy). As Sanya also explained, the association’s leadership drew a direct connection between the upheaval in South Vietnam and Htoon’s arrest and the uncertainty surrounding the transfer of the WFB secretariat. Because of the unrest, moving the international fellowship’s headquarters to relatively stable, noncommunist Thailand, where the Buddhist Association of Thailand would begin to oversee its administration, was now perceived as an urgent necessity. Sanya divulged details of a recent exchange with WFB officials in Rangoon. He said that the association had requested in an August 24 cable that Thailand be allowed to immediately “assume WFB Secretariat responsibilities” in light of “requests from regional [WFB] centers and the critical situation in Vietnam.” He informed Klausner that Burma had already given its consent, much more quickly than expected. Pending ratification the next year by the WFB general council—which Burma’s acquiescence all but guaranteed—the transfer would be made official. In the meantime, Thailand could expect to take up secretariat duties on a provisional basis. Sanya and other association officials were “greatly pleased by the response from Burma,” Klausner reported.95 The association, then, prepared for its August 31 meeting in Bangkok with the WFB problem on track to a satisfactory solution. This second gathering was intended as a nationwide public forum on the crisis, but it was

177

Y7216.indb 177

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t C r i s i s i n So u th Vi etnam

not open to all. After some discussion on whether an invitation should be extended, the association explicitly discouraged Cao Thai Bao from attending. Organizers feared that the South Vietnamese ambassador’s presence would inflame the emotions of the Buddhist attendees.96 However, Thai monks were also barred, according to a sternly worded letter distributed to the head abbots of various monasteries.97 Buddhist laity only could attend. The gathering concerned a political matter, the notice had made clear, and was therefore inappropriate for monks. By exerting pressure on individual monasteries to keep their monks away, Thai authorities were taking no chances. The rule against clerical involvement was being stringently enforced. With their clerical brethren excluded, no fewer than 2,500 lay Buddhists representing 63 of Thailand’s 71 provinces convened in the association’s Phra Athit Road headquarters in one of Bangkok’s oldest riverside quarters—not far from Phimolatham’s former enclave at Wat Mahathat.98 It was a sizable showing—made more remarkable by the presence of a small group of Thai Muslims, who also took part in the six-hour-long discussion.99 The August 31 meeting adopted four resolutions in support of South Vietnam’s Buddhists, which were to be sent by telegram the following day to the usual cast of world figures: Kennedy, U Thant, the pope, and Diem.100 The association-sponsored assembly walked a fine rhetorical line. Its carefully phrased declaration reflected the generally conservative, apolitical orientation of the Thai Buddhist establishment by omitting any language that could have been construed as an endorsement of increased Buddhist political activism. Yet the announcement strongly condemned the use of force against Buddhists, pulling no punches against the Diem government. Furthermore, the August 31 group sent more than words: those attending the meeting had also donated the small sum of 6,000 baht ($330) to aid with refurbishment of damaged Vietnamese pagodas and to provide for medical care of Vietnamese Buddhists injured during police and army raids.101 This support, both verbal and financial, was gratefully accepted. In July 1964 a distinguished representative of South Vietnam’s Buddhist community would travel to Bangkok in order to thank his constituency’s Thai benefactors.102 The visitor was Mai Tho Truyen.

178

Y7216.indb 178

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t C r i s i s i n So u th Vi etnam

The WFB Revisited By September 1963, the proposed shift of the WFB secretariat to Bangkok, though not yet formally approved, had gained widespread acceptance. Htoon’s presumptive successor had already taken up some of the duties of WFB president. Htoon was replaced by neither Foong Srivicharn nor Sanya Dharmasakti, though both of these highly regarded Buddhist affairs insiders were among those under consideration. Instead, the position would fall to Princess Poonphitsamai Ditsakun, a prominent lay Buddhist devotee whose royal blood and close ties to the Buddhist Association were her main qualifications. The small, gray-haired princess, with her kindly public persona, would now emerge as Thailand’s most visible commentator on South Vietnam’s Buddhist situation. “In truth, we want to help” resolve the crisis, Poon commented in midSeptember in her new presidential capacity. “But if we were to become involved it would not be a religious matter only, but one that also involved politics.”103 Under her stewardship, the conservative-minded Poon indicated, the WFB would limit its involvement in South Vietnam. Between them, the two military regimes in Rangoon and Bangkok had managed to debilitate the World Fellowship of Buddhists. Meanwhile, Klausner was preparing for another excursion to Laos. There he would gather intelligence on the wider regional implications of the secretariat’s transfer, as well as of Thailand’s firm prohibition on mixing religion and politics. During the course of a five-day visit beginning on September 17 he and the foundation’s Laos representative held private meetings with Nai Kruong Pathoumxad, the director general of Laos’s Department of Religious Affairs and a long-standing Asia Foundation contact. The trio talked at length about the crisis in South Vietnam and the Lao ecclesiastical hierarchy’s response. Kruong reported that Laos’s ecclesiastical authorities, like their fellow Theravada counterparts in Thailand, saw the nature of the Vietnamese Buddhist crisis as political. They had therefore adopted a strict policy of noninvolvement for Lao monks, similar to that being enforced in Thailand. Klausner considered this decision more than coincidental, observing that “the example of the similar position taken by the Thai Sangha may well

179

Y7216.indb 179

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t C r i s i s i n So u th Vi etnam

have had an influence on ecclesiastical leaders in Laos.”104 In Buddhist affairs as in politics, Laos’s official establishment tilted west, showing greater solidarity with its Theravada neighbor than with predominantly Mahayana Vietnam. Conversation with Kruong had turned from the Buddhist crisis to the related issue of the WFB. In his role as a WFB vice president, Kruong endorsed the transfer of the secretariat to Bangkok and was preparing to send a cable to Burma with that recommendation. He also supported the installation of Princess Poon as Htoon’s replacement. He anticipated that Laos would benefit from the relocation to Bangkok and that the organization would become much “much more active,” if not more effective, in Thai hands.105 Klausner compiled reports on this latest trip to Laos and forwarded them to San Francisco on September 27. There they may have informed a renewed discussion on the WFB, which was soon to take place within the foundation’s senior ranks. The Americans had resolved in late May to discontinue their financial relationship with the fellowship. But in light of the crisis that had erupted in South Vietnam in the meantime, that decision was now being reconsidered. Like Kruong, foundation planners perceived that the relocation of the secretariat to Bangkok would benefit the organization. Yet they harbored deep anxieties about continuing spillover effects from South Vietnam, which could potentially be amplified by the WFB’s eastward transfer to the Thai capital. What the Americans had begun to fear most intensely was that the Chinese communists would find ways to capitalize on the crisis—fears that filtered through the October 7 memo that restarted confidential deliberations on the fellowship. “Events during the past few months call for a reassessment of our position,” wrote John Sullivan. “They will undoubtedly result in efforts by the Chinese Communists to infiltrate Buddhist organizations further and manipulate them to their own ends, a move which would consequently increase the responsibility of agencies interested in denying such influence.” Relocating the WFB to Bangkok would undoubtedly yield certain advantages, but not if Thai efforts to “strengthen” the organization, or make it more active, hastened a split—enabling the Chinese to “establish a separate secretariat under their control.”106

180

Y7216.indb 180

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t C r i s i s i n So u th Vi etnam

Although these were seen as acute problems, Sullivan recommended a cautious approach for the time being. No commitments on a future financial relationship with the fellowship were to be made, he advised, until various contingencies had played out. For one thing, the nature of Princess Poon’s presidential take-over remained uncertain, as rumors circulated that she preferred a more limited role as the WFB’s “figurehead,” absolving her of some or all administrative responsibility. Sullivan favored a “sympathetic but detached point of view” until the issue of leadership, among others, became clearer. A strengthened WFB resulting in an intensified Chinese role could well, in turn, increase U.S. “interest” in the organization, previously viewed only in terms of its “negative aspects.” In the meantime, however, a policy of “wait and see what happens” seemed most appropriate to Sullivan.107 His colleagues evidently raised no objections. Fears of heightened Chinese activity were not unrealistic, as events later that month would make clear. The opening of a “Conference of Asian Buddhists” in Beijing on October 17 showcased to a wide international audience that the Chinese did wish to exploit the crisis to gain favor with Buddhist populations. Beijing announced that representatives from 11 Asian countries, including Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos, attended the three-day gathering at the city’s Fayuan monastery, a picturesque complex dating from the Tang dynasty. Most beneficial to Chinese interests was the spirited participation of a South Vietnamese monk named Thich Thien Hao. Thich Thien Hao’s recent Vietnamese-language biography reveals not only his deep involvement, since 1945, in Vietnam’s communist revolutionary movement but also details of his personal acquaintance with Thich Quang Duc and of his clandestine passage to Beijing. Thich Thien Hao’s route to the Chinese capital took him across the densely forested VietnameseCambodian border to Phnom Penh, where he flew with a Cambodian passport to Hong Kong, eventually linking up with escorts from the North Vietnamese consulate.108 In Beijing, he met a North Vietnamese delegation led by Thich Tri Do (head of the North Vietnamese Buddhist church, who had also crossed paths with Gard at the 1961 conference in Phnom Penh). Thich Thien Hao’s lengthy report on the crisis dominated the conference’s plenary session. Eulogizing his friend Thich Quang Duc while

181

Y7216.indb 181

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t C r i s i s i n So u th Vi etnam

luridly depicting Buddhist persecution under Diem, Thich Thien Hao set the stage for the conference’s well-choreographed climax on the evening of October 19: a resolution advocating “basic human rights and freedom of religious belief” for the Buddhists of South Vietnam. In the aftermath of the 1959–61 conquest of Tibet, Mao’s government sponsored this “appeal” with the utmost cynicism.109 Unsurprisingly for a political event staged under Mao, the resolution reportedly received unanimous support. If South Vietnam’s Buddhist crisis, at its 1963 peak, changed the Asia Foundation’s decision-making calculus surrounding the WFB, the failure to predict it from its early stages had also fostered an atmosphere of selfcriticism. The foundation’s American staff seemed to entertain the idea that the crisis might have been averted had they only been more discerning and undertaken some sort of preemptive measures. “We should have probably been in this field four or five years ago,” wrote Jack E. James, director of the foundation’s Southeast Asia Division, on June 5. Lamenting years of insufficient programming in Vietnamese Buddhism, James regretted that “no one of us unfortunately had the foresight to anticipate this sudden importance.” Now it was too late. “I am not recommending that you rush out and start programming,” James advised the foundation’s representative in Vietnam. “This is hardly the time for that.”110 A separate communication elaborated on the same themes: “The recent crisis-within-a-crisis in Vietnam has shown that the US Government was unprepared for the developments regarding Buddhism which took place beginning May 8. For the Foundation, the crisis served to point up the fact that we have for years been in touch with Buddhist leaders and organizations where Buddhism is a significant cultural force. (Did we foresee the problem in Vietnam?) While our relationship with Buddhists might not necessarily put us in a position to predict events such as took place in Vietnam, we do believe that we are in close enough touch with Buddhists and Buddhist organizations to sense the development of trends of importance to US foreign policy.”111 “We” collectivized the lack of foresight, yet one individual—at one moment in time—seemed mostly to blame for the foundation’s intelligence failure. In 1961, at the conference in Phnom Penh, Gard had formed a close working relationship with the South Vietnamese Buddhist delegation, but

182

Y7216.indb 182

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t C r i s i s i n So u th Vi etnam

he had neglected to pass along knowledge of its grievances against Diem, which the delegates had put on full display. An internal foundation history written up in 1965 would assign much importance to this strange intelligence gap. “The most startling aspect of the whole affair,” the authors recounted, “is that none of the Western observers at the conference appear to have given a second thought to the Vietnamese complaints and statements.”112 Gard, specifically, was culpable, according to a passage that not only criticized his performance at the conference but even called into question the whole of his work in Vietnam. Records from the Saigon office suggested that the program in Vietnam had failed to benefit in any substantial way from Gard’s advice, foundation staffers recalled in 1965. Gard’s reports had “contained almost nothing of value”; they had comprised mainly “bibliographical compilations” and “highly detailed listings of his appointments in Vietnam.” Most troubling of all, although Gard had stated that he “advised” the South Vietnamese delegation, he had “made no mention of the extremely interesting and important anti-Diem activities of the group.”113 These assessments came down exceedingly hard on the professor, denying him credit where perhaps it was due. Gard may have neglected to pass on vital intelligence from Phnom Penh, but the record shows that he had, on at least one occasion—following his 1960 tour of Vietnam—advocated an expansion of Buddhist programming in the country. Had this advice been followed at the time, the Americans may have later found their position in Vietnam more to their liking. By 1965 such criticisms were, at any rate, moot: Gard had long since left the fold to pursue work in the federal government. Ironically, the Buddhist unrest of 1963 proved beneficial to his career, as it suddenly placed his services as a freelance Buddhist expert in high demand. By May 1963, he had already secured an appointment as a Foreign Service reserve officer assigned to the Far East as a cultural attaché—a post that would involve advising the government on regional Buddhist affairs. Not fully attuned to concerns about his own performance in Phnom Penh, Gard struck a rueful note in a letter to the foundation’s president announcing his departure. The recent outbreak of the crisis “increases my regret that my services have not been better utilized in the field to help the developing situation,” he wrote.114

183

Y7216.indb 183

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t C r i s i s i n So u th Vi etnam

If the foundation was ill-prepared for South Vietnam’s Buddhist upsurge, at least it had done some preliminary “spadework,” preparing the ground for an expanded effort.115 Though James had advised against a programming surge, this is precisely what the Saigon office undertook during the months following the bloody end to the flag incident in Hue. The operation in Vietnam thus transitioned into a second phase, distinct from the first in its sense of purpose and importance—though not dramatically different in terms of the amount of money invested. The foundation’s American staff adapted to an evolving situation as the Buddhist movement outlasted its original opponent and raison d’être (the Diem government) and grew even more assertive and institutionally robust. Vietnamese Buddhist protestors confronted another round of violent government suppression in 1965–66, and thousands of Khmer Krom monks and lay people continued to flee South Vietnam for Cambodia.116 The movement’s persistence would perplex and disappoint Washington. Meanwhile, it would increasingly perturb those international Buddhist observers who were interested in preserving Buddhism’s traditional detachment from secular politics as a standard of clerical behavior. Beyond Cambodia and perhaps Laos, international Theravada Buddhist sympathy for the movement in South Vietnam, particularly in Thailand, would quickly dissipate. For the United States, shrewd recognition of the differing national codes of Buddhist ethics would present windows of diplomatic opportunity in South Vietnam.

184

Y7216.indb 184

7/20/17 9:51 AM

SIX

Enforcing the Code South Vietnam’s “Struggle Movement” and the Limits of Thai Buddhist Conservatism

T

hailand’s Princess Poonphitsamai Ditsakun shared the stage with the Dalai Lama under a “vast marquee” erected in the Deer Park at Sarnath, near the holy Indian city of Varanasi (Benares), where the Buddha was believed to have preached his first sermon.1 Three days earlier she had touched down in New Delhi, in advance of this inaugural day of the Seventh General Conference of the World Fellowship of Buddhists, on November 29, 1964.2 Varanasi lies approximately 800 kilometers southeast of the Indian capital, on the banks of the Ganges River. Poon and her entourage had traveled there, according to her detailed Thai-language diaries, via the state capital of Lucknow, convening at the global Buddhist pilgrimage site at Sarnath with a group of 154 international Buddhist representatives from 23 countries, including Mongolia and the Soviet Union. It was a smaller WFB group than had gathered in Phnom Penh three years earlier. Nevertheless, the spacious white tent that the conference organizers had constructed at the entrance of the Mulgandakuti Vihara monastery grounds, with seating for 1,000, filled to capacity on November  29. Princess Poon, seated on a dais directly to the right of the Dalai Lama (an exile residing in the northern Indian city of Dharamsala since fleeing the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1959), against the background of a “garlanded, glittering” statue of the Buddha, stared out at a large crowd. Visitors had come from Sarnath and Varanasi to get a glimpse of the president of India, Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, who delivered the inaugural address, and to “have a look at the rare event.”3 The conference would close on December 4.

185

Y7216.indb 185

7/20/17 9:51 AM

E n f o r c i n g the Co de

For the Thai princess, a morning tour of the area’s ancient religious monuments preceded the conference’s most important discussions. These took place in the afternoon of December 3. It was then that the WFB’s committees presented resolutions for the conference’s consideration. In an echo of Phnom Penh, the humanitarian committee restated its plea to the United Nations for an end to the global arms race. In a new resolution, without precedent at previous conferences, the committee also urged the WFB to “give support to social and community service projects carried out under the auspices of the Sangha and Buddhist lay organizations.”4 The fellowship’s embrace of a socially engaged role for Buddhist monks corresponded to initiatives already in progress in Thailand, where the ecclesiastical establishment, under government auspices, had begun to increase clerical involvement in secular affairs. For American observers at the conference, including William Klausner, the resolution bore implications for continuing U.S. efforts to exert a constructive influence on Buddhism in South Vietnam. Thai Buddhist leaders would secretly become involved in these efforts, as we shall see. What emerged during 1964–66 was a pattern of triangular Buddhist diplomacy between Thailand, South Vietnam, and the United States that quietly mirrored the secular and more visible militarystrategic ties. The Buddhist movement in South Vietnam cast a long shadow over the WFB meeting in Sarnath. In fact, the South Vietnamese delegation to the 1964 event proved “even more openly political” than the previous delegation to Cambodia.5 Again disregarding the fellowship’s apolitical posture, the delegates distributed documents, resolutions, and reports to publicize grievances at home. Exhibitions of photography, painting, and film displayed an avant garde flair and drew added attention to Buddhists’ political problems with the South Vietnamese government. The government had already experienced several chaotic transitions since Diem’s assassination in November 1963. Since a second coup, carried out on January 30, 1964, General Nguyen Khanh had ruled South Vietnam. He had approved the formation, on October 20, of a civilian government with schoolteacher and former Saigon mayor Tran Van Huong as prime minister. Behind the civilian facade, Khanh retained significant power as

186

Y7216.indb 186

7/20/17 9:51 AM

E n f o r c i n g t he Co de

commander-in-chief of the armed forces. These arrangements failed to resolve differences between South Vietnam’s many rival factions. A new outburst of “antigovernment fury” confronted the Huong government on the streets of Saigon.6 A November 29 sit-down strike coincided exactly with the start of the conference in India. The alleged return of Diemist elements in the ranks of the Huong government had provoked Buddhist radicals—and inspired one of them, Thich (Venerable) Tinh Khiet, to cable the South Vietnamese delegation at Sarnath a suitably Buddhist image of reincarnation: “ngo diem government reborn through tran van huong government.”7 Following instructions to inform the conference of this fact, the delegates had attempted to read the cable into the record during the last session on December 4. That effort was blocked, but not before it caused embarrassment. Mai Tho Truyen may have felt this embarrassment most of all. As an officer of the United Buddhist Church (UBC) and as a WFB vice president, Truyen had joined the South Vietnamese delegation, but as a moderate layman he had not approved of the “aggressive political line” adopted by his more radical coreligionists.8 Truyen had met with Richard Gard at Saigon’s Xa Loi pagoda, the institutional home of his southern lay association, on September 23. He had disclosed to Gard the makeup of the delegation to the upcoming conference as well as the tensions in his relationship with the UBC establishment, foreshadowing an eventual acrimonious split with the group. Truyen “ruefully admitted” that attrition to the UBC had diminished by as much as 60 percent the membership of his own Saigon-based Buddhist Studies Association of southern Vietnam. He and his organization would nevertheless “continue to concentrate on the real substance of Buddhism and foreswear all other activities,” he told Gard.9 Truyen’s determination to keep Buddhism separate from politics put him on a collision course with his fellow Vietnamese delegates at Sarnath. The South Vietnamese Buddhist delegation’s performance had “made a bad impression” with most of the other conference delegates, according to American observers.10 Mai Tho Truyen was chagrined. Bad impressions notwithstanding, the 1964 conference was thought to have gone much better than the one in Phnom Penh, where a combination

187

Y7216.indb 187

7/20/17 9:51 AM

E n f o r c i n g the Co de

of South Vietnamese Buddhist and communist activities had produced a political contretemps. This time, because of the “zealous” interventions of the Thai-dominated WFB secretariat, the South Vietnamese delegates were soon stopped “quite effectively” on the Sarnath conference floor, even as they stayed “very active” among the delegations.11 South Vietnamese Buddhist misbehavior had been diligently monitored. The fact that there were a smaller number of communist delegations at Sarnath had also contributed to a sense of calm on the anticommunist side. The good outcome at Sarnath led Christmas Humphreys, the most prominent British conference delegate, to describe the conference in almost idyllic terms. In an article relating his conference experience, Humphreys allayed concerns over the WFB’s politicization. He credited Princess Poon for her firm control of the event. Previous conferences had been “bogged down in politics by the deliberate actions of the Chinese delegates,” he wrote. However, the most recent gathering, held in the “great expanse of serene and sunlit beauty” at Sarnath, had been different—not only because the communist Chinese did not attend but also because of Poon’s leadership. “No political issues were allowed to mar either the business or the discussions at Sarnath,” Humphreys wrote. “Indeed, the outstanding quality of the Conference was the spirit of friendly, happy co-operation in Buddhist affairs of common importance.”12 The Asia Foundation’s leadership, too, would judge Sarnath a success, even though publication of a WFB news bulletin commemorating the conference caused a minor scandal. Through its tactful approach, the foundation’s programming in Thai Buddhism largely avoided public criticism. But a rare negative appraisal of its work appeared in the pages of the WFB’s in-house newsletter, an unlikely place. Because of an editorial oversight, an article attributed to a mysterious “J. B.” had not been flagged for its commentary on the foundation in Thailand, which impugned the group’s motives. “Certain government organizations and such bodies as the (United States) Asia Foundation have done their utmost to enlist Buddhists and Buddhist teachings in their crusade against communism,” J. B. wrote. “The more they succeed in obtaining overt support from the monks for their anti-Communist activities, the more

188

Y7216.indb 188

7/20/17 9:51 AM

E n f o r c i n g t he Co de

likely it is that the monks will find themselves involved in politics, especially if an extreme left-wing or Communist government should one day take power” in Thailand.13 After the piece was discovered in copies of the newsletter, the foundation’s Bangkok office reacted swiftly. The statement was “tendentious” and “incorrect,” foundation staffers insisted in an exchange with the author. He had been identified as John Blofeld—a prolific London-born writer and translator who had acquired knowledge of Chinese Mahayana and Tibetan Buddhism while living in China before the communist revolution there. After the Chinese communist take-over, he had taken up residence in Bangkok and broadened his studies of Buddhism to develop expertise in Thai Buddhism. While Blofeld may have been hostile to U.S. influence over Thai Buddhism, his experiences in China likely made him equally critical of the treatment Buddhism received under communist rule in China and the Soviet Union. Blofeld’s efforts to make amends for his article barely satisfied the foundation. Although he did provide a revision, which was then pasted over the original version, the new wording left “something to be desired”; he had only partly shifted the “onus” of his critique to “US government agencies.” “It can only be hoped that in the process of rewriting this paragraph Mr.  Blofeld has learned about the constructive work being done by the Thais with the assistance of the Foundation,” a staffer wrote.14 Yet anticommunism of the kind Blofeld had described in the original version had indeed motivated the foundation’s behind-the-scenes preparations for and assistance to the Sarnath conference. Foundation observers had assumed (correctly) that communist China, North Vietnam, and Cambodia would not be represented at Sarnath. These absences were sure to ratchet down tensions. Beijing’s resentment of the WFB secretariat’s recent transfer from Rangoon to Bangkok explains the Chinese communist boycott. Zhao Buzhu, a WFB vice president, had made Chinese communist objections clear in statements made in Beijing. Zhao had refused to attend the gathering in India, claiming he “had not been consulted” in the move to U.S.-allied Thailand. He had even argued that the conference itself, due to the illegitimate

189

Y7216.indb 189

7/20/17 9:51 AM

E n f o r c i n g the Co de

relocation of the WFB headquarters, was “illegal.”15 North Vietnam and Cambodia had evidently followed Beijing’s lead. Despite the Chinese boycott, the Americans had still anticipated a politically tense meeting. The South Vietnamese delegation, they felt, was “likely to inject controversial resolutions,” and possible Soviet, Mongolian, and East European provocations on “issues affecting Peking” were also a concern. Furthermore, Chinese communist influence at Sarnath remained a threat in American eyes despite expectations that a Chinese delegation would not be present. “Because of the increased efforts on the part of the Chinese to penetrate and take over this organization,” an Asia Foundation analysis had stated, “adequate representation of non-communist bona fide delegates at the Conference . . . is essential for the continued existence of the World Fellowship of Buddhists in its present non-political form.”16 These assessments had warranted a large burst of financial aid to the WFB’s Thailand-based secretariat in the lead-up to the conference. The financial outlay had amounted to $8,000. Discreetly channeled to the WFB’s secretariat, the funds sent eight members of the secretariat’s Thai staff to India, and covered costs of a preconference WFB council meeting in Bangkok in late November. The money had also been used to send five non-Asian participants to the event. This group presumably had included Klausner, whose close collaboration with the Thai delegation attracted attention. The foundation had by now completely dispelled the hesitant mood that had surrounded its financial relationship with the WFB in 1962. Klausner’s preliminary reports suggested Sarnath had gone “smoothly” and that there had been little in the way of “political” debate. The resolutions had passed unanimously, results that Klausner attributed to the “effective behind-the-scenes activities of the Secretariat officials.” Another evaluation explained these in detail: “Many resolutions of a highly political, and in some cases overtly anti-American nature, were submitted, but these all were eliminated by the Steering Committee and thus were not considered.”17 It appeared to foundation observers that effective leadership had protected U.S. Cold War interests. The long-term repercussions of the conference, however, remained to be seen. After returning from India, and on or before January 14, 1965, Klausner traveled to Saigon to discuss with Ernest M. Howell, the foundation’s repre-

190

Y7216.indb 190

7/20/17 9:51 AM

E n f o r c i n g t he Co de

sentative in South Vietnam, “programming opportunities arising from the recent WFB conference”—specifically those regarding South Vietnamese Buddhism.18 Klausner found Saigon in a morass of political intrigue. The situation there had grown even more precarious during the brief interval since the conference. Another coup staged on December 20 had not displaced Huong, but it had enabled Khanh and his military clique to consolidate greater power. In Washington, frustration with the state of South Vietnamese politics ran deep, even casting doubt on the future of the U.S.–South Vietnamese alliance. General Maxwell Taylor, U.S. ambassador to Vietnam, expressed anger over the recent turn of events during a meeting with South Vietnamese military officers at his embassy office on December 21. “Do you all understand English?,” he asked. “I made it clear that the military plans which I know you would like to carry out are dependent on government stability. Now you have made a real mess.”19 Apprehension over Saigon’s instability slowed the Johnson administration’s drift toward full-fledged war in early 1965 but did not halt it. Southern National Liberation Front units bore the brunt of the communist side of the fighting, and for several years the U.S. Air Force had been active in bombing their southern rural base areas. However, Hanoi’s infiltration of some regular North Vietnamese Army units (elements of the originally southernrecruited 325th Division) into the south beginning in 1964 fueled debate in Washington over the expansion of American air power to sever infiltration routes, cow the north, and bolster southern government morale. Worries that the South Vietnamese government might be too weak to withstand the blowback from punitive bombing strikes would persist at least until early February. It was then, on February 6, that an NLF attack on the U.S. base at Pleiku prompted the Americans to escalate the war. At Pleiku, as General Westmoreland would later remark, the United States crossed “a kind of Rubicon.”20 With Johnson’s authorization, bombing on a more limited scale expanded into an all-out bombing campaign over North Vietnam, dubbed “Operation Rolling Thunder.” In this context of escalating war, continuing Buddhist political activity in South Vietnam confounded U.S. policy makers and demanded solutions from those with expertise in Buddhist affairs. Conferring in Saigon,

191

Y7216.indb 191

7/20/17 9:51 AM

E n f o r c i n g the Co de

Klausner and Howell agreed that Sarnath had presented a window of opportunity to shape the behavior of South Vietnamese Buddhists. Relaying details of the discussion to San Francisco, Howell noted that “the WFB conference did strongly back Buddhist social development programs of a constructive bent.” He and Klausner anticipated that “use might be made of its resolutions to encourage constructive trends in Vietnam.”21 The foundation’s Saigon office was already working on a limited basis to promote reform along these lines. But the post-conference meeting with Klausner fostered an expansionary mood, as Howell explained in detail: “Bill and I were in agreement that Buddhism has shown that it is a basic social force in Vietnam and that it behooves one to have a consistent policy toward Buddhism even though relations may at times be difficult due to the militancy of some of the more politically minded leaders. We saw a parallel in the past developments in Ceylon and Burma. We were in complete agreement that such a force cannot be ignored, but rather that effort should be increased to help Buddhism develop responsibly.”22 Howell’s phrasing was euphemistic; he was recommending an increase in the disbursement of CIA funds to friendly Buddhist groups in South Vietnam. The underlying aim was to encourage Buddhist leaders to concentrate on educational and social action programs, diverting their attention to ostensibly less political activities. What role could Buddhist leaders in Thailand, the principal U.S. ally in the region, play in keeping their South Vietnamese coreligionists out of politics? At a confidential meeting at the White House in December 1964, Thai support in this area had already been set in motion. Yet direct Thai involvement in South Vietnam’s Buddhist crisis would require delicate handling to avoid any fallout on the regional diplomatic scene.

Princess Poon and the Dhamma Ambassadors Princess Poon remained in India until December 10, 1964, when she returned to Bangkok via Rangoon. There she prepared her Sarnath diaries for publication, including, in her final entry, reflections on her life and the start of her WFB career. She had been born in 1896 into the Thai aristocracy.

192

Y7216.indb 192

7/20/17 9:51 AM

E n f o r c i n g t he Co de

Her “tiny, bird-like” frame contrasted with her outsized pedigree: she was a niece of the late King Chulalongkorn and a cousin of the current king, Bhumipol.23 Her father, the late Prince Damrong Rajanupap, was a doyen of the Thai court, and an accomplished biographer and historian. A matronly, conservative, and yet worldly figure, she had come of age during the twilight of Thailand’s absolute monarchy and risen to prominence during Sarit’s cultural “dark age.”24 Her blue-blooded background signaled her allegiance to Thailand’s aristocratic Thammayut order. Poon had received little formal education. From the age of seven, following her mother’s death, she had been primarily under her father’s wing. It was through Prince Damrong that she was first introduced to the international networks that meshed small but growing Buddhist communities in the West with Europeanized Asian Buddhist elites, such as Thailand’s royal family. In 1930 she had joined her father on a visit to London where they met with members of the British Buddhist Society at its headquarters on Eccleston Square. Poon’s Sarnath diary included surprising bursts of candor. She was aware, she wrote, that her (communist) “enemies” sought to challenge and displace her. Taking up the duties of the presidency under these circumstances had admittedly left her with a “heavy-heart.” To her surprise, however, Sarnath had been “successful,” and the praise she received from a WFB official assuaged her insecurities, which may have stemmed partly from her gender. “It was truly a good thing,” the secretarial assistant had exclaimed, “that the [WFB] president is a woman with a royal Thai title, as this helped everything [at the conference] go smoothly.”25 Poon must have returned from her presidential debut in India feeling more comfortable in her position. She also came home to a Thai Buddhist establishment in the process of implementing policies that coincided with key resolutions at Sarnath—those that had sanctioned a social development role for Buddhist monks. The roots of these programs lay in the reforms of Sarit Thanarat, who had died in early December 1963 of cirrhosis of the liver, ceding power to his former underlings, Generals Thanom and Praphas. Under Sarit, the Thai government—its hand strengthened by its successful crackdown on

193

Y7216.indb 193

7/20/17 9:51 AM

E n f o r c i n g the Co de

Phimolatham and his associates—had begun to recalibrate the monkhood’s posture toward secular affairs in order to suit its own agenda, which focused on national development. Thailand’s monkhood, under its new conservative leadership, would promote the government’s development goals through a series of state-sponsored rural outreach programs. These activities would overlap with government efforts to combat communism on Thailand’s rural periphery. According to Asia Foundation records, the “first indication” that the Thai government was “seriously considering” supporting projects that would involve monks in rural community service came in February 1964.26 However, Thai sources present a different chronology: by September 1963, approximately three months before Sarit’s death, the government had already drawn the monkhood into rural development. Indeed, as early as August 1962 the Thai government had publicized a major new development program designed to counter the apparent growth of Thailand’s rural-based communist party (CPT). It was this initiative, launched just four months after the jailing of Phimolatham (who spent the years 1962–66 in prison), that would lead to the first explicit political deployment of Thai monks in anticommunist campaigns. The first steps were of course secular and military-led. A high-profile meeting at the Supreme Command Headquarters of the Ministry of Defense occasioned the announcement of the “mobile development unit,” the new program that was reportedly the “brainchild” of Sarit himself. The autonomous mobile military team was designed to cut through “red tape,” Air Chief Marshall Dawee Chullasapya, chief of the military general staff, explained to reporters. Indeed, the unit’s capacity for assisting remote villages “without having to report back to Bangkok” was its most touted attribute.27 In practice, Sarit’s program of “crash logistical support” proved ill conceived.28 The mobile unit’s itinerant, scattershot approach was far from systematic—and its impact rarely lasting. The roving squad of uniformed military officials, usually traveling in a caravan of Land Rovers, short-circuited existing pathways of community self-help and lent assistance to particular villages while bypassing their neighbors. They delivered modernity to the far-flung reaches of the kingdom in an abrupt, deus ex machina style, ac-

194

Y7216.indb 194

7/20/17 9:51 AM

E n f o r c i n g t he Co de

tually inspiring one inhabitant of northeastern Sakorn Nakorn province to liken the team that brought electricity to his village to a “god.”29 Yet in September 1962, Klausner reported that inhabitants of the 15 to 20 villages “within the project area are not particularly appreciative of the aid granted and resent the influx of large numbers of military personnel.”30 Ban Na Khu, a village in Kalasin province where the mobile unit’s headquarters had been set up, accommodated most of the 96 officials involved in the project. Winning few hearts and minds in the villages, the mobile unit program also caused dissension within Thailand’s bureaucratic ranks. Behind the scenes, it was well understood that Sarit’s decision to form the mobile unit under the auspices of the Ministry of Defense had signaled his “dissatisfaction” with the preexisting community development programs of the Ministry of the Interior. Sarit’s rebuke set the stage for a feud. Interior officials recognized the mobile program as a “direct undercutting of their own community development efforts,” which had placed far greater emphasis on community self-help.31 They resented the army’s intrusion into their community-development domain and privately criticized its flashy yet unsustainable approach.32 Partly because of the “conflicts between Ministries,” the Asia Foundation had opted not to become involved in the mobile unit, despite an official proposal that it do so. An officer from the Supreme Headquarters Command had suggested that the foundation might supply “educational materials” for the project. He had indicated that the U.S. Information Service and other U.S. agencies were already participating. He had also “intimated” that the foundation might benefit from “publicity for its contribution to the development project directed towards combating communist infiltration.”33 The unidentified Thai official must not have realized that such publicity was anathema to the American front organization, which placed a premium on its low public profile—and its apparent detachment from Cold War politics. The foundation declined. Overtures by Thai officials to leaders of the monkhood during the next year, however, produced a different outcome: the sangha, unlike the foundation, was prepared to contribute to this mobile development effort, acquiescing to official demands and setting in motion an evolving series of

195

Y7216.indb 195

7/20/17 9:51 AM

E n f o r c i n g the Co de

rural outreach programs that edged the monkhood toward an oblique anticommunist role. These programs would attract behind-the-scenes foundation support. The foundation thus was able inconspicuously to facilitate activities that it had been reluctant to become associated with but that aligned well with its goals. Six high-ranking clerics—including, with Phimolatham in jail, two representatives of Wat Mahathat—convened in Bangkok on September 23, 1963, to meet with Foong Srivicharn, director-general of the Department of Religious Affairs, and M. L. Pin Malakul, minister of education. The monks listened as the two officials called on the monkhood to “cooperate” in the mobile program and explained the government proposal in detail. Monks would travel to remote areas, particularly in the northeast, to spread the teachings of the Buddha; their efforts would promote “peacefulness” among peasant populations coping with “extreme poverty.”34 Their work would ameliorate conditions associated with the rise of communism. The 1963 discussion marked the inchoate beginnings of a full-fledged Buddhist missionary effort that had become known as the thammathut (ambassadors of the dharma) program.35 In addition to providing basic religious instruction, the Buddhist missionaries, initially chosen among monks who had training in meditation and experience living in rural areas, would also distribute medical supplies. In some instances, the locations of their missions would “overlap with the politically strategic and remote areas” that the mobile units were already visiting; in other areas, they were to cover “virgin territory.”36 A second 1965 initiative, dubbed the thammacarik (wandering dharma) program, would focus on Buddhist conversion of largely animist hill-tribe communities in Thailand’s mountainous north and the ordination of young hill-tribe men.37 This project sought to promote allegiance to the royalist Thai state, and it stressed Buddhism as an attribute of citizenship. Some 175 monks, all drawn from the elite Thammayut order, made up the first thammathut group. Formally initiated during a ceremony in Udon Thani province on February 1, 1964, their “tour of duty” ended on June 3. The results were reported as “satisfactory,” but, in fact, the trial run had revealed “certain weaknesses” in the program, as Klausner had already learned by June 4.38 The exclusion of any monks from the popular Mah-

196

Y7216.indb 196

7/20/17 9:51 AM

E n f o r c i n g t he Co de

anikay order had done nothing to improve inter-order relations. And there were other issues, as he explained in detail: Several priests and laymen with whom I have spoken emphasized that priests with the wrong background and qualifications were chosen for the Dhammathud assignment. Their meditation background provided little common ground for mutual understanding . . . with the villagers . . . There was also some annoyance on the part of the villagers in being required to attend “sermons” or “lectures” arranged by the Dhammathud teams. It has been reported that names of villagers who did not attend these sermons were noted and reported to the district authorities as “pro-Communist.” It is difficult to credit such political ineptness, but such reports have been received from several sources . . . There seems to be general agreement that the priests were not sufficiently trained. However, there is a feeling that if Buddhist University priest graduates were used training would not have to be so extensive. The now-familiar problem of persuading monks to return to the countryside had not gone away, either: The Buddhist University officials with whom I spoke concerning this Dhammathud project expressed the view that it was necessary for the Buddhist priests to be stationed on a permanent basis in these rural areas in order for there to be a lasting impact in terms of social or political stability . . . Chao Khun Rajvisuthimethi of Mahachulalongkorn University said that the University authorities were considering a special project to assign priest graduates to permanent positions in selected provincial and rural communities in the provinces bordering Laos and Cambodia. These border areas, according to University officials, are not properly administered by the Thai government and the vacuum presents a good opportunity for antireligious and subversive elements to carry out their work.39

197

Y7216.indb 197

7/20/17 9:51 AM

E n f o r c i n g the Co de

To correct these problems, authorities at the Department of Religious Affairs brought the two Buddhist universities—long-time partners of the foundation—into the fold. Constituting the thammathut’s second cohort, the 1965 missions comprised 818 monks, divided into seven groups. The universities administered two of these groups, a change that “promised to bring more trained monks into the program and put [responsibility] into the hands of university officials who had already subscribed to the social service concept.”40 A ceremony in central Thailand’s Nakorn Pathom province on January 22, 1965, launched the second round of missions.41 Held at the first-rank royal monastery enclosing the ancient and highly venerated Phra Pathom pagoda, the meeting showcased lofty government aims for the program. Prime Minister Thanom Kittikachorn, one of Sarit’s two successors, arrived at the monastery at 3:00 p.m. to address the missionary ranks. His speech set high expectations. The monks’ “visits to spread the teachings of the Buddha . . . will be of inestimable value to helping the Government achieve success in full,” Thanom said.42 The thammathut program, he suggested, played a vital role in promoting national goals. Meanwhile, Princess Poon had returned from India in December 1964, just as preparations for the January 1965 missions gained steam. The innovative new programs enjoyed the approval of politically conservative, lay Thammayut Buddhists, including the princess. While she and her peers would have rejected any form of divisive or oppositional political involvement on the part of Thai Buddhist clerics, the government-sponsored missionary programs—which featured an anticommunist thrust as well as the participation of the austere, royally sponsored Thammayut order—ran with the grain of conservative Thai Buddhist values. They brought monks to the political arena, but only to its edges—and only along carefully controlled, establishment-sanctioned pathways. The program therefore seemed in keeping with Thailand’s customary constraints on clerical involvement in political affairs. It was also consistent with occasional past efforts by the monarchy to deploy the monkhood in furtherance of national integration.43 But the long-term consequences of the thammathut remained to be seen, and a troubling possibility loomed: had the new programs created openings for uncontrolled and less-acceptable forms of political involvement?

198

Y7216.indb 198

7/20/17 9:51 AM

E n f o r c i n g t he Co de

Reflecting on the thammathut evidently put Poon in a sentimental mood. She wrote a lengthy article titled “Ambassadors of Dhamma” to observe a Buddhist holiday on February 16. The piece celebrated, in stilted English, the virtues of missionary activity, while cautioning laymen and clergy alike on its many spiritual and physical demands. “As living and traveling examples [of the Dhamma] it is reasonably expected that in the course of their pilgrimage to far-off villages and countries [missionaries] are to encounter strange peoples with strange customs and beliefs,” she wrote. “Some of these people might be hostile . . . Thus all kinds of difficulties, from criticism to ridicule, and all kinds of dangers, from violence to murder, are naturally anticipated.”44 Along with these many “difficulties,” the itinerant nature of the thammathut experience frustrated some parties: Buddhist university officials had made clear to Klausner that if young activist monks were to have a lasting impact they would need to put down more permanent roots in the countryside. A new program, allowing for the permanent placement of monks in rural areas, was already in development. Meanwhile, on the international stage, Princess Poon and other Thai Buddhist leaders—seeing no contradiction—continued to hold forth a standard of political noninvolvement for all Buddhist clergy, even as the hierarchy’s policy for monks at home drifted toward assigning them an anticommunist role.

A White House Meeting President Lyndon Johnson signaled an appreciation for Thai Buddhism’s international influence during a meeting in Washington, D.C., in December 1964, as U.S. bombing of the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos began.45 Participants in the December 11 discussion included William P. Bundy, assistant secretary for Far Eastern affairs; Thanat Khoman, foreign minister of Thailand; and Sukich Nimmanheminda, the Thai ambassador to the United States. It’s doubtful that Princess Poon, who had returned to Bangkok the previous day, was privy to details of the discussion—though she may have learned of it later from Thanat. By this time, in late 1964, Bangkok and Washington were locked in a close embrace. A decade earlier, Thailand and the Philippines had become

199

Y7216.indb 199

7/20/17 9:51 AM

E n f o r c i n g the Co de

the only Southeast Asian nations to join the U.S.-led military alliance, the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). The United States had already used elite Thai paratroopers as a proxy force to influence the civil war in Laos. In March 1962, the United States had declared that it would give full support to Thailand in the event of a communist attack, even without the consent of other SEATO powers. Since March 1964, Thailand had hosted a heavy influx of U.S. Air Force jets and Army engineer units. U.S.-funded building projects were transforming parts of the Thai landscape to lay the logistical groundwork for the air war in Indochina. Meanwhile, the August 1964 Tonkin Gulf Resolution— conceived as the “functional equivalent” of a declaration of war—had supplied it with a congressional mandate.46 Between 1965 and 1968, approximately three-quarters of all the bomb tonnage dropped on North Vietnam and Laos would come from the seven U.S. airbases built on Thai soil.47 The deteriorating situation in South Vietnam dominated the discussion of December 11. Johnson was deeply concerned, he told his two Thai guests, about the “ineffectiveness and disunity” in Saigon. “The problem of getting the various groups to put the national unity ahead of their parochial welfare was a terribly trying one,” the president said. Washington “needed ideas from any quarter that would help us solve it.”48 Thanat took his cue to respond. First, he said, the “so-called Buddhist movement” of South Vietnam was “heavily political and was indeed infiltrated by Communists to some degree.” Johnson and Thanat then had an exchange: “[Thanat] thought it must be remembered that the Buddhists in general had had legitimate grievances under previous governments (obviously meaning Diem) and that there should be utility in trying to reason with them to see if greater understanding could not be reached. The President raised the question whether leading Buddhist groups or individuals in Thailand could play a part in reaching the Vietnamese Buddhists, and Thanat showed much interest in this proposition and implied that he would look into it.”49 Johnson’s offhand remark introduced a new wrinkle into the U.S.-Thai alliance. In addition to the military-strategic support that was remaking Thailand into a U.S. client state, cooperation on South Vietnam’s Buddhist

200

Y7216.indb 200

7/20/17 9:51 AM

E n f o r c i n g t he Co de

problems would now also fall within the scope of the partnership. Yet more than two years would pass before any action was taken on the secret agreement of December 11, 1964. And that action would fail.

Contradictory Missions? Since his formal investiture on May 5, 1963, Somdej Phra Ariyawongsakhatayan (formerly known by a lower religious title, Somdej Phra Buddhakosacharn) had presided over the Thai monkhood as supreme patriarch. Buddhakosacharn’s appointment, a surprising turn of events for the elderly monk—a well-respected figure yet not a likely candidate for the post—had placed him in charge of the country’s 230,000 monks and novices and 23,000 monasteries. But Buddhakosacharn, who turned 91 on December 1, 1964, could function only as a figurehead, having little to do with the day-today operations of the monkhood. While his physician had made assurances of his “above average health,” Buddhakosacharn’s infirmity was plain. “The burden of [Buddhakosacharn’s] 91 years makes it difficult for him to move about,” a U.S. embassy official reported to Washington in May 1964. “He is never required to walk long distances and is usually supported on both sides when rising, sitting down, or walking.”50 Buddhakosacharn’s death in the early morning hours of May 15, 1965, of cerebral thrombosis after a week-long coma, came as no surprise. Condolence messages from various Buddhist groups abroad showcased the interconnectedness of the world Buddhist community, as well as the Thai Buddhist hierarchy’s international stature, now strengthened by the presence of the WFB headquarters in Bangkok.51 Buddhakosacharn’s death also set the stage for a politically significant transfer of the monkhood’s leadership, enabling still closer collaboration between the palace, the Buddhist hierarchy, and the secular government on matters of national security. Waiting in the wings was Buddhakosacharn’s presumptive successor: the formidable Thammayut monk known by his long-standing clerical title Phra Mahawirawong. As we saw in chapter 5, the authorities had passed him over in 1963 in favor of Buddhakosacharn, a decision made with the expectation that the wizened Mahanikay cleric

201

Y7216.indb 201

7/20/17 9:51 AM

E n f o r c i n g the Co de

would ease intersectarian tensions and that his tenure would be brief. Now Mahawirawong’s day had come, though his investiture would not take place until November 25, 1965. U.S. sources reveal noteworthy details about Mahawirawong’s background and personality. He had been born on January 16, 1897, in Amphur Banpong in Ratburi province with the lay given name Juan Utthayi. The “intelligent and alert” Mahawirawong was ordained in the reformist Thammayut tradition in 1917 at Wat Makut Kasattriyaram, after three years as a novice.52 By 1927 he had pursued his credentials as a Pali scholar to the terminal ninth stage, and in 1956 he was elected lord abbot of Wat Makut Kasattriyaram, one of his numerous posts within the clerical administration. Mahawirawong’s taut, angular countenance projected an air of self-possession and contrasted with his predecessor Buddhakosacharn’s “serene smile.” Mahawirawong’s intimate ties with the royal family, though unsurprising for a Thammayut leader, were a distinguishing feature of his career. Mahawirawong had “regularly been chosen to deliver sermons and blessings on the King’s birthday” ever since serving as the king’s instructor “when His Majesty entered the priesthood temporarily in 1956.” He also served as tutor to Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn, Bhumipol’s only male heir, on Buddhist doctrine. As Dana Orwick, counselor for political affairs at the U.S. embassy in Bangkok, would write in March 1966, Mahawirawong had “long enjoyed a close and special relationship with the Royal Family.”53 If Buddhakosacharn’s age had made him an imperfect administrator, now the younger Mahawirawong would govern the monkhood with a steadier hand. Mahawirawong’s leadership would also cement clerical backing for the sangha’s community outreach programs, which the detached Buddhakosacharn had tacitly sanctioned but not actively supported. Mahawirawong would approach these programs differently. While considered an able religious scholar, he had “not withdrawn his attention from the problems of the secular world.” He displayed an intellectual grasp both of the Cold War and the significance of the programs within that context. Indeed, Orwick noted that Mahawirawong was “more politically conscious than his immediate predecessors,” and he showed concern “over the threat of Communism to both Buddhism and Thailand.” “While [Mahawirawong] will probably

202

Y7216.indb 202

7/20/17 9:51 AM

E n f o r c i n g t he Co de

continue the policy of forbidding monks to take part in political action, he is sympathetic to social welfare projects aimed at countering Communist subversive efforts,” the U.S. official added, perhaps relaying the impressions of Thai contacts within the Department of Religious Affairs.54 Like Poon and other Thai Buddhist leaders, Mahawirawong saw no contradiction between forbidding political involvement and encouraging community activism with anticommunist overtones. However, by mid-July 1965—two months after Buddhakosacharn’s death —Klausner had begun to see hints of just such a contradiction. The thammathut missions of 1965 had been active since the ceremony at Phra Pathom pagoda in late January. On July 5, a reception in Bangkok at the Department of Religious Affairs officially brought them to a close. Attendees at the meeting did not include the 818 rank-and-file monk participants; only the clerical leaders of the various missions, along with the missions’ secretaries, were invited. Prime Minister Thanom and other government officials attended. And Klausner evidently was also there, taking notes on details of the discussion that would not appear in Thai press coverage of the event. Thanom praised the monks. He said that their missions had spread knowledge of Buddhism and had “helped fight against Communist doctrine which aims at destroying the country and the religion.”55 He also asked that they report on conditions in the areas they had visited, eliciting responses that Klausner found significant. Insisting that their statements remain off the record, so that they would not be accused of working as “government or intelligence agents,” the monks were remarkably candid. In one exchange, a cleric told the prime minister of problems in the northern border zones, where he had conducted his mission. It was “common knowledge” in those areas, the monk frankly told Thanom, that certain officials in Thailand’s Border Patrol Police (BPP), a special paramilitary force organized in the 1950s with assistance from the CIA, were involved in the opium trade. Thanom feigned surprise, though he must have known about the BPP’s collusion in the lucrative Golden Triangle drug trade. He turned to another high-ranking official present at the meeting and ordered that the officials specified be “transferred immediately.”56

203

Y7216.indb 203

7/20/17 9:51 AM

E n f o r c i n g the Co de

Other criticisms were directed toward government officials working on community development projects in the northeast. Behaving like “feudal lords,” the officials failed to give villagers in these areas the “proper respect and sympathy.”57 Their haughty attitude alienated the peasantry and undermined their own efforts to secure these areas. The monks recommended reform. Encouraging monks to provide such assertive feedback seemed risky to the cautious and contemplative Klausner. In a July 15 report, he wrote: It became obvious from the discussions that these priest missions—whether initially intended to or not—were fulfilling a function of channeling rural community grievances and needs to the highest echelons of government. While such a transmission belt could serve a most useful and constructive purpose, the political implications of the priests serving in this role cannot be overlooked. If encouragement is given to the priests to report on people’s grievances and malpractices and inefficiency of government administration in the areas in which priests travel, the priests might enlarge on the role given and become politically involved demanding action be taken on their findings. It is not clear whether the government has fully comprehended the implications of encouraging the priests to speak out along the lines taken at this meeting and showing not only interest but taking direct action based on information and comments made.58 The meeting had left Klausner concerned about the unintended consequences of opening the Pandora’s box. His fears of a boomerang effect were well founded—although the thammathut project would not draw monks into politics on the scale, or precisely in the “transmission belt” manner, that he suggested on July 15. Rather, the “missionary” project would backfire in a more limited way: by boosting the career of a charismatic Mahanikay monk known as Phra Kittivudho. In the 1970s, Kittivudho would enter Thailand’s political fray from the far right, gaining prominence and notoriety as an anticommunist demagogue. He would owe much of his influence to a training college for

204

Y7216.indb 204

7/20/17 9:51 AM

E n f o r c i n g t he Co de

monks founded in the eastern coastal province of Chonburi. But in July 1965, Kittivudho had yet to burst onto the national scene. The domestic and regional situation would have to deteriorate further before such an iconoclastic, right-wing figure could emerge in Thailand.

Poon Tours the West Concerns about mixing Buddhism and politics were meanwhile affecting travel plans for Princess Poon. On August 5, one month after the debriefing session on the thammathut, arrangements for a high-profile international trip, including destinations in the United States and Europe, were disclosed  to the U.S. embassy in Bangkok. In order to avoid diplomatic complications, the U.S. government would not officially host her. Instead, following the familiar pattern, those responsibilities would fall to the tour’s public sponsor, the Asia Foundation. Foundation funds would enable Poon and Khun Aiem Sangkhavasri, honorary general secretary of the WFB, to take part in the Eleventh Congress of the International Association of the History of Religions, held in Claremont, California, September 7–12. The tour would also serve a more general purpose: it was intended to promote “understanding of Thai Buddhism’s role in the modern world” and to give Poon an opportunity to build rapport with Buddhists at the WFB’s various regional centers, some of which she would visit en route.59 Poon’s world tour required that the U.S. government walk a fine line to avoid any diplomatic fallout on the international Buddhist scene. Her stay in Washington, D.C., from September 19 to 21 would pose special challenges, as she would need to be accorded “high-level attention.” A warm reception there was important, for reasons that Orwick spelled out in a memo advising the State Department on protocol: “Such attention would be regarded in Thailand and presumably in other non-Communist Buddhist countries as complimentary recognition of Buddhism, and may serve also . . . to reinforce the World Fellowship of Buddhists, which has been subjected to recurrent attack by Communist Buddhist countries.” For the earlier parts of her trip, however, a more aloof posture was recommended:

205

Y7216.indb 205

7/20/17 9:51 AM

E n f o r c i n g the Co de

“Caution should be taken to prevent any appearance that [her] visit is being sponsored by the United States Government . . . Such intervention could detract from the apolitical nature of the trip and the WFB.”60 Yet the Asia Foundation, the tour’s supposedly nongovernmental sponsor, was no longer working as anonymously as it once did. An August 4 broadcast from the pro-communist “Voice of the People of Thailand” accused the group of working in “the service of U.S. neo-colonialism” as part of an excoriating attack on its influence on Thai culture and education.61 The broadcast drew no distinction between the foundation and publicly affiliated U.S. government agencies operating in Thailand, such as the Peace Corps. Meanwhile, in May 1965, Cambodia broke off diplomatic relations with the U.S. government, closing down both the American embassy in Phnom Penh and the Asia Foundation office there. While not yet exposed, the foundation’s philanthropic smokescreen was evaporating; before long, it would dissipate entirely. The Voice of the People of Thailand had been broadcasting from southern China’s Yunan province since 1962 as part of a token effort by Beijing to support the CPT, Thailand’s homegrown communist party. With limited backing from Beijing and Hanoi, in 1965 the CPT still amounted to a mere fledgling guerrilla force. Its members had avoided serious fighting with government forces, even as they carved out small jungle strongholds on the northeastern frontier, and propagandized among Thai villagers. The relatively peaceful situation changed on August 8, 1965, when the government forces’ first real clash with the CPT took place in the mountainous province of Nakhon Phanom, resulting in a few casualties on each side. A CPT document captured later by government forces revealed that the incident compelled the party to launch an armed insurgency earlier than it had planned.62 By August 19, five skirmishes had been reported.63 The party’s growing combativeness had the further effect of attracting new recruits, including, according to some accounts, the Marxist intellectual Jit Phumisak. His release from prison in early 1965, where he had been since 1958, had allowed him to flee into the jungle, possibly to take up arms as a communist fighter, some ten months later.64 Thus there appeared to be a full-scale insurgency breaking out in Isan as Poon, Jit’s former mentor in Thai classical history, left for the United States

206

Y7216.indb 206

7/20/17 9:51 AM

E n f o r c i n g t he Co de

on August 28, stopping over in Hong Kong, Taipei, and Tokyo.65 Playing her apolitical role to a tee, Poon studiously avoided any public commentary on the deteriorating security conditions in Thailand—or in neighboring Vietnam—during her U.S. tour. Her address to the Claremont congress stuck to general religious themes, lamenting “new songs” and “new fashions” as frivolous distractions from deeper questions of “mind.” In Chicago, she brushed off questions about South Vietnam and about the Thailandthemed film The King and I. The film was “just a comedy and the situation in South Vietnam was a political matter,” she said.66 The princess played it equally safe during an interview with the Voice of America in Washington, D.C., on September 20, having paid her respects at Kennedy’s tomb that morning. A September 18 gathering at the home of Dr.  Kurt Liedecker, a philosophy professor at Mary Washington College and a prominent American Buddhist, had introduced her to the capital’s small community of Buddhists. But the reception fell short of Bangkok’s recommendation that she be included in a “White House cultural or other social occasion” during her stay.67 Rome was more attentive. Poon’s late October audience with Pope Paul VI, following visits to London, Berlin, and several other European capitals, recalled Phimolatham’s Vatican stopover during his 1958 Moral Rearmament Army tour and the more recent visit of Supreme Patriarch Kittisophana in 1962. Interreligious unity was the theme of the pope’s audience with the princess and her two escorts, Khun Aiem Sangkhavasri and H. E. Somboon Palasathira, Thailand’s new ambassador to Italy. The pope “stressed collaboration of the Church with Buddhism,” showing an appreciation for Thailand’s closeness to the “unrest and turmoils” of Indochina.68 The pope might have been less welcoming had he known that Poon was then considering a visit to the Soviet Union. She had received an open invitation while in Berlin. Soon after she returned to Bangkok, on November 1, she told Richard Gard and U.S. embassy official Dana Orwick that she was tempted by the proposal for several reasons: She had been “favorably influenced by her encounters” with the Soviet delegation at Sarnath, and by the courtesy of two Soviet embassy officials who had called on her in Bangkok in October 1964. She was also under the impression that Moscow was liberalizing its policies on religion. Drawing a comparison with communist

207

Y7216.indb 207

7/20/17 9:51 AM

E n f o r c i n g the Co de

China, she said that she was “inclined to regard” the Soviet Union as “less dogmatically Communist and increasingly tolerant of religious activity.” A visit, she suggested, might be appropriate given these trends.69 Poon’s openness to the Soviet advance seems to have discomfited Gard and his companion, who tried to dissuade her. The Soviet Union had not “abandoned its objective of world Communization,” Poon was told. And, contrary to her impressions, religion in the Soviet Union “appeared still to be politically dominated.” Poon was staunchly anticommunist. But U.S. officials did not want the WFB president to stray at all from their camp, even for a goodwill mission.70 Perhaps because of these pressures, Poon would not accept the invitation. She resumed her duties at the WFB headquarters as events in Vietnam unfolded quickly, and the Buddhist movement there entered a state of heightened activity. Poon’s flirtation with the Soviets had caused a slight tremor in the U.S.-Thai Buddhist alliance. But this would fade into the background by spring 1966, when the Johnson administration called in a favor from Foreign Minister Thanat.

The Struggle Movement: Thai Buddhist Interventions A chain reaction leading to a new round of Buddhist demonstrations in South Vietnam was in progress by January 1966. Saigon’s coup-prone politics had already displaced General Khanh. A new U.S.-backed military junta headed by Nguyen Cao Ky and Nguyen Van Thieu had held power since mid-1965. Ky placated Buddhist demands for democratization with a January 15 pledge for a return to constitutional government, a plan that envisioned national elections at the end of 1967. But he stalled on those reforms, angering his Buddhist opponents and other Buddhist-allied dissident groups, including urban students. Ky’s next move, the March 10 firing of General Nguyen Chanh Thi, the powerful and independent Buddhist commander of South Vietnam’s central “I Corps” zone—and one of Ky’s most threatening rivals—made matters worse. As Topmiller writes, Thi’s dismissal “ensured an explosive reaction” from an “outraged citizenry.”71 The Buddhist-led “Struggle Move-

208

Y7216.indb 208

7/20/17 9:51 AM

E n f o r c i n g t he Co de

ment” sought to accelerate the return to constitutional government and end the war. South Vietnam faced its most serious crisis since 1963. During a lull in this conflict, Thailand’s Supreme Patriarch Mahawirawong had a discreet meeting with a visiting fellow Theravada Buddhist leader from South Vietnam. On January 28, 1966, he gave an audience to a small delegation led by Thich Phap Tri, South Vietnam’s leading Theravada Buddhist cleric. This encounter received little publicity, and the details are murky. What is clear is that Mahawirawong warmly received Phap Tri, whose Theravada sectarian affiliation would have disarmed the Thai hierarchy and made him an effective emissary to Bangkok. During the 4:00 p.m. audience at Wat Makut Kasattriyaram, the monastery where Mahawirawong had resided since his 1917 ordination, conversation had quickly turned to South Vietnam’s Buddhist crisis. “I feel happy at the sight of the Thai people’s peaceful existence,” Phap Tri reportedly said to Mahawirawong. “It is different here than in Vietnam, where there is now political unrest . . . The Buddhists of South Vietnam regard the Thai people as close relatives, and they are thankful to the Thai clergy and to the Thai government for supporting the Vietnamese civilians and clergy who live here.”72 Mahawirawong replied agreeably: “We are at peace in Thailand,” he said. “Yet we feel worried that the people of South Vietnam are experiencing such difficulty. In Thailand, the right to religious freedom is guaranteed and the Vietnamese people who live in Thailand also enjoy the same security and happiness.”73 This response was not, however, a declaration of support for South Vietnam’s Buddhist protestors. Two months later, the State Department summarized the developments in the continuing crisis in South Vietnam in an April 5 memo to the U.S. embassy in Bangkok. Its contents were intended as background information for Sanya Dharmasakti, president of Thailand’s Buddhist Association and one of Poon’s closest confidants. Sanya was now at the center of a confidential U.S.-Thai plan to address the deteriorating situation in South Vietnam, and Washington wanted to bring him up to speed with the best intelligence available. Meanwhile on April 2, Graham Martin, the U.S. ambassador in Bangkok, received instructions to pass on an oral communication to Foreign

209

Y7216.indb 209

7/20/17 9:51 AM

E n f o r c i n g the Co de

Minister Thanat. Martin was to approach Thanat regarding the Buddhist crisis in South Vietnam and propose that he “find some way to exert a constructive influence upon [the radical Vietnamese monk Thich] Tri Quang and his wing of the Buddhist leadership.”74 During the morning of April 4, as Thanat was preparing to leave on an official visit to Rangoon, he met with Martin at his private residence and received Secretary of State Dean Rusk’s request. Thanat would cooperate, but he recommended caution. “Any overt intervention by either the [U.S. government] or the [Thai government] would open the door to exploitation of latent anti-foreign tendencies,” he counseled.75 It seems that Thanat’s initial impulse was to send Sanya to Saigon alone and on an unofficial basis—and with as little public fanfare as possible—an idea that Rusk quickly endorsed. “Any influence which Sanya . . . can have especially on the Tri Quang element to persuade this group to put aside parochial interests in favor of national cause . . . would be most helpful,” Rusk wrote from Washington.76 The U.S. embassy in Saigon was also enthused about what it called the “use of Thai Buddhist influence” on the militant faction associated with Thich Tri Quang.77 But the make-up of the delegation would change after further consultations with Foreign Minister Thanat—and later with Prime Minister Thanom. As it happened, because of his trip to Burma, Thanat did not take part in the April 5 cabinet meeting where the U.S. request was first discussed. His absence nearly derailed the whole venture. Other members of the cabinet were very likely unaware of the informal agreement Thanat had struck with Johnson more than two years earlier (at the December 1964 White House meeting), so they would not have seen Washington’s plea in that context. Some were concerned that the mission might leave the Thai government “liable to charges of interfering in [South Vietnamese] affairs.” A second source of apprehension was that “such involvement if publicized might be used as precedent by small minority [of] Thai Buddhists which would like to have Buddhist clergy more involved in social and political issues in Thailand.”78 Perhaps a majority of cabinet members preferred to avoid any Thai involvement whatsoever in South Vietnam’s latest Buddhist crisis. Thanat returned from Burma and took control. He convened a meeting on the morning of April 7 with Martin, Princess Poon, Sanya, and several

210

Y7216.indb 210

7/20/17 9:51 AM

E n f o r c i n g t he Co de

other prominent Thai Buddhists. He offered assurances that had he been able to attend the April 5 meeting he “would have eliminated apprehensions over possible embarrassment to [the Royal Thai Government] by pointing out that the project was not official.”79 The mission’s nonofficial status, however, was merely a front; the Thai government was certainly involved and would help defray the travel expenses. Thanat not only supported the U.S. plan but now sought to enlarge the delegation to four. Poon herself would join the mission, he suggested. And so would Professor Sriprinya Ramaxoud, president of Thailand’s Buddhist Youth Association, and Khun Aiem Sangkhavasri, Poon’s companion on the recent U.S. and European tour. Thanat also expanded the purpose of their “unpublicized visit” beyond what the Americans had originally proposed. Not only would the delegation “urge moderation” on Thich Tri Quang, it would also meet with his rival, the more moderate Thich Tam Chau, to “discuss the general Buddhist situation.” The delegation’s approach, he stipulated, would be made “in terms of the impropriety of agitation in Buddhist religious context and unreasonableness of disturbances that threatened the total disintegration of the country.”80 Thanat was making good on his promise. The United States had succeeded in enlisting the Thai government in its cause. But the Buddhist hierarchy remained hesitant. Poon needed convincing. Although both she and Sanya showed a “great willingness” to help, neither was satisfied that the delegation would yield good results considering the “pace of events” in South Vietnam. Thanat showed “great deference” to Poon’s judgment, and it was a sign of his persuasiveness that at the end of the hour-long conversation he had her blessing.81 Yet by the following day Thanat’s plans were partially overturned. The whole operation required Prime Minister Thanom’s final approval, and on April 8 he seems to have raised doubts of his own. It was probably he who objected to Sanya and Poon going on the mission themselves, given its uncertain prospects for success, though they may also have fed his concerns directly. The U.S. embassy in Bangkok explained the rationale for a stripped-down and lower-profile delegation of only two members: “It was decided that [the] situation in Saigon [is] so fluid that it would not be desirable in the first instance to engage [the] prestige” of Poon and Sanya.82

211

Y7216.indb 211

7/20/17 9:51 AM

E n f o r c i n g the Co de

An alternative plan had now firmed up: Sanya and Poon would remain in Bangkok for the time being, but they would each supply “strongly and plainly worded” letters calling for an end to the Buddhists’ antigovernment campaign. Professor Sriprinya Ramaxoud and Khun Aiem Sangkhavasri, who had already proven his diplomatic mettle at Poon’s side in Washington and Rome, would bear the letters to Saigon and deliver them in person to Thich Tri Quang. If South Vietnam’s Buddhist radicals proved receptive to outside influence, then Sanya and Poon could travel to Saigon to personally “reinforce [the] appeal.” Sanya had indicated his willingness to conduct a follow-up mission even if the chances of the visit “being useful” were only “10 percent.”83 Sriprinya and Aiem quietly departed with letters in hand, probably on the afternoon of April 9, arriving under “perfect” diplomatic cover.84 Since the Sarnath conference, elements within South Vietnam’s clerical leadership had been courting international support for a proposed Buddhist Youth Conference. Reaction to the plan in India had been tepid; the WFB so far had declined to sponsor such a conference under South Vietnamese auspices, fearing it might devolve into a “political circus.” Although the youth conference had yet to come to fruition, its main South Vietnamese proponent had not abandoned the plan. In fact, he had recently written Aiem appealing for Thai assistance in making the arrangements. The ostensible purpose, then, of the Thai delegation was to acknowledge this request from Thich Thien Minh, the powerful commissioner general for youth of the Vien Hoa Dao (Institute for the Execution of the Dharma), the political arm of the UBC. The two Thai representatives returned to Bangkok on April 13, 1966, after making their rounds among South Vietnam’s top Buddhist leaders. They had met with Thich Thien Minh, Thich Tri Quang, and Thich Tam Chau—the three most powerful monks in the country. They had also met with Thich Phap Tri, leader of South Vietnam’s Theravada Buddhist community and vice president of the Vien Hoa Dao, who had visited Bangkok in January.85 In light of developments that would take place in May, Thich Phap Tri’s prior interactions with the Thai Buddhist establishment are of interest.

212

Y7216.indb 212

7/20/17 9:51 AM

E n f o r c i n g t he Co de

Assessments of the delegation’s success varied. For their own part, Khun Aiem Sangkhavasri and his companion gloomily reported on their mission and sought to downplay any notion that it had brought South Vietnam’s Buddhist leadership to heel. Thanat’s secretary provided the Americans with a translated version of their report, which reached a damning conclusion: “It is no longer practical to remind Vietnamese Buddhist monks as fellow Buddhists to keep peace and self-restraint, particularly to abstain from taking part in demonstrations or from becoming involved in political maneuvers . . . It was too late to reason with them.” The pair depicted their efforts as a failure. They considered that South Vietnam’s militant Buddhists could not “be swayed from [their] present political course.”86 Poon hinted at her exasperation with the failed mission in statements to the Thai press on August 16. The princess condemned the South Vietnamese clergy’s political activism—especially the practice of self-immolation. She had “already sent an urgent letter” to South Vietnam urging the monks to quit politics, she said, alluding to the delegation without revealing details of its confidential history and provenance, which went all the way to the White House. Yet, she noted, the “improper” and “unsuitable” behavior of South Vietnamese monks continued.87 Developments in South Vietnam over the next few days allowed Thanat to cast the delegation in a much more positive light. On April 23, Secretary of State Dean Rusk had instructed the Bangkok embassy to thank Thanat for arranging the mission and sharing details from its report. The secretary attempted to find a silver lining in the “unsuccessful” effort, which had at least provided Buddhist circles in Thailand with a “clearer picture” of South Vietnamese Buddhist political involvement.88 Thanat’s surprising reply claimed the Thai delegates had proven far more effective than their report indicated—due in part to their leveraging of WFB influence. Ambassador Martin relayed Thanat’s account of the delegation’s accomplishments to Washington: “It had been made clear that the situation was completely different from 1963 when Tri Quang was able to use people like Halberstam, NY Times, to distort alleged Buddhist persecution of Buddhists by Diem. If this time Tri Quang’s actions resulted in significant communist gains, Thai would see that [the WFB], through its regional councils, would insure

213

Y7216.indb 213

7/20/17 9:51 AM

E n f o r c i n g the Co de

that true picture widely circulated resulting in marshaling of world Buddhist opinion against him. Thanat said he was happy to see that Tri Quang was actively attempting to damp down ‘Struggle Forces’ in Hue, Dalat, Danang area.”89 It was, in fact, true that the Buddhist demonstrations had subsided in the wake of the Thai mission, but not for the reasons Thanat implied. In reality, Thich Tri Quang and other Buddhist leaders had taken steps to reduce tensions in I Corps because the Saigon junta appeared to be buckling under Buddhist pressure. An April 14 announcement granted substantial concessions (which would later be withdrawn) to the Buddhist-led antigovernment movement, including a pledge to hold assembly elections within three to five months.90 The hardline Thich Tri Quang showed some willingness to compromise in mid-April because of these realpolitik factors at home. He was not reacting to Thai critics he likely dismissed as sanctimonious, foreign scolds. Perhaps Thanat had genuinely misinterpreted the events in question. Or perhaps he wished to inflate the Thai mission’s success in order to enhance his own prestige in U.S. eyes. In either case, U.S. officials perceived that Thanat had probably mistaken correlation for causality. Martin raised the possibility that the foreign minister was “stretching the cause and effect relationships a bit,” prompting Henry Cabot Lodge to speculate along similar lines from Saigon: “We too are surprised by Thanat’s comment [regarding the] strength of Thai Buddhist . . . representations . . . We believe delegation’s visit was [a] useful exercise and that it may have had some impact on the more conservative, traditional bonzes with whom the group met. These people are not, alas, the political maneuverers[;] their influence on Tri Quang and company is at best minimal. As for Tri Quang, we believe he would care if a segment of world Buddhist opinion were directed against him and his activities, but nothing short of a unanimous resolution of censure by the world body would be likely to deflect him from the pursuit of his goals. And even this might not work.”91 These conclusions were realistic. Washington’s attempt to triangulate a solution to the crisis through its Thai Buddhist friends had yielded a marginal payoff at best. It was now clear that conservative Thai influence—even with the weight of the WFB behind it— barely touched the antiforeign and avowedly nationalistic Thich Tri Quang.

214

Y7216.indb 214

7/20/17 9:51 AM

E n f o r c i n g t he Co de

But other South Vietnamese Buddhist leaders were more international in their outlook—and more interested in cultivating good relations abroad— than the inward-turning Quang. This included Thich Tam Chau, widely regarded as a spokesman for South Vietnam’s Buddhist moderates. After having met with the Thai delegation to Saigon, he would soon arrive in Bangkok.

Thich Tam Chau: An Uninvited Guest Twelve Buddhist countries would be represented at the May 9–15, 1966, inaugural conference of the World Buddhist Sangha Council in Colombo. The Thai supreme patriarch Mahawirawong declined an invitation to attend personally, pleading obligations at home. In his stead, he sent Colonel Pin Mutugun, Thailand’s director-general of religious affairs, who departed for Ceylon on May 7.92 Mahawirawong had doubts about the newly formed Buddhist organization, whose functions would in some respects overlap with the WFB. Like the WFB, the council ostensibly avoided politics. Its goals at the conference were to focus on international religious issues such as Buddhist education, propagation, and monastic training and discipline. But in a May 9 interview with Thai reporters Mahawirawong suggested that the council’s true character remained to be seen. Pin Mutugun had not yet reported on how the conference was progressing, so Mahawirawong kept his comments broad and speculative: if the council became involved in politics then its effects would be “harmful,” he told the press, but if it remained aloof from politics and “introduced the Buddha’s teachings to the people,” then its work would prove “beneficial.”93 As it happened, the conference was kept more or less politics-free, despite the efforts of a South Vietnamese delegation led by Thich Tam Chau to call attention to Buddhist grievances with the Ky regime. He and his group arrived in the Ceylonese capital on May 5. A few days later, Chau attempted to introduce a resolution of support for the South Vietnamese Buddhist struggle. According to an account relayed to U.S. officials, the conference chairman ruled Chau’s motion “out of order.”94

215

Y7216.indb 215

7/20/17 9:51 AM

E n f o r c i n g the Co de

Blocked on the conference floor, Chau worked the Colombo crowd through other means. He approached Mutugun and proposed that he and his entourage stop over in Bangkok after the conference closed, while en route back to Saigon to solicit support for the South Vietnamese Buddhist cause. Thailand’s Buddhist leaders had sent a delegation to South Vietnam; now, one month later, their South Vietnamese counterparts wanted to repay them in kind. Mutugun promptly informed Bangkok of Chau’s unwelcome idea. Complicating matters was the fact that Air Marshal Ky had accorded Chau official status for his Colombo trip in an effort to curry favor with the moderate wing of the Buddhist movement, encouraging a split with Thich Tri Quang and his radical circle. Chau had in mind a high-profile, official visit to Thailand, including meetings with the king, the supreme patriarch, and other members of the Thai Buddhist hierarchy. He also wished to meet with members of Bangkok’s small community of ethnic Vietnamese Buddhist clergy. This troubled Thai officials, who had little faith in the political loyalty of their country’s ethnic Vietnamese minority. Bangkok gave its “unenthusiastic acquiescence.”95 But Mutugun was instructed to inform Chau that his admission into Thailand would be in a private capacity. Chau’s official credentials were to be ignored. After contending with Mutugun in Colombo, Thich Tam Chau and his group of nine other Vietnamese monks touched down in Bangkok on May 20 to a frosty reception—and as events in South Vietnam took a chaotic turn.96 Ky had reneged on the concessions he made in April. A crackdown on the Struggle Movement forces entrenched in Danang had just begun. Chau and his staff made the rounds in Bangkok as the fighting intensified, providing a sensational context for their visit. Chau was guarded about how long he intended to stay before traveling on with his entourage to Singapore and Malaysia. Despite the lack of enthusiasm for his stopover, he did not back away from his bold proposal to see Mahawirawong in person. Upon arrival, he asked Pham Huy Ty, chargé d’affaires at the South Vietnamese embassy, to make the arrangements. But Ty was “sensitive to Thai Buddhist and official objections to Buddhist involvement in politics.” He sensed the proposal was likely to ruffle feathers,

216

Y7216.indb 216

7/20/17 9:51 AM

E n f o r c i n g t he Co de

so he pressed the issue as lightly as he could—by sending a very low-ranking embassy official to Thailand’s Department of Religious Affairs in order to determine if the request would be well received. Thai officials raised a red flag. They did not want Chau to hold an audience with Mahawirawong for fear that he “would subsequently embarrass the Patriarch by attributing unfounded statements of support for the [South Vietnamese] Buddhists’ political struggle.”97 This concern had a backstory. In late April, rumors that the Thai Buddhist hierarchy had already publicly pledged its support for the South Vietnamese Buddhist struggle had come to the attention of U.S. officials in Vientiane and Bangkok. The story came to light following the visit of two unidentified South Vietnamese monks to Laos, where they met with local Buddhist clergy and paid a courtesy call at the South Vietnamese embassy. Believed to be “partisans de Tri Quang,” the pair claimed to have come from Bangkok, where they allegedly “obtained a public statement of sympathy” from the Buddhist hierarchy.98 The rumored visit, however, drew “total blanks” from senior Thai Buddhists, including Khun Aiem Sangkhavasri and the lord abbot of Wat Po, the second most senior member of the Thai ecclesiastical hierarchy. By May 5, the U.S. embassy in Bangkok was convinced that there had, in fact, been “no public statements . . . that could be interpreted as sympathy” for the “struggle” of South Vietnamese Buddhists—that the two monks had, in short, invented the story.99 The rumors appear now as an embellished echo of the earlier meeting between Mahawirawong and Phap Tri. At that January 1966 meeting the supreme patriarch had stopped short of endorsing the Buddhists’ purported struggle for rights in South Vietnam. But had the usually savvy Mahawirawong, perhaps in an unreported moment, edged closer to a “statement of sympathy” in his exchange with Phap Tri, the Theravada monk who was something akin to his South Vietnamese counterpart? In any case, Thai officials would not risk a meeting between the supreme patriarch and the South Vietnamese monk who had most recently arrived at their doorstep: Thich Tam Chau was not encouraged to pursue a meeting with Mahawirawong during his visit in late May 1966. To his disappointment, an audience did not take place.

217

Y7216.indb 217

7/20/17 9:51 AM

E n f o r c i n g the Co de

Still another disappointment was in store for Chau before he left Bangkok on May 23. Tolerated on the surface, Bangkok’s small community of ethnic Vietnamese monks was distrusted. An undercurrent of fear came to light when Chau tried to accomplish one of the main goals of his visit: establishing contact with Bangkok’s Vietnamese Buddhist circles. Thai officials could not abide Chau’s appointment of a young Vietnamese monk to serve as his local representative in “overseeing Vietnamese monks studying in Thailand.”100 They feared the appointment might allow Bangkok’s small number of Vietnamese monasteries to fall under Chau’s control. Monastic networks with international communist ties were a recurring specter for Thai authorities. In the case of the Vietnamese monasteries of Bangkok, this fear may have had some basis in fact. A 1948 CIA report had found that the Viet Minh used three Vietnamese Buddhist monasteries in Bangkok (see introduction). Against the backdrop of alleged Viet Minh activity at Vietnamese monasteries, Chau’s appointment of a special representative in Bangkok was sure to raise hackles. Pham Huy Ty at the South Vietnamese embassy advised Chau that the appointment had to be “handled very carefully and without publicity lest [his] motives be misunderstood by the Thai, and that at first opportunity the appointment should be cleared with the Thai hierarchy and the Religious Affairs Department.”101 As Chau’s agent, they settled on Phra Wanchan Atakayano of Wat Arun, the grand Bangkok monastery situated at a bend in the Chao Praya river. The choice seemed well considered: the young Wanchan was ethnically Vietnamese, but he held Thai citizenship, and his affiliation with the prestigious Wat Arun placed him in Thailand’s Theravada mainstream. Wanchan, however, committed a gaffe: he divulged news of his appointment before it was cleared through the proper channels, causing a “considerable sensation” in the Thai press. A reporter cut to the heart of the matter in an interview with Pin Mutugun on May 24. Could Chau’s “appointment of a personal representative . . . involve putting Vietnamese wats [monasteries]” under his control, the reporter asked. Mutugun insisted that this was impossible. He said that Thailand’s Vietnamese monks had been placed “under observation” by the Department of Religious Affairs.102

218

Y7216.indb 218

7/20/17 9:51 AM

E n f o r c i n g t he Co de

Within a few days, Wanchan was compelled to withdraw from his post. This left Chau once again without representation in Thailand. Barred from seeing the Thai supreme patriarch, this part of his visit had failed, too. Chau’s Bangkok sojourn mirrored the Thai mission to Saigon of the previous month. Mutual failure linked the two visits: Thich Tam Chau’s overture to the Thais had been no more successful than the earlier Thai effort to constrain the Struggle Movement. If anything, Chau’s efforts were even less fruitful. Far from gaining Thai support, Chau’s stopover had strengthened Thai prejudices by occasioning an outpouring of criticism of South Vietnam’s Buddhist movement and reactivating latent fears of the Vietnamese monastery as a communist enclave. Ironically, it was soon after Chau returned to Saigon that the long simmering conflict that pitted him against more militant Buddhists precipitated a split within the movement he had come to Thailand to promote. In truth, the moderate Chau—though the product of a different sectarian culture—was not ideologically far removed from the Theravada Buddhists who spurned him in Bangkok. His forced resignation from the Vien Hoa Dao on June 3, after calling on Buddhists to cease demonstrations against the government on the previous day, highlighted his relative closeness to the apolitical Buddhism that Thailand’s Theravada devotees advocated. This time Chau’s divorce from the Vien Hoa Dao was only temporary; he rescinded his resignation on June 7.103 Within three weeks, the Ky regime, with stiff U.S. backing, had forcibly put down the Buddhist movement and placed Chau’s rival, Thich Tri Quang, under arrest. He was soon released, but many of the several hundred other monks who were also incarcerated remained in jail nine years later.104 A report from Bangkok described the outcome of Chau’s visit there from the U.S. perspective, including a pithy summing up of Thailand’s role in regional Buddhist politics—and its potential decline. Chau’s solicitations had “caused Thai Buddhist attitudes to harden to a point where some danger exists that they might become overly identified publicly with an antiSVN Buddhist position,” the memo began, framing a long-range concern that stemmed in part from the U.S. pressure on them: “It is important that Thai Buddhists should not be obliged to appear too frequently in the role of

219

Y7216.indb 219

7/20/17 9:51 AM

E n f o r c i n g the Co de

critics of South Vietnamese Buddhism, in order that Thai Buddhist international influence may be conserved. In general, Thai Buddhist leaders can be relied on to do what they can to maintain the principle of non-political involvement.”105 Washington needed to realize that its political deployment of Thai Buddhism could backfire.

Chiang Mai At the Ninth General Conference of the WFB, the principle of political noninvolvement would be codified under the guidance of the Thai hosts. By early July 1966—within weeks of Thich Tam Chau’s departure—plans for the next WFB meeting were already in full swing.106 The conference would be held in Chiang Mai, in Thailand’s mountainous north, on November 6–11, 1966, drawing together a familiar cast of characters among the 152 Buddhist dignitaries who attended: Prime Minister Thanom, Dr. G. P.  Malalasekera, Sanya Dharmasakti, Christmas Humphreys, John Blofeld, and Richard Gard were all in the mix on the opening day.107 Chiang Mai would close the circle on events that had played out in the two years since the Sarnath conference and recapitulate some of Sarnath’s key themes. It was during her presidential address on the afternoon of November 6— following an inaugural prayer ceremony administered by Supreme Patriarch Mahawirawong—that Princess Poon again took up the theme of Buddhist social engagement.108 The princess attacked the “common misconception” of Buddhists as “passive” and “fatalistic.” She reported on what she considered a positive sign: that Buddhist monks and laymen in WFB member countries had “assumed an active and constructive role in social services . . . and community development.”109 While Poon spoke in global terms, she might have presented local evidence of this trend. The involvement of Thai monks in rural community development had evolved since the early days of the mobile unit. The thammathut and thammacarik were ongoing programs. With financial backing from the Asia Foundation—and under Klausner’s conceptual guidance—a more complex effort to permanently place young monks (especially gradu-

220

Y7216.indb 220

7/20/17 9:51 AM

E n f o r c i n g t he Co de

ates of Bangkok’s two Buddhist universities) in upcountry community leadership roles had also emerged. This work fell under an umbrella program dubbed “Sangha Social Service.” By late 1966, nowhere had Buddhist clergy been better integrated into the community development designs of the state than in Thailand. To the extent that these programs were meant to “secure” or “stabilize” rural areas perceived as vulnerable to communist infiltration, they had a clear political aspect. Poon and her peers showed no signs of cognitive dissonance when they sanctioned government-sponsored “Social Service” on the one hand while condemning clerical political activism on the other. Few at the conference were aware of the full extent of Thai efforts to promote this selectively “nonpolitical” code of ethics in South Vietnam at the height of the Buddhist crisis there. The dry and distorted account of the April 1966 mission that Khun Aiem Sangkhavasri included in a conference report kept the full story tightly under wraps. It was just a “fact-finding” mission that had taken him to South Vietnam, Aiem maintained—and the letters he had delivered to Thich Tri Quang and other Buddhist leaders were merely “good will messages.”110 If Aiem obscured the deeper purpose of the delegation, this was, at any rate, a moot point by November 1966. South Vietnam’s Buddhist movement had proven all but impervious to Thai Buddhist influence. But it had fallen to pieces under the combined weight of a factionalized leadership and the Ky regime’s bloody crackdown in June. Against the backdrop of an enervated South Vietnamese Buddhist movement, the WFB’s conservative Thai leadership made moves in Chiang Mai to cement even more firmly the organization’s official nonpolitical posture. It was on the conference’s third day, on November 8, that a new clause was added to the WFB constitution emphasizing that the group would “refrain from involving itself . . . in any political activity.”111 What had previously been an informal guideline was to be written in stone. It was now understood, as Poon commented during her closing address on November 11, that “no act is more contrary to the spirit of our Constitution than the exploitation of Buddhism for political ends.”112 At previous conferences, South Vietnamese representatives could have been expected to run interference on such a motion, but at Chiang Mai a

221

Y7216.indb 221

7/20/17 9:51 AM

E n f o r c i n g the Co de

quieter atmosphere prevailed. The four-man South Vietnamese delegation led by Thich Tam Chau arrived late, but in time to take part in the discussions on the proposed constitutional amendment. Chau did not protest the amendment, which Poon hailed in her closing remarks as the conference’s most “significant achievement.” Chau, in fact, had no comment. Asked for his reaction by Thai reporters, he replied only with a sad but innocuous non sequitur. He was impressed with the “peace” and “serenity” of Chiang Mai, he said; it was a stark contrast, he suggested, with the “killing and shooting” in Vietnam.113 By now Chau had tried to go into semi-retirement. In early September 1966, he had declared his intention to again resign from the Vien Hoa Dao in order to devote his time to “his books” and to “international Buddhist affairs”—attempting a dignified withdrawal from the nitty-gritty of South Vietnamese political life.114 His return to Thailand for the Chiang Mai event, after his unsuccessful delegation in May 1966, showed his commitment to Buddhist internationalism. His muted reaction to the amendment was probably a sign of his withdrawal, a connection lost on the Bangkok Post. Editorializing on the conference under the headline “Buddhism and Politics,” the newspaper took note of the fact that Chau had raised “no objections” to the amendment and suggested, superficially, that it might have been the “serenity and peace” of Chiang Mai that changed his “attitude” for the better.115 Actually, it was not the pleasing atmosphere in Chiang Mai but a deeper disappointment that likely explained his behavior. If U.S. observers and their Thai Buddhist allies had considered Sarnath a success, then Chiang Mai was even more so—given the new passivity of Thich Tam Chau and his fellow delegates, the absence of any disruptions from the communist side, and the passage of the new amendment. Since the 1961 conference in Phnom Penh, South Vietnam’s Buddhist activists had been a thorn in the WFB’s side. But with the implosion and violent destruction of their movement in June 1966 the fellowship enjoyed a novel sense of calm, which lingered through the conference’s “grand finale” in Bangkok. Thich Tam Chau was probably among the conference delegates who attended the tea party hosted by King Bhumipol in the “cool shade”

222

Y7216.indb 222

7/20/17 9:51 AM

E n f o r c i n g t he Co de

of the Grand Palace’s Royal Sivalaya Gardens on November 12.116 It was a tranquil scene, but a troubling question still loomed: after having opened the Pandora’s box of a political role for monks in Thailand, could Thailand’s Buddhist leadership keep in place at home the apolitical standard it enforced abroad?

223

Y7216.indb 223

7/20/17 9:51 AM

Se v e n

Thailand’s Buddhist Hierarchy Confronts Its Challengers, 1967–1975

E

ven as Thailand’s lay Buddhist elites attempted to project their principle of Buddhist apoliticism internationally, preconditions for political disturbances within the Thai clergy were being met. This reflected a combined effect of social change and political unrest within the kingdom and intensifying Cold War strife in the broader region. In January 1967, the Thai ecclesiastical hierarchy contended with the controversial phenomena of Thai monks volunteering for a newly formed Thai army unit (the Queen’s Cobra Regiment) slated for combat in South Vietnam. Thailand’s Buddhist elders initially forbade monks from volunteering for military service before leaving the monkhood, considering enlistment a violation of the monastic rules.1 But within the year they themselves routinely blessed the departing troops, lending their prestige to the Bangkok government’s expeditionary forces. Such ceremonial farewells further eroded the Thai Buddhist clergy’s purported disavowal of secular political affairs, a principle already partially undermined by government anticommunist programs for monks. The senior clergy’s blessings of these military deployments recalled its complicity in Bangkok’s former wartime alliance with Japan. They also prefigured, as the historian Richard Ruth suggests, the hierarchy’s collusion with the right-wing monk Kittivudho, who by 1967 had begun his own fast rise to national prominence. One monk applicant to the new South Vietnam–bound regiment of “Buddhist warriors” had succinctly explained his motives: “The nation is more important. If the nation is likely to be destroyed, then religion will no longer exist.”2 Kittivudho’s extremist teachings would later expound on the same logic.

2 24

Y7216.indb 224

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t H i e r ar c h y C o n fr o nts Challenger s

From 1967 until the 1975 denouement of the Vietnam War, marked by the fall of Saigon to communist forces, Thailand’s ecclesiastical hierarchy and lay Buddhist leadership would confront the myriad consequences of the clergy’s partial unmooring from traditionalist values. The hierarchy, in its quest for stability, would respond with pragmatic accommodation, whenever possible, and autocratic suppression, whenever necessary, to liberal dissident challengers whose various programs cohered around desires to preserve the clergy’s relevance in a time of widespread social and political upheaval, to democratize the clerical administration, and to restore Phimolatham and a fellow victim of the Sarit era (the Thammayut monk Phra Satanasophon) to their former positions. But for Kittivudho—a figure who posed a greater challenge to the Thai clergy’s prohibition on divisive participation in worldly affairs—there was a policy of tacit support born out of the Buddhist establishment’s intensifying fears of communist subversion, if not revolution. For U.S. official observers following these developments, the tumultuous period ahead brought renewed attention to the long-standing question of the Thai clergy’s continuing ability to promote national stability, rather than foment unrest— an issue that related directly to the Asia Foundation’s work in this area. The foundation’s role, however, was due for a major alteration. By 1967, growing student-led protests against the Vietnam War were becoming a major factor in U.S. domestic politics. In March of that year, in one sign of the spreading antiestablishment dissent, the Asia Foundation’s CIA connections were exposed in a “sensational article” in Ramparts magazine, a prominent antiwar journal. The disclosures left the foundation’s board of trustees to wonder, during the course of a tense spring, if its operations in Asia would collapse amid the adverse publicity.3 In May, the consequences remained to be seen: “It was still too early to assess the seriousness of the damage done to the Foundation’s effectiveness in Asia, but there is no doubt that a shadow has been cast over some of our programs,” Asia Foundation president Haydn Williams wrote.4 By late summer, however, the trustees felt assured that the foundation had escaped significant fallout, despite “trouble spots” in Afghanistan and India.5 The group would not suffer a complete rollback in Asia, as its relations with “host governments continue[d] to be cordial and correct.”6 But it was now without a financial patron.

225

Y7216.indb 225

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t H i e r ar c h y Co nfr o nts Challenger s

Williams found a sympathetic audience in Washington. Reporting to the trustees in August 1967 on his recent testimony before a panel of the Rusk Commission, he disclosed that the commission was “undertaking a very thorough and far-reaching study of the entire problem of the work of private organizations in the international field and the need for a new government mechanism to encourage and support such efforts.”7 Also promising, Williams reported, were signs that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) would help bankroll the foundation’s future. By late February 1968, USAID had joined with the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs to lobby Congress for $3.1 million— half the amount necessary to cover the foundation’s budget. In relatively short order, Congress responded to pressure to “pick up CIA’s tab” so that the foundation could stay open for business with “above-board, openly acknowledged U.S. Government help.”8 That meant the foundation’s Buddhism programs in Thailand and elsewhere could continue, though on a less agile footing than before. However, though still active in Thai Buddhism, the now congressionally funded organization would have no dealings at all with the controversial new Jittaphawan College being built in Chonburi for the benefit of the up-and-coming Kittivudho.

Kittivudho’s Beginnings Many facts about Kittivudho’s biography have long been documented. However, while researching this project in Thailand during 2008–9, I grew curious if more could be learned about his life. It seemed a good time to reopen the investigation. Kittivudho had died on January 21, 2005, at Chonburi hospital near Jittaphawan College. The Thai custom of memorializing the life of a notable person with a commemorative volume raised the question of whether such a book had been written about Kittivudho. Four years after his death, I suspected that one had. In 2009, I traveled to the most likely repository of new information on Kittivudho: Jittaphawan College. On the Sunday I arrived for an unannounced visit, there were few signs of life at Jittaphawan. Its buildings were run down and mostly vacant, the

226

Y7216.indb 226

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t H i e r ar c h y C o n fr o nts Challenger s

Phra Kittivudho (center) at Jittaphawan College, c. 1967. Courtesy of Jittaphawan College. foliage overgrown. In the rear, I found a middle-aged monk who identified himself as Phra Pongsak. He was supervising a small group of novices. He agreed to speak with me about the college and about Kittivudho, whom he had known personally, having been his “pupil” for many years. He also gave me a copy of a commemorative compilation of Kittivudho’s religious writings and sermons, containing a biography of 27 pages. Construction on the college began in early July 1967. The king of Thailand had given the college its name (which roughly means “college of the mind”) and the queen had dedicated the cornerstone. A crew of volunteer laborers made up of approximately 750 former monks worked on the project during its initial phase, which took several years to complete. The design, by M. R. Laem Chanhasdin, dean of the Chulalongkorn University’s Faculty of Architecture, was supposedly “modernistic.”9 But when I visited the site four decades later the steep peaked gables and upward curving finials were to my eyes the traditional motifs of royal and religious architecture in Thailand—not modern, but staid and monumental.

227

Y7216.indb 227

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t H i e r ar c h y Co nfr o nts Challenger s

The religious hierarchy built Jittaphawan for the 31-year-old Kittivudho, already a rising figure in Thai Buddhist politics. He relished Jittaphawan’s grandiose design, its coastal setting on a nearly ten-acre campus, and its ambitious mission. “It will face the sea,” Kittivudho told reporters as construction was getting under way in 1967. “Those who study in the college will be trained to become Buddhist missionaries. They will be sent to teach the Lord Buddha’s Dhamma overseas too,” he added.10 Kittivudho was soon named Jittaphawan’s director, his latest elevation in a rapid ascent to fame. His path had intersected with events described in earlier chapters: the scandals that had taken place at Wat Mahathat, the flagship monastery of the Mahanikay order, in the early 1960s. Kittivudho was born on June 1, 1936, in the Bang Len district of Thailand’s central Nakorn Pathom province, on Bangkok’s western edge. The young Manggon Jarernsataapon (Kittivudho’s lay given name) would have grown up among lush rice fields, speaking the central Thai dialect, and feeling little connection to the Lao-influenced northeast Isan region. Kittivudho’s own family was of Chinese lineage, perhaps reflecting relatively recent roots in Thailand. The third oldest of eight siblings, Kittivudho showed interest in Buddhist teachings from a young age. On June 14, 1957, after a period of time as a novice, and having just turned 21, he was ordained into the grassroots Mahanikay order (like Phimolatham) at Wat Paknam Bhasicharoen in Thonburi, the sprawling settlement on the western bank of the Chao Praya river that had briefly (1767–82) preceded Bangkok as the Thai capital.11 Interestingly, Kittivudho’s arrival at Wat Paknam in 1957 establishes a link with Phra Mongkol Thepmuni, the Buddhist meditation master (then in the final two years of his life) who had overseen a restoration of the monastery as its lord abbot, and whose teachings now form the basis of Thailand’s flourishing Dhammakaya movement.12 However, Kittivudho soon began to study vipassana meditation at Wat Mahathat just across the river, traveling there from his residence in Wat Paknam. His stature grew as he “focused his early activities” on this Burmese-influenced meditation practice that Phimolatham had popularized.13 Indeed, at Wat Mahathat, a Burmese monk known as Phra Ajarn Enatwang-

228

Y7216.indb 228

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t H i e r ar c h y C o n fr o nts Challenger s

satayra assisted with (or perhaps supervised) vipassana training. Kittivudho studied under him. But powerful conservative benefactors, especially Somdej Phra Wannarat (Pun Punyasiri)—the abbot of Wat Phra Chetuphon who would become supreme patriarch in 1972—planned a very different future for Kittivudho. These early connections likely explain his transfer on June 1, 1960, to an appointment as a teacher of Buddhism at Mahachulalongkorn, the Buddhist university attached to Wat Mahathat that had by then become a focus of Asia Foundation activities. With this appointment, Kittivudho departed from Wat Paknam. For reasons recounted by historian Peter Jackson, the timing appears more than coincidental. Kittivudho ingratiated himself with conservative politicians and clerics by “propagating a conservative interpretation of Buddhism that justified centralized authoritarian rule and the use of force to eradicate political threats, in particular the Communist Party of Thailand.”14 Kittivudho arrived at Wat Mahathat precisely at the time when conservative forces were preparing to destroy the career of Phimolatham, the lord abbot of that monastery who had preached a contrasting gospel of toleration for communism (including the admission of communists into the monkhood) and advocated democratic reform of the ecclesiastical administration. Kittivudho was not, then, brought in merely as a teacher. He was to be “groomed to provide a countervailing force” to Phimolatham inside Wat Mahathat.15 He made an adversary of Phimolatham through “aggressive campaigning against” him, the author Paul Handley confirms.16 Kittivudho may well have witnessed Phimolatham’s arrest in 1962. It was then that he firmly situated himself at Wat Mahathat. In the vacuum created by Phimolatham’s removal, Kittivudho gained new visibility as one of the monastery’s most dynamic and well-connected younger monks. Kittivudho’s breakthrough accomplishment was the 1965 establishment at Wat Mahathat of the conservative Abhidhamma Foundation.17 This he undertook “with Wannarat’s support.”18 Future supreme patriarch Wannarat was the foundation’s president; his protégé Kittivudho became its director. The Abhidhamma Foundation enlarged Kittivudho’s influence. Through it, he was able to expand his work in Buddhist propagation, a main focus of

229

Y7216.indb 229

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t H i e r ar c h y Co nfr o nts Challenger s

his career since 1958. The foundation’s first widely publicized project was a clerical training program hosted at Wat Mahathat in 1966.19 The program complemented the government’s rural propagation efforts, which had already sent hundreds of missionary monks from the capital to the countryside. Like them, the 250 monks who took part in the Abhidhamma seminar were to bring Buddhist teachings to poor rural areas widely seen as vulnerable to communist influence. Still more important for Kittivudho’s career was the 1967 founding of Jittaphawan under the Abhidhamma Foundation’s public sponsorship.20 Kittivudho had first been groomed for Wat Mahathat. But his patrons—getting a fuller measure of his charisma and intelligence—quickly installed him in an institution of his own. Pongsak, the monk I interviewed, was born in Bangkok and had been ordained there as a novice before coming to Jittaphawan to study in 1970. In that year Jittaphawan also inaugurated a foreign exchange program, offering college scholarships to large numbers of mostly Lao, Cambodian, and South Vietnamese monks.21 Pongsak remembered the influx of monks from Indochina as a main source of misperception about the college: “When we had Lao and Cambodian monks here other people thought we were communists,” he said.22 Pongsak’s recollections rang true. From an early stage, controversy surrounded the college that would evolve into Kittivudho’s quasi-independent fiefdom and a center of political activity for Thailand’s far right. Criticism initially came from an unlikely direction, as some conservative Thai Buddhists mistook this enigmatic institution as a leftist enclave. The confusion lay in part in Jittaphawan’s foreign entanglements but also in its strong emphasis on vocational training. For one lay critic named Sunton Wongaasaa, writing in early 1970, the college’s curriculum, which combined skilled trades with more conventional religious training, conjured up an uncomfortable association: just as young monk students at Jittaphawan were seen driving tractors and doing other kinds of labor, so, too, had monks in parts of communist-controlled northern Laos been forced to do this kind of work. Was Jittaphawan—like the communists of Laos—producing “red novices”?23

230

Y7216.indb 230

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t H i e r ar c h y C o n fr o nts Challenger s

Many conservative lay Buddhists still instinctively equated monks’ involvement in community development with leftism. The doubt initially cast on Jittaphawan had reflected that attitude. But it also sprang from ignorance of the sophisticated yet arch-conservative philosophy of its founder. Kittivudho was indeed committed to rural community development—and even to a degree of social justice for the poor.24 Yet his economic views were, at bottom, consonant with the authoritarian, hierarchical worldview that he shared with his patrons within the ecclesiastical establishment. As Swearer has noted, Jittaphawan’s programs trained monks to “instill a work ethic in villagers.”25 Their message to rural communities, as spelled out in October 1972, was to be unmistakably pro-capitalist: “A life of achievement can only be guaranteed through the good secured from labor,” Jittaphawan graduates were expected to preach. “People who don’t work are a burden on the world. The Buddha condemned such people as the ‘refuse of humanity’ because they are parasites on society. Labor is money and money is labor. Money is a master that can produce everything for us.”26 This was, ironically, a capitalist mirror opposite of the Khmer Rouge version of communism that attacked Cambodian monks as a “burden” and “parasites” on society.27 With the thammathut and thammacarik programs of the mid-1960s, the Thai monkhood had been made an instrument of government policy, enabling the clergy’s further politicization. Now, at Jittaphawan, Kittivudho brought that process to an extreme with an economic philosophy that was also a profound assertion of the monkhood’s alignment with the conservative political establishment and its program for anticommunist national development. Peasants would be taught not to seek economic uplift by demanding reform (or overthrow) of the capitalist system; rather, they were to labor as best they could within that system, such as the Buddha would want. Some had misread Jittaphawan as a pro-leftist institution, prompting one defender of the college to offer a crude correction: they had mistaken a “goat for a sheep.”28 The truth was that Jittaphawan represented the interests of Thailand’s most conservative elite. This would become even more clear during the mid-1970s, when those interests seemed gravely threatened and Kittivudho

231

Y7216.indb 231

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t H i e r ar c h y Co nfr o nts Challenger s

brought his political role to its furthest extreme. Unlike other challengers to the Thai hierarchy’s apolitical status quo, he was to encounter little resistance from clerical authorities, whose members included some of his staunchest supporters.

The Fears of Thai Buddhist Conservatism As the hot season of 1970 set in, new fronts opened in what had become known as the Second Indochina War. Political propaganda from Indochina grew feverish from all sides, and much of it highlighted the roles and experiences of Buddhists. For instance, in a February 19 radio broadcast from the Laotian province of Xieng Khouang, a communist-allied Buddhist association condemned many alleged crimes against the faith: in the past five  years, it was claimed, the U.S. “imperialists” and their “henchmen” had destroyed some 336 pagodas, killed 53 monks, and burned down thousands of bookshelves containing Buddhist scriptures and statuary in Xieng Khouang province alone.29 The next month, in Cambodia, Sihanouk’s neutral government fell, and in April the Vietnam War spilled across the border and soon engulfed that country. In a broadcast from Phnom Penh, a group of “Buddhist intellectuals” declared its support for the new right-wing government of General Lon Nol and Prince Sirik Matak with a message targeting their Vietnamese communist opponents: “We hope that all our dear countrymen, who are fervent Buddhists and who respect religious principles . . . will never allow the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese—the archenemy of our Buddhist religion—to come carry out propaganda in the name of Sihanouk.”30 Lon Nol’s military shot down pro-Sihanouk Cambodian peasant demonstrators and also slaughtered hundreds of ethnic Vietnamese civilians, many of whose bodies floated down the Mekong River into South Vietnam.31 On May 18, on the occasion of the Buddha’s birthday, communist-aligned South Vietnamese Buddhists issued their condemnation: “Buddhist compatriots have condemned the Thieu-Ky-Khiem clique for its collusion with the Lon Nol–Matak clique in massacring Vietnamese residents, Cambodian Buddhist monks and other Cambodians in Cambodia.”32

232

Y7216.indb 232

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t H i e r ar c h y C o n fr o nts Challenger s

Conservative Thai observers of the regional Buddhist scene in 1970 would have deplored the spreading violence, but they also saw much to fear in this escalation of religious rhetoric across the spectrum. These radio broadcasts, claims and counterclaims, demonstrated the intense politicization of Buddhism in Indochina, an outcome of the larger Cold War. They showcased Buddhist constituencies imploring devout local populations sometimes to support but also—in more troubling cases—to undermine governmental authority. Thailand’s governmental and clerical leadership had already involved rank-and-file Buddhist clergymen in its anticommunist efforts in the Thai countryside, and it would continue to do so. The Thai establishment also appears to have voiced few objections when, as Pongsak recalled to me in 2009, Kittivudho personally traveled to Cambodia in 1971 and met with “leaders” there. Yet the possibility that Thai monks might someday become politically active outside of those government-sanctioned channels— possibly even in opposition to the Thai government—remained a profound concern, as William Klausner recalled. Thai authorities had seen “what was happening to Buddhism in Vietnam—the burnings, the monks committing suicide, the obvious political role play of the monks in Vietnam,” he said. “I think certainly the government saw that as a threat. And I think the monk hierarchy saw that as a threat. In other words, if we’re not careful here [they thought] we’re going to have [Thai] monks getting involved in divisive political activity, railing against the government because it’s dictatorial. So, in other words, political activism in the most negative terms. Not in terms of involvement in national development, but in terms of anti-government activities or anti-government protests.”33 Thailand’s ruling elite was as determined as ever to prevent Thai monks from becoming dissident political activists like many of their monk counterparts in neighboring lands. But the task of enforcing that code of behavior at home would grow more challenging in the coming decade. After enjoying a long period of relative isolation from the regional turmoil, Thailand, too, was now falling under extraordinary domestic pressures. Popular dissatisfaction with authoritarian military rule was mounting. Two bloody confrontations and military coups loomed. It was during the build-up to

233

Y7216.indb 233

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t H i e r ar c h y Co nfr o nts Challenger s

this unrest that young, educated Thai monks (especially those who attended Bangkok’s two Buddhist universities) showed signs of “becoming more socially conscious,” as Klausner observed.34 Their political potential therefore appeared to authorities as a growing problem.

A Polarized Buddhist World: Signals from Ulan Bator During the closing years of the Vietnam War, the international Buddhist community grew more polarized, but also more stable as communist countries relaxed their pressure on the World Fellowship of Buddhists by finally splitting away into a separate organization. This occurred at the Soviet-sponsored Asian Buddhist Conference of June 11–13, 1970, held in Ulan Bator, Mongolia. The conference was a stark display of religious politics at a time of violence on an unprecedented scale in Indochina. There, the U.S. war effort, now under the control of an erratic Nixon administration, approached its climax. While some noncommunist countries took part in this Ulan Bator gathering, Thailand’s Buddhist leadership used it as another opportunity to project onto the international stage its familiar message: that Buddhism and politics must not be mixed. Plans for the conference, greeted with widespread skepticism throughout Buddhist Asia, had been under way since July 1969. It was then that the Venerable S. Gombojab, high lama of the Gandantegchinlen Monastery in Ulan Bator, convened in the Mongolian capital a preparatory committee made up of delegates from Ceylon, Nepal, and India. Soviet support for an event purportedly intended to “promote the preservation of peace in Asia” was strong. Among other efforts to publicize the gathering, a delegation of Soviet Buddhists on a visit to Laos in January 1970 had spent “much of its time canvassing support for the conference.”35 Yet the propagandistic nature of the meeting—an attempt to appeal to Buddhists of Laos and Cambodia, staged in the shadow of the May 1970 invasion of Cambodia by allied U.S. and South Vietnamese forces—was plain. And its Mongolian setting did not sit well with international observers who remembered Soviet persecution of Mongolia’s Buddhist community.

234

Y7216.indb 234

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t H i e r ar c h y C o n fr o nts Challenger s

A Singapore newspaper editorial criticized the choice of locale: “There is irony in the choice of Ulan Bator . . . for it is the boast of its Soviet sponsors . . . in a different context, that Communism in the People’s Republic of Mongolia was built on the ruins of Buddhism. Indeed, before 1921 there were some 7,000 Buddhist monks at Gandantegchinlen Monastery alone, then the second largest in Mongolia. Today there are little more than 100 in the whole country.”36 Partly for these reasons, the international response to the conference was tepid, yielding (for the hosts) a disappointing roster of attendees. While fellow Mahayana Buddhist delegates from Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, and both North and South Vietnam did join, co-religionists from a larger number of states—including those governing the core Theravada countries of Thailand, Cambodia, Burma, and Laos—reportedly declined invitations.37 The WFB’s near-boycott of Ulan Bator was another expression of Thai disapproval of the event. No formal delegation was sent—only a lone observer. Improbably, this was the same British-born John Blofeld who in 1964 had criticized the Asia Foundation (see chapter 6). Blofeld now came to Ulan Bator with an admonishing message from WFB president Poonphitsamai Ditsakun on the need to keep Buddhism and politics separate. Joining a tour arranged for conference guests, he visited the famous Ivolginsky Monastery in the Soviet south-central Siberian “Autonomous Republic” of Buryatia before arriving in Ulan Bator. Blofeld’s 1964 article had revealed his open hostility toward U.S. influence over Buddhism, but neither was he sympathetic to the oppressive treatment of Buddhism under communist rule. Nonetheless, the prospects for Buddhism in Mongolia indeed seemed “optimistic” to the WFB observer. Monasteries there were not empty but “spick and span.” Popular enthusiasm for Buddhism appeared widespread and openly expressed. Blofeld even grew genuinely hopeful about Buddhism’s prospects in other parts of communist Asia: “Even now, one may dare to hope that, when Chinese socialism matures, the surviving Buddhists in Tibet will be treated with the same tolerance as their coreligionists in the Soviet Union.”38 Of course, some Buddhists in the countries of Indochina would have found Blofeld’s report cold comfort. Their concern, after all, was not so much with “mature”

235

Y7216.indb 235

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t H i e r ar c h y Co nfr o nts Challenger s

Soviet communism but with the newer communist forces poised to take power in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. This critic of the Asia Foundation’s “crusade against communism” saw the Mongolia conference as one of the major elements of that crusade (protecting the WFB from communist influence) that finally succeeded. The “main outcome” of Ulan Bator—a resolution to establish the new and cumbersomely named Committee for the Coordination of Asian Buddhist Activities—signaled the communist acceptance of a defeat. “The establishment of the committee,” one report noted, “may reflect the Communists’ failure to influence and exploit existing international Buddhist organizations such as the World Fellowship of Buddhists.”39 Long-standing concerns over communist activity within the WFB presumably faded from this point on, satisfying some observers. But on the negative side, the break-up now compounded divisions between right and left while utterly negating the WFB as a diplomatic forum between Cold War camps. Heading home from Ulan Bator via Hanoi in July 1970, the conference’s leading South Vietnamese delegate recorded a statement for North Vietnam’s Liberation Radio. The Venerable Thich Don Hau offered an unsparing assessment. He gave listeners a sampling of what had been Ulan Bator’s other main result: anti-U.S. invective. The South Vietnamese delegation had, he recounted, denounced the “U.S.-puppets’ crimes, such as destroying pagodas and Buddha’s statues, the massacre in Son My [My Lai], the slaughter of Vietnamese residents in Cambodia and the throwing of their bodies into rivers.” Further, he told listeners that the conference had issued an “urgent appeal” calling on “misery-ridden Buddhists in Asia and the world to vigorously support the Indochinese peoples’ just struggle for peace and freedom.”40

Buddhist Outreach: Thailand and Indochina, 1971–73 It was with equal urgency that some Indochinese Buddhists who opposed Vietnamese communism appealed for international support in the two years after Ulan Bator. In this effort, Cambodian Buddhists led the way. Cambodian Buddhist delegates first visited Bangkok. Later, they also went

236

Y7216.indb 236

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t H i e r ar c h y C o n fr o nts Challenger s

to Laos. We can grasp something of the internal dynamics of the Cambodian monkhood during this period based on U.S. sources. This puts the Cambodian overtures to the Thai and Lao Buddhist establishments during 1971–73 in sharper relief and casts an interesting light on Kittivudho’s trip to Cambodia in 1971. In January 1972, a U.S. State Department analyst observed “increasing involvement of [Cambodian] Buddhist monks in politically-related activities.” It seemed possible to speculate on the origins of the trend: these lay in Cambodia’s 1970 change in government. Until then, the Sihanouk regime had “succeeded in maintaining the lid on” the latent anti-Sihanouk sentiment affecting a “significant minority” of the monkhood. The Lon Nol–Sirik Matak government, after Sihanouk’s overthrow, had “attempted to capitalize upon this sentiment by soliciting the active support of bonzes for its cause.” Among other measures, the new government had encouraged the heads of Cambodia’s two monastic orders to “make public statements supporting the government’s objectives.” It had also asked monks to “assist the leadership in making its policies understood by the population.”41 Two rallies in Phnom Penh on October 19, 1971, suggested that, as in Thailand, the “gradual evolution” toward an increased role for monks in “politically-related activities” was in danger of an unintended mutation. Gathering at two Phnom Penh temples, Cambodian dissidents protested against a controversial transformation of the new government’s structure (from a national assembly to a constituent assembly). Though they lasted for little more than an hour, the demonstrations were a significant “indication of what would appear to be an essentially new departure, for this is the first open involvement of monks in a political issue which is basically a struggle for power among Cambodians.”42 Thus, by October 1971 some Cambodian monks appeared to be drifting toward a divisive, antigovernment domestic political role—precisely the same pattern that Thai Buddhist elites feared would set in at home. Even more significant was the identity of the pair of monks who had organized the rallies. These were the Venerables Khieu Chum and Pang Khat. Both of these Cambodian clerics had a “long history of political activity” dating from the events of July 1942, when more than 500 Cambodian monks

237

Y7216.indb 237

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t H i e r ar c h y Co nfr o nts Challenger s

took part in a momentous protest against French colonial rule.43 The republican leader Son Ngoc Thanh—later exiled from Sihanouk’s kingdom but now an invited participant in Lon Nol’s new Khmer Republic—had been the “motive force” behind the 1942 demonstration. Both Khieu Chum and Pang Khat were known to have had “close relations” with Thanh; they were probably part of a growing “nucleus” of his partisans among Phnom Penh’s monks.44 Thanh would even rise to become prime minister under Lon Nol, before Lon Nol forced him out of politics in 1972.45 From his residence at Phnom Penh’s Wat Langka, Khieu Chum had reportedly maneuvered against Sirik Matak and in favor of Thanh.46 In the controversy over the assembly’s configuration, the two monks had challenged Lon Nol government policy, though this was no sign of loyalty to the insurgent forces of the Khmer Rouge either. Indeed, in a complicated twist, these avowedly rightist monks also supported the Lon Nol regime’s outreach to its regional allies, especially Thailand. So it was a right-leaning, republican monk—an old Cambodian bonze whose renewed antigovernment activities in Phnom Penh embodied what the royalist Thai Buddhist establishment most feared in its own monks—who was officially received in Bangkok on July 2, 1971. Pang Khat came with four others—two monks and two lay Buddhist leaders—as the head of this Cambodian delegation. One of the lay delegates was Boun Chan Mol (president of the Buddhist Association of Cambodia), who as a young follower of Son Ngoc Thanh had also taken part in the 1942 anti-French demonstration in Phnom Penh.47 One account of the Cambodians’ July 2 discussions with Pin Mutugun and other senior officials at Thailand’s Department of Religious Affairs may exaggerate their tone, but it captures their underlying purpose. Pang Khat and his colleagues had come to Bangkok “to enlighten the civilized world of the horrors inflicted upon Buddhist monks, nuns and novices throughout Cambodia by North Vietnamese and Viet Cong invaders.” And they had come to win Thai sympathy—even to secure material aid in the form of medical supplies, food, and clothing. This was a message Boun Chan Mol reportedly drove home with blunt statements to his hosts. He may even have asserted, “Buddhism in Cambodia faces disaster,” according to the

238

Y7216.indb 238

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t H i e r ar c h y C o n fr o nts Challenger s

writer Trong Nhan. Mol and his associates had come to appeal for “aid, support and assistance from the people of Thailand.”48 The blander but more authoritative account that appeared in Thailand’s official gazette confirms that the discussions did in fact touch on the “protection of Buddhism against things that would do it harm”—probably a veiled reference to Vietnamese communism. It also indicates that the visit had fostered friendly feelings, as Mutugun took pains to reaffirm ThaiCambodian religious ties, using familiar terms of Thai Buddhist diplomacy. “Although the earth is divided into our two countries which are separated by river, mountain and forest,” he remarked to his guests, “our two peoples have always been connected by our shared Buddhist faith.”49 Significantly, the Cambodian delegation to Bangkok would have coincided with Kittivudho’s trip to Cambodia that same year. Pang Khat and his four colleagues came to the Thai capital reportedly to request Thai aid. Coincidentally, it was possibly to administer the disbursement of financial aid to young Cambodian monks, as part of his Jittaphawan program, that Kittivudho may have crossed the border at around the same time—but in the opposite direction. Having “unquestionably strengthened” bonds of religion and culture with the rapprochement to their Thai neighbors in 1971, Cambodian Buddhists achieved much the same thing through outreach in Laos in the next year.50 As recently as 1968, Cambodian-Lao Buddhist relations had remained “infrequent,” as factors such as “local dacoity, unrest, or communist activities” inhibited “unofficial, Free Buddhist travel” across the border.51 However, the new Cambodian delegation would surmount those obstacles in a journey across the Cambodian-Lao frontier. Arriving in Luang Prabang, the ancient capital in north-central Laos, toward the end of December 1972, were two other Cambodian Buddhist leaders: Chao Khun Preah Vanarat Pomsolheang (chief monk of Battambang province and director of the Buddhist college of Battambang), and Preah Chanthavanno Ong Mean (vice president of the Cambodian Buddhist Association and a professor at the Buddhist University of Cambodia). Like the earlier delegation to Bangkok, this Cambodian duo went to Laos to foster a sense of “Buddhist religious community” and to raise awareness of

239

Y7216.indb 239

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t H i e r ar c h y Co nfr o nts Challenger s

Cambodian Buddhism’s plight. They reported “massacres of Khmer monks and laity . . . and the destruction of Buddhist temples and works of art,” representing some 2,000 years of Buddhist civilization, at the hands of Vietnamese communist forces.52 Meanwhile, Khmer communists produced their own atrocity claims, as some communist-aligned Cambodian clergy asserted that “Lon Nol’s soldiers hold religion in contempt.”53 During the stay of the two Cambodian representatives, the Lao and Cambodian Buddhist associations issued a “joint communique.” This declaration stated: Considering that the Khmer Republic, the Republic of South Viet-Nam and the Kingdom of Laos are being menaced by the most cruel war in the history of the Indo-Chinese peninsula and considering that this war begun by the North Vietnamese has destroyed the goods, lives, morals and monasteries and relics of Buddhism . . . the representatives . . . agreed upon the following: 1. The establishment of religious relations between Cambodia and Laos. 2. To respect the preservation of Buddhism in Southeast Asia. 3. To re-establish the religious links between the two countries. 4. To recognize the difficulties and suffering undergone by the Khmer Republic because of the aggression of North Viet-Nam.54 Lao Buddhists proved the statement to be more than lip service when they took up an invitation to reciprocate. Making good on the Laotian pledge to renew religious ties, a trio of Lao Buddhist delegates went to Phnom Penh in May 1973. Reporting on conditions in the country, they claimed to have verified that Cambodian Buddhism was indeed under siege. They lamented “brutal massacres” of monks and lay people, the destruction of more than 100 monasteries and 300 temples, and the “occupation” of Angkor Wat.55 By then, however, Vietnamese communist and anticommunist forces had both largely withdrawn from Cambodia, and it was the Khmer Rouge forces led by Pol Pot who were already turning on their former Vietnamese com-

240

Y7216.indb 240

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t H i e r ar c h y C o n fr o nts Challenger s

munist allies—as well as, with escalating violence, against Cambodian Buddhist monks and monasteries.56 Politically active, right-leaning Cambodian Buddhists successfully reached out to like-minded coreligionists in Thailand and Laos in 1971–73. This was the deeper history of regional Buddhist relations during this critical window, which spanned the American withdrawal from Vietnam and the escalation of U.S. bombing in Cambodia.57 The Cambodian delegation to Bangkok in July 1971 allegedly requested aid from Thai Buddhists. In at least one significant way Cambodian (and Lao) Buddhists were already receiving substantial Thai support, in circumstances that Kittivudho’s own travels perhaps illuminate.

October 1973 Amid signs of a divided and increasingly politicized Buddhist world abroad, Thailand’s ecclesiastical establishment would soon experience tremors from within, compounding its anxieties. That establishment had never been a monolith but was rather internally divided along multiple lines. Along with the perennial tensions, temporary instability was also in store as a result of the short tenure of the recently appointed supreme patriarch, Somdej Phra Wannarat (Pun Punyasiri). After his investiture on July 21, 1972, at age 77, he would die in little more than one year, depriving Kittivudho of his main sponsor. During his brief interval at the apex of the Thai Buddhist hierarchy, Somdej Phra Wannarat saw the makings of two crises of ecclesiastical authority that would be left for his successor to manage. The first was a revolution in the Thai civil sphere ushering in a new atmosphere of populist political activism in which a youthful band of Thai monks would controversially take part. The second was a resumed push from within the monkhood to reverse the judgment against Phimolatham, a scandal that had left an enduring rift in the clerical ranks. Somdej Phra Wannarat lived to see massive student demonstrations take place on the streets of Bangkok in October 1973 protesting decades of military dictatorship. These had climaxed in a “violent outburst” of military

241

Y7216.indb 241

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t H i e r ar c h y Co nfr o nts Challenger s

repression and street fighting on October 14. On what the WFB called this “saddest day of every Thai,” at least 65 student demonstrators were killed and hundreds more wounded.58 The resulting widespread popular outrage led to the Thanom-Prapat military government’s removal from power and its leaders’ flight into exile. Historians David Morell and Chai-anan Samudavanija succinctly explain the root causes of these pivotal events. The “explosion” was largely the result, they write, of the “frustrations and unmet aspirations associated with [the] large and growing gap between change in society at large and stagnation in its political institutions.”59 Thailand had begun a new experiment with constitutional government and a freer civil society, permitting a renewal of interest in the Marxist intellectual output of the 1950s. This included, in particular, the republication of the late Jit Phumisak’s Thai Feudalism and his rediscovery by a new generation of leftist activists.60 However, the experiment would last only three years: sadder days were coming. A left-leaning urban intelligentsia made up of students and young professors was mostly responsible for leading the uprising. From the late 1960s, as the 1968 global wave of student demonstrations etched a worldwide template for domestic upheaval, this group had grown more militant and better organized. Foreign imperialism, both Japanese and American, ranked among the students’ main grievances. The students had found ready allies in Thai farmers, another source of the democratic upsurge whose historical experience Jit’s writings had explored from a Marxist perspective. Increasingly united and radicalized, farmers staged demonstrations against the now rapidly increasing unfair distribution of agricultural land in some parts of the kingdom—one symptom, many argued, of capitalism’s ill effects in Thailand. In the country’s central region, historically the location of the highest rates of tenancy, by 1973 as much as 39 percent of agricultural land was tenant-occupied, compared to only 10 percent in 1963.61 The farmers’ protests had begun even prior to the October 1973 urban uprising. They would briefly flourish in the unusual and vibrant political ecosystem that emerged afterward. By late 1974, the Peasants Federation of Thailand (PFT), a farmers’ advocacy group, had branches in 41 provinces and a membership estimated to be as large as

242

Y7216.indb 242

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t H i e r ar c h y C o n fr o nts Challenger s

1.5 million.62 In a development that would deeply trouble conservative Thai Buddhist observers—who instinctively drew connections with the international phenomenon of the “political monk”—the birth of a popular movement of farmers and students also portended the involvement of young Thai monks in urban street protests. Remarkably, the month of October had also featured a new burst of advocacy on behalf of Phimolatham, portending monk protests of a different sort. In September, a petition to the supreme patriarch calling for the restoration of Phimolatham’s rank had claimed the support of 4,580 monks.63 On October 15, the chief abbots of all of the northeastern Isan region’s then 16 provinces signed a letter representing an even more potent demonstration of the divisive nature of the Phimolatham scandal. Their message asserted Phimolatham’s goodness and purity and respectfully appealed to the supreme patriarch to reconsider his case.64 Buddhism was supposedly a principal source of Thai national unity—a mucilage helping the kingdom to withstand Cold War encroachments. Significantly, the Phimolatham case continued to reveal the ethnic and geographical fault lines that separated a Bangkok-centered national Buddhist establishment from a Lao-speaking Buddhist periphery where such encroachments were most intensely feared. Perhaps it was his illness with cancer that prevented Somdej Phra Wannarat from responding to these appeals. Nevertheless, his passing on December 7, 1973, provided the Thai hierarchy another opportunity for putting international Buddhist ties on display.65 Among the thousands who paid tribute to the late supreme patriarch in a rainy procession on March  23, 1974, from Wat Po to Wat Dhepsirin—where King Bhumipol presided over the cremation rites—were three distinguished clerical visitors from Laos and Cambodia. One was a representative of the supreme patriarch of Cambodia’s royalist-sponsored Thammayut order (a direct offshoot of the elite Thai order of the same name). Also attending were Somdej Phra Mahasumedhadhipati, supreme patriarch of Cambodia’s Mahanikay order, and the Venerable Phra Look Kaew Kampan Silasamvaro, representative of the supreme patriarch of Laos. The trio visited the WFB headquarters on March 26, where they met with Princess Poon, respectfully lit candles and joss sticks, and were photographed together.66

243

Y7216.indb 243

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t H i e r ar c h y Co nfr o nts Challenger s

These contacts were snapshots in time. In 1975, communist forces, the Pathet Lao and Khmer Rouge, would overrun the hierarchies of Thailand’s two eastern neighbors, making such casual visits impossible. A curtain would descend at the Mekong between the three national Buddhist establishments, in a turn of events that would heighten the anxieties of a Thai ruling elite confronted, at the same time, with domestic troubles.

A Specter Materialized: Thailand’s Left-Wing Monks While Somdej Phra Wannarat had seen the 1973 student-led uprising, he did not have to deal with its consequences for the monkhood, which fell to his successor, the Thammayut monk Somdej Phra Maha Virawongse. It was around August 1974 that the new supreme patriarch and his fellow monks on the Council of Elders began to confront the two challenges born out of the new and effervescent political climate: 1) the emergence of a small group of left-leaning activist monks who openly took part in the farmers’ demonstrations and 2) a sudden push from the younger ranks of the monkhood to have the cases against Phimolatham and Satanasophon reconsidered. Their tactics now went beyond the mere signing of petitions to the staging of a days-long public protest at Wat Mahathat. The long-standing questions of how democratically the monkhood would be governed and whether the aging Phimolatham would be fully rehabilitated eight years after his release from prison were coming to a head in an atmosphere of deepening tension between left and right. One leftist monk who would be the focus of the first controversy, which erupted in late November 1974, had gained notoriety by August of that year. Jud Kongsook was born in the southern province of Surat Thani into a poor peasant family, the Thai religious historian Somboon Suksanram reports. Later coming to Bangkok to study, Jud took up residence at Wat Dusitaram. He was ordained as a monk in 1973. He had no outstanding patrons within the clerical administration (though the abbot of Wat Dusitaram was a “friend of a former teacher”). On the contrary, Jud’s personality set him on a collision course with clerical authority. Although a “talented student,” he was considered “disobedient, too independent, failing to observe the Vinaya [monastic code] strictly, and guilty of frequent violations of Sangha regula-

244

Y7216.indb 244

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t H i e r ar c h y C o n fr o nts Challenger s

tions.”67 When I met him many years later, in August 2008 in the restaurant of a Bangkok hotel, he seemed courteous and soft-spoken. It was at a “left-wing seminar” in August 1974 that Jud took aim at Thailand’s role in the Indochina wars.68 His Buddhist critique saw Thailand’s foreign and domestic policies as linked. Calling for a U.S. military withdrawal from Thailand—more than 26,000 U.S. troops remained in the country in 1974—he connected economic exploitation at home to violence against Buddhist neighbors abroad: “Thailand is a Buddhist country but accommodates seven American bases from which aeroplanes are flying to bomb the Vietnamese . . . If we are to be true Buddhists then firstly, we must oust the  American bases from Thailand, secondly, the government must care for the well-being of the people by protecting them from exploitation and oppression of both indigenous and foreign capitalists. Where there is oppression, there will also be reprisals . . . The great majority of the population living in the countryside are suffering and in misery.”69 Jud grasped at the interlinked nature of a war that killed Buddhists outside of Thailand, and which appeared, to his eyes, structured into a domestic regime of capitalist abuse. If Thailand was to be restored as a true Buddhist country, he suggested, ending its participation in the war, which had included the deployment of the Queen’s Cobra Regiment to South Vietnam, was only a preliminary step.70 The country would also need to meet a corollary requirement: reform or even total disavowal of a capitalist system that had both propelled the war and fed off it (most visibly at U.S. airbases, which were also magnets for prostitution and crass commercialism).71 Jud was an outlier for being so outspoken, but he had not appeared out of a vacuum. Somboon has documented Jud’s milieu. This was Bangkok after October 1973—a more pluralistic and liberal environment than under military rule. Here a very small segment of the monkhood’s young, urban rank-and-file grew attracted to leftist, pro-democratic causes, including criticism of a dictatorial Thai clerical administration. The majority were monk students of the two Buddhist universities. Their activities mirrored, though on a much reduced scale, trends within Bangkok’s radicalized lay student population. Some observers, drawing a deeper connection, would even “theorize that the numerous student activists who have entered the

245

Y7216.indb 245

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t H i e r ar c h y Co nfr o nts Challenger s

monkhood for varying durations . . . are almost certainly the vehicle which carried activist politics and social discontent into the wats.”72 If the emergence of a tiny left-wing salient within the Thai clergy had begun cautiously and largely in secret before October 1973, then the more relaxed but more volatile atmosphere after the uprising brought it into the open. In late 1973, government authorities saw signs of what they regarded as a worrisome trend—an indicator of the clergy’s hesitant diversification. A handful of monks were observed at leftist political rallies, attracting official scrutiny. Around this time Thailand’s Department of Central Intelligence found that “some young monks had clandestinely formed themselves into about twenty different groups some of which were linked.”73 The specter of leftist political monks that had haunted Thai clerical, civil, and military authorities since the 1950s finally had some basis in reality. Small, weakly organized, and frequently branching into new offshoots, these groups crossed an important threshold in November 1974, when many of them consolidated into the Federation of Buddhists of Thailand (FBT). There were around 200–300 FBT members at the start; within two years, their ranks had grown to approximately 3,000. However, the FBT would also prove unstable. By March 1976, factional divisions within this “highly personalized and ad hoc” organization would give rise to at least two splinter groups, both more politically radical than the FBT.74 It was around the time of the November 1974 formation of the FBT that the growing visibility of the left-wing monks—heightened by Jud’s sensational comments at the August seminar—triggered a reaction from the hierarchy. So far it had exercised restraint. But on November 21 the hammer came down with a statement from the Council of Elders, the body that was the seat of conservative authority as the monkhood’s sole executive. In response to the new phenomena of “left-wing monks,” the hierarchy reaffirmed its prohibition against clerical involvement in divisive party politics. The November 21 declaration of the Council of Elders stated that “monks and novices are forbidden to involve themselves in the election campaign, to directly or indirectly advocate any candidate, to be present at or participate in any assembly demanding civil rights.” Further, they were “forbidden to debate, make speeches or discuss politics.”75 Any violations,

246

Y7216.indb 246

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t H i e r ar c h y C o n fr o nts Challenger s

the statement threatened, would be punishable according to the monastic code of conduct, the Vinaya. The Council of Elders had intended to nip its problem in the bud. But it instead fertilized the “first active political move by monks in recent Thai history.”76 The move was made on November 23, when small numbers of monks began to openly participate in the farmers’ protest rally of November 18–30. One of the monks, Phra Phong Chiraphunyo, gave an hour-long speech to the farmers in which he reportedly said: “Farmers must have their lands back to earn a living and this could be done by ruling the country under a socialist system.”77 Its threats unheeded, the Thai clerical hierarchy now faced a public crisis that nearly matched—and in some ways specifically echoed—the Phimolatham scandal of the early 1960s. That older and yet unresolved affair still loomed on the horizon for a Thai Buddhist administration determined as ever to stamp out any behavior that contradicted its authority. It was not until an event on November 29, 1974, that Jud and his small circle of fellow activist monks became the object of an intense national controversy, generating headlines in the major Bangkok newspapers. The massive farmers demonstration under way at that time was the largest since June. The 12-day sit-in, held on the Thammasat University campus and surrounding areas, called on the government to reform agrarian land ownership. A November 29 evening march on Bangkok’s ornate, Venetian-style Government House pressed these demands, which had so far gone unanswered. Participants included around 10,000 farmers along with allied student and labor groups and ordinary citizens.78 In a development that “came as a sudden shock to the Buddhists,” a group of around 20 young monks made that mixture even more diverse.79 Led by Jud, they joined hands in front of the crowd. This recalls the 1942 Cambodian monks’ demonstration in Phnom Penh, but more pertinently, it caused Thai authorities to worry that the same form of divisive political involvement that had long been a feature of monks in such countries as Vietnam and Ceylon had now materialized in the kingdom. Indeed, in response to the crisis, Wachara Iamchot, director general of the Religious Affairs Department, explicitly “expressed the concern that the monks might become politicized as have their counterparts in South Vietnam.”80

247

Y7216.indb 247

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t H i e r ar c h y Co nfr o nts Challenger s

A complicating factor was uncertainty over the seriousness of the monks’ alleged infractions, or if they even truly constituted political role-play. This was a debate that garnered opinions from influential lay Buddhist observers and government officials, as well as from Thailand’s highest-ranking clerics. For Kukrit Pramoj, destined to rise to the office of prime minister in March 1975, the monks’ “well-intentioned” actions were defensible, as they had likely promoted “non-violence.”81 But the Thai army general Krit Siwara staked out a far more censorious position that “probably reflect[ed] the feeling of the majority of Thailand’s conservative elite.”82 The monks’ activities were “the end of everything,” he said. “There is nothing more serious than this.”83 Like the civilian official Wachara Iamchot, General Krit feared subversive foreign Buddhist influences over the demonstrating Thai monks. He even publicly entertained the possibility that politicized Cambodian clerics might become directly involved as part of a communist plot. Offsetting fear with fatalism, Krit also asserted that the government could do nothing to avert the crisis.84 Jud himself favors a nuanced interpretation of his actions. When we met in 2008, he drew a distinction between “taking an interest in politics, and becoming involved in them.”85 He and his colleagues had played no particular role in the politics of the era, he suggested. Their aims had been only to help promote a sense of “peace and calm.” So Jud had defended himself against his critics during the uproar that followed November 29, finding at least one influential sympathizer in the otherwise traditionalist Kukrit. “Our participation in the march was not intended as a political act,” Jud told a reporter on December 1. “It was instead for the sake of humanity, to guard over [the demonstrators’] safety, and to promote calm.”86 Those intentions notwithstanding, Jud and his cohort provoked a stern reaction from clerical authorities. This had featured a November 30 order from the lord abbot of Wat Dusitaram expelling him from the monastery grounds—in effect, as it was widely understood at that moment, dismissing him from the monkhood. Only later did it become clear that because Jud was only a visitor at Wat Dusitaram he had not been disrobed in the manner that is implicit in ejection from a monk’s home monastery. The hierarchy stopped short of its harshest punishment.

248

Y7216.indb 248

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t H i e r ar c h y C o n fr o nts Challenger s

Jud announced plans to raise the matter of his expulsion with the abbot of Wat Dusitaram “one more time.”87 If the results of his appeal were unsatisfactory, he would then petition the Council of Elders for redress, he said. In the evening of December 1, 1974, more than 300 local residents gathered at the gates of Wat Dusitaram in a spontaneous protest against Jud’s eviction. But the abbot would not hear their complaints. Jud would later find refuge among friends at Wat Mahathat, even as the abbot there apparently also joined in the attacks against him. Among unfriendly circles, criticism of Jud and his companions mounted over the next few days.88 The abbot of Wat Dusitaram spoke with reporters to make the case for Jud’s ejection. He recalled Jud’s past misbehavior, reciting a long litany of violations of monastery rules. The monks who still resided at the monastery claimed to be no more sympathetic toward their confrere who was now, along with his associates, suspected of being “communist.”89 Yet their statements cannot be taken at face value in light of Jud’s claim that the abbot had “ordered other monks to vote against him and expel him from the wat.”90 On December 3, the Council of Elders met to reaffirm and augment its November 21 prohibition on clerical involvement in political affairs as new allegations against Jud emerged. During a search of his possessions, letters to female students at Thammasat University had allegedly been found. It remains unclear whether any such letters had been sent or received. Senior clerical administrators may have resorted to the tactic once used against Phimolatham by falsely accusing Jud (a monk of similarly suspect political leanings) of sexual crimes.91 For U.S. observers, these events represented not only a “benchmark in Thai Buddhist history and the politicization of interest groups” but also an occasion to recapitulate the basic themes of the U.S. engagement with Thai Buddhism since the early stages of the Cold War.92 A young William Klausner had years earlier expounded on the complex constellation of issues related to the apparent erosion of the rural clergy’s traditional, multifarious role in village life and the resulting discontentment of its younger monks. Now those problems again came to the fore in an assessment that emphasized, in relation to Jud, that “even as rural life has become more complex

249

Y7216.indb 249

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t H i e r ar c h y Co nfr o nts Challenger s

and technical, the clergy’s ability to meet the education and assistance requirements of their parishioners has become less effective. Hence those monks with active social awareness and concern are frustrated.”93 Jud’s self-prescribed role as peaceful intermediary between the farmers and the government arguably still operated within the traditional vein. But his activities, skirting the edges of divisive protest, also recalled Klausner’s warnings of an unintended “transmission belt” escalation of that role into confrontational politics. Along the same lines, U.S. observers considered that Jud’s activism created the dangerous possibility of “immediate and serious confrontation in a sector of Thai society hitherto unaffected by protest—one that along with the king has served so well as a stabilizing force and a parameter within which other social-political conflicts could play themselves out.” Such risks helped explain Krit’s ominous comments, which were also an “indication of just how seriously the conservative leadership takes the current situation.” With more than two decades of American experience interpreting the Thai Buddhist sphere behind them, the U.S. diplomats closed on a prophetic note: “For now the protesters have dispersed. We do not believe, however, that we have seen the last of the saffron robes in public demonstrations.”94

Phimolatham Redux U.S. predictions were borne out in full the next month. Public demonstrations of young monks demanding the restoration of Phimolatham (and Satanasophon) began in late December 1974 and played out through January 1975, yielding them some success. Jud and his friends had offered moral support to protesting farmers in what was construed by their critics as antigovernment activism. The new round of monk protests did not target the secular government but rather posed a direct challenge to the Buddhist hierarchy—the entity that had overseen the persecution of the two “red monks” more than a decade earlier. Consequently, the new activist wave, which drew an estimated 1,000– 1,500 monk protesters to Wat Mahathat by January 16, 1975, could not be denounced or suppressed as easily as monks’ secular political involvement.

250

Y7216.indb 250

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t H i e r ar c h y C o n fr o nts Challenger s

It bore very acutely on the Buddhist hierarchy’s internal politics—thus presenting a far greater threat to the hierarchical imperative.95 Faced with a threatening movement from within, clerical authorities would respond with pragmatic conciliation, while ceding only a partial victory to the protesters. Most curious of all is the previously unknown and archly ironic role that Phimolatham himself played in resolving the crisis of his own rehabilitation. The event centered on a hunger strike staged by five of the protesting monks starting on January 12.96 Here Buddhist traditionalism fused with the new climate of antiauthoritarian protest. From one vantage point, as a U.S. observer commented, the demonstration as a whole could be seen as “further confirmation of how widespread has become the public challenge to traditional authority, values, and patterns of action in Thailand.” By contrast, the “peaceful” hunger strike, in its organizers’ conception, was a quintessentially Buddhist tactic rooted not in the recent upsurge of antiauthoritarian activism but rather in monastic practices of an older pedigree. The monks’ use of this technique was “most appropriate to their particular role and value orientation,” especially considering that, as protest leader Thongbai Inthathata himself claimed, “protesting monks had used the hunger strike even in the time of the lord buddha.”97 The appropriateness of their tactics was matched only by the “purity” of their goals, Thongbai also suggested: the monks had assembled without any hidden motives, he said, but purely out of the desire to “fight for justice.”98 In fact, what the hunger strike represented was the carrying out of an earlier threat of “further action” if the demands of a December 19 petition had not been met by January 8. Despite promises to review the cases by that date, the Council of Elders had allowed the deadline to pass. The ecclesiastical elders would not submit to what appeared to their eyes as an attempt at blackmail—a tactic they considered unbecoming because it was unprecedented for Thai monks. Resentment of this “very regrettable” method of squeezing the ecclesiastical hierarchy, resulting in the humiliation of the supreme patriarch, had formed a major theme of a special January 13 meeting of the council.99 But neither did resentment cloud the need for the ecclesiastical administration to respond. The next day the council invited Phimolatham and

251

Y7216.indb 251

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t H i e r ar c h y Co nfr o nts Challenger s

Satanasophon to an evening audience with the supreme patriarch.100 The two prominent victims of Thailand’s Cold War now edged toward redemption with a formal meeting at the nexus of conservative Thai Buddhist power, among the successors to their former persecutors. The invitation, though phrased in respectful terms, appeared as a summons. Yet in a turn of events that outside observers were not privy to, Phimolatham’s role at this important meeting, according to his own memoirs, was more that of an adviser than a supplicant. The Thai Buddhist hierarchy’s dilemma was plain to American observers, who saw a secular analog in the tribulations of a Thai government also beset with popular activism from formerly dormant sectors of society. “The ecclesiastical council is learning, as is the Thai government, that it can not use promises of action to defuse a tense confrontation and then not deliver,” the U.S. State Department reported on January 16—the day of Phimolatham’s audience.101 “The council is in a difficult position, however, because if it does restore the two monks to their original ranks and positions it will thereby bring spokesmen into the conservative hierarchy who will press for further reform within the church, including the raising of younger monks to positions of authority. Phra Pimontham [Phimolatham] and his supporters will also, for example, continue to push for reform of the religious education system.”102 Ironically, the individual best able to advise the council on how to cut the Gordian knot—the conflicting demands of conciliation and control— was Phimolatham himself. He and Satanasophon arrived at Wat Rajabopit, the Bangkok monastery whose unique interior resembles a gilded Italian arcade, with time to spare for their 6:00 p.m. appointment. Nearly 15 years after his April 1962 arrest, Phimolatham now wore glasses—one visible sign of advancing age. But his wit had not diminished with his eyesight. Smiling at reporters, he parried questions about how he felt with anodyne replies: he was “happy” and “contented” as he waited for the audience.103 Barred from the interior chamber where the meeting took place, the press was unable to report on the discussion.104 Bangkok’s newspapermen therefore missed the spectacle of an outwardly friendly exchange in which the supreme patriarch, surrounded by other council elders and lay Buddhist

252

Y7216.indb 252

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t H i e r ar c h y C o n fr o nts Challenger s

affairs officials, solicited Phimolatham for input. The once embattled monk minced no words in an assessment that described the hierarchy’s “difficult position” even more starkly than U.S. officials had. Phimolatham supposed that the question of his rehabilitation had now become a matter of “public opinion.” If that were so, he continued in a hypothetical vein, then it was a situation that the hierarchy ignored or mishandled at its peril, for “whoever resisted public opinion faced two options: either to be murdered or to commit suicide.”105 Phimolatham strongly suggested that the hierarchy should respond to public sympathy for his case. The critical next step was the crafting of a written response that would abate the immediate crisis—the ongoing hunger strike and demonstration—while buying the hierarchy more time. Remarkably, it was with this “very important” task in mind that one elder monk, Phra Wisuttaa, drew close to Phimolatham at the meeting and discreetly asked for his help.106 As Phimolatham recalled, he at first “played hard to get” with the senior monk, who knew him from long ago. He coyly insisted that writing such a statement was “not his role, but rather was the role of those who are members of the Council.”107 But he soon consented to the request. Paper was brought out and Phimolatham began to write a response that was then typed up. The supreme patriarch made only one small change—a spelling correction. The statement had the intended effects. These included the immediate end of the hunger strike, which came to a celebratory finish on January 17, and the dispersal to their provincial temples of the protesting monks, who met at Wat Mahathat “for the last time” the following morning.108 Carefully worded as a plea rather than a command, the statement promised that consideration of the reinstatement of the two monks would be completed by February 5.109 More time was necessary, the protesters were told, because the process needed to be carried out “in accordance with Buddhist principles and ethics to retain the prestige of Thai monks.”110 Yet, while more time was gained, the hierarchy’s basic conundrum remained unresolved, as the Americans noted—once again with prophetic overtones—on January 22: “The ecclesiastical council finally appears as though it will act to restore the two monks’ ranks. The dilemma is that if it

253

Y7216.indb 253

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t H i e r ar c h y Co nfr o nts Challenger s

does so, Phra Pimontham [Phimolatham] and company will be encouraged to force reforms on the conservative hierarchy. If it decides against reinstatement the protesting monks will be back in greater numbers [than] ever before. We look forward to continued turbulence in Buddhist ranks, whatever the decision.”111 What U.S. officials did not contemplate was that Thailand’s conservative Buddhist elders would manage to thread the needle, avoiding an escalation of the protests while also delaying Phimolatham’s reintegration into the top ranks of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, the outcome they least desired. This was accomplished by separating two issues that American officials had fused together: the restoration of Phimolatham’s monastic rank and his rehabilitation as an influential figure within the clerical administration. Symbolically, the last would not be achieved until he had at least regained his position as lord abbot of Wat Mahathat, the office he had held at the time of his arrest. It would take the ecclesiastical hierarchy only until January 30 to issue a formal statement clearing Phimolatham (and Satanasophon) of all outstanding charges, reestablishing their “purity” in the public eye—and so placating their defenders.112 The formal restoration of their ranks occurred later, in late February.113 Their clerical fans were returned in June.114 But several more years would pass before the hierarchy allowed Phimolatham to begin to resume his former administrative powers at Wat Mahathat, while the still larger question of his eventual ascension to full somdet (cardinal) rank and a position on the Council of Elders controversially played out. The ecclesiastical hierarchy and its conservative allies thus partially accommodated the January 1975 push for Phimolatham’s reinstatement while deflecting the movement’s hardest and most dangerous thrust. Meanwhile, the hierarchy did not conciliate but merely suppressed another of its challengers: Maha Jud. Jud was the monk who had more recently assumed Phimolatham’s mantle of progressive activism. Indeed, as an advocate of pacifistic liberal internationalism—an attribute that under the conditions of the Cold War opened him to charges of communism— Jud was one of the more notable successors to Phimolatham, a figure of whom he spoke admiringly to me 30 years later. Like Phimolatham, Jud’s compassionate internationalism had combined with his advocacy for do-

254

Y7216.indb 254

7/20/17 9:51 AM

B u d d h i s t H i e r ar c h y C o n fr o nts Challenger s

mestic reform to provoke the ire of a conservative ecclesiastical hierarchy still not open to any oppositional political role for Thai monks. Events would show, however, that Thailand’s clerical leadership would now tolerate political activity, provided that it was supportive of establishment conservatism. Indeed, while punishing Jud, the hierarchy showed favoritism toward Kittivudho and his brand of politics, which played to the establishment’s exaggerated fears of foreign communism. As the historian Peter Jackson explains, this was a double standard that Jud and his nominally left-wing associates protested, seemingly with the expectation that the thammacarik and thammathut programs had opened up legitimate possibilities for activism across the political spectrum: “After the issuing of the Mahatherasamakhom’s [November] 1974 directive that monks should not become politically involved, left-wing monks pointed out the contradiction between the Council of Elders’ active participation in implicitly political government-sponsored activities, such as the Dhammadhuta and Dhammacarika Buddhist propagatory programmes, and the Council’s opposition to the political activities of monks who were critical of the government. Furthermore, it was pointed out that Kittivudho’s involvement in right-wing demonstrations and political involvement went without official comment, while similar activities by left-wing monks were strongly condemned.”115 These complaints were naïve. The reality was that these “propagatory” programs had broken down the barriers only to radical right-wing activism of the sort that called to mind Professor Tsusho Byoto, Thailand’s longforgotten wartime Japanese guest.

255

Y7216.indb 255

7/20/17 9:51 AM

Ei ght

The Rage of Thai Buddhism, 1975–1980

J

im Chamberlain was not “one hundred percent convinced” he and his colleagues would have to shutter the Asia Foundation office in Vientiane following the 1975 Pathet Lao takeover. The atmosphere in the Lao capital was “not violent,” he recalled. “Things didn’t look like they would be so bad.” However, his perceptions changed the day he came across a column of Vietnamese tanks lined up for about three kilometers on a road leading into town. The new Lao communist government had signed a military agreement with Vietnam, allowing Vietnamese troops into the country. Recognition of this “indisputable power sitting there” was Chamberlain’s “wake-up call,” he told me—the moment when “things really started to change.” In events that increased his sense of danger, communist-aligned Lao protesters targeted USAID, a large French military compound, and even the U.S. diplomatic residence, after having earlier staged demonstrations in front of various Lao government ministries calling for resignations of blacklisted officials (many of whom now quickly departed for Thailand). The decision was then made to close the foundation’s Lao office. Chamberlain and other staffers promptly began “burning all of our documents” (though they spared many books, sending these to the Lao National Library).1 The December 2, 1975, abolition of the Lao monarchy, one immediate outcome of the Pathet Lao victory, had a “tremendous psychological impact” in Thailand, William Klausner recalled.2 This was due in large part to its troubling implications for Buddhism. Because of the centurieslong symbiotic relationship between the Lao Buddhist hierarchy and the Lao monarchy, the fates of the two institutions seemed closely intertwined. Indeed, the Pathet Lao’s destruction of the monarchy (the Lao king, queen, and crown prince were sent to a reeducation camp, where they subse-

25 6

Y7216.indb 256

7/20/17 9:51 AM

T h e R ag e o f T h a i Bu ddhi sm

quently died) seemed to Thailand’s Buddhist elders equally as much an attack on Buddhism itself. That the new communist government of Laos also chose—as another of its first acts—to disband the Thammayut monastic order, which it saw as an agent of Thai imperialism in the country, only confirmed such fears. All of these circumstances were a “very crucial element” accentuating the instinctive anticommunism of Thailand’s senior administrative clerics, Klausner remembered of this time.3 The Thai Buddhist hierarchy’s tacit support of Kittivudho’s anticommunist activism during the critical year of 1976 was all the more assured because of what had happened in Vientiane. And in Cambodia, ruled by the Khmer Rouge since April 1975, the fate of Buddhists was much worse again. One of the patriarchs of the two Khmer orders and many other monks had already been secretly murdered.4 However, Thailand’s closer historical and linguistic relationship with Laos served to focus greater Thai attention on events there. What Chamberlain witnessed in Vientiane in late 1975 were events that conservative Buddhist elites in Thailand naturally found deeply unsettling. They shifted the right-wing counterreaction, already aggressive, into an even more determined “second stage.”5 Kittivudho’s fascistic Buddhist rhetoric now gained added traction, lending rhetorical inspiration to his followers even as it attracted serious criticism, including from some monks.6

The Right Mobilizes By 1974, the groundwork for a right-wing backlash against the “revolution” of October 1973 had already been laid. In moves that have been widely recounted, rightist elements within the military, the business sector, the monarchy, and other segments of the Thai establishment had begun to mobilize supporters. These developments increased the already deep polarization of the Thai public sphere. From August 1975, they received close attention from U.S. officials, who recognized their troubling implications for Thai religious affairs. In the countryside, the Village Scouts, a civic action group founded under palace sponsorship in Loei province in August 1971, was indoctrinating trainees in the fundamentals of Thai patriotism: loyalty to nation, religion,

257

Y7216.indb 257

7/20/17 9:51 AM

T h e R ag e o f Thai Bu ddhi sm

and king. The Village Scouts’ principal founder, Border Patrol Police colonel Somkuan Harikul, took inspiration from the early twentieth-century nationalism of the Wild Tiger Corps that King Vajiravudh (r. 1910–25) had sponsored. Perhaps more pertinently, Colonel Somkuan’s organization also bore the “hallmarks” not of the Asia Foundation but of “American counterinsurgency work in Vietnam and elsewhere.”7 Religious content infused the three-day-long training program for inductees. Their indoctrination, as documented by anthropologist Katherine Bowie, featured songs, dancing, games, speeches, oath-taking—and the ritual presentation to every new scout of a royal kerchief whose sacredness and nobleness Village Scout instructors emphasized.8 It was not uncommon for local monks to take part in these activities. Buddhist clergy delivered lectures on Thailand’s national defense and on traditional Thai culture while plays—also taking up Buddhist themes—showed how “communists were punished in hell.”9 This foreshadowed Kittivudho’s rhetoric. By 1974 the Village Scout organization—with membership now in the tens of thousands and growing fast—had begun to assume the proportions of the “largest right-wing popular organization ever fabricated in Thai history.”10 Its darker character reflected its new status, effective by that year, as a national organization administered by the Ministry of Interior and the counterinsurgency Internal Security Operations Command (ISOC). Despite efforts made in parliament to rein in or financially undercut ISOC during 1974–76, its clout in fact grew as the scope of the organization’s activities— and its budget—increased many times over.11 Personnel at ISOC made up the “matrix” from which two more “neo-fascist” organizations were born.12 Both of these groups complemented the rural grassroots and later countrywide organization of the Village Scouts, creating a three-pronged right-wing movement. Forming the bluntest edge of the conservative trident, various elements connected with ISOC began to organize the shock troops of Thailand’s right-wing comeback. Suebsai Hatsadin, son of Colonel Sudsai Hatsadin, former head of ISOC’s Hill Tribes Division, was one of the better-known ISOC leaders involved in the formation of this group, which was named the Krathin Daeng, or Red Gaurs, after an aggressive species of large for-

258

Y7216.indb 258

7/20/17 9:51 AM

T h e R ag e o f T h a i Bu ddhi sm

est buffalo.13 As the political scientist Benedict Anderson has reported, the Red Gaurs were composed in part of unemployed vocational school graduates and high school dropouts, but slum toughs, former mercenaries, and soldiers discharged from the army for disciplinary infractions also stiffened their ranks. Rather than ideological convictions, promises of high pay, free liquor, and access to brothels motivated them.14 Since mid-1974, Red Gaurs were known to carry guns and explosives “in the open, immune from police or military arrest.”15 They disrupted and bombed leftist political rallies and ransacked the offices of leftist newspapers. They intimidated student, farmer, and trade union leaders. In July 1975, investigative reporting by the British-born journalist Norman Peagam, writing for the Far Eastern Economic Review, shed new light on the Red Gaurs and their organizers.16 But Peagam’s reporting was even more notable for the interest it generated in the Navapol (“New Strength”) organization, which had also emerged from the ISOC nexus.17 The streetlevel visibility of the Red Gaurs contrasted with this allied, but far more shadowy, group. Navapol’s alleged ties with the U.S. government, particularly the CIA, were a subject of widespread rumor after its August 1974 inception.18 By September of the following year—in the wake of Peagam’s July exposé and the August 21 opening of Navapol offices in Bangkok’s Thip Metal building, marking the group’s first anniversary—such allegations prompted the U.S. State Department to request a detailed report on the group from the Bangkok embassy. The embassy complied. This report was inconclusive on the question of CIA connections. However, it shows that State Department officials were skeptical of the organization whose upper echelons comprised a self-styled “Masonic elite”—and whose name, in an appropriately pseudo-mystical flourish, was an esoteric reference to Bhumipol’s reign.19 Navapol owed its programmatic emphasis on the conservative ideology of nation, religion, and king mostly to its “chief ideologue,” the ISOC-associated and U.S.-educated Watthana Khieowimon. Watthana, who had returned to Thailand in 1973 after a ten-year sojourn in the United States, was also an alleged CIA associate.20 But this link was not confirmed by State Department observers, who instead related details of Watthana’s questionable behavior and reputation.

259

Y7216.indb 259

7/20/17 9:51 AM

T h e R ag e o f Thai Bu ddhi sm

He is an “aggressive, name-dropping, influence peddler,” they wrote.21 Watthana was reportedly not well respected even within his own right-wing Thai circles. His credentials were considered insufficient for the exposure to high-ranking members of the Thai government that he enjoyed during a controversial stint as an adviser to ISOC—employment that he later “terminated” in order to devote himself to Navapol organizing. For influence, Watthana relied on “claims to have intimate contact with senior levels of the U.S. government,” including assertions that he was an adviser to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and a CIA contact.22 Watthana’s character defects made him “both the strength and weakness” of Navapol, U.S. officials found. “Some people hold [him] in low regard and withhold their support from [Navapol] because of his control.”23 Partly because of distrust of Watthana, Navapol’s “present influence” was still described as “minimal” in September 1975. However, despite its “lightweight and opportunistic” leadership, the cell-based Navapol network, whose reach had already extended to Chiang Mai, Nan, Lumphun, and Udon provinces, was also seen to have considerable “growth potential.”24 Navapol had gained traction as a secretive association intermingling governmental, academic, and military elites. This was a niche filled neither by the royally patronized but grassroots and relatively egalitarian Village Scouts nor by the youthful and thuggish Red Gaurs. Navapol’s cabalistic pretensions enhanced its niche appeal. While U.S. officials downplayed its influence, they also anticipated that the “conservative elite may find that it has encouraged a phenomena [sic] that it cannot totally control.”25

Navapol’s Monk Among the factors that made Navapol potentially uncontrollable, the Americans also recognized, was Kittivudho’s involvement in the group. Kittivudho’s commemoration volume suggests that he began his association with Navapol in 1975, in time to fuel a growing roster of supporters composed mainly of low-level government functionaries and clerks, urban petitbourgeoisie, and rural village and commune headmen.26 Kittivudho’s own base of support, as Charles Keyes observes, was “drawn from much the same class of people as was the support” for the Navapol movement.27

260

Y7216.indb 260

7/20/17 9:51 AM

T h e R ag e o f T h a i Bu ddhi sm

During 1975, Kittivudho proselytized for Navapol at rallies throughout the country, where his connections and his reputation as a rousing speaker helped boost attendance.28 Deepening the relationship beyond speaking engagements, Kittivudho began to channel some of the $10 million he had reportedly raised through his “charismatic preaching and teaching” to the political group that had now made him its traveling clerical representative.29 In another indication of an intimate partnership, Kittivudho’s royally sanctioned outpost in Chonburi became a Navapol training ground while still functioning as a school for monks. Jittaphawan’s two institutional purposes merged as young monks attended Navapol seminars hosted on the campus.30 A young and energetic clerical contingent based at Jittaphawan would complement Navapol’s country-wide lay membership, claimed to number as high as 50,000, and purportedly spread throughout half of Thailand’s provinces, by July 1975.31 Navapol’s growing clout became more conspicuous when, during the six months between April and August 1975, an anonymous group began “systematically culling” (i.e., murdering) the leaders of the Peasants Federation of Thailand at a rate of roughly one per week, totaling no fewer than 23  assassinations by July—with some victims being “gunned down as they made their way home from the funerals of their murdered comrades.”32 It was very likely Navapol, operating from the center in Chonburi where monks and lay supporters intermingled, that lay behind this reign of terror in the countryside. For U.S. officials, Navapol’s ideological emphasis on Buddhism, as personified by Kittivudho’s high-profile involvement, bore extremely troubling implications for Thailand. One concern was that the close association of Buddhism with the Navapol program could “create antagonisms with other religious minorities in the country”—an observation that gestured prophetically toward future developments in the kingdom’s restive, Muslim-majority deep south.33 More generally, Navapol’s deployment of religion, including the indoctrination of Jittaphawan’s monk students, threatened to politicize the Thai clergy. This posed an immediate threat to Thailand’s national stability, a perennial U.S. concern. “New Strength aims to be the paramount conservative organization in Thailand,” U.S. officials wrote. “Its emphasis on

261

Y7216.indb 261

7/20/17 9:51 AM

T h e R ag e o f Thai Bu ddhi sm

the conservative triumvirate of nation, religion and king, however, holds considerable dangers for Thailand. There is a distinct possibility that New Strength’s emphasis on king, nation and religion could drag the monarchy and the Buddhist hierarchy into the political fray. If this happens, the organization will have contributed to the weakening of the monarchy as a factor for political and social stability, to the ultimate cost of Thailand.”34 The U.S. diplomats might have added that such an outcome would counteract decades of Asia Foundation programming dedicated to channeling the Thai clergy’s energy into constructive, nonpolitical arenas with the intention of preserving the monkhood as a “stabilizing” force.

The U.S. Withdrawal Political violence in Thailand increased with the start of the new year. The recent debacle in Indochina, combined with a darkening political climate at home, cast a shadow over the World Fellowship of Buddhists’ eleventh conference in Bangkok on February 20–25, 1976. It was a stark reminder of Indochina’s sudden divorce from the WFB community that there were no representatives from Laos, Cambodia, or Vietnam present. Delegates from these countries had played a vocal part in WFB gatherings in years past. Now they were absent, suffering varying degrees of repression under their new rulers. If anyone could speak with authority on recent political crises—both at home and abroad—it was Thailand’s elected, embattled, and now recently ousted prime minister, Kukrit Pramoj, who in fact addressed the delegates on February 20. As leader of a center-right coalition that had come to power following the elections of January 1975, Kukrit had pursued a reformist domestic program while taking steps to normalize relations with Hanoi and Beijing, transforming Thailand from a U.S. client state into a more pragmatic and independent country. As much as these policies had endeared Kukrit to much of the Thai public, they had done little to resolve Thailand’s underlying social and political problems, and they had antagonized a hard-line right skeptical of any kind of progressive agenda, either foreign or domestic. Conservative Thai observers especially feared a hasty termination of the American military presence.

262

Y7216.indb 262

7/20/17 9:51 AM

T h e R ag e o f T h a i Bu ddhi sm

They supposed that this would create a power vacuum easing the advance of foreign communist forces across Thailand’s borders. On January 12, 1976, Kukrit had succumbed to royal and army pressure to resign, thereby allowing the king’s dissolution of the national assembly, Thailand’s elected parliament.35 New elections were scheduled for April 14. In the meantime, Thailand endured a spate of new assassinations and bombings; right-wing vigilante groups were determined to tilt the upcoming elections in their favor by killing leaders and members of leftist groups, including elected members of the national assembly. Kukrit retained a wisp of his former power by agreeing to stay in office as caretaker prime minister.36 As he did so, his antagonists within the extreme right factions of the ruling elite continued to entertain the possibility—as they had throughout his short tenure—of an immediate coup to shortcircuit the electoral process. From afar, Washington warned against the plotting. “It continues to be our assessment that a military coup or other extra-constitutional action . . . would harm our policy interests and objectives in Thailand.”37 The State Department insisted that embassy personnel in Bangkok leave Thailand’s military and civilian officials “with no illusions as to our opposition about coups.” Yet U.S. influence in Thailand was already in decline. Negotiations over the departure of remaining U.S. troops and aircraft and the closure of all U.S. military installations now formed a major preoccupation of diplomatic communication between Washington and the caretaker government in Bangkok. Despite various setbacks, Kukrit came across as sanguine at the WFB conference in February, relying on his Buddhist faith to gain perspective on the swirl of events. “The life of a Prime Minister is a life full of problems, political, social and economic,” he said in his address. “There is bewilderment and doubt in the world today. Every country has its difficulties and is faced with all kinds of dangers. If there is to be peace in the world, there must be a guiding light. And I sincerely believe that no one philosophy is so qualified . . . as Buddhism.”38 A fierce royalist—and a traditionalist—Kukrit was also a wry-humored intellectual who may not have overlooked the irony of his own address. As he commented on what some Buddhist thinkers construed as Buddhism’s essential pacifism, informed observers—Kukrit among them—may have also

263

Y7216.indb 263

7/20/17 9:51 AM

T h e R ag e o f Thai Bu ddhi sm

reflected on the determination of Thailand’s right-wing groups to employ Buddhism for very different purposes: to promote not peaceful understanding of but hatred for the political left. The irony grew even sharper on the WFB conference’s final day. The event closed with a daylong tour arranged for the conference attendees. The entire group traveled along Thailand’s eastern coast to their destination in Chonburi province: Jittaphawan College. Foreign Buddhist delegates representing more than a dozen countries gathered for lunch on February 25 in one of the expanding campus’s several assembly halls. It remains unclear whether Kittivudho—the one monk in Thailand whose growing reputation for political activism most directly contradicted all that the WFB was supposed to represent on the international stage—personally greeted these guests. Three days after the WFB tour of Jittaphawan, on February 28, 1976, right-wing attacks reached a new level of brazenness with the assassination of Dr. Boonsanong Punyodhana, a Cornell-educated sociology professor, elected member of the national assembly, and secretary general of the Socialist Party of Thailand. The murder of this moderate political figure, who had advocated the removal of U.S. bases from Thai soil, went unsolved. Behind the scenes, during the next few weeks, several of Thailand’s key right-wing figures spoke out against the U.S. withdrawal that Boonsanong had advocated (forming a key motive for his assassination). One of the most formidable of these figures, General Saiyudh Kerdphol, the “father” of ISOC, said that “Thailand has no one to help it against the North Vietnamese Army and other forces that have been supporting the well-armed communist insurgents in all parts of Thailand with weapons, supplies and people.”39 The general reportedly felt that the U.S. withdrawal was “basically wrong,” views that echoed those of other senior military officers, who similarly maintained that “Thai forces are inadequate to face their potential enemies to the East.” But in the face of such right-wing protests, U.S. diplomats reacted skeptically: “The large U.S. shoulder to lean on would probably assure the fact that the Thai military would do little or nothing more constructive to become self-sufficient.”40 Against staunch right-wing resistance—and despite his diminished stature as head of a caretaker government—Kukrit pushed the U.S. phaseout.

264

Y7216.indb 264

7/20/17 9:51 AM

T h e R ag e o f T h a i Bu ddhi sm

With national elections imminent, Kukrit announced, in a televised statement on March 20, a four-month deadline for the complete withdrawal from Thailand of the remaining 4,000 U.S. troops (save for 270 military aid advisers) and the closure of all U.S. military installations.41 Kukrit’s reasons for discontinuing the patron-client relationship that had defined the ThaiU.S. security arrangement since the dawning of the Cold War were more pragmatic than ideological. The U.S. bases had become “a serious domestic political issue as well as ‘lightning rods’ for the new communist governments in Indochina which hurt the development of constructive relations with them,” he said.42 Kukrit’s assertive handling of the U.S. withdrawal was generally popular, especially among anti-U.S., leftist student activists. But it earned harsh disapproval from conservatives who favored a continued U.S. military presence. The Kukrit government had “mishandled the issue of an American residual presence,” said Thailand’s former foreign minister Thanat Khoman in an April meeting with the U.S. ambassador, Charles Whitehouse.43 “In its role of caretaker, the Kukrit government had not had the authority to make a decision of this significance,” he added. Thanat, the onetime confidant of the Lyndon Johnson administration who had helped orchestrate Thai Buddhist diplomacy in now communistruled Vietnam, expressed his “fervent hope” that Washington would not use the March 20 declaration as a “pretext for a withdrawal from this part of Asia.” Whitehouse, for his part, was noncommittal: it was not Washington’s intention to “tip-toe away,” he offered reassuringly, but the “fact was that the [Royal Thai Government] had taken an official position to which we were responding.”44 In other words, the die had been cast: a U.S. withdrawal was in the offing—a development that greatly heightened the Thai right’s anticommunist fervor. These were fears that even Whitehouse considered paranoid due to the extreme unlikelihood of actual foreign communist infiltration or invasion. Dismissing the U.S. evacuation of Thailand as a “non-issue,” he was bemused when the palace expressed concern over his safety as U.S. troops were preparing to leave.45 By this time, criticism of Kukrit was also moot: the April elections had brought to power his elder brother and former wartime ambassador to the

265

Y7216.indb 265

7/20/17 9:51 AM

T h e R ag e o f Thai Bu ddhi sm

United States, Seni Pramoj, as prime minister of a new coalition government led by Seni’s Democrat Party. This mainline establishment party had grown more progressive under Seni’s leadership, especially through its advocacy of moderately populist social policies and the opposition of its liberal wing to military interventions in Thai political life. In the meantime, in a sign of moderation’s limited appeal, political violence had escalated. On March 25, a grenade attack on a rally of the moderate liberal New Force party in Chainat had taken ten lives.46 By election day in mid-April, more than 30 people associated with liberal or left-wing parties had been killed.47 Seni’s new government inherited major challenges from his brother’s administration.

Thailand’s Holy War Readers of Kittivudho’s commemoration volume are left with a strange impression of the year 1976: that it was among the least eventful of his career. The biographical portion of the volume breaks down his activities according to several categories. It was in building construction—readers are led to believe—that Kittivudho was most active in 1976. A new 2 million baht structure was completed that year under Kittivudho’s supervision, presumably as part of the Jittaphawan campus’s continuing expansion. But Kittivudho reportedly accomplished nothing in 1976 in the area of “national security works” (a separate category which, however, does include his public affiliation with Navapol starting in 1975).48 Kittivudho’s biographers omitted important details. It was in June, as Seni Pramoj attempted to oversee the U.S. troop withdrawal that his brother had mandated, that Kittivudho fueled the rising tide of anti-left violence in the statement that brought his public visibility to its peak. In a widely quoted declaration, Kittivudho publicly stated that killing communists was not a sin. On the contrary, he said such killing is not killing persons “because whoever destroys the nation, the religion, or the monarchy, such bestial types (man) are not complete persons. Thus, we must intend not to kill people but to kill the devil (Mara); this is the duty of all Thai.” He continued, under questioning, to say that while any killing is

266

Y7216.indb 266

7/20/17 9:51 AM

T h e R ag e o f T h a i Bu ddhi sm

demeritorious, the demerit is very little and the merit very great for such an act that serves to preserve the nation, the religion, and the monarchy. “It is just like,” he said, “when we kill a fish to make a stew to place in the alms bowl for a monk. There is certainly demerit in killing the fish, but we place it in the alms bowl of a monk and gain much greater merit.”49 It was not, as some of Kittivudho’s defenders would later claim, that he had been misunderstood. Pongsak, Kittivudho’s former pupil, echoed that familiar defense when I spoke with him at Jittaphawan in 2009: Kittivudho had not advocated the killing of communist individuals, he told me. He had been speaking metaphorically, Pongsak insisted: his real meaning was that killing communism ought not be considered sinful. But Kittivudho’s later specification that the deaths of 50,000 Thai communists would accrue sufficient merit for the 42 million other Thais undermines Pongsak’s case.50 Indeed, Kittivudho’s liberal critics took his words at face value—as a literal injunction to kill. The Federation of Buddhists of Thailand denounced him as a “villain in a yellow robe” who was “contaminating the religion and the yellow robe with blood.”51 The outraged attacks on Kittivudho included charges by the liberal newspaper Prachachart on June 24 that he had invented a “new religion” predicated on killing.52 Taking up a second theme, the newspaper’s editorial noted with frustration that while the Council of Elders had disciplined the leftist monk Maha Jud, it had so far done nothing to punish Kittivudho. On the first point, the Prachachart editorial failed to take in a broader context. Kittivudho’s ideas were not fundamentally new. They represented a Thai variation on earlier rhetoric that Buddhism’s twentieth-century involvement in war and confrontation with international communism had generated in other Buddhist societies. In 1942, as we have seen, the Japanese professor Byoto had attempted to introduce a very similar set of religious precepts to Thailand’s Buddhist establishment, only to find it unreceptive. Now, after decades of Cold War, which had seen Thailand’s Buddhist neighbors subjected to military destruction only to fall to communism, Kittivudho’s recapitulation of these same precepts gained far greater traction among conservative Thai Buddhists (even as they remained anathema to the liberal and leftist Thais whom Kittivudho attacked). And just as Byoto’s

267

Y7216.indb 267

7/20/17 9:51 AM

T h e R ag e o f Thai Bu ddhi sm

compatriot and contemporary Hatane Jozan had argued that Japan’s “sacred war” on China somehow reflected “the great practice of the bodhisattva,” Kittivudho decades later (and without any direct knowledge of Jozan) saw the killing of communists within Thailand as a meritorious duty that both fulfilled and protected the Buddha’s teachings. In a more abstract way, Kittivudho’s thought also unwittingly resembled the mental gymnastics of militant Zen scholars in its unlikely conflation of killing with the giving of life. For Byoto and his contemporaries, these ideas had often hinged on the symbolic significance of the sword both as a tool of death and—more curiously—as an instrument of Buddhist mercy. For T. D.  Suzuki, as Brian Victoria explains, the “art of swordsmanship” distinguished between the “sword that kills and the sword that gives life.”53 Similarly, for Byoto, application of the sword to kill a “small being” was the sacrificial act that ensured life for the “big being” (by which he meant the nation).54 It was purely by coincidence, it seems, that the noted Thai poet and writer Naowarat Phongpaiboon used abstruse sword-related imagery to challenge Kittivudho. In a scathing attack on Kittivudho’s integrity as a monk, Phongpaiboon referred to a Thai maxim that every new ordinant in the monkhood resembled a “two-sided blade” concealed beneath a saffron robe.55 Whether the new monk used his clerical status for good or ill, he suggested, depended on which side of the blade he favored (or perhaps embodied). Phongpaiboon denounced Kittivudho not only for his endorsement of killing communists but also for one of his lesser known quips: he had told a reporter that he could attain Nirvana simply “by taking a nap.”56 Kittivudho was a monk who represented the blade’s negative side; he insulted the Buddha by making light of the state of sublime nothingness that was the ultimate goal of every Buddhist; and he degraded the Thai nation through his unorthodox advocacy of political killing, which the Buddha had never sanctioned. Of course, Kittivudho saw himself differently. For him, as for Byoto, political murder did not undermine or degrade the national life but rather, turning over the sword’s blade, preserved and strengthened it. In a slight variation on a theme, Kittivudho couched his ideas in terms of the “sur-

268

Y7216.indb 268

7/20/17 9:51 AM

T h e R ag e o f T h a i Bu ddhi sm

vival” of nation, religion, and king. He reportedly said: “We must say the same words, that is, Thailand does not want communists to rule our country . . . if we want to preserve our nation, religion, and monarchy, we sometimes have to sacrifice certain rules of morality (sila) for the survival of these institutions. If we are cautious in keeping to the rules of morality, then these three institutions will not survive. I ask you to ponder this: how would you choose between the violation of the prohibition on killing and survival of the nation, religion, and the monarchy?”57 If the Prachachart editorial understandably failed to draw connections with the militant Zen school of wartime Japan, the editors less understandably overlooked the recent war in Cambodia, where elements of Kittivudho’s supposedly “new religion” had also been in play. While Kittivudho almost certainly knew nothing of Byoto or his contemporaries, it is clear that the war in Cambodia did mold his outlook.58 In the country he visited in 1971 (and whose young monks he admitted to study at Jittaphawan by the dozens), Lon Nol’s government had declared a “religious war” on the Khmer Rouge and North Vietnamese, using rhetoric that Kittivudho would later— perhaps deliberately—echo.59 Somboon recounts that Lon Nol “persuaded the Khmer people to believe that the war with these enemies not only was a war against aggression, but it was also a war against the atheist devil.” He adds that the Lon Nol government “found it natural to justify their counter action against the Khmer Rouge in Buddhist terms. The notions that the communists were mara or Dhmil (atheist devil) were powerful arguments and generated fear and hatred in the minds of the people.”60 Had Kittivudho, five years after visiting Cambodia—and with the Lon Nol government now defeated—consciously introduced these same formulations (communists as devils) to Thailand? While Prachachart overstated the novelty of Kittivudho’s ideology, the second thrust of its June 24 editorial was indisputable: the Council of Elders, after discussing the issue in a meeting at Wat Boworniwet around June  30, took no action against Kittivudho.61 In resisting calls to punish him (unlike Jud), the supreme clerical body showed its irreducible conservatism, its fealty to the palace-military establishment, and its genuine anticommunism (recently intensified by the fall of Laos and Cambodia). In

269

Y7216.indb 269

7/20/17 9:51 AM

T h e R ag e o f Thai Bu ddhi sm

a July 14, 1976, interview, Thailand’s supreme patriarch made this position clear in responding to Kittivudho’s alleged statements: “I can not give an opinion on this matter, because I have only heard that Kittiwuttho [Kittivudho] has said this, but there is no evidence to prove it. Moreover, I myself have never been to Chittapawan [Jittaphawan] College, nor been informed of its activities. However, from the religious point of view, any action taken in the interests of both the person and the public is legitimate. But, if it is taken only for personal interest, it is definitely wrong . . . With regard to the behavior of monks, some monks may do some things wrong. But the press should sometimes forgive them and should not always blame them . . . and it, or any other person or organization, should not try to hammer the wedge into the wood.”62 So Kittivudho’s many detractors would not find satisfaction from the hierarchy. Neither would they approve of its response to Thai Buddhism’s next major controversy.

Tyrants Return During August and September two of Thailand’s former military rulers, Thanom Kittikachorn and Praphas Charusathien, returned from exile, having been forced to flee the country following the uprising of October 1973. Ostensibly, both men sought to reenter Thailand for personal reasons. For Praphas, it was in order to receive medical treatment for a heart ailment. For Thanom, it was to attend to his dying 91-year-old father and to accrue merit on his behalf by being ordained as a monk. Heated debate within the government over the reentry requests of the two figures focused on two considerations. First, neither had been formally charged in any criminal court, as investigations into the killing of demonstrators in October 1973 were still ongoing.63 Second, from a constitutional and legal perspective, the government lacked the authority to prohibit a Thai national from returning to the country. The authorities were unable to legally deport a Thai citizen. The “unexpected and clandestine” return of Praphas on August 15 from Taiwan had thus presented the Seni government with a “complex and difficult” situation, which it proceeded to handle with “considerable care

270

Y7216.indb 270

7/20/17 9:51 AM

T h e R ag e o f T h a i Bu ddhi sm

and caution.”64 The homecoming of this deeply unpopular figure in fact enjoyed limited support, even within military circles. Praphas’s supporters were mostly found among officers of his own unit, the First Army, with whom he had personal and family connections. Upon arrival, Praphas entered into the protective custody of the First Army commander, General Yot Thephatsadin. Other segments of the military leadership reportedly favored his rapid redeparture from the country, sentiments primarily reflecting a “desire to avoid an investigation into the events of October 1973” (in which some current military officers had been involved).65 Praphas’s return was threatening even to some of his peers. Much of the military’s top brass was therefore likely “relieved” when the Seni-led cabinet, fearing domestic unrest, unanimously decided on August 19 to have Praphas re-expelled.66 Not surprisingly, in light of the fact that the government had no legal authority to compel his expulsion, Praphas was noncompliant. He insisted that he would stay on for medical treatment, even as student-led protests against his presence flared. Seni then turned to the most potent extralegal means of pressuring Praphas to relent: on August 20, during a private afternoon audience, he asked Bhumipol to intervene. But even at this stage Bhumipol’s views on Praphas’s reappearance in Thailand were hard to discern, the U.S. embassy reported. “There has been no information as of yet on the king’s reaction to Praphas’s return and what his response to such a request might be. If the report is true, and the king turns down the request, the government will be in a very difficult situation.”67 In the event, Bhumipol appears to have sided with the government. Praphas soon agreed to leave within a week, a reversal that seemed to demonstrate to U.S. officials the “continued importance of the king in the Thai political system” as an “important stabilizing influence and a court of last appeal when all else fails.”68 The Americans detected no reason to suspect that Bhumipol had played a role in bringing Praphas to Thailand in the first place. They reported, on the contrary—and perhaps accurately—that the king’s “concern over the unrest caused by Praphas’s return and his apparent support for government efforts to get Praphas out of the country probably played a decisive role in forcing Praphas and his supporters to back down.”69

271

Y7216.indb 271

7/20/17 9:51 AM

T h e R ag e o f Thai Bu ddhi sm

Meanwhile, unfolding in tandem with the return and subsequent hasty departure of Praphas were plans for Thanom’s repatriation from Singapore, rumored to be under way since as early as August 6. The possibility of his returning to visit his father was indirectly broached to Seni later that month through contacts made by Thanom’s sister, and the arrangements were subsequently negotiated during in-person meetings with his wife and daughters. By August 27, it was apparent that the government “may be preparing the way for the return of Thanom to visit his father but is obviously picking its way carefully [in order] to diffuse any protests against [his] return.”70 This hesitant process, shaped also by a desire to avoid “embarrassment similar to that caused by Praphas’s surreptitious entry,” began even as opinion within parliament remained seriously divided on the issue.71 Some parliamentarians considered Thanom’s father’s condition, reportedly critical, a “good reason” to approve Thanom’s request on humanitarian grounds.72 Others were opposed for reasons that one anti-Thanom Democrat MP ruefully pointed out: “Thanom had never provided any humanitarian considerations during his long period in power.”73 In any case, however, Seni’s assessment was that the government, as in the matter of Praphas, lacked the legal right to prohibit Thanom’s reentry; it could merely attempt to discourage his return.74 What critically shaped the Thanom affair was his ordination as a monk upon arrival. As we have seen, Thailand’s clergy had long been guided by the principle that it would avoid participation in struggles for power within the secular government. In a move that his detractors would denounce as a cynical ploy, Thanom now attempted to use that principle to his own advantage, removing himself from politics—and helping to “deter” criticism—by becoming a monk.75 Thanom’s ordination thus presented an ironic instance of a monk whose stated intention of abstaining from politics itself became a matter of intense political controversy. In reality, the ecclesiastical hierarchy’s ready acceptance of Thanom into the clerical ranks was a political act signaling its obeisance to right-wing interests, as well as the rightward drift of the hierarchy itself. So it was that a spokesman for the powerful and well-connected chief abbot of Wat Boworniwet, Phra Yanasangwon, announced on September 2 that there would be “no objections” to Thanom’s ordination at that uniquely

272

Y7216.indb 272

7/20/17 9:51 AM

T h e R ag e o f T h a i Bu ddhi sm

prestigious monastery.76 The flagship monastery of the elite Thammayut order was also the monastery most closely associated with the royal family thanks to long-standing historical associations, as well as to Yanasangwon’s status as Bhumipol’s personal spiritual adviser.77 The arrangements at Wat Boworniwet implied that Thanom’s homecoming had received the palace’s blessing. This set the stage for a drama that would quickly take on theatrical dimensions after Thanom finally did return—already ordained as a novice monk—on September 19.78 The events that followed indicated meticulous planning in which the ecclesiastical leadership was complicit. Thanom’s path into the monkhood had been amply greased by the authorities—first by his preemptive ordination as a novice while still in Singapore and second by a police escort that brought him directly from the airport to Wat Boworniwet. An ordination ceremony there immediately followed to make Thanom a full-fledged monk. This was done “in the correct manner” only after it had been determined that Thanom “possessed all the necessary qualifications” to join the clergy, claimed the supreme patriarch, the Thammayut monk formerly known as Somdej Phra Maha Virawongse (who had ascended to his position in 1973).79 Yet the ceremony was closed to the public, a breach of protocol that prevented Thanom’s critics from voicing their objections. The next few days witnessed a steady flow of visitors to a monastery whose walls were now a barricade protecting the newly ordained Phra Thanom. Thanom began to perform the routine duties of a monk and met for the first time with his father as the strength and extent of his backing became apparent. His arrival had energized all segments of the right. Receiving little attention was Princess Poon’s visit to Wat Boworniwet in the early hours of September 23 to put food in Thanom’s alms bowl, a gesture signaling the conservative lay Buddhist elite’s sympathy for Thanom’s ordination.80 Before long, members of Navapol would gather at the monastery to protect it against purported (almost certainly specious) threats of arson attacks. More controversial was a visit to the monastery that evening by the king and queen. The royal pair had just returned to Bangkok after a month’s stay in southern Thailand. Their impromptu appearance was interpreted as a sign of the monarchy’s favoritism toward Thanom.81

273

Y7216.indb 273

7/20/17 9:51 AM

T h e R ag e o f Thai Bu ddhi sm

The visit indeed carried an undeniable political charge and was immensely revealing of the king’s sharpening rightist inclinations. But it was not the proximate cause of Seni’s attempted resignation from the premiership, which he had tendered to Bhumipol in a private meeting earlier that afternoon—hours before the royal couple’s nighttime appearance at Wat Boworniwet. What had spurred Seni’s announcement was, rather, the dissension Thanom’s return had sowed within the ranks of his own party. Indeed, it was after members of parliament, including Democrat Party spokesman Wira Musikaphong, “bitterly criticized the government over its handling of the Thanom affair,” that Seni had decided to leave office.82 Seni’s lawyerly insistence that the government lacked a constitutional prerogative to compel Thanom to depart had failed to placate his critics, who would have preferred that he leave such legal niceties aside. As rancor over the impotent response to Thanom divided the government, anti-Thanom monk and student activists confronted their own difficulties. For the former group, frustration stemmed from the refusal of the ecclesiastical leadership to respond to its concerns—more evidence of the Buddhist hierarchy’s nonreceptiveness to dissent from below. According to a spokesman for the Federation of Buddhists of Thailand (the same group of youthful, progressive monks that had earlier led the charge in Phimolatham’s reinstatement), the “blame” for Thanom’s entry into the monkhood fell especially on the abbot Yanasangwon’s shoulders.83 But the Council of Elders was also at fault for ignoring an FBT appeal that it “act in some way” to reverse Thanom’s ordination.84 Meanwhile, in a troubling sign of Thanom’s behind-the-scene alliances, Kittivudho himself had risen to his defense, proclaiming that the ordination was “sincere.”85 For student activists associated with the National Student Center of Thailand (NSCT), the difficulties were numerous. Above all, they confronted the reality that anti-Thanom activism enjoyed only tepid popular support. Student furor was directed at a figure who had ostensibly returned to the country to fulfill filial obligations and who had now entered the monkhood, actions that nominally placed him above the political fray and even won him a measure of popular sympathy. Thanom was by no means a beloved figure. But he was probably the least disliked of Thailand’s “three tyrants”—a trio that included, along with Pra-

274

Y7216.indb 274

7/20/17 9:51 AM

T h e R ag e o f T h a i Bu ddhi sm

phas, Thanom’s widely reviled (and still exiled) son, Narong Kittikachorn. Such contrasting public sentiments were evident in the fact that the Thai capital, along with the rest of the country, remained “very calm” in the days immediately following Thanom’s arrival with “no sense of crisis or confusion such as hung over Bangkok during the Praphat affair.”86 Detecting a “lack of general support for Thanom’s ouster,” and mindful of the “difficulty” of directly attacking a member of the clergy, NSCT activists proceeded cautiously, fearing a public relations backlash.87 They adopted a “moderate stance while building up support for the expected demonstration.” And they attempted to “counter the Buddhism problem” by defending the integrity of the monkhood against Thanom’s alleged offenses against it. Indeed, according to their carefully parsed criticism, which deflected the onus of irreligious behavior onto Thanom, he had exploited the faith by “using religion to mask his personal reasons for returning to Thailand.”88 This echoed the critique of allied monk activists of the FBT. However, within a few days—and in a turn of events that no one could have planned or foreseen—a gruesome incident would lead to a fateful escalation of the Thanom affair.

Massacre The September 24 beating and garroting in Nakhon Pathom province of two leftist activists who had been pasting up anti-Thanom posters began a chain reaction.89 The pair had died at the hands of local police, their bodies hung from the gates of an abandoned motor workshop. The murders attracted widespread attention. Most critically, as the U.S. embassy reported, the deaths “helped undercut somewhat public sympathy for Thanom, originally generated by the reason for his return (visit his ailing father) and his entrance into the monkhood.”90 By now the arguments that Thanom was “using religion for selfish reasons” and that he was “pulling the monarchy into politics” had also “counteracted somewhat existing sympathy” for him.91 The combined effect of the killings and the partial shift in the public mood was to inspire students to organize demonstrations calling for Thanom’s ouster and the immediate arrest of the murderers of the two activists. In fact, broader public support for the anti-Thanom cause remained

275

Y7216.indb 275

7/20/17 9:51 AM

T h e R ag e o f Thai Bu ddhi sm

limited; the demonstrations would fail to draw many beyond the activist student population and associated labor groups. Nevertheless, the small though accelerating movement was now on a collision course with Thanom’s right-wing defenders. Seni’s attempted resignation had been derailed by supporters in parliament, who implored him to remain in the post.92 Despite his considerable reluctance, he was reappointed to the premiership as head of a reconstituted governing coalition. Thus Seni was back in charge as the Thanom crisis gathered strength. But he still lacked the authority to unilaterally terminate Thanom’s presence at Wat Boworniwet. He could not on his own initiative remove the nettle that had afflicted Thailand’s body politic. Seni could do little more than attempt to convince the institution that had initially aided and abetted Thanom’s repatriation, the ecclesiastical hierarchy, to now expel him. But his secretive meeting with the supreme patriarch on September 28, the reasons for which he refused to publicly divulge, only served to again demonstrate the limits of his influence—even under a renewed parliamentary mandate.93 It seemed likely that Seni had “asked the Patriarch’s assistance in persuading or requesting Thanom to leave the country for the sake of tranquility in Thailand.”94 He may even have called on the kingdom’s highest-ranking cleric to support a proposal then being promoted by Commerce Minister Damrong Latthaphiphat as a face-saving solution for all involved: that Thanom be permitted to remain a monk, but that he relocate to a Thai monastery in Bodgaya, India, far from the political maelstrom in Bangkok.95 Seni’s overture yielded no results; no intervention from the supreme patriarch was forthcoming. Instead, the crisis hurtled forward. NSCT and allied labor union activists planned a major joint demonstration for September 29; another would follow on October 3. Meanwhile, Village Scouts swarmed Wat Boworniwet, pledging to protect the monastery amid their own assertions that it was at risk of being burned down by leftist agitators. The September 29 event reportedly attracted as many as 10,000 protesters to Sanam Luang, Bangkok’s main public square, where impassioned speeches were made before a poster depicting the two murdered activists beside an enlarged image of a ghoulishly smiling Phra Thanom.96 It was

276

Y7216.indb 276

7/20/17 9:51 AM

T h e R ag e o f T h a i Bu ddhi sm

a sizable showing, yet the atmosphere was “sedate,” and the turnout was not sufficient to persuade U.S. observers that anti-Thanom activism had assumed the proportions of a mass movement.97 “We still see very little evidence of support for anti-Thanom rallies which [NSCT] has put together,” they wrote. “[They] so far have attracted little interest outside of student community. Until considerably broader segments of community are involved in anti-Thanom rallies than heretofore, the Seni government is not . . . under heavy pressure to ensure Thanom’s early departure from Thailand . . . Prime Minister Seni would dearly love to make Thanom issue ‘go away’ somehow but there is no . . . sign of resolution of this matter now in sight.”98 The government’s most promising potential means of making matters “go away” still remained a breakthrough with the clergy’s conservative senior leadership. That body, if it chose to act independently, could have overturned Thanom’s ordination, or at least denied him residency at Wat Boworniwet (perhaps in favor of reassignment to Bodgaya). However, a new attempt by Seni’s subordinates to secure “help” at that monastery yielded no more success than his own late-September appeal to the supreme patriarch.99 An October 1 visit to the monastery by Deputy Prime Minster Sawat Plampongsarn accompanied news that the government was “relying heavily on assistance” from abbot Yanasangwon to “persuade Thanom to leave” after the end of the Buddhist lent on October 8.100 Yanasangwon may have offered token assurances of his cooperation. But the timeline for the plan would soon be overtaken by a horrific event. During the next several days an increasingly tense series of pro- and antiThanom rallies and counter-rallies pitted a newly united student and labor front against its antagonists on the right. On October 2, in a further highly public sign of the palace’s support for Thanom, Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn, Bhumipol’s only male heir, visited Wat Boworniwet.101 More directly menacing to student protesters, however, was the rally the next day of approximately 300 Navapol members, coordinated by Watthana Khieowimon at Sanamchai, opposite the Grand Palace. There Watthana told the press that “certain elements were trying to use Thanom as an excuse to create trouble in the country,” referring especially to the “progressive faction” of

277

Y7216.indb 277

7/20/17 9:51 AM

T h e R ag e o f Thai Bu ddhi sm

the Democrat Party.102 He threatened further Navapol action if the government did not improve the situation within 15 days. But Seni’s hands were still tied. The rally’s subsequent move to Wat Boworniwet, where Navapol participants visited with Yanasangwon, was meant as a “show of strength.”103 What it also showed was the degree to which Thai Buddhism’s most prestigious monastery, under the extraordinary circumstances of the Thanom affair, had come to resemble the right’s other monastic redoubt, Jittaphawan College. Fittingly, Kittivudho himself was on the scene. A sermon he delivered that evening at the nearby royal monastery of Wat Chanasongkram stoked the right-wing fervor. Despite the febrile atmosphere—and the tension-filled mobilization of both camps—the anti-Thanom protests had remained largely free of violence. But a tipping point came with a mock hanging staged by student activists on the Thammasat campus on October 4. The outdoor production dramatized the killings in Nakhon Pathom and Phra Thanom’s culpability for them, providing the next odd twist in an entangling skein of events. Some would later claim that a photograph of the performance published in the rightist newspaper Dao Siam had been altered so that one of the student dramatists appeared to closely resemble the crown prince.104 If so, the doctored image had precisely the effect its manipulators must have intended: it motivated the right to attack the activist student community, which could now be accused of hanging the crown prince in effigy. Army radio broadcasts and right-leaning newspapers whipped up patriotic ardor with charges that the left threatened the nation, religion, and monarchy. With student demonstrators massed on the football field, the Thammasat campus was a ripe target. After dusk on October 5, Village Scouts, Red Gaurs, members of Navapol, and units of the elite Border Patrol Police gathered outside the university, blocking exits and preparing to attack those inside. Before dawn, the events that have come to be known as “bloody October 6” began with an early morning bomb blast that reportedly killed nine students and wounded thirteen. A witness recalled details of the armed assault that unfolded over the course of the day, leaving 46 dead according to the official count (more than

278

Y7216.indb 278

7/20/17 9:51 AM

T h e R ag e o f T h a i Bu ddhi sm

100 according to unofficial estimates): “The Border Patrol Police seemed intent on killing—as if to kill enemies who must be wiped out . . . Police fired into some buildings. Some students with their hands up were shot dead . . . The police levelled such atrocities to the people . . . it is a wonder from where they learnt such barbaric things.”105 The witness raised a provocative question. The answer related in large measure to the activities of the right’s patron monk, Kittivudho.

Aftermath Once the violence was over, assessments of the fallout began. Behind the scenes, Thailand’s ruling elite took stock of the right-wing outburst. Along with the arrest of more than 3,000 students, a coup had also occurred in conjunction with the massacre.106 The elected Seni government had been toppled. A conservative-dominated military council was installed in its stead. Soon a civilian prime minister, Thanin Kraivixien, would be appointed. For Anand Panyarachun, Thailand’s undersecretary of foreign affairs, recent events had “clearly discouraged” him.107 The “excessive brutality” at Thammasat, photographed and publicized throughout the world, had “clearly discredited” Thailand, he told Ambassador Whitehouse in a private meeting. Yet Anand also strained to put the massacre in “as good a light” as possible. The new National Administrative Reform Council (NARC) had no plans to establish permanent dictatorial control, he pointed out, but rather wanted to quickly transition to civilian rule. More trivially, the NARC had “avoided such pitfalls” as trying to enforce a curfew in Bangkok.108 An official call with the U.S. ambassador was carefully deferred. The NARC’s newly appointed chairman, Admiral Sa-ngad Chaloryu, explained his rationale for putting off a formal meeting with Whitehouse until after October 22, when the council planned to unveil a new constitution and civilian cabinet. A secret meeting before that date, Sa-ngad felt, would “inevitably become known and would lend substance to charges by Hanoi and others that there had been [U.S. government] involvement in the military takeover which could damage the NARC both internally and abroad.”109 These were concerns that Whitehouse lauded as both “forthright” and

279

Y7216.indb 279

7/20/17 9:51 AM

T h e R ag e o f Thai Bu ddhi sm

“sophisticated.”110 He would not meet with the newly appointed Thanin Kraivixien until October 27.111 Trained in law in England, Thanin was an ultraconservative and avid royalist ideologue and former supreme court judge with known ties to Navapol. For the U.S. ambassador, delayed official contact with the new government did not preclude other discreet meetings in the meantime, including a private lunch with Bhumipol’s private secretary, Thawisan Ladawan, on October 19. Here Whitehouse gleaned revealing details of the king’s reaction to the conservative coup, which he viewed sympathetically but not without concern. Unfavorable international reactions were one source of the Thai monarch’s anxiety. Thus he had asked Thawisan to query Whitehouse for “advice on how Thailand could overcome the false impression which had been given in Europe and America of recent events here.”112 Further, Bhumipol wondered if “there was some way” Washington could help explain to the international community that the “change in government had been brought about by the weakness of [the] Seni government and the provocative actions of communist-inspired students.”113 The king blamed the victims. Bhumipol’s rightist politics were squarely on the table. Also evident was the palace’s sensitivity to charges that the violence of October 6 had been prearranged. The crux of the matter was the Thanom affair. Had his repatriation been the centerpiece of a deliberate ploy to provoke the student-led left, thereby creating a pretext for the right-wing assault and takeover? Thawisan, for his part, pushed back against what appeared to many critics as a plausible interpretation of the massacre—and one that implicated the monarchy in the plot. “It was hard to tell what the upshot of the Thanom affair would be,” Thawisan told Whitehouse. “There was a conspiracy theory being gossiped about by many people according to which the return of Prophat [Praphas] and Thanom and the events at Thammasat University had all been premeditated.” These charges were “ridiculous,” he then asserted: “Thanom had compelling personal reasons for returning and Prophat had made a very convincing case of his various ailments and desire to return to his homeland.”114 In light of the “blame” that had fallen on the crown for the demise of the Seni government and for the events at Thammasat, Thawisan also ex-

280

Y7216.indb 280

7/20/17 9:51 AM

T h e R ag e o f T h a i Bu ddhi sm

pressed concern over the “security” of the king and queen. The flight of at least 1,000 disaffected leftist activists into the jungle to join the communist insurgency, another outcome of the violent conservative takeover, heightened fears of an emboldened antiroyal opposition.115 The new recruits were by no means seasoned fighters, and their relations with the leadership of the CPT’s veteran cadres were tense for reasons both disciplinary and ideological.116 Nevertheless, the influx stiffened the CPT ranks and made its challenge to the stability of the central government more credible. After years of relatively low-intensity conflict, Thailand’s homegrown insurgency was approaching its 1978 peak. The response of the palace-backed Thanin government was a far-reaching program of repression. This signaled its severe anticommunist orientation and harkened back to the darkest days of the Sarit era. The hardline retrenchment extended to nearly every facet of the civil sphere. The banning of strikes suppressed labor unrest. Counterinsurgency activities against the northeastern-based CPT—and in the kingdom’s conflict-stricken deep south—escalated to new levels of violence, meeting some of the criteria of civil war. A general clampdown on dissent featured the intensification of media censorship, sweeping arrests, the adoption of rigorous lèse-majesté penalties, and the 1977 re-banning of Jit Phumisak’s Thai Feudalism.117 Meanwhile, as members of the Navapol movement, including Watthana Khieowimon, were appointed to the newly formed National Administrative Reform Assembly (NARA), the government placed renewed emphasis on the militant traditionalist ideology of nation, religion, and king that had incited the violence on October 6. All of these developments marked a fascistic turn in Thai public life. In foreign affairs, the Thanin government contended uneasily with the record of diplomatic normalization with neighboring communist powers that the brothers Kukrit and Seni Pramoj had achieved. At first, the rapprochement hesitantly carried forward. Indeed, by late November 1976, some five weeks after the conservative usurpation, it was possible for the Americans to report that the Thanin administration had so far “sought to preserve the diplomatic gains” of the Kukrit and Seni governments by choosing not to overturn the August 1976 joint communiqué restoring

281

Y7216.indb 281

7/20/17 9:51 AM

T h e R ag e o f Thai Bu ddhi sm

Thai-Vietnamese diplomatic relations and providing for a planned exchange of ambassadors.118 But the fiercely anticommunist regime did not successfully build the momentum of regional détente over the longer run. Despite continuing Thai diplomatic outreach, a renewed atmosphere of bellicosity took hold. The government’s sanctioning of the sporadic mistreatment of Vietnamese refugees residing in Thailand’s northeast—a cynical component of its broader anticommunist program—had a toxic effect on relations with Hanoi.119 Even more acutely disruptive to regional relations was the dispatch of armed forces and border police into periodic combat with Lao and Cambodian troops, showcasing a new “tendency to use all-out offensive operations.”120 Clashes along the Cambodian border escalated after November 1976 to an intensity “much worse” than prior to the NARC’s October seizure of power.121 Diplomatic contact, meanwhile, made “little or no progress” toward normalization.122 It was within the context of the worsening border crisis that Kittivudho now moved. Since the October 1976 coup, his “national security” activities, still directed from his Jittaphawan outpost on the fringe of the Cambodian border zone, had increased. From his perspective, the year 1977 possibly marked the apex of his career—with an ultra-rightist administration in power and conditions on the border seeming to validate his vision of a dire external communist threat to the kingdom. Accordingly, he focused part of his work on supporting Thai troops deployed to Prachinburi province, scene of a Khmer Rouge border incursion in August 1977, in which 29 Thai villagers were massacred.123 Twice that year Kittivudho provided tools for the construction of army barracks in Prachinburi. He did the same in Trat, the province in Thailand’s far southeastern corner that historically had been disputed as Cambodian territory. Then, in a still more dramatic display, he also arranged for a group of Buddhist novices to donate blood to wounded soldiers at the Phramongkutklao Royal Army Hospital in Bangkok.124 Kittivudho was playing his self-ascribed role as the monkhood’s primary defender of the realm. His major charitable works in the national security arena increased from three to six in 1978, the most reported in any year.125 But his position slipped

282

Y7216.indb 282

7/20/17 9:51 AM

T h e R ag e o f T h a i Bu ddhi sm

even as his activism crested. After surviving two abortive military coups during its yearlong administration, the deeply unpopular Thanin government had succumbed to an October 1977 takeover by the powerful moderate general, Kriangsak Chamanond—a long-rumored move that finally went forward despite Thanin’s royal backing. Kriangsak held power until 1980. With Kriangsak’s ascent, the Thai political pendulum began to swing toward a new and more pragmatic era of incremental national reconciliation, relative internal stability, and even the glimmerings of a durable regional détente. Despite the continuing turmoil in Cambodia, which had sent troops into Vietnamese territory and would soon be the target of a retaliatory invasion, the Cold War climate in which Kittivudho thrived was beginning to change within Thailand. Kriangsak made a credible offer of amnesty to the CPT and exploited rifts in its international alliances to further divide its ranks. Its demobilization appeared on the horizon as Navapol “disappeared” and other segments of Thailand’s far right—the Red Gaurs and Village Scouts—also faded from view.126 Evolving domestic political circumstances had started to erode Kittivudho’s relevance. At the same time, the hesitantly liberalizing mood at home probably encouraged Phimolatham to spread his wings in ways not seen since his 1950s heyday. Phimolatham might not have dared attend a Moral Rearmament Army (MRA) event commemorating the 100th anniversary of its founder Frank Buchman’s birth had it been held the year before— during the height of Thanin’s repression. However, Buchman’s 1878 birth meant the gathering happened to fall in the midst of the Kriangsak thaw. In a replay of past trips, he flew to Europe on July 21 with a Mahachulalongkorn entourage to participate in the observances.127 There, in a fitting encounter with a critic of the now-deposed Thanin government, he paid a call on Kukrit Pramoj, who was convalescing in a hospital in Zurich after treatment for diabetes.128 Kukrit’s efforts to normalize regional relations during his brief tenure as prime minister, now being incompletely realized under Kriangsak’s direction, had been consonant with Phimolatham’s past advocacy of liberal internationalism (a motive for his MRA activism). This point of contact between their two worldviews may help explain their good rapport.

283

Y7216.indb 283

7/20/17 9:51 AM

T h e R ag e o f Thai Bu ddhi sm

Now on an upward trajectory, which pointed toward his reinstatement as abbot of Wat Mahathat in 1981, Phimolatham’s path contrasted with the decline of his 45-year-old adversary Kittivudho.129 During the same weeks that the former toured Europe, the latter was becoming entangled in a web of scandal. The alleged offenses were numerous and intertwined, implicating him first in the smuggling and illegal sale of luxury cars.130 A woman with whom he reputedly had an “intimate relation” was said to handle the profits from those deals.131 And the vehicle racket was only the tip of an iceberg: further charges brought attention to Kittivudho’s reputed involvement in forest poaching and the illicit timber trade—activities related to his use of Jittaphawan as a refuge and training ground for right-wing Laotian and Cambodian guerrillas.132 The disclosures tarnished Kittivudho’s image with brushes of underworld criminality as well as sexual misconduct. They also coincided with the reports that Jittaphawan was among 2,500 temples throughout Thailand that had not attained legal status as temples according to the Department of Religious Affairs.133 By August 1978, both Kittivudho and the institution associated with his name had run afoul of the law. Even in the face of enveloping scandal, Kittivudho was unrepentant— and unrelenting in his criticism of leftist student activists, whom he still accused of communism. He waded assertively into a controversy surrounding the continuing presence of a U.S. signals base in Thailand—an installation student activists wanted removed. Their demands were naïve, he implied. The base was “advantageous” because it monitored the movements of Thailand’s “enemies,” a boon in the lead-up to Vietnam’s overpowering December 1978 invasion of Cambodia.134 The Vietnamese occupation would last ten years. But the more curious arch of Kittivudho’s late-1970s career was not his predictable antagonism toward the student-led left—or his support for continued U.S.-Thai military cooperation to confront Southeast Asia’s post– Vietnam War realities. Rather, it was his deepening admiration for and association with the Buddhism of Japan. The Twelfth General Conference of the WFB, staged in Tokyo in September 1978, had offered him the chance to travel there.135 His attendance suggests that, despite all that had transpired since the WFB’s February 1976

284

Y7216.indb 284

7/20/17 9:51 AM

T h e R ag e o f T h a i Bu ddhi sm

An aging Phra Kittivudho (left) at Jittaphawan College with visiting unidentified Mahayana monks, date unknown. Courtesy of Jittaphawan College. visit to Jittaphawan, his relations with the group’s Bangkok-based leadership, including Princess Poon, had not fallen out. Nor had his relations with the Thai monarch suffered. He even claimed a “good reception” in Tokyo, though by now a controversial reputation preceded him.136 An outgrowth of his conference experience, Kittivudho’s newfound enthusiasm for Japanese Buddhism was a sharply ironic turn for the Thai monk who had provided the ideological justification for the October 6 massacre—an event that he simply ascribed to its victims’ “karma.”137 More than 35 years had passed since Thailand’s cloistered religious establishment had rebuffed Professor Byoto, the mysterious Japanese proponent of a militant and violent role for Thai Buddhism in confronting the challenges of international communism. The Thai establishment’s later tacit embrace of Kittivudho, a native proponent of a similar program, had closed a circle opened decades before. Now Kittivudho himself turned to Japan to discover virtues in its Buddhist establishment he had finally found lacking in Thailand’s.

285

Y7216.indb 285

7/20/17 9:51 AM

T h e R ag e o f Thai Bu ddhi sm

It was not only that Japan’s Buddhists seemed better united than their Thai counterparts, despite their 20 different Buddhist sects.138 Nor was it just because Japanese officials seemed to avoid micro-management of religious matters—a criticism he made possibly as a veiled dig at the more intrusive Thai bureaucrat who had recently refuted Jittaphawan’s legal status as a monastery. Kittivudho also liked Japan because unspecified Japanese donors had awakened him to the benefits of their investment in his college. He had even concluded that his “intelligent” Japanese Buddhist benefactors were superior to his various Thai patrons, who “waited only to swindle” him.139 Kittivudho’s financial connections in Japan overlapped obscurely with the recent car scandal. Approximately 100 vehicles were being used at Jittaphawan, purportedly so that the monks based there could conveniently travel throughout the country to hold seminars. The cars had been purchased with Japanese help, he said. Even more strangely, he claimed that a nearly two-acre parcel of land in the vicinity of Mount Fuji had been donated to Jittaphawan for the purpose of opening a “branch” of the college there.140 This held forth the surreal possibility that Kittivudho would establish a presence at the base of the iconic mountain and patriotic symbol that had partly inspired Japan’s religio-political militarism and colonial expansion over East and Southeast Asia during World War II.141 Kittivudho was looking toward the future. As the postwar era of Thai history came to an end, the circle closed again.

286

Y7216.indb 286

7/20/17 9:51 AM

Conclusion From Byoto to Kittivudho

K

ittivudho was a figure born of a particular time and place: he could not have emerged from the convention-bound Thai religious establishment of 1940, which still retained the characteristics of an earlier era. Much more so than other national Buddhist clergies of Southeast Asia, Thailand’s monkhood had passed through the region’s colonial period in relative (though not total) isolation. While direct European rule had provoked monks of Thailand’s neighboring countries into becoming more openly political (for instance, as some of them rose up to contest colonial domination), no such changes had been induced in Thailand. In Southeast Asia’s only continuously independent country, the values of a traditional Theravada Buddhist clergy had remained comparatively well preserved and well enforced—both by conservative clerical leaderships and by lay Buddhist leaders and public opinion. According to those values, Thai monks were to refrain from the forms of oppositional political participation increasingly seen among their clerical counterparts in colonized countries just across Thailand’s borders. When not pursuing spiritual attainment or gaining scriptural knowledge, the monks were to continue to visibly—but silently—legitimize the status quo, neither challenging nor overtly defending the hierarchical social system whose apex was the Thai monarch himself, surrounded by Buddhist patriarchs and elderly abbots. These were the standards that had continued to define proper behavior for Thailand’s clergy as monks in Burma, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam experimented with vocal, dissident modes of engagement in the secular political realm during the period before World War II.

287

Y7216.indb 287

7/20/17 9:51 AM

C o n clu si o n

Had the mysterious Japanese scholar and monk Tsusho Byoto been briefed on these facts prior to his arrival in Bangkok, he might have abandoned his program. His message was offensive to Thai Buddhist sensibilities in two ways. First, while Thailand’s clergy silently supported the pillars of the state, Byoto advocated an unorthodox escalation of that role. His plan called on Thai monks to stridently and overtly defend the nation and its traditions through direct political involvement, breaching a code that called only for their implicit support. Second, while Thailand’s clergy had an insular, even chauvinistic, worldview, Byoto recommended its militant involvement in a Japanese-led confrontation with international communism, a matter of global politics that was not supposed to bear on Thailand’s cloistered community of monks. On both of these counts, Thailand’s religious establishment—ready for neither overt political involvement nor any form of internationalism—was predisposed to reject Byoto and all that he stood for. But over the next 35 or so years, under the pressures of the Cold War, these twin planks that were the foundation of Thailand’s monastic culture loosened and finally fell away. Thailand’s Buddhist hierarchy became both more overtly political and more overtly international, while Buddhists throughout the region— from military-ruled Burma to war-ravaged Vietnam—were drawn into various forms of political engagement with Cold War overtones. To a perhaps surprising degree, the Cold War’s superpower antagonists in Asia (the United States and China perhaps more so than the Soviet Union) perceived the postwar trend toward a more unified world Buddhist community as strategically important. They had recognized the 1950 establishment of the World Fellowship of Buddhists and the 1954 staging of the Great Buddhist Synod in Burma as signs of a new emerging field of Cold War competition in which the governance of a broad swath of Asia’s population seemed to hang in the balance. With the apparent solidification of a Buddhist bloc, there was a corresponding sense of emerging liability for both sides: Asia’s formerly disparate Buddhist community could have been ignored in ways that a unifying one now could not. This sense of urgency set the stage for significant U.S. government engagement with the Theravada Buddhism of Southeast Asia. The

288

Y7216.indb 288

7/20/17 9:51 AM

C o n c l u si o n

Asia Foundation’s covertly funded involvement with the Buddhist establishments of Thailand and its neighbors was the centerpiece of Washington’s new program. Less surprising was the reaction of Thailand’s clerical establishment to these unifying trends. Only with reluctance did Thailand’s top clerics agree to send representatives to Burma’s Great Buddhist Synod (1954–56), an event that seemed to subordinate Thai Buddhist prestige to that of a rival Burmese Buddhist establishment. Because this chafed against the Thai hierarchy’s sense that Thai Buddhism was superior to other national (and especially Burmese) versions of the faith, many of Thailand’s senior administrative clerics would have preferred to refrain from dispatching Thai monks as delegates. That slight did not come to pass, but it might have—had only the Thai hierarchy been left to its own devices. Instead, Thailand’s highestranking monks had been compelled to accommodate Phimolatham, the famous Thai friend of Burmese Buddhism—the monk who, adding insult to injury, even introduced Burmese meditation practices to the kingdom. If Byoto’s recommendations back in 1942 had offended Thai Buddhist sensibilities, Phimolatham’s activism in the 1950s offended even more so. The liberal Phimolatham was the singular Thai clerical representative of the globalizing trends at work within the broader Buddhist community after World War II. That immediately put him at odds with the Thai hierarchy’s slightly xenophobic streak. But his overt international outlook was just one trait in a constellation of characteristics that also contradicted another basic tenet of the Thai clergy’s behavior: that it should silently legitimize the authoritarian, hierarchical status quo, supporting an elite conservative establishment whose center of gravity was the monarchy. Phimolatham’s activities cut completely against the grain of those expectations: he was neither silent nor supportive of the conservative establishment. A native of the politically suspect, poverty-stricken, Lao-speaking northeast region (Isan), he spoke out for tolerance of leftism, even advocating that communists be permitted to ordain as monks. On behalf of the grassroots Mahanikay order that he represented within the hierarchy’s top echelons, he appealed for the democratic reform of the clerical administration, challenging the entrenched aristocratic interests of the Thammayut

289

Y7216.indb 289

7/20/17 9:51 AM

C o n clu si o n

order that preferred a more authoritarian system. Phimolatham surpassed Byoto in the potency of his offense to conservative Thai Buddhism, promoting an international as well as both an activist and liberal role for Thai monks. An attack from circles resentful of all of his progressive attributes was bound to occur. One poignant irony of Phimolatham’s story is that, while the Cold War created the conditions for his persecution, his challenge also pried open the conservative Thai hierarchy to the international world, making it—even in the midst of his ordeal—more receptive to the progressive ecumenical ideals that he embodied. Behind that apparent paradox lay the work of the Asia Foundation, the group that sponsored the conservative supreme patriarch Kittisophana on his tour of the United States while the domestic attacks on his internationally oriented rival were under way. In just one way, the Asia Foundation resembled Byoto: both were foreign agents intent on reforming Thailand’s Buddhist institutions. That resemblance explains why the foundation’s relationship with its Thai clerical partners got off to a rocky start. Thailand’s clerical establishment was wary of any outside influence that might seek to manipulate it, or impinge on its autonomy or sense of pride. But the U.S. organization did manage to gain traction within that staid and insular world—at first with progressive clerical circles centered at Bangkok’s two Buddhist universities, but eventually even with the clergy’s most conservative faction (which included Kittisophana). Meanwhile, the establishment of foundation offices elsewhere in the Southeast Asia region had opened channels of U.S. influence beyond the relatively closed Thai Buddhist arena, expansion that internationalized the foundation’s Buddhist contacts. The foundation offered the Thai hierarchy an attractive bargain. Working with the foundation required that the hierarchy compromise on its anti-foreign impulses, admitting U.S. influence into the clergy’s innermost chambers. Thus a relationship with the foundation weakened the Thai monkhood’s resistance to international engagement. However, in return, the hierarchy would receive an extraordinary benefit: the means to massively reinforce itself against the creeping changes associated with Thailand’s “modernization.”

290

Y7216.indb 290

7/20/17 9:51 AM

C o n c l u si o n

In village settings, as William Klausner had discovered, it appeared that the clergy’s traditional community leadership role was being usurped, especially with the encroachment of modern government services. Those processes seemed to open up the possibility that educated young Thai monks— increasingly socially conscious but frustrated with their lack of stimulation and opportunity—would turn to oppositional or divisive politics as an outlet for their intellectual drive. A Thai scenario resembling the “subversive” Buddhist activism sweeping such countries as South Vietnam in the early 1960s was one that both the foundation and its partners within the Buddhist hierarchy wanted to avoid. The solution both parties agreed on was community development. This mode of clerical activism was basically supportive of the conservative status quo. It also provided a means of restoring the vitality and relevance of the monkhood in the face of modern encroachments on its traditional role, and it occupied energetic clerical activists in a relatively nonpolitical arena. The foundation’s program for the Thai monkhood was, then, both progressive and conservative. Its innovative work broadened the Thai Buddhist hierarchy’s horizons, increasing its international consciousness by sponsoring such events as Kittisophana’s U.S. tour. It also assigned monks a role in an ameliorative social program. At the same time, the foundation aimed to preserve Thailand’s monkhood as an entity whose behavior reinforced— rather than challenged—the inequitable status quo. Ultimately, the community development programs that the foundation devised along with its clerical partners were new methods of achieving an old goal: a nonoppositional Thai monkhood that would silently buttress the pillars of Thailand’s conservative establishment. Skeptics are sure to dismiss the foundation’s work, perhaps with some justification, as a hubristic venture in social engineering. The Buddhism program’s genesis in secret, as a strategy adopted at high levels of the U.S. government and pursued throughout the region via a CIA front group, naturally fuels such skepticism. Its hidden intent was to manipulate foreign religious communities whose values and traditions its architects in Washington did not fully understand or respect. Deceitfulness, as well as a certain presumptuousness, therefore were among its hallmarks. Still, it would

291

Y7216.indb 291

7/20/17 9:51 AM

C o n clu si o n

be simplistic to condemn the initiatives as evidence of an “ugly American” syndrome. There was nothing sinister about their civic empowerment focus, and the sincerity and substantive expertise of some local implementers arguably fail to comport with the stereotype of arrogant interloper. From today’s vantage point, it’s probably clear that the foundation’s efforts in Thailand to arrest the monkhood’s declining relevance through disparate community development initiatives were futile from the start, given the tide of social change driving that decline—namely, the ascendance of a Westernized consumer culture in which an austere and contemplative monkhood has inevitably played a diminished role. If anything, the foundation’s greatest impact was not in preserving the Thai clergy’s stature but in loosening its international insularity, an achievement compounded by other forces as well. The growth and development of the World Fellowship of Buddhists as an increasingly Thai-dominated institution headquartered in Bangkok was another factor obliquely weakening the Thai clergy’s cloistered outlook. In this respect, the permanent relocation of the WFB (which made Bangkok the hub of international Buddhist activity) compounded to some degree the impact of the Asia Foundation, which was also the WFB’s secret financial sponsor. But the WFB’s agenda also meshed with that of the foundation in its espousal of a not overtly political role for Buddhism and Buddhist clergy. This was the constant refrain of such WFB leaders as Thailand’s Princess Poon. As the fellowship’s president, Poon had seen the WFB’s constitution rewritten to explicitly ban political activity within the organization. In her public statements, she attempted to model or promote Thailand’s conservative code of Buddhist ethics before an international Buddhist audience. She publicly rebuked the Buddhist movement of South Vietnam, calling its political involvement improper. Because of the WFB’s institutional weakness, Poon’s message carried little weight abroad. U.S. officials confirmed those shortcomings when, in April 1966, they coordinated an unrealistic attempt to leverage conservative Thai and WFB influence over the dissident South Vietnamese monk activists who were a persistent thorn in their side. Yet at home Poon’s message certainly did not erode the conservative domestic consensus that Thai monks ought to refrain from overt political participation.

292

Y7216.indb 292

7/20/17 9:51 AM

C o n c l u si o n

Like its Asia Foundation patron, the WFB helped increase the Thai Buddhist hierarchy’s exposure to international currents and its visibility on the world stage. Further, in another point of congruence with the foundation’s work, the fellowship’s leadership, with the princess at the helm, also appeared to strengthen the prevailing sense that Thai clerics had no legitimate role as overt political actors. Under other forces, however, the consensus that limited Thai monks to visible but silent political support of the establishment had already begun to loosen without provoking overwhelming protests from Poon or many other conservative lay Buddhist leaders. The change came not from within the hierarchy, the foundation, or a WFB-affiliated lay Buddhist elite but from Thailand’s secular government. It was the government that now co-opted the community development model in order to use monks to “carry out government policies.” Both the thammathut and thammacarik programs called on monks to overtly support and represent the state through direct action in rural areas. This escalated their role far beyond the implicit and passive support required of the clergy in the past, and even well beyond the activist, secular, but nonpolitical community development model sponsored by the Asia Foundation. Along a second axis, these programs also further weakened the posture of detachment from international political currents that had once been a hallmark of the Thai hierarchy. The thammathut program, in particular, contained an explicit anticommunist theme that drew Thai monks into the international as well as the domestic political arena. These initiatives made Thailand’s clergy both more overtly supportive of the political establishment and more overtly international than had ever previously been sanctioned. The government had laid the groundwork for the monkhood’s further politicization, breaking the seal on Pandora’s box. Some elements within the monkhood edged closer to Byoto’s prescription. Other left-leaning monks apparently misread the clergy’s shifting posture as an invitation to revisit the liberal internationalism that Phimolatham had once advocated. But the hierarchy remained fiercely hostile to any kind of dissident clerical activism that challenged conservative interests within the secular political arena. This was the lesson the antiwar Thai monk Jud had learned when he spoke out against Thai participation in the Vietnam War

293

Y7216.indb 293

7/20/17 9:51 AM

C o n clu si o n

and when he and his associates later lent their public support to Thai farmers’ protests—activities that provoked a severe reaction from the clerical administration. Jud’s suppression was a reverberation of the hierarchy’s earlier persecution of the liberal Phimolatham, a sign that overt antiestablishment, pro-democratic activism still remained taboo for Thai monks. In these respects, Jud was the Vietnam War–era successor to the elderly Phimolatham. By contrast, the right-wing Kittivudho, who emerged in the late 1960s, was not an echo or reverberation of Phimolatham so much as his mirror opposite. In the face of multiple threats to its authority, the Thai ecclesiastical hierarchy had slowly become more open to international influences and activities, yet it had also managed to entrench and enforce its prohibition on liberal or dissident clerical activism within Thailand. But Kittivudho, unlike Phimolatham, was neither a liberal nor a dissident. Kittivudho was, rather, an activist monk whose career precisely reflected the erosion, as a result of the Cold War, of the two main historical characteristics of the Thai monkhood: its aversion to overt political participation and its inward-looking worldview. He represented the final conjuncture in a decades-long process of change. In Kittivudho, the newly explicit nature of the clergy’s support for Thailand’s conservative establishment and elite combined with its new willingness to engage with the international world. In a turn of events that Byoto might have applauded, Kittivudho represented both the activation and the internationalization of Thai Buddhist conservatism—developments that in October 1976 abetted considerable violence and loss of life. The younger Kittivudho outlived Phimolatham by 16 years before his death on January 21, 2005. In 2004, he had first experienced symptoms of what was likely congestive heart failure—foot pain and leg swelling (possibly edema)—while traveling in postcommunist Russia and Mongolia. Thus the circumstances surrounding his illness were a coda to his career as an anticommunist ideologue, and a reminder of how much things had changed since the Cold War, when events like the Asian Conference in Ulan Bator had showcased a Buddhist world divided into communist and noncommunist camps. But the termination of the Cold War has not erased the imprint of his militant Buddhist ideology. This can be detected today in the violent response

294

Y7216.indb 294

7/20/17 9:51 AM

C o n c l u si o n

of some Thai Buddhist clergy to the ongoing Malay Muslim insurgency in Thailand’s south, a conflict with distinct regional echoes in contemporary Burma’s equally virulent and clerically led anti-Muslim 969 movement. Ironically, the more recent redirection of Thai Buddhist violence from communism to the kingdom’s Muslim minority has also coincided with the post–Cold War, Islamic epoch in U.S. foreign affairs. This has eclipsed an earlier and largely forgotten era in which Washington’s gaze fell instead on Buddhism as a vehicle to promote U.S. interests in Southeast Asia and to deflect competing communist efforts—or so U.S. cold warriors hoped.

295

Y7216.indb 295

7/20/17 9:51 AM

This page intentionally left blank

Notes

Introduction 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Munier, Sacred Rocks, 93–99. Ibid. Westad, Global Cold War, 3. Sangharakshita, Survey of Buddhism, 3. Kitagawa and Cummings, Buddhism and Asian History, 108–12. Harris, Buddhism and Politics, 1. Maung, From Sangha to Laity; Kiernan, How Pol Pot Came to Power, 19. “พระสงฆ์ไทยไม่ยุ่งกับการเมึอง [Thai priests are not involved in politics],” Thammajaksu 50, no. 6 (March 1965): 35–40. 9. Ibid. 10. “Vietnamese Wats and Bonzes in Bangkok,” CREST, U.S. National Archives (accessed 4 August 2009). For details on Tran Van Giau’s Thai connections see Goscha, Southeast Asian Networks, 176. For more on Thailand’s role in the clandestine transnational networks of the Vietnamese revolution, see Bradley, Imagining Vietnam and America, 158–59. 11. Wilford, Mighty Wurlitzer, 81, 84; Coleman, Liberal Conspiracy, 152, 208. One of the most important of these groups was the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF). The CCF’s main purpose was to win the United States supporters in Europe through cultural outreach to the European noncommunist left. Although the CCF did sponsor activities in such Asian countries as India, Burma, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Japan, its footprint in Asia remained relatively light. By contrast, the Asia Foundation’s presence in the region achieved much grander proportions with the establishment of permanent offices throughout much of East and Southeast Asia, India, and Afghanistan.

297

Y7216.indb 297

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o Pages 13 –20 1 The Buddhist World and the United States at the Onset of the Cold War 1. Victoria, Zen at War; Victoria, “Zen Masters on the Battlefield (Part I)”; Victoria, “Zen Masters on the Battlefield (Part II).” 2. For biographical details on Professor Tsusho Byoto (Tsusho¯ Byo¯do¯), see Gabaude, “Bouddhismes en contact,” 404–6. As an ordained Mahanikay Buddhist monk, Byoto was also addressed by the clerical honorific “Venerable.” 3. Rev. Prof. T. Byoto, “War and Buddhism,” 3, in “เรื่อง บทความเกื่ยวด้วยพุทธศาสนา 2485] [On the articles about Buddhism by ของโปรเฟสเซอร์ ที. เบียวโด [พ.ศ. 2485 Professor T. Byoto (1941)],” Papers of the Office of the Prime Minister, Sor Seua Ror Reua 0201.10/140, Thailand National Archives. 4. “เรื่อง กองทัพญี่ปุ่นขออนุญาตให้บรรพชิตญี่ปุ่นพักอาศัยในวัดและขอให้ครอง จีวรสีเหลืองด้วย [On the Japanese army’s request to have Japanese priests reside in the monasteries and wear the yellow robes],” 2–3, Papers of the Office of the Prime Minister, Sor Seua Ror Reua 0201.9/2, Thailand National Archives. 5. E. B. Reynolds, Thailand and Japan’s Southern Advance, 107. 6. Rev. Prof. T. Byoto, “My suggestion to Thai Buddhism,” 1–2, in “เรื่อง บทความ 2485] [On the articles เกี่ยวด้วยพุทศาสนาของโปรเฟสเซอร์ ที. เบียวโด [พ.ศ. 2485 about Buddhism by Professor T. Byoto (1941)],” Papers of the Office of the Prime Minister, Sor Seua Ror Reua 0201.10/140, Thailand National Archives. For more on the provenance of the two Byoto articles and details on his other scholarly writings, see Gabaude, “Bouddhismes en contact,” 404–6. Byoto’s 1941 English-language book, On Japanese Buddhism and Thai Buddhism, is not generally available. The text does not appear in the Library of Congress catalog. 7. Rev. Prof. T. Byoto, “War and Buddhism,” 1. 8. Ibid., 3. 9. Victoria, Zen at War, 134. 10. “On the articles about Buddhism,” 2. The publication date of the first article is unknown. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid., 5. 13. Ibid., 6. 14. It is unclear when or where Prof. Byoto might have published his pieces in Thai. 15. E. B. Reynolds, Thailand and Japan’s Southern Advance, 156. 16. Ibid. 17. Karl Tonnison and Friedrich Lustig, “Siam Run by the Thais in the Second World War, 1941–1945,” Correspondence 1946–1950—Folder 1 NA Thailand, Records of the Chief of Naval Operations, Office of Naval Intelligence, Naval Attache, Bangkok, Thailand, General Correspondence, 1946–1951, box 1, RG 38, U.S. National Archives. 18. U.S. Naval Attache, Bangkok, Siam to Chief of Naval Operations, Correspondence 1946–1950-1 NA Thailand, Records of the Chief of Naval Operations, Office of

298

Y7216.indb 298

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o P ages 21–25

19. 20. 21.

22. 23.

24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

29. 30.

31. 32. 33.

34. 35.

Naval Intelligence, Naval Attache, Bangkok, Thailand, General Correspondence, 1946–1951, box 1, RG 38, U.S. National Archives. Thanks to Christopher Goscha for alerting me to this source. Fineman, Special Relationship, 18. Ibid., 12. “Siamese Communist Activity,” 12 December 1946, Intelligence Report, Reginald F. C. Vance, Military and Military Air Attache, Office of the Military Attache, Bangkok, Siam, Thailand, 1946–1949, Records of the Central Intelligence Agency, Murphy Papers on International Communism, 1917–1958, box 89, RG 263, U.S. National Archives. The CPT was originally founded in 1930. The date of its wartime reestablishment is found in Pasuk and Baker, Thailand, 181. Pasuk and Baker, Thailand, 181. “Communism in Siam,” 28 January 1947, Intelligence Report, Reginald F. C. Vance, Military and Military Air Attache Office of the Military Attache, Bangkok, Siam, Thailand, 1946–1949, Records of the Central Intelligence Agency, Murphy Papers on International Communism, 1917–1958, box 89, RG 263, U.S. National Archives. Ibid. Pasuk and Baker, Thailand, 181. C. Reynolds, Thai Radical Discourse, 27. Tillman Durdin, unknown title, New York Times, 25 July 1948. “Thai Counter-Communist Information Activities,” 4 April 1950, Embassy, Bangkok No. 250 to Department of State, John F. Stone, First Embassy Secretary, 4202 Thailand 1950–51–52, Records of the Central Intelligence Agency, Murphy Papers on International Communism, 1917–1958, box 89, RG 263, U.S. National Archives. Pasuk and Baker, Thailand, 145. “Estimate of the Situation in Northern Thailand as It Relates to the Communist Threat, Based on Observations Made by Assistant Attache Robert Anderson during Trip in February 1951,” 9 April 1951, Embassy Bangkok No. 691 to Department of State, William T. Turner, Counselor of Embassy, 202 Thailand 1950–51–52, Records of the Central Intelligence Agency, Murphy Papers on International Communism, 1917–1958, box 89, RG 263, U.S. National Archives. Ibid. Ibid. Asia Foundation, “Buddhism and Buddhist Programming in Burma” (Review and Development Department, Asia Foundation, 3rd draft, 1965), 44, planned donation to Southeast Asia Collection, Yale University Library, New Haven. Ibid. Department of State to Amembassy Rangoon, 11 July 1951, 4202 Burma 1951, Records of the Central Intelligence Agency, Murphy Papers on International Communism, 1917–1958, box 100, RG 263, U.S. National Archives.

299

Y7216.indb 299

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o Pages 26 –3 2 36. Ibid. 37. “Buddhism as a Counter-Communist Force,” 7 August 1952, Amembassy Rangoon to the Department of State, Washington, Foreign Service Dispatch 126, 570.3–572.1, Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State, Thailand, U.S. Legation and Embassy, Bangkok, Classified General Records, 1945–1955, box 38, RG 84, U.S. National Archives; Lintner, Burma in Revolt, 6, 387. Lintner notes that Bohmu Aung was one of the Thirty Comrades who was “close to the Socialist Party” and that he was defense minister before Burma’s 1962 coup. Bohmu Aung later led the “Yellow Band” of the People’s Volunteer Organization (PVO), an association of war veterans. 38. “Buddhism as a Counter-Communist Force,” 7 August 1952. 39. Ibid. 40. Ibid. 41. Ibid. 42. Ibid. 43. Gard, Thailand in World Buddhism, 24. 44. “Conference of the Fellowship of World Buddhists,” 16 June 1950, J. C. Sutterthnite, 570.3, Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State, Burma, U.S. Embassy Classified General Records 1945–1961, box 15, RG 84, U.S. National Archives. 45. “Proposals Regarding U.S. Relations with Therawada Buddhist Countries,” Operations Coordinating Board, 16 January 1957, OCB 000.3 [Religion] (File #2) (1) January–May 1957, box 2, White House Office, NSC Staff Papers, OCB Central Files Series, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library. 46. “Candidates for Election to the Executive Board, Curriculum Vitae,” Dr. G. P. Malalasekera, UNESCO, 11th Conference, General Session, Paris, 17 October 1960, available at http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0016/001631/163132eb.pdf (accessed 19 May 2014). 47. “Buddhism Can Put Ceylon on World Map,” Ceylon Daily News, 22 August 1949, as quoted in “Remarks of Ceylon Professor returning from America,” American Embassy Colombo to Department of State, 570.3, Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State, Burma, U.S. Embassy Classified General Records 1945–1961, box 15, RG 84, U.S. National Archives. 48. “Conference of the Fellowship of World Buddhists,” 16 June 1950. 49. Ibid. 50. Ibid. 51. “Proposals Regarding U.S. Relations with Therawada Buddhist Countries,” 16 January 1957. 52. Ibid. 53. “Buddhism Can Solve Problem of Peace,” Times of Ceylon, 570.3, Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State, Burma, U.S. Embassy, Classified General Records 1945–1961, box 15, RG 84, U.S. National Archives.

300

Y7216.indb 300

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o P ages 3 3 –3 9 54. “World Returning to Buddhism: U.S. Will Set Lead Says Bhikkhu,” Ceylon Daily News, 24 May 1950, 570.3, Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State, Burma, U.S. Embassy Classified General Records 1945–1961, box 15, RG 84, U.S. National Archives. 55. McHale, Print and Power, chap. 5. 56. Miller, Misalliance, 262–63. 57. “Saigon to Secretary of State,” 2 June 1951, Foreign Service Dispatch, U.S. State Department Central Files, Indochina, Internal Affairs, 1950–1954, LMO74, reel 42, U.S. National Archives. 58. Sunao Miyabara, A History of the World Fellowship of Buddhists, 2493 B.E. (1950) to 2533 B.E. (1990) (Bangkok: World Fellowship of Buddhists, 1994), 1. 59. Ibid., v. 60. Richard Cummings notes that a nonprofit company called the Committee for Free Europe (CFE) was incorporated in April 1949 in New York City with future CIA director Allen Dulles as its first director; the CFE’s name was changed to the National Committee for Free Europe (NCFE) in June 1949. See Cummings, Radio Free Europe’s “Crusade for Freedom,” 9–10, 90. 61. Ibid., 90. 62. C. Reynolds, Thai Radical Discourse, 34. Reynolds concludes that the event was “somewhat contrived by the Buddhist nations involved, the year 2,500 in the Buddhist calendar having no particular significance in the Pali scriptures.” 63. Asia Foundation, “Buddhism and Buddhist Programming in Burma,” 45. 64. There is no consensus on how many synods have been held after the first. Since the Buddha’s death, as many as 15 synod-like gatherings of monks have reportedly taken place in various locales throughout modern-day Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, and Burma. See https://www.academia.edu/1755155/Summary_Table_of_Buddhist _Council-like_Events (accessed 28 November 2014). 65. Ibid. 66. Asia Foundation, “Buddhism and Buddhist Programming in Burma,” 48. 67. Ibid., 45. 68. The Satta Panni cave, located in or near the ancient Indian city of Ra¯jagaha (modern-day Rajgir), is where the First Buddhist Synod is believed to have been held. 69. “พระธรรมธีระราชเล่าเรื่องไปพม่า [Phra Thammatheerarat recalls his trip to Burma],” Siam Nikorn, 5 June 1954, gor/por7/1954/wor thor 2.4 section 1, Thailand National Archives. 70. Asia Foundation, “Buddhism and Buddhist Programming in Burma,” 47. 71. Ibid., 87. 72. Ibid. 73. C. Reynolds, Thai Radical Discourse, 26. 74. Ibid., 30. The work was entitled “Spirits of the Yellow Leaves.”

301

Y7216.indb 301

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o Pages 3 9 –41 75. Ibid., 15. Reynolds describes the period from the end of the war until 1957–58 as the “real heyday of Thai socialism when many literary and historical studies were inspired by materialist philosophy, social realism, and the achievements of postrevolutionary Russia and China.” 2 Washington Formulates a Buddhist Policy 1. Jonathan P. Herzog, “From Sermon to Strategy: Religious Influence in the Formation and Implementation of U.S. Foreign Policy in the Early Cold War,” in Muehlenbeck, Religion and the Cold War, 53. 2. “The Religious Factor and OCB,” Edward F. Lilly to Elmer B. Staats, 3 March 1954, OCB 000.3 [Religion] (File #1) (1) February 1954–January 1957, White House Office, NSC Staff Papers, OCB Central Files Series, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library. 3. For more on religious revivalism in the United States during the 1950s, see Jacobs, America’s Miracle Man, 62–71. Jacobs notes that the “percentage of Americans officially enrolled in a church or synagogue leaped from 49 percent in 1940 to 55 percent in 1950 to a record 69 percent in 1959.” For discussion of the Protestant Christian background of U.S. secretary of state John Foster Dulles, see Inboden, Religion and American Foreign Policy, 227. 4. Kirby, Religion and the Cold War, 4–5. 5. Herzog, “From Sermon to Strategy,” 56. 6. “Ad Hoc Working Group on Islam,” 30 January 1957, OCB 000.3 [Religion] (File #2) (1) January–May 1957, box 2, White House Office, NSC Staff Papers, OCB Central Files Series, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library. 7. “Inventory of U.S. Government and Private Organization Activity Regarding Islamic Organizations as an Aspect of Overseas Operations,” 3 May 1957, OCB 000.3 [Religion] (File #2) (4) January–May 1957, box 2, White House Office, NSC Staff Papers, OCB Central Files Series, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library. My efforts to locate an Outline Plan for Operations for Islam comparable to the Buddhist plan were unsuccessful. If no plan for Islam was created, the May 1957 inventory’s finding that “neither U.S. government agencies nor private American organizations maintain extensive contacts with the Islamic world” might explain why. U.S. officials could have concluded that they lacked sufficient channels of influence over Islamic groups to proceed, even as they also determined that a “powerful, regionally planned effort, to expose the basic incompatibility between Islam and communism is long overdue and is capable of producing far reaching results.” The Asia Foundation was among the private organizations whose Islam-related activities were assessed in the inventory and related correspondence. While the foundation’s work in Buddhism is described as “extensive,” its involvement in Islam is not explained in detail and appears to have been minimal.

302

Y7216.indb 302

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o P ages 41–47 8. The OCB was a body created by executive order in 1953 to “implement the broad recommendations” of the National Security Council. See Herzog, “From Sermon to Strategy,” 58. The OCB replaced the PSB within the National Security Council apparatus after 30 September 1953. 9. Dianne Kirby, “Harry Truman’s Religious Legacy: The Holy Alliance, Containment and the Cold War,” in Kirby, Religion and the Cold War, 86. 10. Herzog, “From Sermon to Strategy,” 56. 11. Inboden, Religion and American Foreign Policy, 301. 12. Biographical data on Lilly from http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/research/ Finding_Aids/PDFs/Lilly_Edward_Papers.pdf. See also Inboden, Religion and American Foreign Policy, 300. Inboden remarks on Lilly’s Catholic faith as well as his “penchant for intrigue.” 13. “The Religious Factor,” Dr. Edward P. Lilly, 21 July 1953, Moral Factor (4), box 5, White House Office, NSC Staff Papers, OCB Secretariat Series, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library. 14. “Spiritual & Moral Factor and OCB,” Edward P. Lilly, 3 March 1954, Moral and Religious, box 5, White House Office, NSC Staff Papers, OCB Secretariat Series, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library. 15. “The Religious Factor and OCB, Memorandum for Mr. Elmer B. Staats,” Byron K. Enyart, 8 March 1954, OCB 000.3 [Religion] (File #1) (1) February 1954–January 1957, box 2, White House Office, NSC Staff Papers, OCB Central Files Series, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library. 16. Ibid. The chairman’s identity is not disclosed in the documentation. 17. Ibid. 18. “Dr. Lilly’s Memo on the Religious Factor,” Mr. Elmer B. Staats to Charles B. Taquay, 19 March 1954, OCB 000.3 [Religion] (File #1) (1) February 1954–January 1957, box 2, White House Office, NSC Staff Papers, OCB Central Files Series, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library. 19. Ibid. 20. Logevall, Embers of War, 442–44. 21. Ibid., 472, 498–99. Logevall describes in detail the controversy surrounding Bidault’s claim that Dulles offered France the use of two U.S. nuclear bombs at Dien Bien Phu during a meeting in Paris in April 1954. 22. Ibid., 608. 23. Ibid., 606. 24. Operations Coordinating Board, “Progress Report on NSC 5405: United States Objectives and Courses of Action with Respect to Southeast Asia, Jan. 16–July 21, 1954,” 30 July 1954, OCB 091 Southeast Asia File #2 (1), box 79, NSC Staff Papers, OCB Central File Series, available at http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/ research/online_documents/declassified_fy_2010.html (accessed 27 June 2014).

303

Y7216.indb 303

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o Pages 47–5 4 25. Gurtov, “From Korea to Vietnam,” available at http://japanfocus.org/-Mel -Gurtov/3428 (accessed 30 July 2014). 26. Operations Coordinating Board, “Progress Report on NSC 5405,” 30 July 1954. 27. Ibid. 28. Lowry biographical sheet, Evangelical Foreign Missions Association Collection, box 68, folder 11, Billy Graham Center Archives, Wheaton, IL, as quoted in Inboden, Religion and American Foreign Policy, 279. 29. “Proposal to OCB By Foundation for Religious Action,” Richard Nixon to Walter B. Smith, 10 September 1954, OCB 000.3 [Religion] (File #1) (1) February 1954– January 1957, box 2, White House Office, NSC Staff Papers, OCB Central Files Series, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library. 30. Ibid. 31. Nixon, Memoirs of Richard Nixon, 1:145. 32. Ibid., 151. 33. Ibid., 153. 34. Ibid., 164. 35. “Proposal to OCB By Foundation for Religious Action,” Richard Nixon to Walter B. Smith, 10 September 1954. 36. Ibid. 37. Ibid. 38. “Memorandum to Members of the Sub-Committee on the Religious Factor,” Edward P. Lilly, 20 July 1955, OCB 000.3 [Religion] (File #1) (2) February 1954–January 1957, box 2, White House Office, NSC Staff Papers, OCB Central Files Series, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library. 39. “Memorandum of Meeting,” Edward P. Lilly, 29 July 1955, OCB 000.3 [Religion] (File #1) (3) February 1954–January 1957, box 2, White House Office, NSC Staff Papers, OCB Central Files Series, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library. 40. Ibid. 41. “Memorandum for the Sub-committee on the Religious Factor,” 10 August 1955, OCB 000.3 [Religion] (File #1) (3) February 1954–January 1957, box 2, White House Office, NSC Staff Papers, OCB Central Files Series, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library. 42. Peebles, History of Sri Lanka, 104–8. 43. “Agenda Item 6—Other Business,” found attached to OCB Memorandum on “Moral Rearmament’s ‘Vanishing Island,’ ” 11 May 1956, OCB 000.3 [Religion] (File #1) (3) February 1954–January 1957, box 2, White House Office, NSC Staff Papers, OCB Central Files Series, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library. 44. Ibid. 45. Ibid. 46. “Memorandum of Meeting: Committee on Buddhism,” 31 May 1956, OCB 000.3 [Religion] (File #1) (3) February 1954–January 1957, box 2, White House Office, NSC Staff Papers, OCB Central Files Series, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library.

304

Y7216.indb 304

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o P ages 5 4–6 3 47. Landon’s involvement in the planning is interesting in light of his background as a Presbyterian “scholar-missionary” in Thailand. Reynolds writes that Landon was “so well connected that he became a key figure for both American business people in Thailand and for the fledgling Southeast Asian division of the State department, which lacked then [in the late 1940s] the specialists it would subsequently have in abundance.” See C. Reynolds, Thai Radical Discourse, 24. 48. Ibid. Emphasis added. 49. “Memorandum for Committee on Buddhism: Proposals Regarding U.S. Relations with Therawada Buddhist Countries,” Kenneth P. Landon, 15 August 1956, OCB 000.3 [Religion] (File #1) (4) February 1954–January 1957, box 2, White House Office, NSC Staff Papers, OCB Central Files Series, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library. 50. “Comments on Memorandum for committee on Buddhism,” SEA—Kenneth T. Young Jr. to Operations Coordinating Board, Mr. Landon, 27 August 1956, CCB 000.3 [Religion] (File #1) (4) February 1954–January 1957, box 2, White House Office, NSC Staff Papers, OCB Central Files Series, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library. 51. Ibid. ICA probably refers to the International Cooperation Administration, the predecessor of the present-day U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). 52. “Proposals Regarding U.S. Relations with Therawada Buddhist Countries,” Operations Coordinating Board, 7 September 1956, OCB 000.3 [Religion] (File #1) (5) February 1954–January 1957, box 2, White House Office, NSC Staff Papers, OCB Central Files Series, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library. Emphasis added. 53. “Proposals Regarding U.S. Relations with Therawada Buddhist Countries,” Operations Coordinating Board, 16 January 1957, OCB 000.3 [Religion] (File #2) (1) January–May 1957, box 2, White House Office, NSC Staff Papers, OCB Central Files Series, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library. Emphasis added. 54. Ibid. 55. Ibid. 56. “Steps Taken by Department of State to Implement Outline Plan of Operations on Buddhism,” 27 February 1957, OCB 000.3 [Religion] (File #2) (2) January–May 1957, box 2, White House Office, NSC Staff Papers, OCB Central Files Series, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library. 57. Ibid. 58. Ibid. 59. Ibid. 60. “Steps Taken by USIA to Implement Outline Plan of Operations on Buddhism,” 8 March 1957, OCB 000.3 [Religion] (File #2) (2) January–May 1957, box 2, White House Office, NSC Staff Papers, OCB Central Files Series, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library.

305

Y7216.indb 305

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o Pages 6 6 –71 3 Thailand and the International Buddhist Arena 1. Buddhist calendars are calculated from the death of the Buddha, but estimates of the date of his death vary widely. Among the Theravada Buddhist countries, it is commonly held that he died in 543 or 544 BCE. The 2,500th anniversary of his death thus fell on the years 1956 or 1957, depending on which calendar was preferred. 2. Time, 21 May 1956. 3. “Lao Participation in Buddhist Ceremonies at Rangoon,” W. Wendell Blanche, 7 June 1956, Foreign Service Dispatch, American Embassy Vientiane to Department of State, U.S. State Department Central Files, Indochina: Internal and Foreign Affairs, 1955–59, COOO8, reel 49, RG 59, U.S. National Archives. 4. Ibid. 5. Phnom Penh to Secretary of State, 2 April 1957, Carl W. Strom, U.S. State Department Central Files, Indochina: Internal and Foreign Affairs, 1955–59, COOO8, reel 46, RG 59, U.S. National Archives. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid. 8. Walter S. Robinson to Carl W. Strom, 3 May 1957, U.S. State Department Central Files, Indochina: Internal and Foreign Affairs, 1955–59, COOO8, reel 46, RG 59, U.S. National Archives. 9. Phnom Penh to Secretary of State, 27 April 1957, Carl W. Strom, U.S. State Department Central Files, Indochina: Internal and Foreign Affairs, 1955–59, COOO8, reel 46, U.S. National Archives. 10. “Note of Appreciation for Messages addressed to their Majesties on the Occasion of the 2500th Anniversary of the Birth of the Buddha,” 6 June 1957, Carl W. Strom, Amembassy Phnom Penh to Department of State, U.S. State Department Central Files, Indochina: Internal and Foreign Affairs, 1955–59, COOO8, reel 46, RG 59, U.S. National Archives. 11. Bangkok to Secretary of State, 3 May 1957, Folder 892.3932/2-659, General Records of the Department of State, Central Decimal Files, 1955–1959, box 5068, RG 59, U.S. National Archives. 12. In October 1957, U.S. officials would also decline a Lao request for a presidential message. They reasoned that a communication from the president for the upcoming (previously postponed) Lao celebration in November would be “inadvisable.” This was not only because it might be “misinterpreted as a propaganda gambit” but also because other Buddhist countries would resent any “favoritism” shown the Lao considering that a presidential greeting had not been extended to any of the earlier festivals. See Department of State to Amembassy Vientiane, 19 October 1957, U.S. State Department Central Files, Indochina: Internal and Foreign Affairs, 1955–59, COOO8, reel 49, U.S. National Archives. 13. “ผู้แทนรัฐบาลกับคณะสงฆ์ ๑๓ ประเทศมาฉลอง ๒๕ พุทธศตวรรษที่กรุงเทพฯ [Government representatives and clerical delegations from 13 countries celebrate the

306

Y7216.indb 306

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o P ages 71–75

14.

15.

16. 17. 18. 19.

20.

21. 22. 23.

24.

25.

26. 27.

28.

25th Buddhist century in Bangkok],” Chao Thai, 11 May 1957, gor/por7/1957/wor thor 1.2/section 1, Thailand National Archives. “ประกาศ พระราชทานบริเวณสนามหลวงเป็นสังฆปริมณฑลในงานฉลอง ๒๕ พุทธ ศตวรรษ [Notice the King designates Sanam Luang as a Sangha area for the celebrations of the 25th Buddhist century],” Khaopanit, 12 May 1957, gor/por7/1957/ wor thor 1.2/section 1, Thailand National Archives. “อูนุแบกพระไตรปิฎกมาร่วมฉลองกึ่งพุทธกาล [U Nu bears the Tripitaka and joins the celebrations of the Buddhist Era],” Pim Thai, 12 May 1957, gor/por7/1957/wor thor 1.2/section 3, Thailand National Archives. “ต้อนรับอูนุมโหฬาร [Grand welcome for U Nu],” Siamnikorn, 12 May 1957, gor/ por7/1957/wor thor 1.2/section 1, Thailand National Archives. Ibid. Ibid. “นายกว่าพุทธศาสนาไม่ถือชั้น อูนุเผยแนวทางปฏิบัติศาสนกิจ [The Prime Minister asserted Buddhism is not classist; U Nu reveals guidance for religious practices],” Khao Panit, 16 May 1957, gor/por7/1957/wor thor 1.2/section 2, Thailand National Archives. “อูนุน ําพระไตรปิฎกมามอบให้ไทย ทางการซ้อมเดินขบวนแห่สู่โรงพิธี [U Nu presents the Tripitaka to Thailand, the government rehearses the procession march to the ceremony hall],” Chao Thai, 12 May 1957, gor/por/1957/wor thor 1.2/section 1, Thailand National Archives. Sangharakshita, Survey of Buddhism, 28. “The Prime Minister asserted Buddhism is not classist; U Nu reveals guidance for religious practices,” Khao Panit, 16 May 1957. “ภิกษุจากประเทศต่างๆพอใจที่ได้เห็นไทยยึดมั่นพระพุทธศาสนาแน่นแฟ้น [Monks from various nations satisfied to see Thailand firmly upholding the Buddhist religion],” Chao Thai, 16 May 1957, gor/por7/1957/wor thor 1.2/section 2, Thailand National Archives. “อูนุถวายอิสริยาภรณ์สูงสุดแก่สังฆราช รวมทั้งเงินปีอีกปีละพัน [U Nu presented highest honors to the Supreme Patriarch, along with yearly donations of 1000 kyat],” Khao Panit, 17 May 1957, gor/por/1957/wor thor 1.2/section 2, Thailand National Archives. The events of 1767 have assumed a central place in the discourse of Thai nationalism. Their memory fuels perceptions of the Burmese as a perennial aggressor against Thailand—as the “other” against which Thais have defined their own identity. See Thongchai, Siam Mapped, 34–35. “Vipassana,” in Buswell, Encyclopedia of Buddhism, 889–90. Elizabeth K. Nottingham, Introduction to the International Meditation Centre with Buddhist Meditation in Burma, Pamphlet No. 1 (Rangoon: Vipassana Association), 1961. [No title], Sri Krung, 19 June 1954, gor/por7/1954/wor thor 2.1, Thailand National Archives.

307

Y7216.indb 307

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o Pages 75 –81 29. “Editorial,” Maha Bodi 80, no. 4 (1972): 5–6, available at http://www.pariyatti.org/ ResourcesProjects/Treasures/SayagyiUBaKhin/tabid/80/Default.aspx (accessed 15 April 2010). See also Swearer, Buddhist World of Southeast Asia, 142–43. 30. “An Address of Veneration made by Thado Thiri Thudamma U Thein Maung,” Sangayana Monthly Bulletin 1, no. 3 (1953): 5. 31. “Thai Buddhist Goodwill Mission,” Sangayana Monthly Bulletin 1, no. 2 (1953): 7. 32. พระพิมลธรรม [Phra Phimolatham], ผจญมาร บันทึก ชีวิต ๕ ปี ในห้องขัง [Encounter the devils], 4–6. 33. “พุทธสัมพันธ์ในการเดินทางเข้ามายังประเทศไทย [Buddhist relations in traveling to Thailand],” Sarn Seri, 8 May 1954, gor/por 7/1954/wor thor 2.4 section 1, Thailand National Archives. 34. Ibid. 35. พระพิมลธรรม [Phra Phimolatham], ผจญมาร บันทึก ชีวิต ๕ ปี ในห้องขัง [Encounter the devils], 5. 36. Ibid. 37. Ibid. 38. Ibid. The new title (อัคคมหาบัณฑิต) could also be translated “supreme sage.” 39. Ibid., 6. 40. “Return of the Thai Mission,” Sangayana Monthly Bulletin 1, no. 3 (July 1953): 9. 41. The position of ecclesiastical prime minister differs from that of supreme patriarch. As Peter Jackson explains, with the passage of the 1941 Sangha Act, the supreme patriarch became the “titular head of the sangha on the model of the constitutional monarch.” Under the new law, the supreme patriarch was “only able to proclaim clerical directives or regulations . . . on the advice” of the Sangha Council, headed by the equivalent of an ecclesiastical prime minister. See Jackson and ISAS, Buddhism, Legitimation, and Conflict, 72–73. 42. พระพิมลธรรม [Phra Phimolatham], ผจญมาร บันทึก ชีวิต ๕ ปี ในห้องขัง [Encounter the devils], 6–7. 43. Sack, Moral Re-armament, 3. 44. Ibid., 154. 45. “MRA Background,” attachment no. 1 to “Moral Rearmament’s ‘The Vanishing Island,’ ” 25 October 1955, OCB 000.3 [Religion] (File #1) (3) February 1954–January 1957, box 2, White House Office, NSC Staff: Papers, 1948–1961, OCB Central Files Series, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library. 46. Sack, Moral Re-armament, 215 n86. 47. “ขบวนการ เอม.อาร์.เอ จะตอบปัญหาการรบในลาวประชิดชายแดนไทย [MRA movement to answer questions about fighting in Laos near the Thai border],” Siam Nikorn, 2 January 1954, gor/por 7/1954/or 12, Thailand National Archives. 48. Thak, Politics, 56–69. 49. พระพิมลธรรม (อาจ อาสโภ) [Phra Phimolatham (Aat Aatpho)], บันทึกพระพิมลธร รมกับ เอ็ม.อาร์.เอ. [Diary of Phimolatham and the M.R.A.], 30–31.

308

Y7216.indb 308

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o P ages 81–9 0 50. Sack, Moral Re-armament, 156. 51. พระพิมลธรรม (อาจ อาสโภ) [Phra Phimolatham (Aat Aatpho)], บันทึกพระพิมลธร รมกับ เอ็ม.อาร์.เอ. [Diary of Phimolatham and the M.R.A.], 30–31. 52. Lean, On the Tale of a Comet, 477–78. 53. “Moral Rearmament’s ‘The Vanishing Island,’ ” 25 October 1955. 54. Lean, On the Tail of a Comet, 477–94. 55. “Moral Rearmament’s ‘The Vanishing Island,’ ” 25 October 1955. 56. “Analysis of ‘The Vanishing Island’ by USIA Observer,” attachment no. 3 to “Moral Rearmament’s ‘The Vanishing Island,’ ” 25 October 1955. 57. “Reaction of U.S. Embassies,” attachment no. 7 to “Moral Rearmament’s ‘The Vanishing Island,’ ” 25 October 1955. 58. Ibid. 59. Lean, On the Tail of a Comet, 488–91. 60. “เจ้าคุณพิมลธรรมไปเทศน์เมืองฝร ั่ง [Chaokhun Phimontham to preach in the West],” Sarn Seri, 27 May 1958, gor/por 7/1958/wor thor 3.2, Thailand National Archives. 61. พระพิมลธรรม (อาจ อาสโภ) [Phra Phimolatham (Aat Aatpho)], บันทึกพระพิมลธร รมกับ เอ็ม.อาร์.เอ. [Diary of Phimolatham and the M.R.A.], 37–42. 62. Ibid., 45. 63. Thak, Politics, 80. 64. C. Reynolds, Thai Radical Discourse, 13. The full title of Jit’s famous 1957 work is translated in English as The Real Face of Thai Saktina Today. 65. Acts on the Administration of the Buddhist Order of the Sangha (Bangkok: Mahamakuta Educational Council, 1963), 2. 66. Ibid., 25. 67. Jackson and ISAS, Buddhism, Legitimation, and Conflict, 71. Jackson notes: “In 1933, one year after the revolution, a group of pro-democratic Mahanikay monks calling themselves the Group to Restore the Religion (Khana Patisangkhorn Phra Saasanna) was formed with the objective of repealing the 1902 Sangha Act and replacing it with a new law based on equity and democratic principles.” However, the new movement was suppressed and participating monks were forced to disrobe. 68. With the creation of Mukdahan, Amnat Charoen, Nongbualamphu, and Bueng Kan provinces between 1982 and 2011, the number of Isan provinces has increased from 16 to 20. 69. McDaniel, Lovelorn Ghost, 25. 70. Jackson and ISAS, Buddhism, Legitimation, and Conflict, 96. 71. Ibid. 72. Ibid., 95. 73. “Status of Buddhist Clergy in Thailand,” Philip Axelrod, 13 November 1962, AmEmbassy Bangkok to Department of State, 892.40/3-361, box 2878, General Records of the Department of State, RG 59, U.S. National Archives.

309

Y7216.indb 309

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o Pages 9 1–9 7 74. Jackson and ISAS, Buddhism, Legitimation, and Conflict, 95. 75. Asia Foundation, Buddhism and Buddhist Programming in Thailand (Review and Development Department, Asia Foundation, second draft, 1965), 35, planned donation to Southeast Asia Collection, Yale University Library, New Haven. 76. Jackson and ISAS, Buddhism, Legitimation, and Conflict, 97. See also Handley, King Never Smiles, 153. 77. Jackson and ISAS, Buddhism, Legitimation, and Conflict, 96. See also Handley, King Never Smiles, 153. 78. Asia Foundation, Buddhism and Buddhist Programming in Thailand, 35; Somboon, Buddhism and Politics in Thailand, 59. 79. “แถลงการณ์ของรัฐบาล เรื่องใบปลิวเถื่อนท ําลายศาสนา [Government announcement on pamphlets aiming to corrupt Buddhism],” Sarn Seri, 26 May 1960, gor/por 7/1960/sor thor 2.7, Thailand National Archives. 80. “[Public security officers searched quarters of ‘Phimontham’ novices and questioned three Wat Mahathat monks],” Pim Thai, 16 June 1960, gor/por 7/1960/sor thor 2.7, Thailand National Archives. 81. Ibid. 82. “Status of Buddhist Clergy in Thailand,” Philip Axelrod, 13 November 1962. 83. Asia Foundation, Buddhism and Buddhist Programming in Thailand, 38–39. 84. Ibid., 38. 85. Ibid. 86. Asia Foundation, Buddhism and Buddhist Programming in Thailand, 38; “จ ําเลย คดียุยงสงฆ์ให้แตกแยกฟ้องนายตํรวจสันติบาล ๗ นาย [Defendant in monk incitement case sues 7 Santiban officers],” Chao Thai, 14 November 1961, gor/por 7/1961/ sor thor 2.3, Thailand National Archives. 87. “จับผู้ทำใบปลิวต้องสึกจากพระ [Pamphlet makers arrested, disrobed],” Sarn Seri, 17 July 1963, gor/por 7/1963/sor thor 4.7, Thailand National Archives. 88. พระพิมลธรรม [Phra Phimolatham], ผจญมาร บันทึก ชีวิต ๕ ปี ในห้องขัง [Encounter the devils], 7. 89. Ibid., 8, 11–12. Phra Tamratnaagon (พระธรรมรัตนากร), ecclesiastical minister of administration, and Phra Tamkunaapon (พระธรรมคุณาภรณ์), ecclesiastical minister of education, were the two other ecclesiastical cabinet members who attended. 90. Jackson and ISAS, Buddhism, Legitimation, and Conflict, 98. 91. Ibid. 92. Johnson, Lavender Scare. 93. พระพิมลธรรม [Phra Phimolatham], ผจญมาร บันทึก ชีวิต ๕ ปี ในห้องขัง [Encounter the devils], 58. 94. Ibid., 10, 15, 18. 95. Ibid., 28. 96. Jackson and ISAS, Buddhism, Legitimation, and Conflict, 99, 102.

310

Y7216.indb 310

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o P ag es 9 8–107 97. พระพิมลธรรม [Phra Phimolatham], ผจญมาร บันทึก ชีวิต ๕ ปี ในห้องขัง [Encounter the devils], 57–58. 98. “Status of Buddhist Clergy in Thailand,” Philip Axelrod, 13 November 1962. 99. Jackson and ISAS, Buddhism, Legitimation, and Conflict, 100. 100. พระพิมลธรรม [Phra Phimolatham], ผจญมาร บันทึก ชีวิต ๕ ปี ในห้องขัง [Encounter the devils], 58–59. 101. Ibid., 60. See also Jackson and ISAS, Buddhism, Legitimation, and Conflict, 100. Jackson reports that specific allegations against Phimolatham included charges that he had “sent monks to India for Marxist training” and that he headed a group called the Sangha Organization for the Liberation of Thailand, which “allegedly coordinated the Communist Party of Thailand’s operations within the sangha.” 102. “Status of Buddhist Clergy in Thailand,” Philip Axelrod, 13 November 1962. 103. Author’s correspondence with William Klausner, 19 June 2012. 104. มหาจุฬาลงกรณ ์ราชวิทยาลัย [Mahachulalongkonratchawitthayalai], มหาเถระประ วัติ [Mahatheraprawat], 139–40. 105. Untitled article, Siam Rath, 4 May 1962, gor/por 7/1962/sor thor 3.6, Thailand National Archives. 106. Untitled article, Pim Thai, 26 April 1962, gor/por 7/1962/sor thor 3.6, Thailand National Archives. 107. Scott, Seeing Like a State, 2–3. 108. พระพิมลธรรม [Phra Phimolatham], ผจญมาร บันทึก ชีวิต ๕ ปี ในห้องขัง [Encounter the devils], 6. 109. Ibid., 4–7. 110. Ibid., 115. 4 Reforming the Monks 1. “Khon Kaen Report,” William Klausner, 21 November 1958, Social & Economic/ Rural Consultant/I/Wm Klausner-1958/7-59/Thailand 4003/Program, box P-164, Asia Foundation Records, Hoover Institution. 2. Ibid. 3. Ibid. 4. C. Reynolds, “Buddhist Monkhood,” 235, 245–49. 5. Yukio, Practical Buddhism, 283–86. 6. McDaniel, Lovelorn Ghost, 36–38. 7. Attendance figures come from “Report of the Fifth General Conference of the World Fellowship of Buddhists” (Bangkok: The Buddhist Association of Thailand under Royal Patronage, 1958), 157. 8. “นายกพุทธสมาคมห้ามพูดการเมืองในที่ประชุมของพุทธศาสนิกสัมพันธ์ [Association head forbids speaking about politics during WFB conference],” Chao Thai, 26 November 1958.

311

Y7216.indb 311

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o Pages 107–111 9. “Project proposal for a Rural Program Assistance: Report on Khon Kaen,” Harry H. Pierson, 1 December 1958, Social & Economic/Rural Consultant/I/Wm Klausner-1958/7–59/Thailand 4003/Program, box P-164, Asia Foundation Records, Hoover Institution. 10. Klausner, Transforming Thai Culture, 49. 11. Klausner was “honored to be considered a pupil, a disciple,” of Paul Mus, who encouraged his scholarship on Thailand and Southeast Asia. Mus had formed his own connection with the Asia Foundation, traveling to Southeast Asia in summer 1957 on a trip funded by the Asia Foundation and Yale. David Chandler explains that the purpose of the tour was to “discuss a program sponsored by Yale and the Asia Foundation to train local scholars in the United States and elsewhere in the field of Buddhist studies,” but the program ultimately failed to materialize. Klausner reported having “no idea of any details or the extent of [Mus’s] involvement” in the foundation’s work. Author’s personal correspondence with William Klausner, 13 August 2014; Chandler, “Paul Mus (1902–1969),” 178. 12. Keyes, “Buddhism and National Integration,” 551. 13. Grether, “Buddhism in Thailand Today,” 33. 14. Asia Foundation, Buddhism and Buddhist Programming in Thailand (Review and Development Department, Asia Foundation, second draft, 1965), 15, planned donation to Southeast Asia Collection, Yale University Library, New Haven. 15. F. Reynolds, “Civic Religion and National Community in Thailand,” 257–82. 16. Author’s interview with William Klausner, Bangkok, 10 October 2008; author’s personal correspondence with William Klausner, 31 October 2014. “By and large,” Klausner recalled, “communism did not take hold in the rural northeast as a great majority of villagers owned their own land . . . and due to the revered status and community development role play of the conservative Buddhist monkhood.” 17. Author’s personal correspondence with William Klausner, 11 January 2011. 18. “Buddhist Programming,” William Klausner, 10 November 1959, Social & Economic/Religion Buddhism/R. Gard Consultant/Aug–Dec 1959/US & Intel./ Program, box P-130, Asia Foundation Records, Hoover Institution. 19. Ibid. 20. Ibid. 21. Klausner, as one of the few U.S. scholars based in Thailand in the 1950s and 1960s, maintained extensive contacts with U.S. embassy officials. However, he “did not know or socialize with” Willis Bird, Office of Strategic Services veteran of World War II and notable CIA officer of 1950s-era Thailand. Author’s personal correspondence with William Klausner, 21 July 2015. For more on Bird’s activities in Thailand, see Fineman, Special Relationship, 133–46. 22. Asia Foundation, Buddhism and Buddhist Programming in Thailand, 103. 23. Anderson and Mendiones, In the Mirror, 25–26; “CIA Organizational History in Brief,” 1 March 1975, 2–3, CREST, U.S. National Archives (accessed 5 August

312

Y7216.indb 312

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o P ag es 111–116

24. 25. 26.

27. 28.

29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

36. 37.

2009); Wilford, Mighty Wurlitzer, 27, 139–40. Wilford’s discussion of the CIAsponsored National Student Association (NSA), where “witting” and “unwitting” employees worked side by side, is an instructive example of how unwitting employees of a given front organization could be kept unaware of its CIA ties until it was deemed necessary by their witting colleagues to bring them into the fold: “When the CIA judged it necessary to have an unwitting officer made aware of the true source of the organization’s funds, a meeting would be arranged between the individual concerned, a witting colleague, and a former NSA officer who had gone on to join the Agency. At a pre-arranged signal, the witting staffer would leave the room. The CIA operative (still identified only as ex-NSA) would explain that the unwitting officer had to swear a secrecy oath before being apprised of some vital secrets, and, after getting the officer to sign a formal pledge, the operative would then reveal the Agency’s hand in the Association’s affairs . . . Part of the burden of being witting was keeping secrets from unwitting fellow officers.” Asia Foundation, Buddhism and Buddhist Programming in Thailand, 101. Ibid., 102. “Briefing by Ambassador Edwin F. Stanton,” Memorandum for the Record, 27 June 1952, 337, Army Department—Army Advisory, Orientation Conference, November 12, 1951 [1 of 2], Harry S. Truman Papers, Psychological Strategy Board Files, Harry S. Truman Library. Asia Foundation, Buddhism and Buddhist Programming in Thailand, 101. Letter, C. D. Jackson to Abbott Washburn, 3 February 1953, C. D. Jackson Papers, Jackson Committee (3), box 63, available at http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/ research/online_documents/declassified/fy_2011/1953_02_03.pdf (accessed 9 July 2015). Asia Foundation, Buddhism and Buddhist Programming in Thailand, 103. Ibid. Ibid., 66. Ibid., 102. Ibid., 103. Ibid. Ibid. In fact, there was no Buddhist “Church” per se. Here foundation personnel displayed a penchant for incorrectly using terms derived from Christianity to describe Buddhism. This tendency, which Klausner himself shared, was also evident in their referring to monks and monasteries as “priests” and “temples.” Ibid. Emphasis in original. “Mahamakuta Institute of Thailand [in English],” Thammajaksu 43, no. 7–8 (April–May 1958): 98; “Buddhism Expenditures and Percentages,” 23 August 1960, Social & Economic Religion Buddhism/R. Gard Consultant/July–Dec. 1960/US & Intl. Program, box P-130, Asia Foundation Records, Hoover Institution. Buddhism expenditures for fiscal year 1955–56 represented 6 percent of that year’s total program expenditures.

313

Y7216.indb 313

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o Pages 116 –125 38. “Comments on Dr. Gard’s Comments on the Buddhist Program in Thailand— G-75 of May 19, 1959,” Robert Fasson, Social & Economic/Religion Buddhism/ R. Gard Consultant/Aug–Dec 1959/US & Intl./Program, box P-130, Asia Foundation Records, Hoover Institution. 39. “Comments on the Buddhist Program in Thailand,” Richard A. Gard, 19 May 1959, Social & Economic/Religion Buddhism/Gard Consultant/May–June 1959/ US & Intl Program, box P-130, Asia Foundation Records, Hoover Institution. 40. Ibid. 41. Ibid. 42. Asia Foundation, Buddhism and Buddhist Programming in Thailand, 123. Klausner would later comment on the difficulty of requesting financial reports from the two Buddhist universities concerning their use of foundation grant money: “Though never explicitly stated, the clergy officials viewed such grants as merit offerings in the Buddhist context. The Foundation had made merit and this ended the transaction. Foundation administrators were not amused by such explanations to say the least.” Author’s personal correspondence with William Klausner, 18 January 2011. 43. Asia Foundation, Buddhism and Buddhist Programming in Thailand, 123. 44. Ibid., 57. 45. “Comments on the Buddhist Program in Thailand,” Richard A. Gard, 19 May 1959. 46. “Comments on Dr. Gard’s Comments on the Buddhist Program in Thailand— G-75 of May 19, 1959,” Robert Fasson. 47. Ibid. 48. Asia Foundation, Buddhism and Buddhist Programming in Thailand, 123. 49. “Comments on Dr. Gard’s Comments on the Buddhist Program in Thailand— G-75 of May 19, 1959,” Robert Fasson. 50. James R. Basche Jr., “Assistance to the Secondary Education of Thai Buddhist Priests in the Provinces,” 11 September 1959, Social & Economic/Religion Buddhism/R. Gard Consultant/Aug–Dec 1959/US & Intl./Program, box P-130, Asia Foundation Records, Hoover Institution. 51. Ibid. 52. Ibid. 53. Ibid. 54. Ibid. 55. Ibid. 56. Ibid. 57. Ibid. 58. Asia Foundation, Buddhism and Buddhist Programming in Thailand, 60. 59. “Rural Programming in Thailand, Employment of a Rural Programming Assistant,” The Representative, Thailand, 26 November 1958, Social & Economic/Rural Consultant/I/Wm Klausner-1958/7-59/Thailand 4003/Program, box P-164, Asia Foundation Records, Hoover Institution.

314

Y7216.indb 314

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o P ag es 125 –13 2 60. Author’s personal correspondence with William Klausner, 21 July 2015. 61. “Rural Programming in Thailand, Employment of a Rural Programming Assistant,” The Representative, Thailand, 26 November 1958. 62. Ibid. 63. “Discussion at the Special Meeting held in the Cabinet Room of The White House prior to the 349th NSC Meeting on Thursday, January 22, 1959,” 23 January 1959, DDE’s Papers as President, NSC Series, box 11, available at http://www .eisenhower.archives.gov/research/online_documents/declassified/fy_2010/1959 _01_23.pdf (accessed 15 October 2014). For biographical details on George Allen, see “George E. Allen: A Register of a Facsimile Collection of His Papers at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library,” available at http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/ research/finding_aids/pdf/Allen_George_E_Papers.pdf (accessed 15 October 2014). 64. “Comments on Dr. Gard’s Comments on the Buddhist Program in Thailand— G-75 of May 19, 1959,” Robert Fasson. 65. Author’s personal correspondence with William Klausner, 17 January 2011. 66. “Northeast Tour: Ubol, October 15th to 19th,” William Klausner, 22 October 1959, Social & Economic/Religion Buddhism/R. Gard Consultant/Aug–Dec 1959/US & Intl./Program, box P-130, Asia Foundation Records, Hoover Institution. 67. Ibid. 68. Ibid.; author’s personal correspondence with William Klausner, 11 January 2011. Klausner recalled that the monks’ “knowledge” was less of a concern than their continuing influence over village society. As the government expanded its services into rural areas, government workers increasingly viewed monks as “competitors.” Officialdom thus “exhibited a negative reaction to their influence.” 69. “Buddhist Programming,” William Klausner, 10 November 1959. 70. Population estimate comes from Kingdom of Laos, Ministère des Finances de l’Economie Nationale et du Plan, Bulletin Statistique du Laos, 1958, as quoted in Human Relations Area Files, Laos (New Haven: HRAF Press, 1960), 238. 71. The estimate for 1957 comes from Bureau of Cults, Lao Ministry of the Interior, as quoted in Halpern, Government, Politics, and Social Structure, appendix 2, table 1: “Number of Pagodas, Monks, and Novices in Laos, 1957.” The estimate for 1964 is found in Asia Foundation, Buddhism and Buddhist Programming in Laos (Asia Foundation, Review and Development Department, 1966), 8, planned donation to Southeast Asia Collection, Yale University Library, New Haven. 72. “Buddhist Church in Laos,” Charles W. Yost, 7 November 1955, Foreign Service Dispatch, American Embassy Vientiane to Department of State, U.S. State Department Central Files, Indochina: Internal and Foreign Affairs, 1955–59, COOO8, reel 49, U.S. National Archives. 73. Christopher Goscha documents the intensive nature of DRV involvement in the Pathet Lao in “The Revolutionary Laos of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam: The Making of a Transnational ‘Pathet Lao Solution’ (1954–1956),” in Goscha and Laplante, L’échec de la paix en Indochine, 61–83.

315

Y7216.indb 315

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o P ages 13 2–13 8 74. Halpern, Government, Politics, and Social Structure, 58. For more on the Pathet Lao’s “antireligious policy” in the regroupment zones, see also “Laos, Section 43, Religion, Education and Public Information,” 1 July 1958, National Intelligence Surveys, 1948–1972, Office of Current Intelligence, Directorate of Intelligence, Records of the Central Intelligence Agency, box 219, RG 263, U.S. National Archives. 75. Asia Foundation, Buddhism and Buddhist Programming in Laos, 12. 76. The article first appeared in Thao Nhouy Abhay, Aspects du pays Lao. For the first English translation, see Thao Nhouy Abhay, Buddhism in Laos (Laos: Ministry of Education Literary Committee, 1958). A better English version appeared in Berval, Kingdom of Laos, 237–56. 77. Ibid., 253–56. 78. McDaniel, Gathering Leaves, 27. 79. Berval et al., Kingdom of Laos, 253–56. 80. Thao Nhouy Abhay’s intellectual genealogy descends from Halpern through multiple U.S. sources, including the foundation’s internal history of its Laos operations. See Halpern, Government, Politics, and Social Structure, 49–62; Asia Foundation, Buddhism and Buddhist Programming in Laos, 12–13; Whitaker et al., Area Handbook for Laos, 116. McDaniel describes Halpern as one of the many American “advisors” who were “ubiquitous” in Laos between 1959 and 1975 (Gathering Leaves, 53). 81. Goscha and Laplante, L’échec de la paix en Indochine, 84. 82. Stuart-Fox and Bucknell, “Politicization of the Buddhist Sangha in Laos,” 61. 83. Asia Foundation, Buddhism and Buddhist Programming in Laos, 20. 84. The impact of the Phoumi appointment is discussed in detail in Stuart-Fox and Bucknell, “Politicization of the Buddhist Sangha in Laos,” 61–62. 85. “National Buddhist Conference,” Henry L. Miller, 11 September 1959, Foreign Service Dispatch, American Embassy Vientiane to Department of State, U.S. State Department Central Files, Indochina: Internal and Foreign Affairs, 1955–59, COOO8, reel 49, U.S. National Archives. The figure of 2,000 “active communists” possibly was exaggerated to attract U.S. attention and funding. 86. “Some Problems of Modern Lao Buddhism,” Amembassy Vientiane to Department of State, 15 May 1961, U.S. State Department Central Files, Laos, 1960– January 1963, Internal & Foreign Affairs, C0071, reel 33, U.S. National Archives. 87. McDaniel, Gathering Leaves, 53. 88. Asia Foundation, Buddhism and Buddhist Programming in Laos, 21. 89. “National Buddhist Conference,” Henry L. Miller, 11 September 1959. 90. Ibid. 91. Asia Foundation, Buddhism and Buddhist Programming in Laos, 21. 92. Ibid., 53. 93. Ibid., 41.

316

Y7216.indb 316

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o P ag es 13 8–143 94. The French had made considerable efforts to strengthen Lao-Cambodian Buddhist ties, including the opening of a school for Pali instruction in Champasak (formerly Bassac) in the deep south of Laos. McDaniel explains that the establishment of the school, a project under way by 1931, “was one small part of the hopes of the French of linking Cambodia and Laos culturally, as well as economically and politically.” See McDaniel, Gathering Leaves, 43. 95. These figures are found in “Buddhist Church in Laos,” Charles W. Yost, 7 November 1955. As quoted in Halpern, Government, Politics, and Social Structure, census data from the Bureau of Cults, Lao Ministry of Interior, indicate that there were 1,869 pagodas in Laos in 1957. The discrepancy may reveal an error in the 1955 figures. 96. Author’s personal correspondence with William Klausner, 19 June 2012. Klausner commented: “Intersectarian rivalries in Thailand in the early decades of the 20th century and even into the middle decades did go beyond the political in one sense. Lay adherents of both sects were often more ‘papal than the Pope.’ Marriages were often objected to by elders if the prospective bride and groom were from opposing Mahanikai and Thammayut sects.” 97. “Tour to Pakse and Environs May 11 to May 15,” William Klausner, 15 May 1959, Social & Economic/Religion Buddhism/Gard Consultant/May–June 1959/US & Intl Program, box P-130, Asia Foundation Records, Hoover Institution. 98. Mahathawan Thitangkun, Prasopkan nai Lau (Bangkok, 1977), 120, as quoted in Stuart-Fox, Buddhist Kingdom, Marxist State, 91. 99. Stuart-Fox, Buddhist Kingdom, Marxist State, 89–90. 100. “คณะสงฆ์ไทยรับช่วยเหลือการศึกษาของสงฆ์ เขมร-ลาว [Thai monks assist clerical education in Cambodia and Laos],” Khao Panit, 29 July 1954, gor/por7/1954/wor thor 2.8, Thailand National Archives. See also Thammajaksu 38, no. 9–10 (June– July 1954): 73. 101. Asia Foundation, Buddhism and Buddhist Programming in Laos, 29. 102. “Visit of Phra Maha Manat, Acting Secretary General of Mahacuhula [sic] Long Korn University, and Phra Maha Soda—February 19–28 (1960),” William Klausner, 10 March 1960, Social & Economic/Rural Consultant Klausner/II/7-62/Laos/ Program, box P-284, Asia Foundation Records, Hoover Institution. 103. Ibid. 104. “Dick Gard’s Visit,” Harry H. Pierson, 24 June 1960, Social & Economic/Religion Buddhism/R. Gard Consultant/Jan.–June 1960/US & Intl/Program, box P-284, Asia Foundation Records, Hoover Institution. 105. “Further Developments in the Buddhist Sphere,” Representative, Thailand, 8 July 1960, Social & Economic/Religion Buddhism/R. Gard Consultant/July–Dec. 1960/US & Intl./Program, box P-130, Asia Foundation Records, Hoover Institution. 106. “Thailand,” Social & Economic/Religion Buddhism/Survey of TAF work, etc./1957–60/US & Intl./Program, box P-130, Asia Foundation Records, Hoover Institution, undated five-page report (henceforth “Thailand”).

317

Y7216.indb 317

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o Pages 143 –148 107. Morell and Chai-anan, Political Conflict, 319. 108. “Thailand.” 109. “Comment on Buddhist Situation, Thailand,” Richard A. Gard, 11 January 1961, Social & Economic/Religion Buddhism General/1-61/6-62/US & Intl./Program, box P-245, Asia Foundation Records, Hoover Institution. 110. “Northeastern tour, March 29–April 6,” William J. Klausner, 25 April 1961, Social & Economic/Social & Economic/Rural Consultant/III/Wm Klausner/1961/ Thailand 4003/Program, box P-164, Asia Foundation Records, Hoover Institution. 5 Thailand and the International Response to the 1963 Buddhist Crisis in South Vietnam 1. “Buddhist Patriarch Surveys City,” New York Times, 6 July 1961. 2. Unknown title, Honolulu Advertiser, 10 June 1961; New York Times, 6 July 1961. 3. “Discussions with the Sangharaja and Mr. Foong Srivicharn, Director-General of the Department of Religion,” Mr. Pierson, Dr. Gard, Mr. Klausner, 15 July 1960, Sangharaja The (Supreme Patriarch of Thai Buddhism)/I/April 1961/Thailand 7108/Individuals, box P-160, The Asia Foundation Records, Hoover Institution. 4. Ibid. 5. “Visit to U.S. of the Supreme Patriarch and Party,” Harry H. Pierson, 1 June 1961, Sangharaja The (Supreme Patriarch of Thai Buddhism)/III/June 1961/Thailand 7108/Individuals, box P-160, Asia Foundation Records, Hoover Institution. 6. Programs Department, Attachment G-11, Jim Greene, 14 June 1961, Sangharaja The (Supreme Patriarch of Thai Buddhism)/III/June 1961/Thailand 7108/Individuals, box P-160, Asia Foundation Records, Hoover Institution. 7. “Visit of the Supreme Patriarch to the United States and Europe,” William J. Klausner, 8 August 1961, Sangharaja The (Supreme Patriarch of Thai Buddhism)/ IV/July-1961/Thailand 7108/1-62/Individuals, box P-305, Asia Foundation Records, Hoover Institution. 8. Chao Thai, 29 June 1961, gor/por7/1961/sor thor 2.6 section 1. For Gard’s comments, see “Arrangements for the Visit of the Sangharaja of Thailand,” Richard Gard, 5 June 1961, Sangharaja The (Supreme Patriarch of Thai Buddhism)/IV/ July-1961/Thailand 7108/Individuals, box P-160, The Asia Foundation Records, Hoover Institution. 9. “Visit of the Supreme Patriarch to the United States and Europe,” William J. Klausner, 8 August 1961. For details on Stanton’s important role in U.S. diplomacy in Southeast Asia, see Kiernan, How Pol Pot Came to Power, 55. 10. “Visit of the Supreme Patriarch to the United States and Europe,” William J. Klausner, 8 August 1961. 11. Ibid.

318

Y7216.indb 318

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o P ag es 149 –15 5 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18.

19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

24. 25. 26.

27.

28.

29.

30. 31.

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. “ยกที่ดินให้ไทยสร ้างวัด สังฆราชเผยไปต่างประเทศว่าแทบไม่ได้เดินดู แต่ ‘วิ่งดู’ [Land is granted to the Thai for the construction of a temple; the Supreme Patriarch says his tour was rushed],” Thai, 7 August 1961, gor/por7/1961/sor thor 2.6/ section 2, Thailand National Archives. “Visits of the Supreme Patriarch of Thailand to the United States: Reports of William J. Klausner,” Harry H. Pierson, 15 August 1961, Sangharaja The (Supreme Patriarch of Thai Buddhism)/IV/July-1961/Thailand 7108/1-62/Individuals, box P-305, Asia Foundation Records, Hoover Institution. Jacobs, America’s Miracle Man, 12, 27. Ibid., 129–38. Ibid., 131. Jacobs reports that the number of Catholics in the North declined from 1,133,0000 to 457,000. Nhâat and Merton, Lotus in the Sea of Fire, 54. Mai Tho Truyen, “Le Bouddhism au Vietnam,” in Berval, Présence du Bouddhisme, 801–10. Mai Tho Truyen explains the superior monk of northern Vietnam, To Lien, had provisionally extended Vietnamese membership to the WFB while attending the World Buddhist Congress in Colombo in 1950, where he would have witnessed the creation of the fellowship. Ibid. Jamieson, Understanding Vietnam, 15–16. Translations of Mai Tho Truyen are found in Thien Do, “The Quest for Enlightenment and Cultural Identity: Buddhism in Contemporary Vietnam,” in Harris, ed., Buddhism and Politics, 254–83. “Buddhist Organizations in Viet-Nam,” Joseph A. Mendenhall, 30 August 1960, Amembassy Saigon to Department of State, U.S. State Department Central Files, Vietnam: International and Foreign Affairs, 1960–63, C-0092, reel 24, U.S. National Archives. Prados, Hidden History, 90. Jamieson notes that Buddhism in South Vietnam “enjoyed a powerful resurgence during the 1960s.” See Jamieson, Understanding Vietnam, 284. “National Buddhist Congress,” Joseph A. Mendenhall, 3 October 1959, American Embassy Saigon to Department of State, U.S. State Department Central Files, Indo China: Internal and Foreign Affairs, 1955–59, C-0008, reel 44, U.S. National Archives. Prados, Hidden History, 90. Ibid.

319

Y7216.indb 319

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o P ages 15 5 –16 5 32. Asia Foundation, Buddhism and Buddhist Programming in Vietnam (Review and Development Department, Asia Foundation, Third Draft, 1965), 39, planned donation to Southeast Asia Collection, Yale University Library, New Haven. 33. Ibid. 34. Asia Foundation, Buddhism and Buddhist Programming in Vietnam, 118. 35. “Report of Viet-Nam Visit, 29 July–7 August 1960,” Richard Gard, 30 November 1960, Social & Economic/Religion Buddhism/R. Gard Consultant/July–Dec. 1960/ US & Intl./Program, box P-130, Asia Foundation Records, Hoover Institution. 36. Ibid. 37. “National Buddhist Congress,” Joseph A. Mendenhall, 3 October 1959. 38. “Buddhist Organizations in Viet-Nam,” Joseph A. Mendenhall, 30 August 1960. 39. Ibid. 40. Ibid. 41. Ibid. 42. The Sixth Conference of the World Fellowship of Buddhists (Phnom Penh: Ministry of Religious Affairs, 1961), 11. 43. Ibid., 16–29. 44. Ibid. 45. Sunao Miyabara, A History of the World Fellowship of Buddhists, 2493 B.E. (1950) to 2533 B.E. (1990) (Bangkok: WFB, 1994), 15–16. 46. Ibid. 47. Asia Foundation, Buddhism and Buddhist Programming in Vietnam, 86–87. 48. Ibid. 49. Ibid. 50. “Meeting with Dr. Richard Gard—November 25, 1961,” Social & Economic/ Religion Buddhism General/1-61/6-62/US & Intl./Program, box P-245, Asia Foundation Records, Hoover Institution. 51. Ibid. 52. “Comments on Meeting with Dr. Gard,” Mr. Sullivan, Director of Programs, 30 November 1961, Social & Economic/Religion Buddhism General/1-61/6-62/ US & Intl./Program, box P-245, Asia Foundation Records, Hoover Institution. 53. Ibid. 54. Ibid. 55. “Dr. Richard Gard at WFB Conference,” Leonard C. Overton, 4 December 1961, box P-245, Asia Foundation Records, Hoover Institution. 56. “Comments on Meeting with Dr. Gard,” Mr. Sullivan, Director of Programs, 30 November 1961. 57. Malalasekera’s residency in New York at this time was probably connected to his work with the United Nations. Recently declassified U.S. records suggest that Malalasekera’s U.N. employment was under threat of termination at an earlier date due to alleged misconduct. An 11 May 1957 White House memo cites U.S.

320

Y7216.indb 320

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o P ag es 16 5 –16 8

58. 59.

60. 61.

62. 63. 64.

65. 66. 67.

claims of “unimpeachable evidence that Samaresekara, a Ceylonese national in the U.N. Secretariat, recently removed documents from the Ceylonese delegation and delivered them to the USSR delegation.” The document (in which Malalasekera’s name probably was misspelled) also reports that U.S. officials had requested his dismissal from U.N. employment under Section 13 of the U.N. Headquarters Agreement. These charges would have coincided with Malalasekera’s May 1957 appointment as the Ceylonese ambassador to the Soviet Union. Despite the alleged infraction, Malalasekera was again involved with the U.N. in 1959, when he served as the deputy chairman of the Ceylon delegation to the U.N. General Sessions. See Staff Notes, no. 111, 11 May 1957, DDE’s Papers as President, DDE Diary Series, box 24, May 1957 Diary-Staff Memos, available at http://www.eisenhower .archives.gov/research/online_documents/declassified/fy_2014/020_025.pdf (accessed 14 October 2014). See also “Candidates for Election to the Executive Board, Curriculum Vitae,” Dr. G. P. Malalasekera, UNESCO, 11th Conference, General Session, Paris, 17 October 1960, available at http://unesdoc.unesco.org/ images/0016/001631/163132eb.pdf (accessed 19 May 2014). Personal letter to Richard G. Heggie, Director, Program Services, Richard Gard, 27 February 1962, box P-245, Asia Foundation Records, Hoover Institution. “World Fellowship of Buddhists,” John F. Sullivan, 7 October 1963, Social & Economic/Religion/Buddhism/II/General/US & Intl./Program, box P-245, Asia Foundation Records, Hoover Institution. Ibid. “Utilization of Dr. Richard Gard’s Services,” Mr. John F. Sullivan, 11 July 1962, Social & Economic/Religion Buddhism/I/General/1962/US & Intl./Program, box P-245, Asia Foundation Records, Hoover Institution. Ibid. Kahin, Intervention, 149. “Conversation with U Chan Htoon on International Buddhist Affairs,” James V. Martin, 7 June 1963, American Embassy Rangoon to Department of State, Soc— Social Conditions—Burma, General Records of Department of State, box 4205, RG 59, U.S. National Archives. Halberstam, Quagmire, 113. “Sihanouk Demand,” FBIS, Cambodia, 17 June 1963, Daily Reports, reel 254, box 86, RG 263, U.S. National Archives. Phnom Penh’s acute interest in Buddhist affairs in South Vietnam reflected a perhaps paternalistic attitude toward the ethnic Khmer Theravada Buddhist minority, the Khmer Krom, which inhabited parts of South Vietnam’s delta region—a vestigial reminder of Cambodia’s prior historical possession of those territories. Cambodian concern for religious persecution of South Vietnam’s Buddhist community—the ethnic Khmer minority in particular—mingled with undercurrents of racially charged irredentism. See “Sihanouk Receives Buddhist Demonstra-

321

Y7216.indb 321

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o Pages 16 8–173

68. 69. 70.

71. 72. 73.

74.

75.

76.

77.

78. 79.

80.

81.

tors,” FBIS, Cambodia, 17 June 1963, Daily Reports, reel 254, box 86, RG 263, U.S. National Archives. For contemporary evidence, see Burchett, Furtive War, 11–16; Warner, Last Confucian, 151–53; and Leifer, Cambodia, 94–95. “Diplomatic Ties with S. Vietnam Cut,” FBIS, Cambodia, 27 August 1963, Daily Reports, reel 256, box 86, RG 263, U.S. National Archives. “Appeal to All WFB Centres and Buddhist Organizations: Help Our Long Suffering Brethren of South Vietnam,” Burman, 2 July 1963. “Conversation with U Thi Han, Foreign Minister,” Alexander Schnee, 11 June 1963, American Embassy Rangoon to State Department, Soc—Social Conditions—Burma, General Records of Department of State, box 4205, RG 59, U.S. National Archives. Ibid. “Ne Win Urged to Act against S. Vietnam,” FBIS, Burma, 29 August 1963, Daily Reports, reel 256, box 86, RG 263, U.S. National Archives. “U Chan Htoon Statement on Buddhist Situation in South Vietnam,” James V. Martin, 9 July 1963, American Embassy Rangoon to State Department, Soc— Social Conditions—Burma, General Records of Department of State, box 4205, RG 59, U.S. National Archives. “สังฆราชกำหนดเสด็จอินเดียแล้วพร ้อมผู้ตามเสด็จ ๕ ท่าน [The supreme patriarch visits India with 5 followers],” Siam Nikorn, 29 May 1962, gor/por7/1962/sor thor 3.5, Thailand National Archives. For news coverage, see Pim Thai, 4 January 1963, gor/por7/1963/sor thor 4.5. The Sangha Act of 1962 had been formally promulgated in the Royal Gazette on 1 January 1963. In accordance with the new law, the notice also announced Buddhakosacharn’s appointment as acting supreme patriarch. “สมเด็จยิ้ม ‘ขอบใจทุกคน’ จากเย็นถึงดํ่ายังไม่หมด [The Supreme Patriarch says thank you all through the evening],” Pim Thai, 5 May 1963, gor/por7/1963/sor thor 4.5, Thailand National Archives. “Buddhist situation in Thailand,” William J. Klausner, 1 February 1963, Social & Economic/Religion/Buddhism General/III/1-62/Thailand/Program, box P-318, Asia Foundation Records, Hoover Institution. Ibid. “Discussion of Buddhist programming with Khun Foong Srivicharn, Director General of the Department of Religious Affairs,” William J. Klausner, 21 May 1963, Social & Economic/Religion/Buddhism General/III/1-62/Thailand/Program, box P-318, Asia Foundation Records, Hoover Institution. “Discussion with Khun Foong Srivicharn, Director-General, Department of Religious Affairs,” William J. Klausner, 16 August 1963, Social & Economic/Religion/ Buddhism General/III/1-62/Thailand/Program, box P-318, Asia Foundation Records, Hoover Institution. Ibid.

322

Y7216.indb 322

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o P ag es 173 –178 82. “พระไทยเผาตัวเองมรณะอีกรายโดยใช้นํ้ามันราด ยังไม่รู้สาเหตุ [Another Thai Buddhist monk sets himself on fire. Cause still unknown],” Chao Thai, 31 July 1963, gor/por7/1963/sor tor 4.3, Thailand National Archives. 83. “Discussion with Khun Foong Srivicharn, Director-General, Department of Religious Affairs,” William J. Klausner, 16 August 1963. 84. Ibid. 85. “ชาวพุทธในไทยไหวตัวนัดชุมนุม [Thai Buddhists begin to congregate],” Sarn Seri, 19 August 1963, gor/por7/1963/sor 1.4, Thailand National Archives. 86. Foreign Service Telegram, Trueheart, 16 August 1963, 570.3 Religion—Buddhist Affair—Aug 1963, Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State, Vietnam, U.S. Embassy Saigon, 1936–1963, box 84, RG 84, U.S. National Archives. 87. “Monks Appeal for Foreign Intervention,” FBIS, South Vietnam, 19 August 1963, Daily Reports, reel 256, RG 263, U.S. National Archives. 88. “Thanom on S. Vietnam Buddhist Issue,” FBIS, Thailand, 20 August 1963, Daily Reports, reel 256, RG 263, U.S. National Archives. 89. “พร ้อมเปิดโอกาสให้พุทธศาสนิกชนแสดงความคิดเห็นด้วย [The opinions of Buddhists are still welcome],” Sarn Seri, 19 August 1963, gor/por7/1963/sor 1.1, Thailand National Archives. 90. “ก.ก. โง่ๆ ยังกล่าวหาชาวพุทธว่าเป็นฝ่ายก่อเหตุในเวียดนามใต้ [The Committee still accuses the Buddhists of causing the events in South Vietnam],” Sarn Seri, 24 August 1963, gor/por7/1963/sor 1.1, Thailand National Archives. 91. “Buddhist Meeting Proposed Prior to U.N. Debate,” FBIS, Thailand, 23 August 1963, Daily Reports, reel 256, RG 263, U.S. National Archives. 92. Ibid. 93. “Conversation with Judge Sanya Dharmasakti, Vice President, Buddhist Association: WFB and Buddhist Situation in South Vietnam,” William J. Klausner, 28 August 1963, Social & Economic/Religion/Buddhism General/III/1-62/ Thailand/Program, Asia Foundation Records, Hoover Institution. 94. Ibid. 95. Ibid. 96. “ขอร ัองทูตญวนมิให้ร่วมชุมนุมวันนี้ [Vietnamese ambassador asked not to attend today’s meeting],” Pim Thai, 31 August 1963, gor/por7/1963/sor 1.1, Thailand National Archives. 97. “ไม่ให้ภิกษุ สามเณร ชุมนุมชาวพุทธ [Monks and novices barred from meeting],” Pim Thai, 31 August 1963, gor/por7/1963/sor thor 4.1 section 2, Thailand National Archives. 98. Foreign Service Telegram, 6 September 1963, 570.3. Religion (U) 1962, Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State, Thailand, U.S. Consulate, Legation and Embassy Bangkok, General Records, 1936–1942, 1945–1963, box 129, RG 84, U.S. National Archives.

323

Y7216.indb 323

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o Pages 178–184 99. “หกชั่วโมงไม่กินข้าวว่าอิ่มใจ [Six hours for not having anything because one is full of happiness],” Lak Meuang, 1 September 1963, gor/por7/1963/ sor 1.1, Thailand National Archives. 100. “พุทธสมาคมโทรเลขแจ้ง . . . ประเทศต่างๆ [Buddhist association contacts numerous countries via telegram],” Pim Thai, 1 September 1963, gor/por7/1963/sor 1.1, Thailand National Archives. 101. Foreign Service Telegram, 6 September 1963. 102. “ผู้แทนชาวพุทธเวียตนามขอบคุณชาวพุทธไทย [Vietnamese Buddhist representative thanks Thai Buddhists]," Thammajaksu 49, no. 11 (1964): 91. 103. “เร่งตั้งศูนย์ชาวพุทธโลกในไทย [The World Fellowship of Buddhists to be established in Thailand],” Pim Thai, 16 September 1963, gor/por7/1963/sor 1.5, Thailand National Archives. 104. “Conversation with Nai Kruong Pathoumxad, Director-General of Department of Religious Affairs, Ministry of Cults, Laos,” William J. Klausner, 26 September 1963, Social & Economic/Rural Consultant Klausner/II/7-62/Laos/Program, box P-284, Asia Foundation Records, Hoover Institution. 105. Ibid. 106. “World Fellowship of Buddhists,” John F. Sullivan, 7 October 1963, Social & Economic/Religion/Buddhism/II/General/US & Intl./Program, box P-245, Asia Foundation Records, Hoover Institution. 107. Ibid. 108. Diêp, Làng nhoˀ bên sông, 88–91. 109. “Conference of Asian Buddhists Closes,” FBIS, Chicom International Affairs, Daily Reports, 21 October 1963, reel 258, RG 263, U.S. National Archives. 110. “Buddhist Programming,” James E. James, 5 June 1963, Social & Economic/Religion/Buddhism General/II/7-62/Vietnam, box P-310, Asia Foundation Records, Hoover Institution. 111. “Brief Background Paper on Buddhism,” n.d., Social & Economic/Religion/ Buddhism/II/General/US & Intl./Program, box P-245, Asia Foundation Records, Hoover Institution. 112. Asia Foundation, Buddhism and Buddhist Programming in Vietnam, 87. 113. Ibid., 119. 114. “Termination of letter-contract of 15 August 1961 and of 28 June 1962,” Richard Gard, 19 May 1963, Social & Economic/Religion/Buddhism/II/General/US & Intl./Program, box P-245, Asia Foundation Records, Hoover Institution. 115. Asia Foundation, Buddhism and Buddhist Programming in Vietnam, 121. 116. From 1965 to March 1968, for instance, more than 17,000 Khmer Krom, including 2,300 monks, fled to Cambodia. See Kiernan and Boua, Peasants and Politics, 199.

324

Y7216.indb 324

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o P ag es 185 –19 3 6 Enforcing the Code 1. Christmas Humphreys, “The Seventh Conference of World Fellowship of Buddhists,” Middle Way 39, no. 4 (1965): 150–52. 2. พูนพิศมัย ดิศกุล [Poonphitsamai Ditsakun], บันทึกของประธาน พ.ส.ล. เรื่อง ความ สํเร็จขององค์การพุทธศาสนิกสัมพันธ์แห่งโลกในการประชุมใหญ่ครั้งที่ 7 ที่สารนาถ นครพาราณสี [Diary of WFB Chairman on the success of WFB in 7th Conference at Sarnath, Varanasi], 15. 3. “Preliminary Report on the Seventh General Conference of the World Fellowship of Buddhists,” World Fellowship of Buddhists News Bulletin 2, no. 1 (1965): 23; “Buddhists Meet at Sarnath,” Statesman, 30 November 1964. 4. “Preliminary Report on the Seventh General Conference,” 27. 5. Asia Foundation, Buddhism and Buddhist Programming in Vietnam (Review and Development Department, Asia Foundation, Third Draft, 1965), 87, planned donation to Southeast Asia Collection, Yale University Library, New Haven. 6. Topmiller, Lotus Unleashed, 26. 7. Asia Foundation, Buddhism and Buddhist Programming in Vietnam, 87. 8. Ibid. 9. “Memorandum of Conversation,” U.S. State Department Central Files, Vietnam, February 1963–66, Part I, Politics, Government and National Defense Affairs, COO96, reel 34, RG 59, U.S. National Archives. 10. Asia Foundation, Buddhism and Buddhist Programming in Vietnam, 87. 11. Ibid. 12. Christmas Humphreys, “Seventh Conference of World Fellowship of Buddhists.” 13. J.B., “Is Buddhism Emerging as a Political Force in Asia?,” World Fellowship of Buddhists News Bulletin 1, no. 6 (1964): 13–18. 14. Asia Foundation, Buddhism and Buddhist Programming in Thailand, 171. 15. “Buddhists Meet at Sarnath,” Statesman, 30 November 1964. 16. “Monthly Report to the Board of Trustees,” December 1964, The Asia Foundation, Asia Foundation (4), Robert B. Anderson Papers, 1933–91, box 227, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library. 17. Ibid. 18. “Visit of William Klausner,” 14 January 1965, Representative, Vietnam, Social & Economic/Religion/Buddhism General/II/7-62/Vietnam, box P-310, Asia Foundation Records, Hoover Institution. 19. Kahin, Intervention, 256. 20. Prados, Vietnam, 112. 21. “Visit of William Klausner,” 14 January 1965, Representative, Vietnam. 22. Ibid. 23. Sangharakshita, Moving against the Stream, 138. 24. C. Reynolds, Thai Radical Discourse, 36.

325

Y7216.indb 325

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o Pages 19 3 –19 6 25. พูนพิศมัย ดิศกุล [Poonphitsamai Ditsakun], บันทึกของประธาน พ.ส.ล. เรื่อง ความ สํเร็จขององค์การพุทธศาสนิกสัมพันธ์แห่งโลกในการประชุมใหญ่ครั้งที่ 7 ที่สารนาถ นครพาราณสี [Diary of WFB Chairman on the success of WFB in 7th Conference at Sarnath, Varanasi], 134–36. 26. Asia Foundation, Buddhism and Buddhist Programming in Thailand (Review and Development Department, Asia Foundation, second draft, 1965), 75, planned donation to Southeast Asia Collection, Yale University Library, New Haven. 27. “Sarit ‘Mobile Units’ Starting in NE,” Bangkok Post, 6 August 1962. 28. “Mobile Assistance Units in the Northeast,” William J. Klausner, 11 September 1962, Social & Economic/Rural Consultant IV/Wm Klausner/1962/Thailand 4003/ Program, box P-318, Asia Foundation Records, Hoover Institution. 29. “หน่วยพัฒนาการเคลื่อนที่ [Mobile Development Units],” Pim Thai, 11 April 1964, gor/por7/1964/mor thor 4.2, Thailand National Archives. 30. “Mobile Assistance Units in the Northeast,” William J. Klausner, 11 September 1962. 31. Ibid. 32. Another perspective at odds with the Sarit initiative came from Sulak Sivaraksa, whose journal Sangkhomsat Parithat (Social Science Review) commenced publication in 1963 with Asia Foundation support. Benedict Anderson’s In the Mirror describes Sulak as an “idiosyncratic conservative-monarchist” who went on to criticize Thai “Americanophilia” and “developmentalism” during the Sarit era. The Asia Foundation appears to have valued his perspectives on the United States as constructively critical. For good measure, Sulak also helped edit the Filipino journal Solidarity, whose posture was similar to that of his Thai outlet and whose funding came from the CIA-funded Congress of Cultural Freedom. For Klausner, Sulak was a “friend” and a figure worthy of praise as “almost a lone voice in the late sixties and early seventies as a public intellectual spear carrier for civil society.” When queried for details about their relationship, Klausner reported that he did not personally disburse any funds to Sulak and that Sulak “certainly had no knowledge of the Foundation’s connection with the CIA.” Anderson and Mendiones, In the Mirror, 25–26; author’s personal correspondence with William Klausner, 21 July 2015. 33. Ibid. 34. “พัฒนาการเคลื่อนที่ขอให้คณะสงฆ์ร่วมมือแพร่ธรรมกล่อมใจผู้ทุกข์ยาก [The mobile development units to collaborate with Buddhist monks to bring dharma to those in despair],” Lak Meuang, 25 September 1963, gor/por7/1963/mor thor 31, Thailand National Archives. 35. Keyes, “Buddhism and National Integration,” 559–66. 36. Asia Foundation, Buddhism and Buddhist Programming in Thailand, 76. 37. Keyes, “Buddhism and National Integration,” 559–66. Keyes notes that “Mr. Pradit Disawat, the head of the Tribal Welfare Division of the Department of Public

326

Y7216.indb 326

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o P ag es 19 6 –203

38.

39.

40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48.

49. 50.

51. 52.

53. 54.

Welfare, in consultations with a monk who is both abbot of Wat Bencamophit in Bangkok and abbot of a region which comprises four northern provinces” initiated the thammacarik program. Ibid.; “ข่าวพระพุทธศาสนา คณะธรรมทูตจาริกเผยแผ่พระพุทธศาสนา [Buddhist news: Missionaries sent to propagate Buddhism],” Thammajaksu 49, no. 7 (1964): 109; Chao Thai, 9 September 1964, as quoted in World Fellowship of Buddhists News Bulletin 2, no. 1 (1965): 45. “Department of Religious Affairs Dhammathud (Ambassadors of the Dhamma) Project,” William J. Klausner, 4 June 1964, Social & Economic/Religion/Buddhist General/III/1-62/Thailand Program, box P-318, Asia Foundation Records, Hoover Institution. Asia Foundation, Buddhism and Buddhist Programming in Thailand, 77. “ปฐมนิเทศพระธรรมทูต [Missionary orientation],” Siam Nakorn, 24 January 1965, gor/por7/1965/sor thor 4.2, Thailand National Archives. Bangkok World, 23 January 1965, as quoted in World Fellowship of Buddhists News Bulletin 2, no. 2 (1965): 34. Keyes, “Buddhism and National Integration,” 559–66. H.S.H. Princess Poon Pismai Diskul, “Ambassadors of Dhamma,” World Fellowship of Buddhists News Bulletin 2, no. 2 (1965): 1–2. Young, Vietnam Wars, 333. Ibid., 160. Pasuk and Baker, Thailand, 295. “Memorandum of Conversation,” Department of State, 11 December 1964, National Security File, Country File, Thailand memos, Vol II. 8/64-3/65, box 282, Country Files, Papers of Lyndon Baines Johnson President, 1963–1969, Lyndon B. Johnson Library. Ibid. “Biographic Data on Somdej Phra Ariyawongsakhatayan, the Supreme Patriarch of the Buddhist Church in Thailand,” Theodore A. Tremblay, 15 May 1964, Amembassy Bangkok to Department of State, Soc—Social Conditions—Thai—1/1/64, General Records of the Department of State, Subject Numeric File, 1964–66, box 3242, RG 59, U.S. National Archives. Chas F. Knight, “Messages of Condolences,” World Fellowship of Buddhists News Bulletin 2, no. 4 (1965): 43. “Biographic Data on Chuan Uthayi, Somdet [Somdej] Phra Ariyawongsakhatayan, Supreme Patriarch of the Buddhist Church of Thailand,” Dana Orwick, 16 March 1966, Amembassy Bangkok to Department of State, Soc—Social Conditions— Thai—1/1/64, General Records of the Department of State, Subject Numeric File, 1964–66, box 3242, RG 59, U.S. National Archives. Ibid. Ibid.

327

Y7216.indb 327

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o Pages 203 –209 55. Siam Rath, 6 July 1954. Translation found attached to “Dhammathud and Dhammacarik Missions to Remote Areas,” William J. Klausner, 15 July 1965, Social & Economic/Religion/Buddhist General/III/1-62/Thailand Program, box P-318, Asia Foundation Records, Hoover Institution. 56. “Dhammathud and Dhammacarik Missions to Remote Areas,” William J. Klausner, 15 July 1965, Social & Economic/Religion/Buddhist General/III/1-62/Thailand Program, box P-318, Asia Foundation Records, Hoover Institution. 57. Ibid. 58. Ibid. 59. “ข่าวพระพุทธศาสนา เพื่อสร ้างความเข้าใจอันดีในต่างประเทศ [Buddhist news: for good understanding in foreign countries],” Thammajaksu 50, no. 12 (September 1965): 91. 60. “U.S. Visit of President, World Fellowship of Buddhists, H.S.H. Princess Poon Pismai Diskul,” Dana Orwick, 13 August 1965, Soc—Social Conditions—Thai— 1/1/64, General Records of the Department of State, Subject Numeric File, 1964–66, box 3242, RG 59, U.S. National Archives. 61. “U.S. ‘Control’ of Thai Education Attacked,” Thailand, 12 August 1965, Daily Reports, box 8, RG 263, U.S. National Archives. 62. Morell and Chai-anan, Political Conflict, 81–82. 63. “Thais Weigh Anti-Red Action,” New York Times, 19 August 1965. 64. C. Reynolds, Thai Radical Discourse, 14. Jit would be shot dead in the jungle on 5 May 1966. 65. Ibid., 20. Reynolds notes that the princess had had contact with a young Jit Phumisak, whose “interest in the classical past took him more than once to visit” her. 66. “Brief News of the World Tour of the President of the World Fellowship of Buddhists,” World Fellowship of Buddhists News Bulletin 2, no. 6 (1965): 50. 67. “ข่าวต่างประเทศ ประธานองค์การพุทธศาสนิกสัมพันธ์แห่งโลกในต่างประเทศ [News from abroad: The Chairman of the World Fellowship of Buddhists abroad],” Puttajak 19, no. 11 (November 1965): 64. See also “U.S. Visit of President, World Fellowship of Buddhists,” Dana Orwick, 13 August 1965. 68. “Brief News of the World Tour of the President of the World Fellowship of Buddhists,” World Fellowship of Buddhists News Bulletin 2, no. 6 (1965): 53. 69. Bangkok Post, 2 November 1966. See also “USSR Invitation to World Fellowship of Buddhists President,” Dana Orwick, 12 November 1965, Soc—Social Conditions— Thai—1/1/64, General Records of the Department of State, Subject Numeric File, 1964–66, box 3242, RG 59, U.S. National Archives. 70. “USSR Invitation to World Fellowship of Buddhists President,” Dana Orwick, 12 November 1965. 71. Topmiller, Lotus Unleashed, 37. 72. “คณะผู้แทนชาวพุทธเวียดนามเข้าเฝ้าสมเด็จพระสังฆราช [Representative of Vietnamese Buddhism granted audience with Thai Supreme Patriarch],” Talanghan, February 1966, 133.

328

Y7216.indb 328

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o P ag es 209 –214 73. Ibid. 74. Department of State to American Embassy, Bangkok, 2 April 1966, U.S. State Department Central Files, Vietnam, February 1963–1966, Part I, Politics, Government and National Defense Affairs, C0096, reel 29, RG 59, U.S. National Archives. 75. Bangkok to Department of State, 4 April 1966, U.S. State Department Central Files, Vietnam, February 1963–1966, Part I, Politics, Government and National Defense Affairs, C0096, reel 29, RG 59, U.S. National Archives. 76. 5 April 1966, Soc 12-1. Viet S. 1/1/66, General Records of the Department of State, Subject Numeric File, 1964–1966, box 3255, RG 59, U.S. National Archives. 77. Amembassy Saigon to Secstate, 5 April 1966, Soc 12-1. Viet S. 1/1/66, General Records of the Department of State, Subject Numeric File, 1964–1966, box 3255, RG 59, U.S. National Archives. 78. Amembassy Bangkok to Secstate, 7 April 1966, Soc 12-1. Viet S. 1/1/66, General Records of the Department of State, Subject Numeric File, 1964–1966, box 3255, RG 59, U.S. National Archives. 79. Ibid. 80. Ibid. 81. Ibid. 82. Amembassy Bangkok to Secstate, 8 April 1966, Soc 12-1. Viet S. 1/1/66, General Records of the Department of State, Subject Numeric File, 1964–1966, box 3255, RG 59, U.S. National Archives. 83. Ibid. 84. Amembassy Bangkok to Secstate, 12 April 1966, Soc 12-1. Viet S. 1/1/66, General Records of the Department of State, Subject Numeric File, 1964–1966, box 3255, RG 59, U.S. National Archives. For details of the delegation’s meeting with Thich Thien Minh, see Saigon Daily News, 12 April 1966. 85. Details on the delegation’s Saigon itinerary may be found in “Reports on the Eighth General Conference, Chiengmai, Thailand, 6–11 November 2509/1966,” (Bangkok: World Fellowship of Buddhists, 1967), 65. 86. Amembassy Bangkok to Secstate, 19 April 1966, Soc 12-1. Viet S. 1/1/66, General Records of the Department of State, Subject Numeric File, 1964–1966, box 3255, RG 59, U.S. National Archives. The delegation’s return date is also documented here. 87. “ในฐานะประธานองค์การพุทธฯ ว่าเป็นการผิดวินัยสงฆ์ [The President of the World Fellowship of Buddhists points out a breach of the monastic code],” Chao Thai, 16 April 1966, gor/por7/1966/or 6.1/section 1, Thailand National Archives. 88. Department of State to Amembassy Bangkok, 23 April 1966, Soc 12-1. Viet S. 1/1/66, General Records of the Department of State, Subject Numeric File, 1964–1966, box 3255, RG 59, U.S. National Archives. 89. Amembassy Bangkok to Secstate, 27 April 1966, Soc 12-1. Viet S. 1/1/66, General Records of the Department of State, Subject Numeric File, 1964–1966, box 3255, RG 59, U.S. National Archives.

329

Y7216.indb 329

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o Pages 214–220 90. For details on these developments, see Kahin, Intervention, 425. 91. Amembassy Saigon to Secstate, 28 April 1966, Soc 12-1. Viet S. 1/1/66, General Records of the Department of State, Subject Numeric File, 1964–1966, box 3255, RG 59, U.S. National Archives. 92. “อธิบดีกรมการศาสนาเดินทางไปประชุมองค์การสงฆ์ระหว่างประเทศ ณ กรุงโคลัมโบ ประเทศลังกา [Director General of the Department of Religious Affairs attends the international Buddhist conference in Colombo, Sri Lanka],” Talanghan, May 1966, 392. 93. “ข่าวพระพุทธศาสนา ให้ต้ังประมุขสงฆ์โลก [Buddhism news: appointment of world Buddhism leader],” Thammajaksu 51, no. 9 (June 1966): 58–60. 94. “Thich Tam Chau’s Visit to Thailand, May 20–23,” 1 June 1966, SOC 12—Viet S—1/1/66, General Records of the Department of State, Subject Numeric File, 1964–1966, box 3255, RG 59, U.S. National Archives. 95. “Thich Tam Chau Visit to Thailand, May 20–May 30,” 8 June 1966, SOC 12— Viet S—1/1/66, General Records of the Department of State, Subject Numeric File, 1964–1966, box 3255, RG 59, U.S. National Archives. 96. Bangkok Post, 24 May 1966. 97. “Thailand Visit of Thich Tam Chau, May 20–23, 1966,” 31 May 1966, SOC 12— Viet S—1/1/66, General Records of the Department of State, Subject Numeric File, 1964–1966, box 3255, RG 59, U.S. National Archives. 98. Amembassy Vientiane to Secstate, 2 May 1966, U.S. State Department Central Files, Vietnam, February 1963–1966, Part I, Politics, Government and National Defense Affairs, C0096, reel 29, RG 59, U.S. National Archives. Adding to the confusion was a mid-April visit to Bangkok by the lay Vietnamese Buddhist leader Nguyen Thang Thai, which evidently included an audience with Supreme Patriarch Mahawirawong. For details see Bangkok Post, 14 April 1966. 99. Amembassy Bangkok to Secstate, 5 May 1966, U.S. State Department Central Files, Vietnam, February 1963–1966, Part I, Politics, Government and National Defense Affairs, C0096, reel 29, RG 59, U.S. National Archives. 100. “Thich Tam Chau Visit to Thailand, May 20–May 30,” 8 June 1966. 101. “Thailand Visit of Thich Tam Chau, May 20–23, 1966,” 31 May 1966. 102. “Thich Tam Chau Visit to Thailand, May 20–May 30,” 8 June 1966. 103. Topmiller, Lotus Unleashed, 128–29. 104. Kahin, Intervention, 430. 105. “Thich Tam Chau Visit to Thailand, May 20–May 30,” 8 June 1966. 106. “เตร ียมประชุมที่เชียงใหม่ ระหว่าง 7–13 พ.ย. [Preparations for conference in Chiang Mai (November 7–13)],” Thai Rath, 4 July 1966, gor/por7/1966/or 6.1/ section 1, Thailand National Archives. 107. “Reports on the Eighth General Conference, Chiengmai, Thailand, 6–11 November 2509/1966,” 15. 108. “พระดํารัสพระสังฆราช ‘อริยมรรค’ แก่ชาวพุทธทั่วโลก [The Supreme Patriarch

330

Y7216.indb 330

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o P ag es 220–226

109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114.

115. 116.

with the noble eight-fold path to Buddhists around the world],” Siam Nikorn, 7 November 1966, gor/por7/1966/or 6.1/section 1, Thailand National Archives. “Reports on the Eighth General Conference, Chiengmai, Thailand, 6–11 November 2509/1966,” 20–23. Ibid., 65. “WFB Rules That Politics, Religion Shouldn’t Be Mixed,” Bangkok Post, 8 November 1966, gor/por7/1966/or 6.1 section 1, Thailand National Archives. “Reports on the Eighth General Conference, Chiengmai, Thailand, 6–11 November 2509/1966,” 54. “WFB Meeting Ends with Call to Stand Apart from Politics,” Bangkok Post, 12 November 1966, gor/por7/1966/or 6.1 section 1, Thailand National Archives. Amembassy Saigon to Secstate, 2 September 1966, Soc 12-1. Viet S. 1/1/66, General Records of the Department of State, Subject Numeric File, 1964–1966, box 3255, RG 59, U.S. National Archives. “Buddhism and Politics,” Bangkok Post, 14 November 1966, gor/por7/1966/or 6.1/ section 1, Thailand National Archives. “New Thinking among Buddhists at Chiengmai Convention,” Bangkok Post, 15 November 1966, gor/por7/1966/or 6.1/section 1, Thailand National Archives. 7 Thailand’s Buddhist Hierarchy Confronts Its Challengers

1. “มหาเถรสมาคมจะประกาศห้ามพระภิกษุสมัครไปรบเวียตนามยืนยันผิดพระ วินัยต้องสึกก่อน [Council of Elders announces prohibition on monks volunteering to fight in Vietnam: finds this violates the Vinaya must leave the monkhood first],” Siam Rath, 17 January 1967. 2. Ruth, In Buddha’s Company, 23, 201; “ข้างวัด หลวงพี่สมัครไปรบ [Beside the monastery: monks applying to fight],” Siam Rath, 18 January 1967; “กําหนดอัตราเงิ นเดือนพลทหาร 3 พัน—นายทหาร 1 หมื่น [Specifying the monthly salary: soldiers three thousand—officers ten thousand],” Thai Rath, 17 January 1967. 3. Sol Stern, “NSA and the CIA: A Short Account of International Student Politics and the Cold War with Particular Reference to the NSA, CIA, etc.,” Ramparts, March 1967, 29–39; “Report to the Board of Trustees,” March, April, May, 1967, Asia Foundation (2), box 227, Robert B. Anderson Papers, 1933–91, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library. 4. “Report to the Board of Trustees,” March, April, May, 1967. 5. Ibid. 6. Minutes of the Board of Trustees Meeting, 10 July 1967, TAF Board Meeting 9 Oct 1967, box 228, Robert B. Anderson Papers, 1933–91, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library. 7. “President’s Monthly Report to the Board of Trustees,” 4 August 1967, Asia Foundation (1), box 227, Robert B. Anderson Papers, 1933–91, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library.

331

Y7216.indb 331

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o Pages 226 –23 1 8. Warren Unna, “State Dept. to Ask Congress for Asia Foundation Funds,” Washington Post, 26 February 1968. 9. “Youths Ordained for New College,” Bangkok Post, 17 July 1967, gor/por8/1967/69/ section 3, Thailand National Archives. 10. “Work Begins on Buddhist College,” Bangkok Post, 5 July 1967, gor/por8/1967/69/ section 3, Thailand National Archives. 11. Charles F. Keyes, “Political Crisis and Militant Buddhism in Contemporary Thailand,” in Smith, Religion and the Legitimation of Power, 148. 12. T. Magness (The Venerable Suratano Bhikku), The Life and Teaching of Chao Khun Mongkol-Thepmuni and Dhammakaya, http://www.triple-gem.net/LP _Biography_01Nov07.pdf (accessed 16 February 2012). 13. Jackson and ISAS, Buddhism, Legitimation, and Conflict, 148. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid. 16. Handley, King Never Smiles, 225. 17. Keyes, “Political Crisis and Militant Buddhism in Contemporary Thailand,” 148–49. Keyes notes that the “ostensible purpose of the Abhidhamma Foundation was to foster the study of the Abhidhamma-pitaka, the metaphysical basket of the Buddhist scriptures, the part of the scriptures that is most difficult to interpret.” 18. Jackson and ISAS, Buddhism, Legitimation, and Conflict, 148. 19. “ข้างวัด งานของมูลนิธิอภิธรรมมหาธาตุ [Beside the monastery: the work of the Abhidhamma foundation],” Siam Rath, 18 June 1966, gor/por7/1966/sor thor 4.2, Thailand National Archives. 20. “ผู้ที่เป็นหัวแรงในการก่อตั้งคือ มูลนิธิอภิธรรมมหาธาตุ [The one who has been key in establishing the Abhidhamma foundation],” Chao Thai, 6 July 1967, gor/ por8/1967/69/section 3, Thailand National Archives. See also Keyes, “Political Crisis and Militant Buddhism in Contemporary Thailand,” 149. 21. พระเทพกิตติปัญญาคุณ (กิตติวุฑโฒ ภิกขุ), ปรมัตถธรรม ๔ [Kittivudho Bhikku, Paramattham 4], 29–30. In 1970, there were 120 scholarships provided to Lao monks, ten to Cambodian monks, and ten to South Vietnamese monks. 22. Author’s interview with Phra Pongsak, Chonburi, Thailand, 22 March 2009. 23. “วิทยาลัยจิตตภาวัน [Jittaphawan College],” Chao Thai, 4 February 1970, gor/ por8/1970/25/section 1, Thailand National Archives. 24. Jackson and ISAS, Buddhism, Legitimation, and Conflict, 149. 25. Somphorn Phechawut, “Lak khamson khong phutasasana kap kan phatthana thong tin [The teachings of Buddhism regarding community development],” Chofa 7 (October 1972): 70–80, quoted in Donald K. Swearer, “Center and Periphery: Buddhism and Politics in Modern Thailand,” in Harris, Buddhism and Politics, 213. 26. Ibid. 27. C. Boua, “Genocide of a Religious Group,” in Bushnell, State Organized Terror, 227–57. See also Harris, Buddhism in a Dark Age, 44. Harris notes that even before

332

Y7216.indb 332

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o P ag es 23 1–23 9

28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47.

48.

the Cambodian civil war of 1970–75, Cambodian communists were “pointing to the economic burden that so many monks placed on the country.” “วิทยาลัยจิตตภาวัน [Jittaphawan College],” Chao Thai, 4 February 1970. “Buddhists Denounce Destruction of Pagodas,” FBIS, Laos, 19 February 1970, Daily Reports, reel 2, box 147, RG 263, U.S. National Archives. “Buddhist Intellectuals Ask Support for New Regime,” FBIS, Cambodia, 26 April 1970, Daily Reports, reel 2, box 148, RG 263, U.S. National Archives. Ben Kiernan, “The 1970 Peasant Uprisings against Lon Nol,” in Kiernan and Boua, Peasants and Politics, 206–8; Anson, War News, 116–46. “Buddhists Exhorted to Step Up Anti-U.S. Struggle,” FBIS, South Vietnam, 18 May 1970, Daily Reports, reel 2, box 148, RG 263, U.S. National Archives. Author’s interview with William Klausner, Bangkok, Thailand, 26 September 2008. Ibid. “Ulan Bator Conference for Asian Buddhists,” 28 July 1970, HU OSA 300-8-3-4024, Records of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty Research Institute: Publications Department: Background Reports, Open Society Archives at Central European University, Budapest, http://hdl.handle.net/10891/osa:a729a754-0469-4405-9228 -c4e44a1dd17a (accessed 21 January 2012). Ibid. Ibid. John Blofeld, “Buddhism in the USSR and Mongolia,” Middle Way 45, no. 3 (1970): 128–31. “Ulan Bator Conference for Asian Buddhists,” 28 July 1970. See also Chao Thai, 20 August 1970. “Buddhist Official Interviewed During Stopoff in Hanoi,” FBIS, South Vietnam, 20 July 1970, box 148, RG 263, U.S. National Archives. “Buddhist Monks and Khmer Politics,” 11 January 1972, Amembassy Phnom Penh to Department of State, Soc Camb. 1/1/70, General Records of the Department of State, Subject Numeric Files, 1970–73, box 3056, RG 59, U.S. National Archives. Ibid. Kiernan, How Pol Pot Came to Power, 43–44; Chandler, History of Cambodia, 169. Ibid. Kiernan, How Pol Pot Came to Power, 347–48. J. D. Wilcox, “Behind the New Khmer ‘Dictatorship,’ ” Indochina Chronicle 12 (February 1972): 1–4. Bunchan Mul, “The Umbrella War of 1942,” in Kiernan and Boua, Peasants and Politics in Kampuchea, 1942–1981, 114–26. The Ven. Khieu Chum evidently was not a member of the July 1971 Cambodian delegation to Bangkok. However, his experience in Thailand, including prior residence at a Bangkok monastery, was extensive. For details, see Ian Harris, “The Monk and the King,” 94–95. Trong Nhan, “Buddhism’s Ordeal in Cambodia,” W.F.B. Review 8, no. 5 (1971): 27–28.

333

Y7216.indb 333

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o P ages 23 9 –245 49. “ราชอาณาจักร ข่าวกรมศาสนา คณะผู้แทนสัมพัมธไมตรีทางศาสนาของสาธารณรัฐเข มรเยี่ยมกรมการศาสนา [Department of Religious Affairs news: representatives of Cambodian religious goodwill mission visit the Department of Religious Affairs],” Talanghan, July 1971, 375. 50. “News from Secretariat,” W.F.B. Review 8, no. 5 (1971): 46. 51. “Potential Buddhist Role in Asia: Laos,” 19 January 1968, L-SOC (SOCIAL [general folder including Education, Health, Culture, Buddhists]), Program and Subject Files for Thailand, Laos and the Philippines, 1968–1977, Office of Research and Analysis East Asia and Pacific: Southeast Asia Division, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, box 2, RG 59, U.S. National Archives. This report indicates that these same factors also constrained Lao Buddhist contacts with Burma. 52. “Open Letter from the Buddhist Community of Laos,” W.F.B. Review 10, no. 5 (1973): 27–29. 53. Serge Thion, “With the Guerrillas in Cambodia,” Indochina Chronicle 17 (July 1972): 7–14. 54. “Open Letter from the Buddhist Community of Laos,” 27–29. 55. Ibid. 56. Kenneth Quinn, “The Khmer Krahom Program to Create a Communist Society in Southern Cambodia,” airgram from U.S. Consulate, Can Tho, to Department of State, 20 February 1974; Kiernan, How Pol Pot Came to Power, 357, 377, 381–82, 386. 57. Kiernan, “American Bombardment of Kampuchea.” 58. “The Black October, Let’s Turn It White,” W.F.B. Review 10, no. 5 (1973): 59–64. 59. Morell and Chai-anan, Political Conflict, 6. 60. C. Reynolds, Thai Radical Discourse, 13–15. See also Thongchai, “Changing Landscape of the Past,” 101. 61. For more on tenancy rates throughout the country, see Haberkorn, Revolution Interrupted, 8. 62. Pasuk and Baker, Thailand, 316. 63. พระพิมลธรรม [Phra Phimolatham], ผจญมาร บันทึก ชีวิต ๕ ปี ในห้องขัง [Encounter the devils], 164. 64. Ibid., 162. 65. “Death of the Supreme Patriarch,” 10 December 1973, RG 59, U.S. National Archives, retrieved from the Access to Archival Databases (Document 1973BANGKO19057) at http://www.archives.gov (accessed 7 June 2014). 66. “Thousands Pay Tribute to the Late Supreme Patriarch,” W.F.B. Review 11, no. 2 (1974): 59–60. 67. Somboon Suksamran, “Political Monks: Personalism and Ideology,” in Brummelhuis and Kemp, Strategies and Structures, 153–71. 68. Somboon Suksamran, “Buddhism and Socio-Political Change: An Interaction of Buddhism with Politics in Contemporary Thailand,” paper prepared for Thai-

334

Y7216.indb 334

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o P ag es 245 –248

69.

70. 71.

72.

73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78.

79. 80. 81. 82.

European Seminar on Social Change in Contemporary Thailand, Amsterdam, 28–30 May 1980. A Heritage Foundation study reports that 26,079 U.S. troops were stationed in Thailand in 1974. See Tim Kane, “Global U.S. Troop Deployment, 1950–2003,” Center for Data Analysis Report #04-11, 27 October 2004, http://www.heritage .org/research/reports/2004/10/global-us-troop-deployment-1950-2003 (accessed 3 October 2015). According to the same source, the number of U.S. troops deployed to Thailand peaked in 1969 at 48,105. Jud’s August 1974 comments quoted from Somboon Suksamran, “The Recent Role of the Buddhist Monkhood in Thai Politics,” Papers in Religion and Politics 5 (issued for private circulation by the Board of Studies of the B.A. in Religious Studies and Politics, Faculty of Theology and Department of Government, University of Manchester, 1978), 3. พวงทอง [Phuangthong] ภวัครพันธุ์ [Pawakaphan]. The U.S. bases in northeast Thailand also had a detrimental effect on Buddhism, according to a statement by Sanya Dharmasakti, whom the king had appointed as head of the interim government overseeing the transition to civilian rule after October 1973: “The presence of large numbers of Americans in up-country Thailand . . . did have a certain indirect effect in that the American presence tended to change and modernize the general culture in these areas, and this in turn created a greater popular interest in things outside the traditional Buddhist framework.” See “Problems Facing Buddhism in Thailand,” 29 January 1968, Subject Files of the Office of Thailand and Burma Affairs, 1963–75, Lot File 70D547, box 3, RG 59, U.S. National Archives. “Thai Confrontation Politics: Enter the Monks,” 6 December 1974, RG 59, U.S. National Archives, retrieved from the Access to Archival Databases (Document 1974BANGKO19138) at http://www.archives.gov (accessed 6 June 2014). Somboon, “Political Monks: Personalism and Ideology,” 155. Ibid., 156. Somboon, “Recent Role of the Buddhist Monkhood in Thai Politics,” 4. “Thai Confrontation Politics: Enter the Monks,” 6 December 1974. Ibid. “เจ้าอาวาสจําหน้าได้จากรูปน.ส.พ. ยกขบวนไปชุมนุมกันหน้าวัด [Head monk remembers a face from a newspaper, demonstrations in front of monastery],” Daily Times, 2 December 1974, gor/por7/1974/12, Thailand National Archives. Somboon, “Recent Role of the Buddhist Monkhood in Thai Politics,” 4. “Thai Confrontation Politics: Enter the Monks,” 6 December 1974. Ibid. “Monks and Politics,” 9 December 1974, RG 59, U.S. National Archives, retrieved from the Access to Archival Databases (Document 1974BANGKO19239) at http:// www.archives.gov (accessed 6 June 2014). General Krit Siwara had played a key

335

Y7216.indb 335

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o P ages 248–25 1

83. 84.

85. 86. 87. 88.

89.

90. 91.

92. 93. 94. 95.

96.

role in the events of October 1973 through his “tacit support” of the student protesters. See Handley, King Never Smiles, 210. Ibid. “พล.อ.กฤษณ์ว่าไม่กล้าทําอะไรกลัวพระถกเขมรสู้จะยุ่งกันใหญ่ [Krit says dare not do anything: fears Cambodian monks will get involved],” Chao Thai, 3 December 1974, gor/por7/1974/12, Thailand National Archives. Author’s interview with Phra Maha Jud, Bangkok, Thailand, 3 August 2008. “เจ้าอาวาสจําหน้าได้จากรูปน.ส.พ. ยกขบวนไปชุมนุมกันหน้าวัด [Head monk remembers a face from a newspaper, demonstrations in front of monastery].” Ibid. “อภิบดีศาสนาชี้ พระเดินขบวน ผิด [Director general of Department of Religious Affairs points out that monks’ demonstration was wrong],” Thai Rath, 1 December 1974, gor/por7/1974/12, Thailand National Archives. “มหาเถรสมาคมประชุมด่วนวันนี้ คึกฤทธิ์ “พูด” เรื่องพระเดินขบวน [The council of elders convenes for an emergency session today, what Kukrit says about monks’ demonstration],” Siam Rath, 3 December 1974, gor/por7/1974/12, Thailand National Archives. “Thai Confrontation Politics: Enter the Monks,” 6 December 1974. “แก้ ก.ม. พระยุ่งการเมืองจับสึก กลุ่มพระหนุ่มก่อหวอดประท้วง [Ratifying the law: monks who become involved in protests will be disrobed, worries over young monk protests],” Siam Rath, 4 December 1974, gor/por7/1974/12, Thailand National Archives. See also “เห็นด้วยกับคําสั่งเจ้าอาวาสที่ให้พระมหาจัดออกจากวัด [Agreeing with the abbot’s order to expel Maha Jud from monastery],” 4 December 1974, gor/ por7/1974/12, Thailand National Archives. “Thai Confrontation Politics: Enter the Monks,” 6 December 1974. Ibid. Ibid. Estimated number of monks attending the demonstration found in “ยุว สงฆ์เรียกร้องให้ถอนอธิกรณ์อดีตพระพิมลธรรมและอดีตพระศาสนโสภณ [Young monks demand withdrawal of charges against former monk Phimolatham and former monk Satanasophon],” 10 January 1975–11 January 1975, gor/por7/1975/5, Thailand National Archives. See also “Activist Monks Challenge the Hierarchy,” 16 January 1975, RG 59, U.S. National Archives, retrieved from the Access to Archival Databases (Document 1975BANGKO00846) at http://www.archives.gov (accessed 6 June 2014). Jackson reports that the protesting monks were affiliated with the Federation of Buddhists of Thailand and the Organization of the Sangha Brotherhood (Ongkaan Sahaa Thammik). See Jackson and ISAS, Buddhism, Legitimation, and Conflict, 104. พระพิมลธรรม [Phra Phimolatham], ผจญมาร บันทึก ชีวิต ๕ ปี ในห้องขัง [Encounter the devils], 187.

336

Y7216.indb 336

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o P ag es 25 1–25 5 97. “Activist Monks Challenge the Hierarchy,” 16 January 1975. 98. “พระทั่วประเทศเปิดชุมนุมขอคืนสมณศักดิ์พิมลธรรมสู้แบบอหิงสาจนกว่ามีชัย [Monks throughout the country gather to restore Phimolatham’s priestly rank: fight nonviolently until victory],” Thai Rath, 11 January 1975, gor/por/1975/5, Thailand National Archives. 99. พระพิมลธรรม [Phra Phimolatham], ผจญมาร บันทึก ชีวิต ๕ ปี ในห้องขัง [Encounter the devils], 188. 100. Ibid., 190. 101. “Activist Monks Challenge the Hierarchy,” 16 January 1975. 102. Ibid. 103. “ภิกษุที่เรียกร้องฉันอาหารแล้ว ‘พระพมลธรรม’นําสงฆ์ขอขมา [Protesting monks have food already: ‘Phimolatham’ leads them in asking for forgiveness],” Daily Times, 17 January 1975, gor/por7/1975/5, Thailand National Archives. 104. “ประชุมร่วมกับมหาเถรสมาคม [Meeting with Council of Elders],” Thai Rath, 17 January 1975, gor/por7/1975/5, Thailand National Archives. 105. พระพิมลธรรม [Phra Phimolatham], ผจญมาร บันทึก ชีวิต ๕ ปี ในห้องขัง [Encounter the devils], 192. 106. Ibid. 107. Ibid. 108. “ตามคําบัญชา ‘สังฆราช’ ใน ก.พ. ประกาศก่อนแยกย้ายกลับ [Following February 5 declaration of Supreme Patriarch: notification before going separate ways],” Thai Rath, 19 January 1975, gor/por7/1975/5, Thailand National Archives. 109. “อดีตพระพิมลธรรมเข้าเฝ้าแล้วให้พระประท้วงฉันข้าวและกลับวัด [Former monk Phimolatham appeared for audience: tells protesting monks to eat rice and return to temples],” Chao Thai, 17 January 1975, gor/por7/1975/5, Thailand National Archives. 110. “Monks Challenge the Buddhist Hierarchy,” 22 January 1975, RG 59, U.S. National Archives, retrieved from the Access to Archival Databases (Document 1975BANGKO01210) at http://www.archives.gov (accessed 6 June 2014). 111. Ibid. 112. “มหาเถรสมาคมรับรองพิมลธรรม—ศาสนโศภนถือบริสุทธิ์ถอนอธิกรณ์ [Council of Elders welcomes Phimolatham—Satanasophon: respects their purity withdraws charges],” Thai Rath, 31 January 1975, gor/por7/1975/5, Thailand National Archives. 113. Jackson and ISAS, Buddhism, Legitimation, and Conflict, 104. 114. พระพิมลธรรม [Phra Phimolatham], ผจญมาร บันทึก ชีวิต ๕ ปี ในห้องขัง [Encounter the devils], 229. 115. Jackson and ISAS, Buddhism, Legitimation, and Conflict, 154.

337

Y7216.indb 337

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o Pages 25 6 –25 9 8 The Rage of Thai Buddhism 1. Author’s interview with Jim Chamberlain, Vientiane, Laos, 10 February 2009. 2. Author’s interview with William Klausner, Bangkok, Thailand, 26 September 2008. 3. Ibid. 4. The Cambodian Mahanikay leader, Huot Tath, was murdered by the Khmer Rouge. The chief of the Cambodian Thammayut order, Tep Luong, died of natural causes on 15 April 1975, shortly before the Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh. See Harris, Buddhism in a Dark Age, 176. 5. Pasuk and Baker, Thailand, 326. 6. Keyes reports that one notable monk critic of Kittivudho was the head of the sangha in Laos. See Charles F. Keyes, “Political Crisis and Militant Buddhism in Contemporary Thailand,” in Smith, Religion and Legitimation of Power, 158. 7. J. L. S. Girling, “Thailand: The Coup and Its Implications,” in The October 6 Coup and the Future of Thailand (Sydney: Special publication of the Sixth of October Thai United Front for Democracy, n.d.), 43. 8. Bowie, Rituals of National Loyalty, 183–232. 9. Natee Pisalchai, “Village Scouts,” in Thailand Information Resource 1 (Sydney: Special publication of the Sixth of October Thai United Front for Democracy, 1977), 35. 10. Bowie, Rituals of National Loyalty, 20. 11. According to Puey Ungphakorn, ISOC’s budget, at the time of its creation in 1965, was 13 million baht; by 1976, its budget amounted to more than 800 million baht. On parliamentary efforts to constrain ISOC, he reports, “During the period of freedom, in 1974, 1975 and 1976, Parliament attempted every year to reform the appropriation of the ISOC. Some members wanted to cut it out altogether; others wanted to make the appropriation subject to normal scrutiny and audit. But the ISOC remains intact and has been able to use public funds to destroy democracy” (“Violence and the Coup d’état—6 Oct. ’76,” section 21 [unpublished paper, n.d.]). 12. Dr. E. Thadeus Flood, “The United States and the Military Coup in Thailand: A Background Study” (Indochina Resource Center Publication, n.d.), 5–7. ISOC descended from an earlier relic of Thailand’s Cold War: the Communist Suppression Operations Command (CSOC). Field Marshal Praphat had established this agency in 1965 supposedly at the urging of the “rabidly anti-communist” U.S. ambassador, Graham Martin. 13. Benedict Anderson, Spectre of Comparisons, 157–58. 14. Ibid. 15. Ungphakorn, “Violence and the Coup d’état—6 Oct. ’76,” section 20. 16. Norman Peagam, “Rumblings from the Right,” Far Eastern Economic Review, 25 July 1975, 13–14.

338

Y7216.indb 338

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o P ag es 25 9 –26 1 17. “Alleged CIA Support of Right Wing in Thailand,” 20 August 1975, RG 59, U.S. National Archives, retrieved from the Access to Archival Databases (Document 1975STATE198433) at http://www.archives.gov (accessed 7 June 2014). 18. “Forgery Alleges CIA Support of Right Wing in Thailand,” 19 August 1975, RG 59, U.S. National Archives, retrieved from the Access to Archival Databases (Document 1975BANGKO17201) at http://www.archives.gov (accessed 7 June 2014). These allegations are also explored at length in D. Gareth Porter, “Bloody Wednesday in Bangkok: CIA Responsible for Growth of Fascism in Thailand,” in Thailand Information Resource 1. 19. Handley, King Never Smiles, 225–26. Morell and Chai-anan explain that the name could be translated as “new force,” the “ninth power” (possibly an allusion to Bhumipol, the ninth king of the Chakri dynasty) or “nine strengths.” See Morell and Chai-anan, Political Conflict, 238–40. 20. “Watana Keovimol,” 1 November 1973, RG 59, U.S. National Archives, retrieved from the Access to Archival Databases (Document 1973BANGKO17022) at http:// www.archives.gov (accessed 9 August 2014); Morell and Chai-anan, Political Conflict, 238–40. 21. “New Strength (NAWAPHON),” 2 September 1975, RG 59, U.S. National Archives, retrieved from the Access to Archival Databases (Document 1975BANGKO18375) at http://www.archives.gov (accessed 7 June 2014). 22. Ibid. 23. Ibid. 24. Ibid. Banlom Phuchongkhakun, governor of Lamphun province, was a notable Navapol participant, according to the “New Strength” memo of 2 September. For details on Banlom’s involvement in the controversial 3 August 1975 arrest of nine student and farmer activists working in Lamphun, see “Rural Agitation and RTG Moves against Activists,” 7 August 1975, RG 59, U.S. National Archives, retrieved from the Access to Archival Databases (Document 1975BANGKO16355) at http:// www.archives.gov (accessed 9 August 2014). 25. Ibid. 26. พระเทพกิตติปัญญาคุณ (กิตติวุฑโฒ ภิกขุ), ปรมัตถธรรม ๔ [Kittivudho Bhikku, Paramattham 4], 22; Keyes, “Political Crisis and Militant Buddhism in Contemporary Thailand,” 151. 27. Keyes, “Political Crisis and Militant Buddhism in Contemporary Thailand,” 151. 28. Peagam, “Rumblings from the Right,” 14. 29. Ibid. 30. “เผยรายชี่อ ‘นวพล’ สมาชิกระดับผู้นํามีนายทุน,นักเขียน,นักวิชาการขายตัว [Discovering the Navapol story: leading members have capitalists, writers, academics selling themselves],” Athipath, 27–29 May 1975. 31. Peagam, “Rumblings from the Right.” 32. Pasuk and Baker, Thailand, 326. See also Adisai Apornsawang, “Three Stages toward the Coup,” in Thailand Information Resource 1, 8; Haberkorn, “Unfinished Past.”

339

Y7216.indb 339

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o Pages 26 1–26 6 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

38.

39.

40. 41.

42.

43.

44. 45.

46. 47.

“New Strength (NAWAPHON),” 2 September 1975. Ibid. Morell, “Political Conflict in Thailand.” Ibid. “U.S. Position with Respect to Thai Coup Plotting,” February 1976, Secretary of State to Amembassy Bangkok, T-POL 21-1 Relations with U.S. 1976, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Office of Research and Analysis East Asia and Pacific, Southeast Asia Division, Program and Subject Files for Thailand, Laos and the Philippines, General Records of the Department of State, 1968–1977, box 1, RG 59, U.S. National Archives. Report on the WFB Twenty-fifth Anniversary Celebration and the Eleventh General Conference at WFB Headquarters, Bangkok, Thailand, 19–25 February 1976 (Bangkok: World Foundation of Buddhists, 1976), 21. “U.S. Troops and Thailand—Some Views,” 11 March 1976, Department of Defense Intelligence Information Report, T-POL 21-1 Relations with U.S. 1976, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Office of Research and Analysis East Asia and Pacific, Southeast Asia Division, Program and Subject Files for Thailand, Laos and the Philippines, General Records of the Department of State, 1968–1977, box 1, RG 59, U.S. National Archives. Ibid. David A. Andelman, “U.S. Link Stressed by Thai Minister,” New York Times, 22 March 1976. See also David A. Andelman, “U.S. Pullback in Asia,” New York Times, 30 March 1976. “Views of King and Pramot Brothers,” 23 July 1976, RG 59, U.S. National Archives, retrieved from the Access to Archival Databases (Document 1976BANGKO20780) at http://www.archives.gov (accessed 16 August 2014). “U.S. Forces Withdrawal,” April 1976, Amembassy Bangkok to Secstate WashDC, T-POL 21-1 Relations with U.S. 1976, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Office of Research and Analysis East Asia and Pacific, Southeast Asia Division, Program and Subject Files for Thailand, Laos and the Philippines, General Records of the Department of State, 1968–1977, box 1, RG 59, U.S. National Archives. Ibid. “Concerns of the King of Thailand,” 21 July 1976, RG 59, U.S. National Archives, retrieved from the Access to Archival Databases (Document 1976BANGKO20648) at http://www.archives.gov (accessed 16 August 2014). In a late July conversation with the king’s private secretary, Mom Luang Thawisan Ladawan, Whitehouse characterized Thai conservative fears as exaggerated. He “doubted that Vietnamese panzers were going to plunge into Thailand.” He also asserted that Thailand “should not fear infiltration from an impoverished and backward state like Laos.” The New Force political party had no connection to Navapol. Pasuk and Baker, Thailand, 326. See also “Thailand Fact Sheet (1932–1976)” (Cornell University, 18 October 1976), 9.

340

Y7216.indb 340

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o P ag es 26 6 –271 48. พระเทพกิตติปัญญาคุณ (กิตติวุฑโฒ ภิกขุ), ปรมัตถธรรม ๔ [Kittivudho Bhikku, Paramattham 4], 22–23. 49. As quoted in Keyes, “Political Crisis and Militant Buddhism in Contemporary Thailand,” 153. 50. Ibid. 51. Somboon Suksamran, “Political Monks: Personalism and Ideology,” in Brummelhuis and Kemp, Strategies and Structures, 166. 52. “ศาสนาใหม่ [New Religion],” Prachachart Raiwan, 24 June 1976. 53. Victoria, Zen at War, 110. 54. Prof. T. Byoto, “War and Buddhism,” 1, in “เรื่อง บทความเกี่ยวด้วยพุทธศาสนา ของ 2485] [On the articles about Buddhism by Profesโปรเฟสเซอร์ ที. เบียวโด [พ.ศ. 2485 sor T. Byoto (1941)],” Papers of the Office of the Prime Minister, Sor Seua Ror Reua 0201.10/140, Thailand National Archives. 55. Naowarat Phonpiboon, “ดาบที่หมกอยู่ในจีวร เนาวรัตน์ พงษ์ไพบูลย์ [The sword in monk’s robe],” Prachachart, 4 July 1976, gor/por8/1976/19, Thailand National Archives. 56. Ibid. 57. Somboon, “Political Monks: Personalism and Ideology,” 167. 58. Keyes, “Political Crisis and Militant Buddhism in Contemporary Thailand,” 151. Keyes conludes that “what happened in Cambodia clearly demonstrated to [Kittivudho] that Communism represented a dire threat to the religion.” 59. Harris, Buddhism in a Dark Age, 17. 60. Somboon Suksamran, “The Buddhist Conception of Political Authority and Society” (Paper prepared for the Research Centre of the Khmer Buddhist Association, 1985), 17. 61. “มหาเถรสมาคมประชุมวันนี้ พิจารณาเรื่อง ‘กิตติวุฑโต’ [sic] [The Council of Elders convenes today, deliberations on Kittivudho],” Prachachart, 30 June 1976; Charles F. Keyes, “Buddhists Confront the State,” in Whalen-Bridge and Pattana, Buddhism, Modernity, and the State, 29. 62. Somboon, “Political Monks: Personalism and Ideology,” 166. 63. “Montchai in new check on Oct 14 uprising role,” Bangkok Post, 10 September 1976. 64. “Political Significance of Praphat’s Attempted Return to Thailand,” 25 August 1976, RG 59, U.S. National Archives, retrieved from the Access to Archival Databases (Document 1976BANGKO23913) at http://www.archives.gov (accessed 16 August 2014). 65. “Praphat Charusathian,” 20 August 1976, RG 59, U.S. National Archives, retrieved from the Access to Archival Databases (Document 1976BANGKO23484) at http:// www.archives.gov (accessed 16 August 2014). 66. Ibid. 67. “Field Marshall Praphat’s Return,” 19 August 1976, RG 59, U.S. National Archives, retrieved from the Access to Archival Databases (Document 1976BANGKO23370) at http://www.archives.gov (accessed 16 August 2014).

341

10-Y7216-END.indd 341

7/21/17 12:33 PM

N o t e s t o P ages 271–275 68. “Political Significance of Praphat’s Attempted Return to Thailand,” 25 August 1976. 69. Ibid. 70. “Thanom Kittikhachon Requests Permission to Return to Thailand,” 27 August 1976, RG 59, U.S. National Archives, retrieved from the Access to Archival Databases (Document 1976BANGKO24123) at http://www.archives.gov (accessed 16 August 2014). 71. [No title], 2 September 1976, RG 59, U.S. National Archives, retrieved from the Access to Archival Databases (Document 1976BANGKO00002) at http://www .archives.gov (accessed 16 August 2014). 72. Ibid. 73. “Probe Urged into 1973 Uprising,” Bangkok Post, 3 September 1976. 74. “Thanom’s Reported Plans to Return to Thailand,” 2 September 1976, RG 59, U.S. National Archives, retrieved from the Access to Archival Databases (Document 1976BANGKO24724) at http://www.archives.gov (accessed 16 August 2014). 75. “Thanom Using Robes as Insurance,” Bangkok Post, 23 September 1976. 76. “Temple Has No Objection to Thanom,” Bangkok Post, 3 September 1976. 77. Handley, King Never Smiles, 167, 234. 78. “Thanom Flies Home to New Life in Monkhood,” Bangkok Post, 20 September 1976. 79. “Ordained in the Correct Manner,” Bangkok Post, 21 September 1976. 80. “His Bowl Was Filled,” Bangkok Post, 24 September 1976. 81. “Their Majesties Visit Wat Bovornnives,” Bangkok Post, 24 September 1976. 82. “Prime Minister Resigns,” 23 September 1976, RG 59, U.S. National Archives, retrieved from the Access to Archival Databases (Document 1976BANGKO26599) at http://www.archives.gov (accessed 16 August 2014). 83. “Chief Abbot a Key Figure in Thanom’s Return,” Bangkok Post, 25 September 1976. 84. “The 6th October Massacre,” by a lecturer of Thammasat University, in The October 6 Coup and the Future of Thailand (Sydney: Special publication of the Sixth of October Thai United Front for Democracy, n.d.), 8. 85. Ibid., 9. 86. “Phra Sukitti Khacharo (Thanom Kittikhachon),” 21 September 1976, RG 59, U.S. National Archives, retrieved from the Access to Archival Databases (Document 1976BANGKO26331) at http://www.archives.gov (accessed 16 August 2014). 87. Ibid. 88. Ibid. 89. “Anti-Thanom Activists Garrotted,” Bangkok Post, 26 September 1976. 90. “M. R. Seni Reappointed as Prime Minister,” 27 September 1976, RG 59, U.S. National Archives, retrieved from the Access to Archival Databases (Document 76BANGKO26750) at http://www.archives.gov (accessed 16 August 2014). 91. Ibid.

342

Y7216.indb 342

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o P ag es 276 –280 92. “Seni Quits—but He’ll Be Back,” Bangkok Post, 24 September 1976. 93. “PM Seni Meets Patriarch,” Bangkok Post, 29 September 1976. 94. “The Phikku Thanom Affair,” 29 September 1976, RG 59, U.S. National Archives, retrieved from the Access to Archival Databases (Document 76BANGKO26822) at http://www.archives.gov (accessed 16 August 2014). 95. “Damrong: Thanom Must Go,” Bangkok Post, 24 September 1976. See also “Phikku Thanom Affair,” 29 September 1976. 96. “8,000 call for expulsion of Thanom,” Bangkok Post, 30 September 1976. 97. “Anti-Thanom Rally,” 30 September 1976, RG 59, U.S. National Archives, retrieved from the Access to Archival Databases (Document 76BANGKO27090) at http://www.archives.gov (accessed 16 August 2014). 98. Ibid. 99. “Thanom: Govt Asks for Wat Help,” Bangkok Post, 2 October 1976. 100. Ibid. 101. “Prince Visits Wat Bovorn,” Bangkok Post, 3 October 1976, RG 59, U.S. National Archives, retrieved from the Access to Archival Databases (Document 76BANGKO27191) at http://www.archives.gov (accessed 16 August 2014). 102. “Anti-Thanom Rally,” 4 October 1976. 103. “300 Navapol Members Hold Rally in ‘Show of Strength,’ ” Bangkok Post, 4 October 1976. 104. Handley, King Never Smiles, 235. 105. “6th October Massacre,” by a lecturer of Thammasat University, 12–13. 106. Morell and Chai-anan, Political Conflict, 275. Zimmerman reports that 18 of the arrested student leaders and activists were still being held for trial as of 1978 on such charges as communism, illegal possession of firearms, rioting, and lèse majesté. Zimmerman, Reflections on the Collapse, 91. 107. “Talk with Under Secretary of Foreign Affairs,” October 1976, T-Pol 21-12 #2 ’76, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Office of Research and Analysis East Asia and Pacific, Southeast Asia Division, Program and Subject Files for Thailand, Laos and the Philippines, General Records of the Department of State, 1968– 1977, box 1, RG 59, U.S. National Archives. 108. Ibid. 109. “Initial Embassy Contact with Chairman of NARC,” October 1976, T-Pol 21-1 Relations with U.S. 1976, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Office of Research and Analysis East Asia and Pacific, Southeast Asia Division, Program and Subject Files for Thailand, Laos and the Philippines, General Records of the Department of State, 1968–1977, box 1, RG 59, U.S. National Archives. 110. Ibid. 111. “First Meeting with Prime Minister Thanin Kraiwichian,” October 1976, T-Pol 21-1 Relations with U.S. 1976, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Office of Research and Analysis East Asia and Pacific, Southeast Asia Division, Program

343

Y7216.indb 343

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o Pages 280–282

112.

113. 114. 115.

116.

117. 118.

119.

120. 121. 122.

123.

124.

and Subject Files for Thailand, Laos and the Philippines, General Records of the Department of State, 1968–1977, box 1, RG 59, U.S. National Archives. “Talk with King’s Private Secretary,” 19 October 1976, RG 59, U.S. National Archives, retrieved from the Access to Archival Databases (Document 76BANGKO27191) at http://www.archives.gov (accessed 7 June 2014). Ibid. Ibid. Estimates of the number of activists who joined the ranks of the CPT after 6 October vary widely. On the lower end of the range, a U.S. embassy report found that approximately 1,000 persons had fled. Pasuk and Baker and Handley cite estimates of 3,000 and 10,000, respectively. For the U.S. estimate, see “Activists join CPT’s Siam Organization,” 1 August 1977, RG 59, U.S. National Archives, retrieved from the Access to Archival Databases (Document 1977BANGKO16853) at http://www .archives.gov (accessed 7 June 2014). See also Pasuk and Baker, Thailand, 195, and Handley, King Never Smiles, 258. Pasuk and Baker report that students who entered the jungle “chafed under CPT discipline.” Furthermore, many doubted whether the CPT’s “Maoist strategy of ‘village surrounding city’ would ever succeed in Thailand.” Pasuk and Baker, Thailand, 196. C. Reynolds, Thai Radical Discourse, 13. The text would be reprinted in 1979. “Continuities in Thai Foreign Policy,” 25 November 1976, RG 59, U.S. National Archives, retrieved from the Access to Archival Databases (Document 1977BANGKO16853) at http://www.archives.gov (accessed 7 June 2014). Puangthong Rungswasdisab Pawakapan documents false claims that some 76,000 Vietnamese post-1975 refugees resided in Thailand by November 1976: “In fact, Vietnamese made up the smallest group among Indochinese refugees in Thailand. As of November 1976, Thailand housed 79,689 refugees from Laos, 23,028 from Cambodia, and 8,036 from Vietnam.” See Puangthong Rungswasdisab, “Thailand’s Response to the Cambodian Genocide” (2010), http://gsp.yale.edu/ thailands-response-cambodian-genocide (accessed 24 September 2014). Ibid. Ibid. “Potentially Damaging Impact on Regional Stability of Congressional Rejection of FY1978 Map for Thailand,” 9 May 1977, RG 59, U.S. National Archives, retrieved from the Access to Archival Databases (Document 1977BANGKO09943) at http://www.archives.gov (accessed 7 June 2014). Rungswasdisab, “Thailand’s Response to the Cambodian Genocide.” The author identifies the August 1977 massacre as one of the “worst two incidents” that year. The other had taken place in January in Aranyaprathet where 21 Thai villagers were killed in a separate Cambodian attack. พระเทพกิตติปัญญาคุณ (กิตติวุฑโฒ ภิกขุ), ปรมัตถธรรม ๔ [Kittivudho Bhikku, Paramattham 4], 22–23.

344

Y7216.indb 344

7/20/17 9:51 AM

N o t e s t o P ag es 282–286 125. Ibid. 126. Handley, King Never Smiles, 266–68. 127. พระพิมลธรรม (อาจ อาสโภ) [Phra Phimolatham (Aat Aatpho)], บันทึกพระพิมลธร รมกับ เอ็ม.อาร์.เอ. [Diary of Phimolatham and the M.R.A.], 3. 128. Ibid., 38. 129. พระพิมลธรรม [Phra Phimolatham], ผจญมาร บันทึก ชีวิต ๕ ปี ในห้องขัง [Encounter the devils], 284. 130. “สิทธิของพระภิกษุในการบริภาษตอบโต้ [Accused monk refutes charges],” Siam Rath, 6–12 August 1978. 131. “Rightwing Monk Was Implicated in Car Smuggling Racket,” TIC News 1, no. 26 (1 August 1978). 132. Ibid. 133. “วัดเถื่อน:ผลเสียของเจตนาดี [Illicit temples: bad result of good intention],” Matichon, 3 August 1978. According to the same report, there were 24,000 legally registered temples in the country. 134. “กิตติวุฑโฒด่านักศึกษาคบแดงขับ ‘ฐานเรดาร์’ [Kittivudho abuses red students regarding ‘radar base’],” Arthit, 25 September 1978. 135. “เชิญพระราชสาสน์ไปอ่านในที่ประชุม [Monk invited to read royal letter at conference],” Tawan Siam, 28 September 1978. 136. “กิตติวุฑโฒชมนายทุนญี่ปุ่นสวดราชการไทย ‘เสือก’ ! [Kittivudho praises Japanese donor calls Thai government intrusive],” Arthit, 9 October 1978. 137. Ibid. 138. “กิตติวุฑโฒเผยสูตรขึ้นสวรรค์ [Kittivudho reveals secret for going to heaven],” Arthit, 15 October 1978. 139. “กิตติวุฑโฒชมนายทุนญี่ปุ่นสวดราชการไทย ‘เสือก’ ! [Kittivudho praises Japanese donor calls Thai government intrusive].” 140. Ibid. 141. Earhart, “Mount Fuji.” I have found no evidence that the Jittaphawan branch at Mt. Fuji was ever established.

345

Y7216.indb 345

7/20/17 9:51 AM

This page intentionally left blank

Selected Bibliography

Archival Sources Chulalongkorn University Library, Bangkok Thailand Information Center, Center of Academic Resources Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kans. C. D. Jackson Papers Columbia Oral History Project Interviews Edward P. Lilly Papers National Security Council (NSC) Staff Papers, 1948–1961 Robert B. Anderson Papers Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Mo. Harry S. Truman Papers Hoover Institution, Stanford, Calif. Asia Foundation Records Lyndon B. Johnson Library, Austin, Tex. Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Papers Mahachulalongkorn University Library, Wangnoi, Ayutthaya, and Bangkok Mahamakuta University Library, Bangkok Thailand National Archives, Bangkok Papers of the Office of the Prime Minister Department of Religious Affairs Papers Ministry of Interior Papers Department of Education Papers Thammasat University, Pridi Banomyong Library, Bangkok

3 47

Y7216.indb 347

7/20/17 9:51 AM

S e l e c t e d Bi bli o gr aphy U.S. National Archives, College Park, Md. CREST (CIA Records Search Tool) Records of the Chief of Naval Operations (Record Group 38) General Records of the Department of State (Record Group 59) Records of Foreign Service Posts (Record Group 84) Records of the Central Intelligence Agency (Record Group 263) Interviews † by Dr. Athithep Phatha, Faculty of Buddhism, Mahachulalongkorn University; * with Dr. Athithep Phatha

Phra Ajan Yon, Wat Chaimongkol, Suwannaket, Laos, 13 February 2009† Phra Boonsong Sujitto, Wat Phochai, Nong Khai, Thailand, 10 February 2009* Jim Chamberlain, Vientiane, Laos, 10 February 2009 Phrakroo Indhakalayanakun, Wat Phra Inphang, Nakhon Phanom, Thailand, 12 February 2009* Jud Kongsook, Bangkok, 3 August 2008 William Klausner, Bangkok, 26 September 2008, 10 October 2008, 2 December 2008, 19 February 2009, 29 March 2009 Kraisak Choonhavan, Bangkok, 8 August 2008 Lamduan Suvaraphan, Wat Srisumong, Nong Khai, Thailand, 10 February 2009* Phrakroo Muangpirak Chotitham, Wat Vijitthamram, Suwannaket, Laos, 13 February 2009† Phra Ngoojan Kittivano, Wat Srisumong, Nong Khai, Thailand, 7 February 2009* Phairat Phason, Wat Srisumong, Nong Khai, Thailand, 7 February 2009* Phra Pongsak, Jittaphawan College, Chon Buri, Thailand, 22 March 2009 Phra Rajathiraporn, Wat Srichomcheun, Nong Khai, Thailand, 7 February 2009* Somboon Suksamran, Bangkok, 24 July 2008 Somparn Promta, Bangkok, 19 February 2009 Phra Sophonviharakorn, Wat Phochai, Nong Khai, Thailand, 7 February 2009* Dr. Srisavaya Suwannee, Vientiane, Laos, 9 February 2009* David Steinberg, Washington, D.C., 11 June 2009 Sulak Sivaraksa, Bangkok, 30 July 2008 Phramaha Suthit Apakaro, Wat Mahathat, Bangkok, 27 March 2009 Swang Udomsri, Wat Mahathat, Bangkok, 27 March 2009 Dr. Udon Chantawan, Khon Kaen, Thailand, 16 February 2009

348

Y7216.indb 348

7/20/17 9:51 AM

S e l e c t e d B i b l i o gr aphy Published Sources (English, French, Vietnamese) Books, Articles, and Dissertations Anderson, Ben. “Withdrawal Symptoms: Social and Cultural Aspects of the Oct. 6 Coup.” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 9, no. 3 (1977). Anderson, Benedict R. O’G. The Spectre of Comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia, and the World. London: Verso, 1998. Anderson, Benedict R. O’G, and Ruchira Chinnapongse Mendiones. In the Mirror: Literature and Politics in Siam in the American Era. Bangkok: Editions Duang Kamoi, 1985. Anson, Robert Sam. War News: A Young Reporter in Indochina. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989. Baker, Chris, and Pasuk Phongpaichit. A History of Thailand. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Benz, Ernst. Buddhism or Communism: Which Holds the Future of Asia? 1st ed. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1965. Berval, René de. Kingdom of Laos: The Land of the Million Elephants and of the White Parasol. 1st ed. Saigon: France-Asie, 1959. ———. Présence du Bouddhisme / sous la direction de René de Berval. Saigon: FranceAsie, 1959. Bowie, Katherine. Rituals of National Loyalty: An Anthropology of the State and the Village Scout Movement in Thailand. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. Bradley, Mark Philip. Imagining Vietnam and America: The Making of Postcolonial Vietnam, 1919–1950. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. Brown, E. Richard. Rockefeller Medicine Men: Medicine and Capitalism in America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979. Brummelhuis, Han Ten, and Jeremy Kemp, eds. Strategies and Structures in Thai Society. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam, 1984. Bullock, Mary Brown. An American Transplant: The Rockefeller Foundation and Peking Union Medical College. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980. Burchett, Wilfred G. The Furtive War: The United States in Vietnam and Laos. New York: International Publishers, 1963. Bushnell, P. Timothy, ed. State Organized Terror: The Case of Violent Internal Repression. Series on State Violence, State Terrorism, and Human Rights. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1991. Buswell, Robert E., Jr. Encyclopedia of Buddhism. Vol. 2. New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2004. Chandler, David. A History of Cambodia. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2008. ———. “Paul Mus (1902–1969): A Biographical Sketch.” Journal of Vietnamese Studies 4, no. 1 (2009): 149–91.

349

Y7216.indb 349

7/20/17 9:51 AM

S e l e c t e d Bi bli o gr aphy Chandler, David P., and Ben Kiernan. Revolution and Its Aftermath in Kampuchea: Eight Essays. Monograph Series no. 25. New Haven: Yale University, Southeast Asia Studies, 1983. Coleman, Peter. The Liberal Conspiracy: The Congress for Cultural Freedom and the Struggle for the Mind of Postwar Europe. New York: Free Press, 1989. Cueto, Marcos. Missionaries of Science: The Rockefeller Foundation and Latin America. Philanthropic Studies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994. Cummings, Richard G. Radio Free Europe’s “Crusade for Freedom”: Rallying Americans behind Cold War Broadcasting, 1950–1960. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2010. Darling, Frank C. Thailand and the United States. Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1965. Diê.p, Hòˆng Phương. Làng nhỏ bên sông: truyê. n ký vèˆ thân théˆ và sư. nghiê.p cóˆ Ða. i lão Hòa Thươ. ng Thích Thiê.n Hào. Hòˆ Chí Minh City: Nhà xuáˆt bả n Trẻ , 2002. Earhart, H. Byron. “Mount Fuji: Shield of War, Badge of Peace.” Asia-Pacific Journal 9, no. 1 (2011): 1–14. Engel, Jeffrey A. Local Consequences of the Global Cold War. Cold War International History Project Series. Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press; Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2007. Fall, Bernard, B. Street without Joy. Mechanicsburg, Penn.: Stackpole Books, 1994. Fineman, Daniel. A Special Relationship: The United States and Military Government in Thailand, 1947–1958. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1997. FitzGerald, Frances. Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam. Boston: Little, Brown, 1972. Gabaude, Louis. “Bouddhismes en contact: Un zeste de zen dans le bouddhisme thaï.” Bulletin de l’École française d’Extrême-Orient 87 (2000). Gard, Richard Abbott. Buddhism and Political Authority. [New Haven?]: n.p., 1960. ———. Buddhist Trends and Perspectives in Asia. [Saigon?]: n.p., 1959. ———. The Role of Thailand in World Buddhism. WFB Books Series. Bangkok: World Fellowship of Buddhists, 1971. Goscha, Christopher E. Thailand and the Southeast Asian Networks of the Vietnamese Revolution, 1885–1954. Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Monograph Series. Richmond: Curzon Press, 1999. ———. Vietnam or Indochina?: Contesting Concepts of Space in Vietnamese Nationalism, 1887–1954. NIAS Report Series. Copenhagen, Denmark: NIAS Books, 1995. Goscha, Christopher E., Søren Ivarsson, and Nordic Institute of Asian Studies. Contesting Visions of the Lao Past: Laos Historiography at the Crossroads. Studies in Asian Topics. Copenhagen: NIAS; London: Taylor & Francis, 2003. Goscha, Christopher E., and Karine Laplante. L’échec de la paix en Indochine = the Failure of Peace in Indochina, 1954–1962. Paris: Les Indes savantes, 2010. Gosling, David. “New Directions in Thai Buddhism.” Modern Asian Studies 14, no. 3 (1980): 411–39.

350

Y7216.indb 350

7/20/17 9:51 AM

S e l e c t e d B i b l i o gr aphy Grether, H. G. “Buddhism in Thailand Today.” Southeast Asia Journal of Theology 3 (1961): 32–40. Gurtov, Mel. “From Korea to Vietnam: The Origins and Mindset of Postwar U.S. Interventionism.” Asia-Pacific Journal 42 (2010): 1–10. Haberkorn, Tyrell. Revolution Interrupted: Farmers, Students, Law, and Violence in Northern Thailand. New Perspectives in Southeast Asian Studies. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2011. ———. “An Unfinished Past.” Critical Asian Studies 41, no. 1 (2009): 3–35. Halberstam, David. The Making of a Quagmire. New York: Random House, 1965. Halpern, Joel Martin. Government, Politics, and Social Structure in Laos: A Study of Tradition and Innovation. Monograph Series no. 4. New Haven: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, 1964. Handley, Paul M. The King Never Smiles: A Biography of Thailand’s Bhumibol Adulyadej. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. Harris, Ian Charles, ed. Buddhism and Politics in Twentieth-Century Asia. London: Pinter, 1999. ———. Buddhism in a Dark Age: Cambodian Monks under Pol Pot. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2013. ———. Cambodian Buddhism: History and Practice. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2005. ———. “The Monk and the King: Khieu Chum and Regime Change in Cambodia.” Udaya: Journal of Khmer Studies 9 (2008). Inboden, William. Religion and American Foreign Policy, 1945–1960: The Soul of Containment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Ingram, James C. Economic Change in Thailand, 1850–1970. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1971. ———. Economic Change in Thailand since 1850. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1955. Ishii, Yoneo. “Church and State in Thailand.” Asian Survey 8, no. 10 (1968): 864–71. ———. Sangha, State, and Society: Thai Buddhism in History. Monographs of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1986. Jackson, Peter A. Buddhadasa: Theravada Buddhism and Modernist Reform in Thailand. 1st ed. Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2003. Jackson, Peter A., and Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Buddhism, Legitimation, and Conflict: The Political Functions of Urban Thai Buddhism. Social Issues in Southeast Asia. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1989. Jacobs, Seth. America’s Miracle Man in Vietnam: Ngo Dinh Diem, Religion, Race, and U.S. Intervention in Southeast Asia, 1950–1957. American Encounters / Global Interactions. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2004.

351

Y7216.indb 351

7/20/17 9:51 AM

S e l e c t e d Bi bli o gr aphy ———. Cold War Mandarin: Ngo Dinh Diem and the Origins of America’s War in Vietnam, 1950–1963. Vietnam--America in the War Years. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006. Jamieson, Neil L. Understanding Vietnam. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Jerryson, Michael K. Buddhist Fury: Religion and Violence in Southern Thailand. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Johnson, David K. The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Juergensmeyer, Mark, and Michael Jerryson, eds. Buddhist Warfare. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Kahin, George McTurnan. Intervention: How America Became Involved in Vietnam. 1st ed. New York: Knopf, 1979. Kamala Tiyavanich. The Buddha in the Jungle. Seattle: University of Washington Press in association with Silkworm Books, 2003. ———. Forest Recollections: Wandering Monks in Twentieth-Century Thailand. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1997. ———. Sons of the Buddha: The Early Lives of Three Extraordinary Thai Masters. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2007. Keyes, Charles F. “Buddhism and National Integration in Thailand.” Journal of Asian Studies 30, no. 3 (1971): 551–67. ———. Isan: Regionalism in Northeastern Thailand. Cornell Thailand Project Interim Reports Series. Ithaca, N.Y.: Southeast Asia Program, Department of Asian Studies, Cornell University, 1967. ———. Thailand, Buddhist Kingdom as Modern Nation-State. Westview Profiles Nations of Contemporary Asia. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1987. Kiernan, Ben. “The American Bombardment of Kampuchea, 1969–73.” Vietnam Generation 1, no. 1 (1989): 4–41. ———. How Pol Pot Came to Power: Colonialism, Nationalism, and Communism in Cambodia, 1930–1975. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985. ———. The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975–79. Yale Nota Bene. 2nd ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. Kiernan, Ben, and Chanthou Boua, eds. Peasants and Politics in Kampuchea, 1942– 1981. London: Zed Press; Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1982. Kirby, Dianne. Religion and the Cold War. Cold War History Series. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Kitagawa, Joseph Mitsuo, and Mark D. Cummings. Buddhism and Asian History. Religion, History, and Culture. New York: Macmillan; London: Collier Macmillan, 1989. Klausner, William. Reflections on Thai Culture. 4th ed. Bangkok: Siam Society, 1993. ———. Thai Culture in Transition. 4th ed. Bangkok: Siam Society, 2002.

352

Y7216.indb 352

7/20/17 9:51 AM

S e l e c t e d B i b l i o gr aphy ———. Transforming Thai Culture: From Temple Drums to Mobile Phones. Bangkok: Siam Society, 2004. Lean, Garth. On the Tail of a Comet: The Life of Frank Buchman. Colorado Springs: Helmers & Howard, 1988. LeBar, Frank M., and Adrienne Suddard. Laos: Its People, Its Society, Its Culture, by the Staff and Associates of the Human Relations Area Files. New Haven: HRAF Press, 1960. Leifer, Michael. Cambodia: The Search for Security. New York: Praeger, 1967. Lintner, Bertil. Burma in Revolt: Opium and Insurgency since 1948. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1994. Logevall, Fredrik. Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam. New York: Random House, 2012. Maung Maung, U. From Sangha to Laity: Nationalist Movements of Burma, 1920–1940. New Delhi: Manohar, 1980. McDaniel, Justin Thomas. Gathering Leaves and Lifting Words: Histories of Buddhist Monastic Education in Laos and Thailand. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008. ———. The Lovelorn Ghost and the Magical Monk: Practicing Buddhism in Modern Thailand. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. McHale, Shawn Frederick. Print and Power: Confucianism, Communism, and Buddhism in the Making of Modern Vietnam. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2004. Mendelson, E. Michael. Sangha and State in Burma: A Study of Monastic Sectarianism and Leadership. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1975. Miller, Edward Garvey. Misalliance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and the Fate of South Vietnam. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2013. Morell, David. “Political Conflict in Thailand.” Asian Affairs: An American Review 3, no. 3 (1976): 151–84. Morell, David, and Chai-anan Samudavanija. Political Conflict in Thailand: Reform, Reaction, Revolution. Cambridge, Mass.: Oelgeschlager, Gunn & Hain, 1981. Muehlenbeck, Philip, E., ed. Religion and the Cold War: A Global Perspective. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2012. Munier, Christophe. Sacred Rocks and Buddhist Caves in Thailand. Bangkok: White Lotus, 1998. Mus, Paul. “Buddhism in Vietnamese History and Society.” Jahrbuch 2 (1968): 95–115. Muscat, Robert J. Development Strategy in Thailand: A Study of Economic Growth. Praeger Special Studies in International Economics and Development. New York: Praeger, 1966. ———. Thailand and the United States: Development, Security, and Foreign Aid. Study of the East Asian Institute, Columbia University. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990.

353

Y7216.indb 353

7/20/17 9:51 AM

S e l e c t e d Bi bli o gr aphy Nhâat, Hanh, and Thomas Merton. Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire. 1st ed. New York: Hill and Wang, 1967. Nixon, Richard M. The Memoirs of Richard Nixon. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1978. ———. RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon. New York: Warner Books, 1979. Osgood, Kenneth Alan. Total Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006. Pasuk, Phongpaichit, and Christopher John Baker. Thailand: Economy and Politics. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1995. Peebles, Patrick. The History of Sri Lanka. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2006. Prados, John. The Hidden History of the Vietnam War. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1995. ———. Vietnam: The History of an Unwinnable War, 1945–1975. Modern War Studies. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2009. Race, Jeffrey. “The War in Northern Thailand.” Modern Asian Studies 8, no. 1 (1974): 85–112. Reynolds, Craig J. “The Buddhist Monkhood in Nineteenth Century Thailand.” Thesis, Cornell University, 1972. ———. Seditious Histories: Contesting Thai and Southeast Asian Pasts. Seattle: University of Washington Press; Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2006. ———. Thai Radical Discourse: The Real Face of Thai Feudalism Today. Studies on Southeast Asia. Ithaca, N.Y.: Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University, 1987. Reynolds, E. Bruce. Thailand and Japan’s Southern Advance, 1940–1945. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994. Reynolds, Frank E. “Civic Religion and National Community in Thailand.” Journal of Asian Studies 36, no. 2 (1977): 267–82. Ruth, Richard A. In Buddha’s Company: Thai Soldiers in the Vietnam War. Southeast Asia: Politics, Meaning, Memory. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2011. Sack, Daniel. Moral Re-armament: The Reinventions of an American Religious Movement. 1st ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Sam, Yang. Khmer Buddhism and Politics from 1954 to 1984. Newington, Conn.: Khmer Studies Institute, 1987. Sangharakshita. A Survey of Buddhism: Its Doctrine and Methods through the Ages. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2001. ———. Moving against the Stream: The Birth of a New Buddhist Movement. Birmingham: Windhorse, 2003. Schecter, Jerrold L. The New Face of Buddha: Buddhism and Political Power in Southeast Asia. New York: Coward-McCann, 1967. Scott, James, C. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998. Shawcross, William. Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruction of Cambodia. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979.

354

Y7216.indb 354

7/20/17 9:51 AM

S e l e c t e d B i b l i o gr aphy Smith, Bardwell, L., ed. Religion and the Legitimation of Power in South Asia. International Studies in Sociology and Social Anthropology. Leiden: Brill, 1978. Somboon, Suksamran. Buddhism and Political Legitimacy. Chulalongkorn University Research Report Series. Bangkok: Research Dissemination Project, Research Division, Chulalongkorn University, 1993. ———. Buddhism and Politics in Thailand: A Study of Socio-Political Change and Political Activism of the Thai Sangha. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1982. ———. Political Buddhism in Southeast Asia: The Role of the Sangha in the Modernization of Thailand. London: C. Hurst, 1977. ———. Political Patronage and Control over the Sangha. Research Notes and Discussions Paper. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1981. Story, Francis. Buddhism Answers the Marxist Challenge: An Analytical Comparison between the Scientific Doctrines of Buddhism and the Tenets of Dialectical Materialism, in Theory and Practical Application. Rangoon: Burma Buddhist World Mission, 1952. Stuart-Fox, Martin, Buddhist Kingdom, Marxist State: The Making of Modern Laos. Bangkok: White Lotus, 1996. Stuart-Fox, Martin, and Rod Bucknell. “Politicization of the Buddhist Sangha in Laos.” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 13 (1982): 60–80. Sulak, Sivaraksa. A Buddhist Vision for Renewing Society: Collected Articles by a Concerned Thai Intellectual. 3rd printing with addenda. Bangkok: Thai Inter-religious Commission for Development, 1994. Sulak, Sivaraksa, and Tom Ginsburg. Seeds of Peace: A Buddhist Vision for Renewing Society. Berkeley, Calif.: Parallax Press; Bangkok: International Network of Engaged Buddhists, Sathirakoses-Nagapradipa Foundation, 1992. Swearer, Donald K. The Buddhist World of Southeast Asia. SUNY Series in Religion. Rev. and expanded ed. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995. Taylor, Jim. Forest Monks and the Nation-State: An Anthropological and Historical Study in Northeastern Thailand. Social Issues in Southeast Asia. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1993. Thak, Chaloemtiarana. Thailand: The Politics of Despotic Paternalism. Ithaca, N.Y.: Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University, 2007. Thao Nhouy Abhay. Aspects du pays Lao. Vientiane: Éditions Comité littéraire lao, 1956. Thepwethi, Phra. Thai Buddhism in the Buddhist World: A Survey of the Buddhist Situation against a Historical Background. Bangkok: Mahachulalongkorn Alumni Association, Mahachulalongkorn Buddhist University, 1984. Thepwisutthimethi, Phra, and Donald K. Swearer. Dhammic Socialism. Bangkok: Thai Inter-Religious Commission for Development, 1986.

355

Y7216.indb 355

7/20/17 9:51 AM

S e l e c t e d Bi bli o gr aphy Thongchai, Winichakul. “The Changing Landscape of the Past: New Histories in Thailand since 1973.” Journal of Southeast Asia Studies 26, no. 1 (1995): 99–120. ———. Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1994. Tikhonov, Vladimir, and Torkel Brekke, eds. Buddhism and Violence: Militarism and Buddhism in Modern Asia. New York: Routledge, 2013. Topmiller, Robert J. The Lotus Unleashed: The Buddhist Peace Movement in South Vietnam. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2002. Vasit, Dejkunjorn. In His Majesty’s Footsteps: A Personal Memoir. Special limited ed. Bangkok: Heaven Lake Press, 2006. Victoria, Brian Daizen. Zen at War. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006. ———. “Zen Masters on the Battlefield (Part I).” Asia-Pacific Journal 11, no. 3 (2013): 1–22. ———. “Zen Masters on the Battlefield (Part II).” Asia-Pacific Journal 11, no. 4 (2013): 1–15. Warner, Denis. The Last Confucian: Vietnam, South-East Asia, and the West. Rev. ed. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1964. Westad, Odd Arne. The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Whalen-Bridge, John, and Pattana Kitiarsa, eds. Buddhism, Modernity, and the State in Asia: Forms of Engagement. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Whitaker, Donald P., and American University (Washington, D.C.) Foreign Area Studies. Area Handbook for Laos. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1972. Wilford, Hugh. The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008. Wright, Joseph J. The Balancing Act: A History of Modern Thailand. Oakland, Calif.: Pacific Rim Press; Bangkok: Asia Books Co., 1991. Young, Marilyn Blatt. The Vietnam Wars, 1945–1990. 1st ed. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. Yukio, Hayashi. Practical Buddhism among the Thai-Lao: Religion in the Making of a Region. Kyoto: Kyoto University Press; Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press; Portland, Ore.: International Specialized Book Services, 2003. Zhai, Qiang. China and the Vietnam Wars, 1950–1975. New Cold War History. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. Zimmerman, Robert F. Reflections on the Collapse of Democracy in Thailand. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1978.

356

Y7216.indb 356

7/20/17 9:51 AM

S e l e c t e d B i b l i o gr aphy Periodicals Bangkok Post Buddhist Quarterly Burman Ceylon Daily News Far Eastern Economic Review Honolulu Advertiser Indochina Chronicle Maha Bodi Middle Way Nation New York Times Ramparts Sangayana Monthly Bulletin Statesman Southeast Asia Journal Time Times of Ceylon Washington Post W.F.B. Review World Buddhism World Fellowship of Buddhists News Bulletin Published Sources (Thai) Books, Articles, and Dissertations เอ. โสมานันทภิกขุ. องค์การเผยแพร่พระไตรปิฎกแห่งบังคลาเทศ. กรุงเทพฯ: โรงพิมพ์การ ศาสนา, 2518. (A. Somananthaphikkhu. Tripitaka Prachar Board of Bangladesh. Bangkok: Religious Affairs Printing House, 2518 [1975].) พระบาทสมเด็จพระเจ้าอยู่หัวภูมิพลอดุลยเดช. ประมวลพระราชด ำรัสและพระบรมราโชวาท ที่ พระราชทานในโอกาสต่างๆ ปี พุทธศักราช 2518. กรุงเทพฯ: สำนักราชเลขาธิการ, 2519. (Bhumibol Adulyadej. The royal speeches and addresses of His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej in the year 1975. Bangkok: Office of His Majesty’s Principal Private Secretary, 2519 [1976].) จำเลีอง วุฒิจันทร์. การพัฒนากิจการคณะสงฆ์และการพระศาสนาเพื่อความมั่นคงแห่ง ชาติ. กรุงเทพฯ: วิทยาลัยป้องกันราชอาณาจักร, ไร้ข้อมูลปีพิมพ์. (Chamlueang Wutthichan. The development of religious affairs for national stability. Bangkok: National Defence College, n.d.)

357

Y7216.indb 357

7/20/17 9:51 AM

S e l e c t e d Bi bli o gr aphy จรูญ สุภาพ. ปัญหาการเมืองของประเทศเพื่อนบ้าน. กรุงเทพฯ: สํานักพิมพ์จุฬาลงกรณ์มหา วิทยาลัย, ๒๕๑๑. (Charun Supap. The political problems of neighboring countries. Bangkok: Chulalongkorn University Press, 2511 [1968].) ชลธี ยังตรง. ความคิดทางการเมืองของพุทธทาสภิกขุ. วิทยานิพนธ์มหาบัณฑิต, จุฬาลงกรณ์ มหาวิทยาลัย, ๒๕๓๓. (Chonlathi Yangtrong. The political thoughts of Buddhadhasa Bhikkhu. Master’s thesis, Chulalongkorn University, 2533 [1990].) คณะกรรมการศาสนาเพื่อการพัฒนา. บันทึกการสัมมนา พระสงฆ์กับการประยุกต์ศาสน กิจให้สมสมัย. กรุงเทพฯ: ยุววิทยา, ๒๕๒๘. (Committee on Religion for Development. Seminar record: the sangha and the modernization of religious activities. Bangkok: Yuwawitthaya, 2528 [1985].) สภายุวพุทธิกสมาคมแห่งชาติ. รายงานการประชุมยุวพุทธิกสมาคมทั่วประเทศ ครั้งที่ 11. กรุงเทพฯ: องค์การพุทธศาสนิกสัมพันธ์ แห่งโลก, 2513. (Council of Young Buddhist Association of Thailand. Report on the 11th Conference of the Young Buddhist Association, Aug. 24–25, 1968, at Wat Saothongthong, Lopburi Province. Bangkok: World Fellowship of Buddhists, 2513 [1970].) คณะพระธรรมจาริก รุ่นที่ 3. รายงานการแผยแพร่พระพุทธศาสนาแก่ชาวเขาทางภาคเหนือ ปี 2510. กรุงเทพฯ: กรม ประชาสงเคราะห์ กระทรวงมหาดไทย, 2511. (Group of Buddhist Missionary Monks 3rd Class. Report on propagation of Buddhism to Northern Hill Tribe in 1967. Bangkok: Social Welfare Department, Ministry of Interior, 2511 [1968].) มหาจุฬาลงกรณ์ราชวิทยาลัย. มหาเถระประวัติ. กรุงเทพฯ: มหาจุฬาลงกรณราชวิทยาลัย, 2533. (Mahachulalongkonratchawitthayalai. Mahatheraprawat. Bangkok: Mahachulalongkonratchawitthayalai, 2533 [1990].) ———. พระสงฆ์กับการพัฒนาชนบท. กรุงเทพฯ: มหาจุฬาลงกรณ์ราชวิทยาลัย, 2524. (Mahachulalongkonratchawitthayalai. The role of Buddhist monks in rural development. Bangkok: Mahachulalongkonratchawitthayalai, 2524 [1981].) มิตรสัมพันธ์. พี่นัอง ไทย-ลาว?: สภาพความเป็นมาของความสัมพันธ์ ไทย-ลาว. ศรีสะเกษ: มนตรีศาสตร์, ไร้ข้อมูลปีพิมพ์. (Mitsamphan. Siblings, Thailand and Laos?: the conditions of Thai-Lao relations. Sisaket: Montrisat, n.d.) มณฑล แถวทอง. สรุปรายงานการวิจัย เรื่อง ความสัมพันธ์ระหว่างไทยและลาว ค.ศ. ๑๙๗๕-๑๙๙๒. กาญจนบุรี: สํานักวิจัย สถาบันราชภัฏกาญจนบุรี, ๒๕๓๙. (Monthon Thaewthong. Summary of research on Thai-Lao relations, 1975–1992. Kanchanaburi: Kanchanaburi Rajabhat University, 2539 [1996].) พัชรลดา จุลเพชร. แนวคิดเรื่องกึ่งพุทธกาลในสังคมไทย พ.ศ. 2475–2500. กรุงเทพฯ: มหา วิทยาลัยธรรมศาสตร์, 2548. (Phatcharalada Chulaphet. The concept of Buddhist meridian in the Thai society, B.E. 2475–2500. Bangkok: Thammasat University, 2548 [2003].) พระพิมลธรรม (อาจ อาสโภ), มหาพล. บันทึกพระพิมลธรรมกับ เอ็ม.อาร์.เอ. ธนบุรี: โรง พิมพ์ประยูรวงศ์, 2521. (Phra Phimolatham [Aat Aatpho], Mahaphohn. Diary of Phimolatham and the M.R.A. Thonburi: Bpra Yuun Wohng Printing House, 2521 [1978].)

358

Y7216.indb 358

7/20/17 9:51 AM

S e l e c t e d B i b l i o gr aphy ———. ผจญมาร บันทึกชีวิต 5 ปี ในห้องขัง. กรุงเทพฯ: วัดมหาธาตุ, 2530. (Phra Phimolatham. Encounter the devils: 5 year memoir in jail of Phra Phimolatham (Asapha Mahathen). Bangkok: Wat Mahathat, 2530 [1987].) พระเทพกิตติปัญญาคุณ. ปรมัตถธรรม 4 (จิต เจตสิก รูป นิพพาน). กรุงเทพฯ: โรงพิมพ์ บริษัท สหธรรมิก จำกัด, 2549. (Phrathepkittipanyakhun [Kittivudho Bhikku]. Paramatthatham 4. Bangkok: Sahathammik, 2549 [2006].) พูพวงทอง ภวัครพันธุ์, สงครามเวียดนาม สงครามกับความจริงของ “รัฐไทย”. กรุงเทพฯ: สํนักพิมพ์คบไฟ, 2006. (Phuangthong Pawakapan. The Vietnam War: war and truth of the “Thai state.” Bangkok: Kopfai, 2006. พูนพิศมัย ดิศกุล. บันทึกของประธาน พ.ส.ล. เรื่อง ความสำเร็จขององค์การพุทธ ศาสนิกสัมพันธ์แห่งโลกในการประชุมใหญ่ครั้งที่ 7ที่สารนาถ นครพาราณสี. กรุง เทพฯ: สำนักงานเลขาธิการ องค์การ พ.ส.ล., 2508. (Poonphitsamai Ditsakun. Diary of WFB Chairman on the success of WFB in 7th Conference at Sarnath, Varanasi. Bangkok: World Fellowship of Buddhists, 2508 [1965].) ———. เยี่ยมชาวพุทธอินโดนีเซีย บันทึกของหม่อมเจ้าหญิงพูนพิศมัย ดิศกุล. กรุงเทพฯ: สำนักพิมพ์ไทยเกษม, 2515. (Poonphitsamai Ditsakun. Visit to Indonesian Buddhists: Diary of H.S.H. Princess Poonphitsamai Ditsakun. Bangkok: Thai Kasem Printing House, 2515 [1972].) นาย ปรีชา ช้างขวัญยืน. ความคิดทางการเมืองในพระไตรปิฎก. กรุงเทพฯ: สำนักพิมพ์ จุฬาลงกรณ์มหาวิทยาลัย, ๒๕๓๔. (Nai Pricha Changkhwanyuen. The political thoughts in the Tripitaka. Bangkok: Chulalongkorn University Press, 2534 [1991].) พระระพิน ด้วงลอย. การศึกษาสถานภาพของพระสงฆ์กัมพูชาระหว่าง ค.ศ. 1975–1989. กรุง เทพฯ: บัณฑิตวิทยาลัย มหาวิทยาลัยศรีนครินทรวิโรฒ, 2545. (Phra Raphin Duangloi. The status of Buddhist monks in Cambodia, 1975–1989. Bangkok: Graduate School of Srinakharinwirot University, 2545 [2002].) กรมประชาสงเคราะห์ กระทรวงมหาดไทย. งานพระธรรมจาริก. กรุงเทพฯ: กรม ประชาสงเคราะห์ กระทรวงมหาดไทย, 2522. (Social Welfare Department, Ministry of Interior. The mission of Buddhist missionary monks. Bangkok: Social Welfare Department, Ministry of Interior, 2522 [1979].) สมบูรณ์ สุขสำราญ. ศาสนากับการเมือง: กรณีศึกษาของไทย ลาว และกัมพูชา. กรุงเทพฯ: วิทยาลัย ป้องกันราชอาณาจักร, 2533. (Somboon Suksamran. Religion and politics: case studies from Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia. Bangkok: Thailand National Defence College, 2533 [1990].) สุภัทร สุคนธาภิรมย์ ณ พัทลุง. พุทธปรัชญากับปรัชญามาร์กซิสต์. กรุงเทพฯ: บพิธกา รพิมพ์, 2524. (Suphat Sukhonthapirom na Phatthalung. Buddhist philosophy and Marxist philosophy. Bangkok: Borphitphakarnphim, 2524 [1981].) เสถียร โพธินันทะ. ประวัติศาสตร์พระพุทธศาสนา ฉบับมุขปาฐะ ภาค ๑. กรุงเทพฯ: มหา มกุฏราชวิทยาลัย, ไร้ข้อมูลปีพิมพ์. (Sathian Phothinantha. A history of Buddhism: oral version, part I. Bangkok: Mahamakhut Buddhist University, n.d.) ———. ประวัติศาสตร์พระพุทธศาสนา ฉบับมุขปาฐะ ภาค ๒. กรุงเทพฯ: มหามกุฏรา ชวิทยาลัย, ไร้ข้อมูลปีพิมพ์. (Sathian Phothinantha. A history of Buddhism: oral version, part II. Bangkok: Mahamakhut Buddhist University, n.d.)

359

Y7216.indb 359

7/20/17 9:51 AM

S e l e c t e d Bi bli o gr aphy สมยศ จันทะวงษ์. ความคิดทางการเมืองของพระเทพเวที (ประยุทธ์ ปยุตฺโต). สา รนิพนธ์มหาบัณฑิต, มหาวิทยาลัยธรรมศาสตร์, ๒๕๓๕. (Somyot Chanthawong. The political thoughts of Phra Thepthewi [Prayut Payutto]. Master’s thesis, Thammasat University, 2535 [1992].) สถาบันวิจัยชาวเขา. ประเมินผลการให้การศึกษาชาวเขาของคณะพระธรรมจาริก. เชียง ใหม่: สถาบันวิจัยชาวเขา, ๒๕๒๘. (Tribal Research Institute. An evaluation of the Hill Tribe educational program of the Phra Thammacarit Mission. Chiang Mai: Tribal Research Institute, 2528 [1985].) องค์การพุทธศาสนิกสัมพันธ์แห่งโลก. พุทธศาสนาในยุโรป. กรุงเทพฯ: องค์การพุทธ ศาสนิกสัมพันธ์แห่งโลก, 2513. (World Fellowship of Buddhists. Buddhism in Europe. Bangkok: World Fellowship of Buddhists, 2513 [1970].) ———. งานในรอบปี 2513. กรุงเทพฯ: องค์การพุทธศาสนิกสัมพันธ์แห่งโลก, 2514. (World Fellowship of Buddhists. Mission in the year 1970. Bangkok: World Fellowship of Buddhists, 2514 [1971].) ———. รายงานการประชุมใหญ่ครั้งที่ 9 ขององค์การพุทธศาสนิกสัมพันธ์แห่งโลก. กรุง เทพฯ: องค์การพุทธศาสนิกสัมพันธ์แห่งโลก, 2512. (World Fellowship of Buddhists. Report on the Ninth Conference of the World Fellowship of Buddhists in Kuala Lumpur and Penang, Malaysia on April 13–20, 1969. Bangkok: World Fellowship of Buddhists, 2512 [1969].) ———. การประชุมสัมนาระหว่างผู้แทนนานาชาติ เรื่อง การศึกษาขั้นสูงทางพระพุทธศาสนา. กรุงเทพฯ: องค์การพุทธศาสนิกสัมพันธ์แห่งโลก, 2511. (World Fellowship of Buddhists. Seminar on higher education in Buddhism on May 6–10, 1968, at Bangkok, Thailand. Bangkok: World Fellowship of Buddhists, 2511 [1968].) สภายุวพุทธิกสมาคมแห่งชาติในพระบรมราชูปถัมภ์. พระพุทธศาสนากับความมั่นคงของ ชาติ. กรุงเทพฯ: สภายุวพุทธิกสมาคม แห่งชาติในพระบรมราชูปถัมภ์, ไร้ข้อมูลปี พิมพ์. (Young Buddhist Association of Thailand under the Royal Patronage. Buddhism and national security. Bangkok: Young Buddhist Association of Thailand under the Royal Patronage, n.d.) Periodicals Chao Thai Chaturat Daily Times Khaopanit Lak Meuang Pim Thai Prachachart Prachachart Raiwan Puttajak Sangkhomsat Parithat

360

Y7216.indb 360

7/20/17 9:51 AM

S e l e c t e d B i b l i o gr aphy Sarn Seri Siam Nikorn Siam Rath Sri Krung Talanghan Thai Thai Rath Thammajaksu

361

Y7216.indb 361

7/20/17 9:51 AM

This page intentionally left blank

index

Page numbers in italic type indicate illustrations. Abhidhamma Foundation, 229–30 Aiem Sangkhavasri, Khun, 207, 212, 213, 221 Ajam Enatawangsataya, Phra, 228–29 Ajan Man, Phra, 105 akkomhaabandit, 78, 101 All-Ceylon Buddhist Congress (1947), 30 Allen, George, 126 Anand Panyarachun, 279 Anderson, Benedict, 259 Anderson, Robert, 23–24 Angkor Wat, 240 animism, 3, 109, 131, 154, 196 An Quang pagoda, 156 Anti-Communist Act of 1933 (Thai): repeal (1946) of, 22, 39 Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League, 27 Ard Duangmala. See Phimolatham, Phra Ariyawongsakhatayan, Somdej Phra, 201. See also Buddhakosacharn, Supreme Patriarch arms race, 186 Asia Foundation, 2–3, 35–38, 42, 94, 110–32, 136–59, 161–66, 173, 179–82, 190, 192, 236, 256; Buddhism and, 62, 63, 115–16, 121–25, 127, 129, 141; Cambodian Buddhist Festival (1957) and, 68–69; as CIA cover, 9, 110–11, 126, 291; CIA loss of, 225–26; covert intent of, 289, 291–92; developmental focus of, 112–13, 220–21, 291;

Gard scholarship and, 68–69, 183; Kittisophana’s U.S. tour and, 146–52, 290; long-term goals of, 10; Mahachulalongkorn University and, 229, 290; original objectives of, 110–13, 119, 290; Princess Poon’s world tour and, 205, 206; Rural Program of, 107, 291–92; South Vietnam and, 9, 38, 127, 156–57; U.S. policy and, 65, 225, 289. See also Klausner, William Asian Buddhist Conference (1970, Ulan Bator), 234–36, 294 Asia Society, 62, 63 Axelrod, Philip, 90–91, 93, 98 Ba Khin. See U Ba Khin Bandung Conference of Afro-Asian States (1955), 81–82 Bangkok Conference of World Fellowship of Buddhists (1976), 262, 263–64, 284–85 Bao, Cao Thai, 176, 178 Beijing Conference of Asian Buddhists, 181 Berval, René de, 154, 156, 159 Bhumipol, King, 76, 106, 147, 151, 177, 193, 222–23, 227, 243, 259; October 6 (1976) massacre and, 280; only male heir of, 202, 277; Praphas’s return and, 271–72 Bidault, Georges, 46 Blofeld, John (J. B.), 188–89, 220, 235, 236 Blum, Robert, 126, 132, 155, 156

363

Y7216.indb 363

7/20/17 9:51 AM

i ndex Bohmu Aung, 27, 300n37 Boonsanong Punyodhana, 264 Border Patrol Police (BPP), 203, 258, 278, 279 Boun Chan Mol, 238–39 Boun Oum, Prince, 66 Bowie, Katherine, 258 Brahmanism, 108, 109 Brewster, Kingman, 148 British Buddhist Society, 193 Browne, Malcolm, 168 Buchman, Frank, 80, 81, 82, 83, 149, 283 Buddha, 131, 167, 185, 232, 268; “middle path” of, 33; relics of, 29, 31, 154; 2,500th anniversary (1956–57) of, 30, 35–36, 64, 65 Buddhakosacharn, Supreme Patriarch, 171–73, 174; death of, 201, 202, 203 Buddha Sasana Council, 36–38, 75 Buddhas of Phu Po hill, 1–2 Buddhism: academic study of, 147–48; anticolonial movements and, 4, 36; anticommunism and, 1, 11–12, 17, 29, 31–32, 59–60, 114, 266–70; antiquity of, 1–3; Chinese communists and, 61–62, 67–68, 160, 180, 189, 288; clerical-lay boundary of, 100; as Cold War weapon, 29, 30, 32, 40, 41–64, 66–69, 100, 106, 233–41, 285; conservative interpretation of, 229–30; eschatology of, 160–61; ethno-nationalist tensions and, 73–74; first international conference (1950), 30–31; first international organization (see World Fellowship of Buddhists); globalization and, 7, 8, 25, 29–34, 65–103, 288, 289, 290; hierarchy of, 251; ideal last stage of, 22; Marxist compatibility thesis, 22–23, 26–27; missionary initiatives (1965), 196–98; mistaken perception of, 4; Navapol violence and, 260–62; neutralist pacifist leanings of, 34, 57, 59, 179, 184; revised scriptures of, 71, 72; Southeast Asia and, 3–4, 13, 14, 60, 130 (map); sublime nothingness goal of, 268; triangular diplomacy and, 186; twentieth-century violence and, 266–68; U.S. policy (1950s) and, 26, 41–64, 65; Western appeal of, 33. See also Ma-

hayana Buddhism; Sixth Great Buddhist Synod; Theravada Buddhism Buddhist Association of Cambodia, 238 Buddhist Association of Thailand, 76, 174–78, 179 Buddhist Society (London), 149–50 Buddhist Studies Association of South Vietnam, 153, 155–56, 187 Bun, Phra Maha, 139 Bundy, William P., 199 Burma, 3, 4, 5, 7, 24–29, 34, 36, 83, 170, 287, 295; Asia Foundation in, 9, 35–38, 42, 192; Buddhist national identity of, 25, 43; Japanese World War II invasion of, 13, 14; military regime of, 166, 167, 170, 178, 179; Navapol offices in, 259; neutralist nonalignment of, 27, 66, 67, 82, 102, 160–61, 164, 169; Phimolatham ties with, 78, 79, 88, 101, 102, 121, 289, 290; South Vietnamese Buddhist crisis and, 169–70; Thai relations with, 70–79; Theravada Buddhism and, 72, 74, 78, 235; U.S. Buddhist policy and, 62, 63; vipassana and, 75, 101, 102, 103, 289; WFB secretariat transfer from, 164–66, 170, 173, 177, 189, 190 Burmese Review and Sunday Times, 27 Buu An, 8–9 Byoto, Tsusho, 6, 11, 13–21, 255, 267–68, 285, 287–90, 293, 294 Cambodia, 3, 18, 37, 62, 78, 138; Asia Foundation in, 9, 38, 125, 206; Buddhist political activism in, 5, 237–42, 247, 248, 287; Chinese communists and, 67–68; communist takeover (1975) of, 10–11, 12, 231, 236–40, 244, 257, 269; Lon Nol regime, 232, 237, 238, 240, 269; neutralist nonalignment of, 164; Nixon’s 1953 visit to, 49–50; Sihanouk’s fall (1970), 232, 237; South Vietnamese Buddhist crisis and, 168–69, 184; Thai border clashes with, 282, 283; Theravada Buddhism and, 235; U.S. bombing of, 241; Vietnamese invasion/occupation (1978) of, 284; Vietnam War expansion and, 232, 233–34, 239–41, 269; WFB and, 33, 152, 159–66. See also Khmer Rouge; Phnom Penh

364

Y7216.indb 364

7/20/17 9:51 AM

index Cambodian Buddhist Association, 239 Cao Thai Bao, 176, 178 capitalism, 242, 245 Catholicism, 49, 64, 152–53, 154, 157, 158, 159. 167. See also Vatican Caux (Switzerland), 80, 83, 84, 85, 149, 151 Central Buddhist Association of Vietnam, 33 Ceylon, 30, 37, 62, 66, 79, 234; Asia Foundation in, 9, 38, 293; Buddhist conferences, 31, 34, 215–16; Buddhist monks, 5, 6, 154, 247; neutralist nonalignment of, 164; Sinhalese Buddhist majority, 3, 54; South Vietnamese Buddhist crisis and, 169, 175; Temple of the Tooth, 31 Chamberlain, Jim, 256, 257 Chao Khum Bimoldhamma. See Phimolatham, Phra Chao Khum Thep, 128–29 Chao Khun Bram Muni, 143 Chao Khun Preah Vanarat Pomsolheang, 239–40 Chao Khun Rajvisuthimethi, 197 Chao Khun Sridham, 129 Charisse, Nico, 82 Chau, Thich Tam, 211, 212, 215–20, 222–23 Chiang Mai Conference of World Fellowship of Buddhists (1966), 220–23 China: communist takeover of, 23, 111; Japanese occupation of, 16–17, 268; Moral Rearmament Army and, 80. See also ethnic Chinese Chinese communists, 23, 161, 180, 208; Bangkok Buddhist festival (1956) and, 106–7; Buddhism and, 61–62, 65, 67–68, 160, 180, 181, 189–90, 288; influence in Asia of, 50, 111; propaganda books from, 94, 96, 123; Rangoon Synod and, 66, 67, 70, 82, 102; Sixth Great Buddhist Synod and, 66, 70, 82, 102; Tibet and, 67, 106, 160, 182, 185, 235; Viet Minh settlement (1954) and, 46 Chonburi (Thai province), 11, 261, 265 Chote Thongprayoon, 121–22 Christian values, 10, 40, 41, 57, 79–80 Chulalongkorn, King, 87, 193 Chulalongkorn University, 81

church-state separation: U.S. code of, 8, 9, 25, 60, 62, 68, 69, 137; U.S. policy adjustment to, 26, 29, 40, 42, 43–44, 70, 110 CIA (U.S.Central Intelligence Agency), 8, 48, 54, 63, 126, 203, 218; covert funding by, 9, 10, 35, 225, 226; involvement in Laos of, 125; Navapol’s alleged ties with, 259, 260; Office of Policy Coordination, 110–11; South Vietnamese Buddhists and, 192. See also Asia Foundation Colombo conference (1950), 31, 34 Colombo conference (1966), 215–16 colonialism, 10, 18, 31–34, 108, 111; Japanese wartime occupation effects on, 15, 21, 22; Thailand’s avoidance of occupation, 4–5, 77, 287. See also French Indochina Committee for a Free Asia (CFA), 14, 35, 38, 110; failures of, 112. See also Asia Foundation Committee on Buddhism, 54–58, 62, 63 communism, 7, 11–12, 16, 42, 62; Buddhist ideals and, 22, 26–27, 31–32; Buddhist violence and, 266–70; fall of Buddhist countries to, 267 (see also Cambodia; Laos; Vietnam); freedom of religion vs., 54; monastic networks and, 218, 219, 230; Moral Rearmament Army musical and, 82–83; Phimolatham and, 98–99, 103, 229; WFB members and, 160–66; World Peace Congress, 62. See also Chinese communists Communist Party of Thailand (CPT), 22–23, 112, 194, 206, 229, 281 community development. See rural areas containment policy, 22 Council of Elders (Thailand), 87, 244, 246–47, 249, 251–52, 267, 269–70, 274; ban on monks’ political involvement (1974), 285 Cultural Act of 2484 [1941] (Thailand), 18–19 Dalai Lama, 61–62, 185 Damrong Latthaphiphat, 276 Damrong Rajanupap, Prince, 193 Dawee Chullasapya, 194 Dhammakaya movement, 228

365

Y7216.indb 365

7/20/17 9:51 AM

i ndex Dhani, Prince (Krommamyyn Bidyalabh), 93 dharma, 3, 81, 196 Diem, Ngo Dinh, 64, 83, 152–55, 158, 184, 187; assassination of, 186; international condemnation of, 168–69, 178; persecution of Buddhists by, 157, 162, 167, 171, 173, 175, 182, 183, 200, 213 Dien Bien Phu, fall of (1954), 45–48, 55, 81, 303n21 domino theory, 47 Don Muang, 71, 85 Duc, Thich Quang, 168, 169, 175, 181–82, 210 Dulles, Allen, 126 Dulles, John Foster, 40, 42, 46, 126, 152, 303n21 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 40, 42, 45, 47, 48, 126 Emerald Buddha Temple, 15, 20 Empire State Building, 146, 147 Enyart, Byron, 41, 44, 55 ethnic Chinese, 107–8, 111–12 ethnic Vietnamese, 8–9, 216, 218 Far Eastern Economic Review, 259 Fasson, Robert, 116, 117, 119–20, 125, 127 Federation of Buddhists of Thailand (FBT), 246, 267, 274, 275 Fifth Great Buddhist Synod (1871), 36 Foong Srivicharn, 76, 121–22, 124, 146, 148–49, 172–74, 179, 196 Ford Foundation, 62, 107 “forest monks,” 105 FRASCO, 48–52 freedom of religion, 54, 60, 182 French Indochina, 4, 18, 33, 50, 81, 131–33; Cambodian monks’ protests, 237–38; Navarre plan, 47. See also Dien Bien Phu, fall of Gandantegchinlen Monastery, 234, 235 Gard, Richard A., 116–19, 120, 127, 136, 142–44, 161–66, 181; Buddhist scholarship and, 68–69, 183; Kittisophana’s international tour and, 146–47, 148,

149; ninth WFB conference and, 220; Princess Poon’s tour and, 207, 208; South Vietnamese Buddhism and, 152, 153, 156–59, 162–63, 182–83, 187 Gardes, A. W., 20, 21 General Buddhist Association of Vietnam, 33, 153, 155, 157–58 Geneva Conference (1954), 46–47, 131, 132, 152, 153 Giap, Vo Nguyen, 45 Giau, Tran Van, 8–9 Gombojab, S., Venerable, 234 Gordon, Woolridge, 148 Greene, Jim, 147 Halberstam, David, 213 Halpern, Joel M., 134 Handley, Paul M., 93 Hao, Thich Thien, 181–82 Harris, Ian, 4 Harvard University, 148 Hau, Thich Don, 236 Ho Chi Minh, 160 Ho Chi Minh Trail, 199 homosexuality, 96, 97, 102 Honolulu Conference of Philosophers (1949), 30–31 Horinouchia, Kensuke, 80 Howard, Peter, 82 Howell, Ernest M., 190–91, 192 Htoon, U Chan, 160–61, 162, 166; arrest and imprisonment of, 167–69, 170, 173, 177; replacement of, 179, 180 Hue (Vietnam), 153, 156, 167, 171, 184 Huebsai Hatsadin, 258 Humphreys, Christmas, 149–50, 188, 220 Huong, Tran Van, 186, 187, 191 Ideological Subcommittee on the Religious Factor (U.S.), 52–54 India, 13, 37, 161, 170, 212, 234; Buddhism’s origins in, 3; Buddhist festivals, 61–62, 66; Buddhist proselytizing and, 101; Phimolatham and, 79, 84, 85. See also Sarnath Conference of World Fellowship of Buddhists

366

Y7216.indb 366

7/20/17 9:51 AM

index Indochina, 10–11, 36, 60, 233; French colonialism, 4, 18, 33, 81, 131–33. See also Cambodia; Laos; Vietnam Indochina war: first, 45–48, 55, 81; second (see Vietnam War) Indonesia, 22, 61, 81 Internal Security Operations Command (ISOC), 258–59, 264 International Association of the History of Religions, 205, 207 International Meditation Center, 75 Intersect Committee for the Defense of Buddhism, 174–75 Iraq, 82 Isan (Thai region), 88, 106, 125, 128; insurgency breakout in, 206–7; U.S. anticommunism program and, 108–9 Islam, 41, 178, 261, 295, 302n7 Jackson, Peter, 89, 93, 229, 255 Jamali, Fadhil, 82 James, Jack E., 182, 184 Japan: Kittivudho’s association with, 284–86; Mahayana school and, 37, 61, 150, 151, 235; militant Zen and, 7, 13, 17, 20, 268, 269; Moral Rearmament Army and, 80; occupation of South Asia by, 6–7, 13–21, 71, 131, 224, 282; Phibun’s death in (1964), 86; Phimolatham and, 79, 84. See also Byoto, Tsusho Japan-Thailand Cultural Research Institute, 13 Jit Phumisak, 39, 86, 206; Thai Feudalism, 86, 242, 281 Jittaphawan College, 226–28, 227, 239, 264, 269, 270, 282, 284, 285; expansion of, 266; Japanese investors in, 286; rightwing vigilantes and, 11, 261, 278; rural programs and, 230–31 Johnson, Lyndon B., 191, 199, 200, 208, 210, 265 Jozan, Hatane, 17, 268 Juan Utthayi. See Mahawirawong, Phra Jud Kongsook, Maha, 244–49, 250, 254–55, 267, 269, 293–94

Kathmandu Conference of the World Fellowship of Buddhists (1956), 61, 69, 106, 160 Kennedy, John F., 160, 174, 178, 207 Keyes, Charles, 260 Khanh, Nguyen, 186–87, 191, 208 Khieu Chum, 237–38 Khmer Krom monks, 131, 184 Khmer Rouge, 231, 238, 240–41, 244, 257, 269, 282 Khon Kaen (Thai province), 7, 88, 104–5, 106, 144 Khun Aiem Sangkhavasri, 217 King and I, The (film), 207 Kittisophana: ambition of, 102, 171; archconservatism of, 9, 99; backroom dealings of, 92, 93; clerical title of, 101–2, 145; death and replacement of, 171; international tour (1961) of, 9, 146–52, 170–71, 207, 290, 291; Phimolatham’s persecution and, 79, 96, 97, 101, 124, 145, 149, 172; rise of, 89–90, 92, 145; school reform and, 122–23 Kittivudho, 204–5, 241, 255, 274, 287; background of, 228–29; Cambodian trip of, 237, 239; career of, 294; commemoration volume of, 226–27, 260, 266; death (2005) of, 294; Japanese Buddhism and, 284–86; Jittaphawan College and, 227, 228, 282, 285; Navapol and, 260–62; rightwing activism of, 11–12, 224–33, 257, 278; scandal entanglement of, 284; ultra-right administration (1977) of, 282–83; violence (1976) and, 11–12, 257, 258, 266–70, 279, 294 Klausner, William, 10, 104–10, 121, 125–29, 133, 163, 186, 220, 291; background and education of, 107–8, 148; conversion to Buddhism of, 125; ethnographic research of, 108–10, 113, 129; Kittisophana’s international tour and, 146–50, 152; Laos and, 139, 142, 143, 179–80, 256–57; South Vietnam and, 191, 192; Thailand and, 107–10, 144–45, 151, 172–77, 196, 199, 203–4, 233, 234, 249, 250; WFB and, 190–91. See also Asia Foundation

367

Y7216.indb 367

7/20/17 9:51 AM

i ndex Lilly subcommittee. See Ideological Subcommittee on the Religious Factor Lodge, Henry Cabot, 214 Lokanatha Thero, Phra, 32–33 London, 148–50 Lon Nol, 232, 237, 238, 240, 269 Look Kaew Kampan Silasamvaro, Venerable Phra, 241 Lowry, Charles W., 48–49 Luang Prabang, 3, 239 Luang Prinya Yogavibulaya, 76 Lustig, Friedrich, 19–20

Kong Le, 135, 138 Koranhok Souvannavong, 136 Korean War, 46 Kotelawala, John, 54 Koune Manivong, Phra, 135–36 Krathin Daeng. See Red Gaurs Kriangsak Chamanond, 283 Krit Siwara, 248 Kruong Pathoumxad, Nai, 136, 179, 180 Kukrit Pramoj, M. R., 5–6, 143, 248, 262–65, 281, 283; Red Bamboo (Phai Daeng), 6 Kuomintang, 23 Ky, Nguyen Cao, 208, 215, 216, 219, 221, 232 Laem Chanhasdin, M. R., 227 Landon, Kenneth P., 54–55, 55, 62 Laos, 3, 11, 33, 45, 62, 101, 125–29, 131–45, 179–80; Asia Foundation in, 38, 125, 132, 136–40, 142, 144, 179; Asia Foundation office closure in, 256; Buddhist festivals and, 37, 66–67, 70; Buddhist political activism and, 5, 298; Cambodian Buddhist outreach to, 239–41; civil war, 81, 200; Cold War tensions and, 106, 125, 127, 132, 135; communist infiltration of, 131, 134–35, 230, 232, 236; communist takeover (1975) of, 10–11, 244, 256–57, 262, 269; coup (1960), 138; Japanese World War II troops in, 131; Nixon’s 1953 visit to, 49–50; Phimolatham’s renown in, 88; royal government of, 81, 125, 131, 140, 141; royal ordinance of May 25 (1959), 135–36; South Vietnamese Buddhist crisis and, 179; Thai Buddhist exchange with, 138–42, 143; Thai-Lao border zone, 7, 126–27, 282, 284; Theravada Buddhism and, 179, 180, 235; Vietnam War and, 199, 200, 240. See also Pathet Lao Lao speakers, 88, 102, 108, 125, 243, 289 leaflets scandal, 92–94, 95 Lerski, Jerzy Jan, 163 Liberation Radio (North Vietnam), 236 Liedecker, Kurt, 207 Life of the Buddha (USIS publication), 137 Lilly, Edward P., 41, 42, 43–45, 52, 53, 55

MacKenzie, Archie, 148 Mackinac Island (Michigan), 82, 83, 84 Mahachulalongkorn University, 94, 104, 113–14, 139, 141–44, 148, 196, 197, 198; Asia Foundation and, 229, 290; damaged reputation of, 143–44; Kittivudho and, 229, 283; monk activists, 245–46 Mahamakuta Educational Council, 113 Mahamakuta University, 113–20, 123, 141–43, 148, 198, 221; Asia Foundation and, 116–19, 120, 141, 142; monk student activists, 245–46 Mahanikay order, 6, 86–89, 90, 92–94, 99, 101, 113–14, 124, 128, 129, 142, 201, 243; antagonism toward, 102, 103, 104–5, 196–97; Buddhakosachorn’s interim appointment and, 171–72; communist charges against, 94; flagship monastery of (see Wat Mahathat); Kittisophana’s rejection of, 150; Kittivudho and, 204, 228; Laos and, 138–39; Thammayut rivalry with, 105, 138–49, 173. See also Phimolatham, Phra Mahasumedhadhipati, Somdej Phra, 23 Mahatherasamakhom. See Council of Elders Mahawirawong, Phra (Juan Utthayi), 89, 92, 124, 172, 201–3, 209, 215–17, 220 Mahayana Buddhism, 3, 13, 14, 15, 38, 71, 108, 180; Asian Buddhist Conference (1970) delegates, 235; Japan and, 37, 61, 150, 151, 235; Kittisophana’s view of,

368

Y7216.indb 368

7/20/17 9:51 AM

index 150–51; Ulan Bator Conference (1970) delegates, 235 Mai Tho Truyen. See Truyen, Mai Tho Malakul, M. L., Pin, 93, 121, 196 Malalasekera, G. P., 30–34, 165, 166, 220, 320–21n57 Malaya, 22, 61 Malayan Communist Party (MCP), 111 Malay Muslims, 295 Malaysia, 101, 235 Manat, Maha Phra, 123, 141, 142, 143–44 Manggon Jarernsataapon. See Kittivudho Mao Zedong, 23, 182 Martin, Edward, 41 Martin, Graham, 209–10, 213, 214 Marxism, 22–23, 26–27, 86, 206, 242 McCarthyism, 91 McDaniel, Justin, 105 Meader, James L., 54 Mekong River, 106, 126–27, 133, 232, 244 Mendenhall, Joseph A., 158, 159 Meyer, Cord, 126 Mongkol Thepmuni, Phra, 228 Mongolia, 160, 234–36 Moral Rearmament Army (MRA), 7, 79–85, 103, 148–49; Christian values and, 10, 79–80; “four absolutes” of, 81, 85; Phimolatham and, 79, 80, 83–85, 85, 88, 101, 149, 207, 283; Thai clerical distrust of, 149; The Vanishing Island musical, 82–83 Morrell, David, 242 Mount Fuji, 286 Mus, Paul, 107, 155–56 Muslims. See Islam Mutugun, Pin, 5, 6, 215, 216, 218, 238, 239 My Lai massacre, 236 Nai Prasert Supsunthon, 22 Nakayama, Rin, 161 Nakhon Pathom killings, 275, 278 Nakhon Phanom (Thai province), 206 Naowarat Phongpaiboon, 268 Narateep Ponphapan, 71 Narong Kittikachorn, 275

National Administrative Reform Association (NARA), 281 National Administrative Reform Council (NARC), 279, 282 National Committee for a Free Europe, 35 National Conference of Christians and Jews, 56 National Cultural Council (Thailand), 18–19 National Liberation Front (Vietnam), 191 National Security Council (NSC): Directive 162/2 (1953), 43, 44, 55; Directive 5405 (1954) and revised version, 47, 48, 55 National Student Center of Thailand (NSCT), 274, 275, 276, 277 Navapol, 11, 258–62, 266, 273, 280, 281; member rally, 277–78 Navarre plan, 47 Neo-Confucianism, 154 Neo Lao Haksat (Lao Patriotic Front), 134 Nepal, 37, 61, 161, 164, 234 New Force party (Thai), 266 Ne Win, 166, 170, 173 Ngo Dinh Diem. See Diem, Ngo Dinh Nguyen Cao Ky. See Ky, Nguyen Cao Nguyen Chanh Thi, 208 Nguyen Khanh, 186–87, 191, 208 Nguyen Ngoc Tho, 157 Nguyen Thang Thi, 330n38 Nirvana, 72, 73, 268 Nixon, Pat, 49 Nixon, Richard M., 48, 49–51, 52, 234 non-Theravada Buddhism, 107–8 Norodom Sihanouk. See Sihanouk, Prince North Vietnam, 64, 160, 181–82, 189, 232, 235, 236, 240; U.S. bombing of, 191, 199, 200. See also Vietnam War North Vietnamese Army, 191 NSC. See National Security Council Nu, U. See U Nu nuclear weapons, 46, 160–61, 303n21 October 3 (1976) demonstration, 276, 277–78

369

Y7216.indb 369

7/20/17 9:51 AM

i ndex October 6 (1976) massacre, 278–80, 285, 294 October 14 (1973) massacre, 241–42, 244, 245, 246, 252, 270 Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), 110–11 One-Pillar pagoda (Hanoi), 154 Operation Rolling Thunder, 191 Operations Coordinating Board (OCB), 41–45, 47, 54–64, 67, 303n8; Nixon recommendations to, 52 opium trade, 203 Orthodox Church, 42 Orwick, Dana, 202–3, 205, 207, 208 Outline Plan for Operations, 41, 302n7; final version (January 1957), 57–59, 60–61 outreach programs. See rural areas Overton, Leonard, 125, 126, 132–33, 163, 164 Oxford group, 80 Pali language, 37, 78, 113, 121, 133, 141, 171 Pali-Mathayom schools, 113, 121, 122, 123, 124 Pali scholarship, 202 pamphlets scandal, 92–94, 95 Panchen Lama, 61–62 Pang Khat, 237–38, 239 Pathet Lao (PL), 81, 132, 134–35, 137, 140; influence on monkhood, 125; takeover of Laos, 244, 256 Paul VI, Pope, 207 Peace Corps (U.S.), 206 Peagam, Norman, 259 Peasants Federation of Thailand (PFT), 242–43, 261 Phae Yanawaro, Maha Phra, 96 Pham Huy Ty, 216–17, 218 Phao Sriyanond, 39, 49, 81, 86 Phibun Songkram, 18, 19, 21–22, 39, 49, 87, 89; communist-ordained monks and, 100; death in Japan (1964) of, 86; Moral Rearmament Army and, 79, 81, 83; Phimolatham’s relationship, 90–91; Thai festival and, 71, 72, 73–74, 77–78; Thai political expulsion of, 81, 86, 87 Phimolatham, Phra, 7, 8, 9, 10, 71, 74–85, 84; activism (1950s) of, 289–90; advocation of his rehabilitation, 241, 243, 244, 250–54; Asia Foundation and, 104–5,

106, 107, 123–24, 142–45; birthplace of, 88, 104, 287; Burmese Buddhist ties, 74–79, 88, 101, 102, 121, 289, 290; charges against, 95–105, 249; disrobement of, 96, 97, 98–99; imprisonment of (1962–66), 95, 99–103, 194, 196; internationalism of, 88, 91, 101, 102, 139, 207, 283, 289, 293; Kittisophana’s rivalry with, 79, 89–90, 124, 149, 172; Kittivudho contrasted with, 229, 294; Mahanikay order and, 88–89, 101, 228; martyr status of, 145; memoirs (1987) of, 76, 77, 101; monk champions of, 250–55; monk-statesman role of, 100; Moral Rearmament Army and, 79, 80, 83–85, 85, 88, 101, 283; pan-Buddhist outlook of, 77, 79; persecution of (1959–62), 65–66, 89–93, 95–103, 142, 145, 172, 229, 294; Phibun relationship, 90–91, 100; reinstatement of, 225, 274, 283–84; special clerical title for, 78, 101; vipassana and, 75, 101, 102, 228, 289; Wat Mahathat and, 113, 123, 229, 254, 284; world tour of, 83–85, 151 Phnom Penh: Buddhist anti-French demonstration (1942), 18, 238, 247; Buddhist festival (1957), 67–69 Phnom Penh Conference of World Fellowship of Buddhists (1961), 152, 153, 156, 159–64, 182–83, 187–88, 222 Phongpaiboon. See Naowarat Phongpaiboon Phoui Sananikone, 136 Phra Pathom pagoda, 198, 203 Phu Po hill, 1–2, 7 Pierson, Harry H., 107, 121, 123, 124, 125, 129, 142–43, 166; Kittisophana’s U.S. tour and, 146–47 Pin Malakul, M. L. See Malakul, M. L., Pin Pin Mutugun. See Mutugun, Pin Pius XII, Pope, 84, 178 Pol Pot, 240–41 Pongsak, Phra, 227, 230, 233, 267 Poon, Princess (Poonphitsamai Ditsakun), 179, 180, 181, 185–86, 188, 198, 199, 203, 285; background of, 192–93; Buddhist social engagement and, 220;

370

Y7216.indb 370

7/20/17 9:51 AM

index rural areas, 118–31; Asia Foundation and, 107, 291–92; communist threat in, 109, 194; farmer protests, 242–43, 244, 247, 250, 294; Jittaphawan college program, 230–31; Klausner ethnographic study, 108–10; land distribution, 242, 247; secondary education, 120–26, 127; Thai mobile development programs, 29, 193–99, 202–4, 220–21, 230, 231, 233, 255; Thai monks and, 10, 109–10, 127, 220, 229–30, 249–50 Rusk, Dean, 210, 213 Rusk Commission, 226 Ruth, Richard, 224

failed mission of, 213; Ninth Buddhist Conference and, 220, 221, 222; Sarnath conference diary of, 192, 193; South Vietnamese Buddhist crisis and, 209–13, 292; Wat Boworniwet visit by, 273; WFB and, 193, 205–6, 208, 243, 292; world tour (1965) of, 205–8 Prabang Buddha, 131 Pradit Disawat, 236–37n37 Prados, John, 155 Pramoj. See Kukrit Pramoj, M. R. Praphas Charusathien, 270–72, 274–75, 276 Preah Chanthavanno Ong Mean, 239–40 Pridi Phanomyong, 21, 22, 39, 90 Program for People to People Partnership, 59 Psychological Strategy Board (PSB), 41, 112 Pui Rochanapuranonda, Nai, 175, 178 Pun Punyasiri. See Wannarat, Somdej Phra

Saigon, fall of (1975), 225 Saiyudh Kerdphol, 264 Samudavanija, Chai-anan, 242 Sa-ngad Chaloryu, 279 sangha (monkhood), 27, 186; Laos, 125, 131, 134, 135, 136, 140, 144; Thailand, 87, 89–92, 99, 101, 122, 129, 171, 174, 179, 195, 202, 244; Vietnam, 153 (see also South Vietnam) Sangha Administrative Acts (Thailand): 1902, 87, 92–93; 1941, 87–88, 89, 92; 1961, 136; 1962, 99, 101, 171, 174 Sanit Thamaniyom, Nai, 24 Santiban (Thai political police), 91–94 Sanya Dharmasakti, 176–77, 179, 209, 210, 211–12, 220 Sarit Thanat, 81, 86, 88, 91, 92, 93, 136, 171, 175; authoritarianism of, 99, 101, 103, 172, 193, 225, 281; death of, 193, 194; mobile development program of, 193–98; Phimolatham’s disrobement order and, 98; South Vietnam crisis and, 176, 177 Sarnath Conference of World Fellowship of Buddhists (1964), 185–93, 212, 220; Princess Poon’s diary of, 192–93, 207; repercussions of, 190–91, 192 Sasana (ecclesiastical), 27 Sasanasophana, Phra, 97 Satanasophon, Phra, 90, 225, 244, 250, 252, 253–54 Satta Panni cave, 36–37, 66

Quang, Thich Tri, 210–16, 219, 221 Queen’s Cobra Regiment (Thai), 224, 245 Radhakrishnan, Sarvepalli, 185 Radio Free Asia, 35 Radio Free Europe, 35 Radio Kabul, 164 Radio Peking, 94 Ramparts (magazine), 225 RAND Corporation, 134 Rangoon memorial (1951), 34, 75–76 Rangoon synod (1954–56). See Sixth Great Buddhist Synod Rangoon University, 25 Red Gaurs, 258–59, 260, 278, 283 Religious Affairs Department (Laos), 135 Religious Affairs Department (Thailand), 97, 109, 113–14, 121, 124, 196, 203, 217, 218, 238, 245 Reynolds, E. Bruce, 19 Rockefeller, John D., III, 63 Rockefeller Foundation, 62 Rongrian Rat Khong Wat (RRK) schools, 121, 124 Royal Lao Government (RLG), 81, 125, 131, 140, 141

371

Y7216.indb 371

7/20/17 9:51 AM

i ndex Sawat Plampongsarn, 277 Sayagyi U Ba Khin, 75, 79 Scarborough, Joel, 142–43 Schnee, Alexander, 169 SEATO, 200 Second Indochina War. See Vietnam War Second World War. See World War II self-immolation, 168, 173–74, 175, 213, 233 Senanayake, D. S., 32 Seni Pramoj, 265–66, 270–71, 272, 274–76 September 29 demonstration (1976), 276–77 Seri Thai (Free Thai), 21 Seventh Day Adventists, 8 Sheeks, Robert B., 111 Shintoism, 14 Siam. See Thailand Siam Rath (newspaper), 143 Siang Praphutatham (newspaper), 135 Sihanouk, Prince (Cambodia), 160, 168, 232, 237, 238 Singapore, 235 Sinhala Theravada Buddhism, 3, 54 Sirik Matak, Prince, 232, 237 Sixth Great Buddhist Synod (1954–56, Rangoon), 35–38, 40, 45, 46, 54, 64–67, 74, 89, 288; Chinese communist delegates to, 66, 67, 70, 82, 102; grand finale of, 67, 83; number of attendees, 60–61; Phimolatham and, 65–66, 101; revised scriptures and, 71; U.S. response to, 65; vipissana community and, 75 Smith, Walter Bedell, 48, 50–51 Socialist Party of Thailand, 264 Society for the Promotion of Buddhism (Thai), 49 Soda, Phra Maha, 142 Somboon Palasathira, H. E., 207 Somboon Suksanram, 244, 245, 269 Somkuan Harikul, 258 Song Ngoc Thanh, 238 Son My massacre, 236 Son Ngoc Thanh, 238 Southeast Asia Conference for Moral Rearmament (1953–54, Bangkok), 80–81 Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), 200

South Vietnam: Asia Foundation and, 9, 38, 127, 156–57; Buddhist crisis in, 167–88, 191, 192, 200–201; Buddhist institutional revival (1950s), 33, 64, 153–54; Buddhist monks’ self-immolation, 168, 173–74, 175, 213, 233; Buddhist social action, 5, 10, 152, 155–59, 162, 247; Buddhist Struggle Movement, 208–20, 221, 222, 247, 292; Catholicism and, 64, 152–53, 154, 157, 158, 159; communist victories (1975), 10– 11; coups, 186–87, 191, 208; fall of Saigon (1975), 225; Klausner and, 191, 192; Mahayana Buddhism, 151, 152, 235; Moral Rearmament Army and, 83; Nixon’s vice-presidential visit to, 49–50; rejection of nationwide election (1957), 64; 17th parallel and, 46, 64; U.S. backing of, 64, 186, 219; WFB and, 161–62, 191; World Buddhist Sangha Council delegation, 215–16. See also Vietnam War Soviet Union, 28, 29, 46, 50; Asian Buddhist Conference (1970) and, 234–36; Buddhism and, 63, 160, 189, 234, 288; dissolution of (1991), 1; Moral Rearmament Army and, 82–83; Princess Poon’s tour and, 207–8; Sri Lanka’s first ambassador to, 30; U.S. religious values vs., 40, 42 Sri Lanka. See Ceylon Sriprinya Ramaxoud, 211, 212 Staats, Elmer, 41, 43, 44, 45, 51–52, 53 Stanton, Edwin F., 112, 148 State Department (U.S.), 25, 28, 29, 42, 54, 90, 226, 237, 252, 263; “Buddhist Committee,” 62, 63; Cambodian Buddhist festival (1957) and, 67–69; Cold War front organizations, 69, 111; distrust of Navapol, 259–60; Princess Poon’s tour and, 205; South Vietnam crisis and, 209–10 Story, Francis, 27 Strom, Carl W., 68, 69 Struggle Movement, 208–20, 221, 222, 247, 292 Stuart-Fox, Martin, 138 Sudsai Hatsadin (father), 258 Suebsai Hatsadin (son), 258

372

Y7216.indb 372

7/20/17 9:51 AM

index Sukich Nimmanheminda, 199 Sullivan, John, 163–64, 166, 180, 181 Suzuki, T. D., 268 Tagore, Rabindranath, 13 Taiwan, 161 Taoism, 154 Taquay, Charles H., 44 Taylor, Maxwell, 191 Temple of the Emerald Buddha, 15, 20 Temple of the Tooth (Kandy), 31 Thailand, 10, 43, 65–103; Burma and, 28–29, 70–79, 289; Cambodian monks’ delegation to, 238–41, 242; Cold War impact on, 11–12, 21–39, 85, 86–95, 103, 106, 283; conservative Buddhist hierarchy of, 65–66, 224; conservative elite of, 231–32, 279; coup (1932), 87; coup (1947), 90; coup (1957), 86, 91, 92; coup (1976), 279–82; coup (1977), 283; ecclesiastical pressures (1970s), 10–11, 241–44, 250–55; Japanese occupation (1941) of, 6–7, 13–16, 18–20, 71, 224, 267, 287, 290; military dictatorship of, 179, 214, 233, 242, 270–76; mobile development program (see rural areas); Moral Rearmament Army and, 83–84, 103; Muslim minority, 178, 261, 295; non-colonial history of, 4–5, 108, 287; October 3 (1976) demonstration, 276, 277–78; October 6 (1976) massacre, 278–80, 285, 294; October 14 (1973) massacre, 241–42, 244, 245, 246, 252, 270; right-wing repression, 11, 18, 39, 49, 81, 86, 90–91, 179, 258–66, 270–75, 280–82; September 29 demonstration (1976), 276–77; Theravada Buddhism and, 72, 74, 78, 108, 151, 217, 218, 219, 235, 298; U.S. military pullout, 262–66; U.S. military-strategic alliance, 8, 9, 22, 39, 70, 86, 103, 112, 199–201, 206, 219–20, 245, 249–50; Vietnam War and, 224–55 thammacarit (wandering dharma), 196–97, 200, 231, 255, 293, 326–27n37 Thammasat University, 247, 249, 278, 279, 280

thammathut (ambassadors of the dharma), 196–98, 199, 203, 204, 220, 230, 255, 293 Thammayut monastic order, 5, 86–87, 88– 93, 96–99, 103, 123, 172, 243, 244; interests of, 105; Lao minority and, 139, 140, 141; Mahamakuta University and, 113, 120, 140, 142, 143; Mahanikay tensions with, 138–40, 173; Mahawirawong and, 172; Phimolatham’s challenge to, 289–90; Princess Poon and, 193; resistance to change of, 117; thammathut program and, 196–98; Ubon province and, 128–29. See also Wat Boworniwet Thanat Khoman, 199, 200, 208, 210–11, 213, 214, 265 Thanin Kraivixien, 279, 280, 281–82, 283 Thanom Kittikachorn, 175, 176, 198, 203, 210, 211, 220; fall of (1973), 242; ordination as monk (1976), 272–73, 275; protests against, 274, 275–78, 280; repatriation of (1976), 270, 272–78 Thant, U. See U Thant Thao Nhouy Abhay, 133–34, 138, 158–59 Thawisan Ladawan, 280–81 Thep Muni, Phra, 24 Theravada Buddhism, 3, 9, 15, 61, 71; Asia Foundation offices and, 38–39; Chinese communist activity and, 61–62; core countries, 72, 74, 78, 235 (see also Thailand); dominance in Southeast Asia, 14; folk practices and, 109; increasing interconnections and, 29–30; Laos and, 179, 180, 235; Phimolatham’s world tour and, 83–85; political disengagement and, 13, 150, 179, 184; Prabang Buddha and, 131; Sinhalese tradition, 3, 54; Sixth Great Buddhist Synod and, 36–37, 38, 61; Somdel rank and, 171; South Vietnam and, 209, 212; U.S. Cold War policy and, 55–58, 65–66, 288–89; vipassana and, 75 Thi, Nguyen Chanh, 208 Thich Don Hau, 236 Thich Quang Duc, 168, 169, 175, 181–82, 210 Thich Tam Chau, 211, 212, 215–20, 222–23 Thich Thien Hao, 181–82 Thich Thien Minh, 212

373

Y7216.indb 373

7/20/17 9:51 AM

i ndex Thich Tinh Khiet, 187 Thich Tri Do, 181 Thich Tri Phap, 209, 212, 217 Thich Tri Quang, 210–16, 219, 221 Thieu, Nguyen Van, 208, 232 Tho, Nguyen Ngoc, 157 Thongbai Inthathata, 251 Tibet, 67, 106, 150, 160, 182, 185, 235 Tokyo Conference of World Fellowship of Buddhists (1978), 284–86 Tonisson, Karl, 19–20 Tonkin Gulf Resolution (1964), 200 Topmiller, Robert J., 208–9 Tran Van Giau, 8–9 Tran Van Huong, 186, 187, 191 Trong Nhan, 239 Truman, Harry S., 40, 41, 44 Truyen, Mai Tho, 153, 154, 156, 158, 162, 178, 187 Ty, Pham Huy, 216–17, 218 U Ba Khin, 75, 76, 78 Ubon (Thai province), 106, 128–29; Klausner’s ethnographic research in, 107–8, 113, 133 U Chan Htoon. See Htoon, U Chan Ulan Bator Asian Buddhist Conference (1970), 234–36, 294 United Buddhist Church (UBC), 187, 212 United Kingdom, 4, 80, 101, 148–50, 193 United Nations, 161, 168, 169, 175, 178, 186 University of Wisconsin, Madison, 147–48 U Nu, 24–29, 71, 170; anticommunist credentials of, 27, 35, 66; Buchman’s meeting with, 83; Burmese neutralism and, 67, 82; Sixth Great Buddhist Synod and, 35–36, 66; Thai Buddhist festival (1957) and, 71, 72–74 U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), 226, 256 U.S. Information Agency (USIA), 54, 59; Buddhist Cold War policy, 62, 63; religious advisor to, 57 U.S. Information Service (USIS), 24, 26, 42, 57, 108–9, 110, 196; Laos and, 106, 135, 136, 137–38

U Thant, 83, 174, 178 U Thi Han, 169 Vajiralongkorn, Crown Prince, 202, 277 Vajiravudh, King, 258 Vatican, 32, 42, 84, 163, 167, 207 Victoria, Brian, 7, 268 Vien Hoa Dao, 212, 219, 222 Viet Cong, 167, 232 Viet Minh, 8–9, 45–47, 50, 64, 81, 218 Vietnam, 3, 14, 22, 47, 49; folk religious culture of, 154; invasion/occupation of Cambodia (1978) by, 284; Lao military agreement (1975) with, 256; partition (1954) of, 46–47, 64, 131, 152, 153, 154; repression of Buddhists in, 262; Thai restored relations (1976) with, 279; WFB and, 33, 153–54, 262. See also ethnic Vietnamese; North Vietnam; South Vietnam Vietnam War, 64, 224–55; Buddhism and, 234, 236–41; Cambodia and, 232, 233–34, 239–41; communist victory (1975), 10–11, 225; Thai participation in, 224, 245, 293–94; U.S. role in, 191–92, 199–200, 234, 236, 241, 245; U.S. student protests against, 225 Village Scouts (Thai), 257–58, 260, 276, 278, 283 Vinaya (monastic code), 247–48 vipassana (insight meditation), 74–75, 101, 102, 103, 228–29, 289 Virawongse, Somdej Phra Maha, 244, 273 Voice of America, 207 Voice of the People of Thailand, 206 Vo Nguyen Giap, 45 Vongvichit, Phoumi, 135 Wachara Iamchot, 247, 248 Wachirayanawong, 89, 91–92 Wanarat, Phra, 89. See also Kittisophana Wanchan Atakayano, Phra, 218–19 Wannarat, Somdej Phra (Pun Punyasiri), 229, 241–44 Wat Benjamabophit, 20, 71, 72 Wat Boworniwet, 73, 113, 143, 272–74, 276, 277, 278

374

Y7216.indb 374

7/20/17 9:51 AM

index Wat Dusitaram, 244, 248–49 Wat Mahathat, 20, 71, 74, 75, 81, 90, 101, 104, 123, 196; Jud’s refuge at, 249; Kittivudho and, 229–30; monks’ protest at, 244, 250–53; Phimolatham and, 113, 123, 229, 254, 284; three scandals, 91–99, 142, 143, 149, 228; vipassana training, 228–29. See also Mahachulalongkorn University Wat Makut Kasattriyaram, 202, 209 Wat Nang Leang, 8–9 Wat Paknam, 228, 229 Wat Phra Kaeo, 15, 19 Wat Rajabopit, 252–53 Watthana Khieowimon, 259–60, 277–78, 281 Westmoreland, William, 191 WFB. See World Fellowship of Buddhists Whitehouse, Charles, 265, 279–80 Wilbur, Brayton, 35 Wild Tiger Corps (Thai), 258 Williams, Hayden, 225, 226 Wira Musikaphong, 274 Wirayarn Muni, 24 Wirayut Watthananusorn, 96, 98 Wisuttaa, Phra, 253 Wongsanuvair, Prince, 151 World Buddhist Sangha Council, 215–16 World Fellowship of Buddhists (WFB), 9, 10, 30, 149, 159–69, 179–84, 242; aims and successes of, 32, 163; Asia Foundation and, 166, 180; Bangkok gathering (1958), 106–7, 159; Cambodia and, 33, 152, 159–66; communist participants, 160–61, 167, 180, 181; communist split from, 234, 236; founding of (1950), 30, 32–33, 34, 153, 288; growth and development of, 292–93; Htoon’s arrest and, 170, 173, 179; institutional weakness of, 163, 169, 179, 292; Malalasekera as first president of, 33;

monks’ social action and, 155–56, 186, 192, 200; nonpolitical position of, 221; Princess Poon and, 193, 205–6, 208, 243, 292; relocation of secretariat, 163–66, 170, 173, 177, 179, 180, 190, 201; South Vietnam and, 161–62, 191; Ulan Bator conference near-boycott by, 235, 236; Vietnamese membership, 153–54, 262 — —world conferences: Fourth (1956, Kathmandu), 61, 69, 106, 160; Sixth (1961, Phnom Penh), 152, 153, 156, 159–64, 182–83, 187–88, 222; Seventh (1964, Sarnath), 185–93, 207, 212, 220; Ninth (1966, Chiang Mai), 220–23; Eleventh (1976, Bangkok), 262, 263–64, 284–85; Twelfth (1978, Tokyo), 284–86 World War II, 48, 59, 287; defeat of Japan, 22; Moral Rearmament Army and, 80; South Asian occupation, 6–7, 13–21, 71, 131, 224, 282, 286 Xa Loi pagoda (Saigon), 155, 156, 174, 175, 187 xenophobia, 102, 289 Yale University, 107, 108, 109, 116, 134, 144, 148, 155, 166 Yamashita, Seishin, 69 Yanasangwon, Phra, 272–73, 274, 278 Yot Thephatsadin, 271 Young, Jane, 54 Young, Kenneth T., 55–58 Young Men’s Buddhist Association, 4 Zen Buddhism, 7, 13, 17, 20, 268, 269 Zhao Buzhu, 189–90

375

Y7216.indb 375

7/20/17 9:51 AM