[Buddha-l] Our correspondent on irreversible changes in Burma

[jkirk]

http://tinyurl.com/yuy2m9
>From The Times
September 29, 2007 

September 29, 2007
‘Loving kindness’ will beat the generals

Our correspondent on irreversible changes in Burma
Maung Zarni 

As the events unfolded this week in Rangoon, my mind wandered back to the
bedtime stories my great-grandmother told me of a bloody encounter in the
1930s in my native Mandalay. It was between the world-conquering power of
the British Raj and the soft power of the world-renouncers, the peaceful and
unarmed Buddhist monks and nuns, 17 of whom were mown down. How gallantly
they had stood up to the British Raj on behalf of Burma’s poor, she said. 

Were she alive today, Granny would recognise the instant crackdown, the
baton blows, machinegun bursts, pools of blood, public outrage – and perhaps
the downfall of the hated regime. 

The involvement of monks in politics goes back to before the colonial era in
Burma. Buddhism and its monasteries have for centuries been the catalystic
force that mobilised the masses against unjust rulers. Buddhism has deep
roots in both rural and urban Burma; it is the bond that unites the main
groups: the dominant Burmese, the Shans, the Mons, the Karens and the
Arakanese; the monasteries are the meeting places where the rich and the
powerful meet the poor and the downtrodden. 

Because most monks are drawn primarily not from urban elite families but
rather from rural Burma, one of the most likely outcomes of the present
“monks power” movement is the political awakening of rural communities that
had hitherto remained untapped by the Western-inspired, urban-middle-class,
pro-democracy opposition. ............[more]


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