[Buddha-l] religious pluralism in Asia

[Dan Lusthaus]

> Wouldn't this ban
> also apply to Dutch missionary activities?

The Dutch had to promise to refrain from missionary activities which, since
they were actual Merchants and fairly secular and worldly in their outlook,
they happily agreed to.

I guess whether to view the whole picture as basically religious persecution
or political in nature, we might think of it this way (and to cast a bit
more Buddhist-relevant data into the mix). The Japanese Imperial rulers
controlled the sangha, deciding not only who could or couldn't be ordained,
or abbot of such-and-such a temple, etc., but how many new initiants could
be inducted in any given year, and the ceremonies were done under Imperial
auspices. Since the larger temples were economically feudal (a practice that
goes back to India, and was very much the case in China, Korea as well as
Japan -- Tibet takes this all to the nth degree), meaning (briefly) that
certain farmlands, etc., adjacent to or near such temples were indentured to
the monastery, required to provide the monks (and occasionally nuns) with
food, expenses, maintainance and temple upkeep, etc., in a system where the
farmers and their land officially belonged to the monastery, the ability to
flourish depended greatly on the largesse of the ruling powers. Not
unexpectedly, that made the monastics supporters and, from time to time,
agents of their political benefactors. The rulers (for much of Japanese
history, the Emperor was the figurehead, but local clans ruled with
occasional national prominence) called the shots. So to the Japanese, the
Vatican was a mirror-image. While people in the west might think of the
Vatican as a political institution only secondarily to its religious role,
it's not that easy. At that time it controlled kings and armies -- not just
salvation-dispensing Jesuits -- and had not yet completely dispensed with
the nomenclature of pope as Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, etc.
Missionaries in Japan, whatever their actual nationalities, were united in
their loyalty to the Vatican, so the Vatican, in the eyes of the Japanese,
was clearly calling the shots. The Pope was the "other" Emperor -- maybe a
figurehead or maybe an actual controlling ruler. The missionaries' own
rhetoric would not have indicated otherwise. The missionaries' job, then,
would be to "soften" the Japanese population (which had its own grievances
againsts the brutalities and injustices of the ruling powers -- always
fodder for missionaries) for the incursion of the foreign Emperor's forces.
The Christian clerics were, therefore, merely transparent agents of foreign
political forces infecting the Japanese populace, as much manipulatable
puppets as the Buddhist clergy. It is also not accidental that at major
times of anti-Buddhist purges in East Asia, the first and loudest charge is
that Buddhism is a "foreign" religion that pollutes the pure national
virtues.

I think this is important even today when following media coverage of
Beijing's policies toward Christianity and Vatican. The concern is usually
with foreign interference (and China has its own disasterous history with
the 3 Ms, such as those which precipitated the Boxer Rebellion), not what
anyone happens to believe or whatever rituals, etc. they might engage in.
Churchs are places where people meet, instructions are fed from above, and
networks are secretly (meaning out of viewing by the govt.) developed and
deployed. Hence China's policy has been to accept Chinese Catholicism that
rejects the authority of the Vatican, but not those who offer allegiance to
that "foreign power." Likewise for Chinese Protestants. Homegrown is fine,
foreign allegiance is not.

As for the jihadi and Hindutva issues, I agree pretty much with your
assessment.

best,
Dan