Religion in Southeast Asia: An Encyclopedia of Faiths and Cultures

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EDUCATION

Education in Southeast Asia is acknowledged as an issue of central developmental concern. The policy goals established are implemented with varying degrees of success, depending on the historical and contextual realities of a given region. The diversity that exists both across Southeast Asia and internally within a particular nation makes any broad-stroke understanding of education problematic. This diversity is manifest in many forms, including language, culture, religion, and history as well as political and economic stability, all of which have an impact on the educational landscape. Education has certainly been variously influenced by the legacy of colonial presence, including British presence in Myanmar, Malaysia, and Singapore; the Portuguese presence in Timor-Lester; the French in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam; and the Spanish and American presence in the Philippines. There is much validity in Vina Mazumdar’s assertion that education in the region is a compromise between indigenous knowledge systems and Western-imposed systems. Religious, cultural, and ideological factors all serve to shape emerging movements, which develop in response to particular histories of imperialism. Thailand, which has no such Western colonial legacy, has a different historical narrative in which education is understood, though Thailand remains influenced by the globalizing forces that affect all countries in Southeast Asia.

The diverse subcontinent of Southeast Asia makes it difficult to form a coherent narrative of the region as a whole. Despite this reality, however, education stands tall, lying at the heart of each nation’s vision for the future. Educational goals and initiatives are statements of intent and hope that cannot shy away from challenging questions about political and economic infrastructure, religion, national and minority group identity, urban and rural shifts, gender, employment, justice, and equality. Education in the region has, therefore, become one of the most important areas of twenty-first-century research and concern, finally beginning to receive the attention it deserves.

Adrian Bird

Political and economic stability are essential components for developing an effective infrastructure for educational progress. The Republic of Indonesia is acknowledged as one of the few countries in Southeast Asia to have achieved close to universal basic education, a success attributable to a range of factors, including postindependence political consolidation, decentralized educational control, and economic development. The education system in Singapore has also received international acclaim, particularly in the area of mathematics and science. The government of Singapore has placed a high priority on education since coming to power in 1959, emphasizing the importance of education in terms of national economic development and social cohesion. A strong economy has allowed for the development of a strong educational infrastructure at primary, secondary, and tertiary levels. Where such stability is less established, foundations are being laid and educational goals remain largely future oriented. Timor-Leste achieved independence in 2002, following Portuguese colonial rule and Indonesian military occupation, and is currently in the process of developing an education system from the vantage point of freedom of self-determination. This development, under the broad concept of “decolonization,” faces the added challenge of economic underdevelopment, which makes Timor-Leste one of the poorest nations in the region, despite optimistic projections for economic growth in the coming years. Leaders in Laos are working to overcome the effects of colonial history and civil revolution in order to rise above their externally identified status as “least developed country.” Here, education is considered to be a critical component in attaining the broader goals of poverty reduction and economic growth.

While acknowledging the problematic nature of any broad-stroke themes due to contextual specific items, there are important issues that recur in dialogue on education in Southeast Asia. These include, but are not limited to, issues of gender, the use of language in the midst of multilinguistic plurality, and education for minority groups.

In terms of student enrollment, Southeast Asia is above the world average for female participation, and much progress has been made in overcoming the challenges of social-cultural constraints to female education, particularly in Indonesia and the Philippines. Certainly the issue of gender remains critical, as demonstrated by the seriousness of this issue in the policy goals of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The issue of gender is of course much more complex than assessing educational enrollment and participation figures, yet the fact that these complexities are being acknowledged is certainly a positive step.

Diversity not only exists across Southeast Asia, but it is also intrinsic to the fabric of each nation. The existence of ethnic and religious minorities in many Southeast Asian countries has an impact on both educational planning and implementation. While ethnic minority rights have been acknowledged as key issues within educational planning forums, this can at times be held in tension with the pursuit of a national identity. The promotion of the dominant Burman identity in Myanmar, for example, exists at the expense of minority ethnic and religious groups in the country, leading to continued interethnic tensions within the nation.

The selection of language within educational institutions is also a central issue of contention, particularly in the midst of ethnic and linguistic diversity. There are a variety of strategies adopted to deal with this tension. Indonesia, a nation of over 6,000 islands and 256 linguistic groups, applies a policy of transitional bilingualism in which the early education years are conducted in the mother tongue of the inhabitants, while the later years are conducted in the national language, Bahasa Indonesia. Until recently, the use of Thai dialect within the system of education of Thailand has failed to meet the needs of the Malay-speaking Muslims in the south of the country.

A further tension to be noted exists between traditional and modern, secular forms of education. This tension exists particularly where religious institutions have traditionally been responsible for education. Examples include the role of the Buddhist monk in the monastic setting of pre-Independence Burma, or the role of Islamic clerics in the pesantren (Islamic boarding leaning centers/mosques) of Indonesia. Secular models of education thus add to the complexity of the educational paradigm, posing questions about the goals and implemental strategies to be adopted within the educational process. The emergence of Muhammadiyah in Indonesia is a modernist and reformist Muslim movement that seeks to work within this tension. Considered the largest modernist movement in Southeast Asia, Muhammadiyah integrates “secular” subjects alongside traditional Islamic teachings taught previously in the pesantren. Across Southeast Asia, public schools exist alongside private schools, offering a breadth of diversity to meet the needs of majority and minority religious groups.

Other factors worthy of note include the continued disparity between the urban-rural educational contexts, the establishment and development of educational institutions from primary to tertiary levels, and the adequate supply and training of teachers at all levels. A further consideration exists as countries across Southeast Asia seek to decentralize the education structure and increase the capacity of educational efforts across the nation. Financial investment, the acquisition of economic support to finance such efforts, is both enormous and open to corruption at various levels, providing another source of challenge to the effective implementation of educational development.

Adrian Bird

See also: Buddhism; Cambodia; Colonialism; Ethnicity; Islam; Laos, Malaysia; Minorities; Muhammadiyah; Pesantren; Singapore; Thailand; Timor Leste (East Timor); Vietnam; Women.

ENGAGED BUDDHISM

Engaged Buddhism, also known as Socially Engaged Buddhism, is a movement of nonviolent social, political, economic, and environmental activism that developed in the Buddhist world in the twentieth century and continues in the twenty-first. Engaged Buddhism is found throughout Buddhist Asia as well as the West. It did not begin from a single founder or single national struggle, but arose again and again in separate responses to the crises and dilemmas facing the Buddhist world in the twentieth century—the war in Vietnam, the Chinese occupation of Tibet, the Cambodian Holocaust, deep poverty in Sri Lanka, the caste system in India, the military dictatorship in Burma/Myanmar, colonialism and its aftermath, the suppression of women, and the challenges of modernization and Westernization. This article will focus on the movement in Southeast Asian countries.

Part of a group of nearly 10,000 South Vietnamese march across a bridge over the Perfume River in Hue during a non-violent demonstration against the policies of the Saigon government and President Nguyen Cao Ky, on March 3, 1966. (AP Images/Eddie Adams)

The first to use the term “Engaged Buddhism” was Vietnamese Zen master and Engaged Buddhist leader Thich Nhat Hanh, who during the Vietnam War advocated that Buddhism be “engagé,” French for pledged or involved, having a sense of responsibility to society. Nhat Hanh himself was influenced by the Chinese monk Venerable Yin Shun, an advocate of “Humanistic Buddhism,” a this-worldly Buddhism that encourages compassionate bodhisattva action in daily life. Engaged Buddhism has received inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi’s pioneering of nonviolent social activism, along with Christian charitable activities and modern, Western forms of social and political analysis. However, Engaged Buddhism is fundamentally Buddhist. At its base, it is a practical expression of the foundational Buddhist values of compassion and loving-kindness. Engaged Buddhism does not ask Buddhists to make a choice between traditional Buddhist spirituality, such as meditation, and social action; it sees them as two sides of a single coin. For example, Thich Nhat Hanh says that one needs to “be peace” in order to make peace (Hanh 1987). That is, one practices meditation, generosity, moral self-discipline, etc., in order to become more selfless and compassionate and in order to develop inner strength and inner peace. One should then be in a better condition to “make peace” and be helpful to society.

Engaged Buddhism has played a central role in major twentieth- and twenty-first-century conflicts.

Vietnam

During the war in Vietnam, Buddhist monks, nuns, and laypersons engaged in a “Struggle Movement” to try to end the war, being especially effective from 1963 to 1966. Striving to maintain their compassion for all persons on both sides of the war, they created a “Third Way” alternative to the warring sides of the (Communist) North and (U.S. allied) South; this Third Way practiced principled nonviolence and pledged to be against no one but only on the side of life. One of their major leaders and their spokesperson in the West was Thich Nhat Hanh.

The dilemma of the Vietnamese Struggle Movement was to find ways powerful enough to bring the war to an end without themselves engaging in violence. They staged street protests, strikes, and boycotts with massive public support and succeeded in bringing down successive South Vietnamese governments that they perceived as being too intent on prosecuting the war. Some individuals immolated themselves in order to try to move others so deeply that they would want to stop supporting the war, though this action was never endorsed by the movement’s leadership. The movement also worked to alleviate what suffering they could, evacuating villages caught in the cross-fire of battle, reconstructing destroyed villages, arranging care for war orphans, aiding military deserters and draft resisters, and bringing medicine to remote areas. In the end, the movement did not succeed in ending the war; however, it remains one of the great examples of courageous and principled nonviolent struggle in the midst of war.

Myanmar (Burma)

In 1962, the Burmese military took control of Burma. They instituted a brutal police state government documented by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International as grossly violating the human rights of the Burmese people with summary executions, condoned rape of women and children, the destruction of the villages of ethnic minorities, forced labor, forced portage, and torture. In 1988, large demonstrations led by students and Buddhist monks broke out across Burma, demanding democracy and human rights. In 1990, national elections were held; Aung San Suu Kyi, a self-described lay Engaged Buddhist, won the election with some 80 percent of the vote. The military government refused to accept this outcome, and Suu Kyi was arrested. In 2007, monks (and nuns) again filled the streets calling for democracy and human rights; this came to be known as the “Saffron Revolution,” after the color of the monks’ robes. These protests were violently put down by the government. Many monks were killed, imprisoned, and tortured, or they fled into exile. In 2010, Aung San Suu Kyi was released from house arrest, having spent 15 of the previous 21 years in detention. In 2012, after the government instituted some reforms, Suu Kyi won a seat in the Burmese Parliament, formally becoming the leader of the opposition.

Cambodia

During the Khmer Rouge era in Cambodia (1975–1979), between one million and two million out of a total of seven million Cambodians were killed, and the Buddhist monastic sangha was almost entirely wiped out. In 1978, the monk Maha Ghosananda, who had been out of the country, returned to lead a movement of healing and reconciliation. He urged Cambodian refugees to cultivate loving-kindness for all people and to heal their wounds by forgiving those who had killed their families (His own entire family had been killed by the Khmer Rouge). He also strove to bring full pacification to the dangerously divided country, where battles still were occurring in the countryside, by working for reconciliation among the leadership of the mutually hostile factions.

In 1992, Maha Ghosananda, who was called the “Gandhi of Cambodia,” led the first Dhammayietra (or Dhammayatra, loosely, peace walk or pilgrimage of Truth) to accompany refugees returning for the first time to their homes. The Dhammayietra was widely credited with helping the repatriation to be successful. A year later, he led a second Dhammayietra immediately before the first national elections. This Dhammayietra was credited with helping to make the elections successful by easing the atmosphere of fear and eliciting heavy participation. The Dhammayietras became annual events, focusing on such issues as land mines, domestic violence, deforestation, and basic morality, though participation fell off drastically after Maha Ghosananda’s death in 2007. Maha Ghosananda and the Dhammayietra movement have been criticized as being too focused on forgiveness and reconciliation and insufficiently concerned with justice and accountability. However, it is the case that despite the genocide, there has been no blood bath of revenge in Cambodia.

Other major efforts and contributions of Engaged Buddhism in Southeast Asia include environmental protection and restoration work, the effort to restore the Theravada Buddhist bhikkhuni (nuns) order, and work to combat rural poverty.

Sallie B. King

See also: Buddhism; Cambodia; Colonialism; Hanh, Thich Nhat; Humanism; Maha Ghosananda; Myanmar (Burma); Reform Movements, Religion and Society; Sivaraksa, Sulak; Vietnam.

ETHNICITY

Southeast Asia has a long history of diverse and sometimes competing religious belief-systems and syncretism. At the same time, the region is home to various ethnic groups who have to deal with their respective states. The very symbolically charged term “ethnicity” can best be understood if attention is turned to this region between China and India. This article will concentrate on Laos—the land between Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and China—to exemplify the state of affairs in Southeast Asia, and which can be used as an example for wider comparison. The argument here is twofold: firstly, to point out how ethnicity has shaped the interaction between ethnic groups and the state; and secondly, to show how its meaning has changed in the scientific discourse over time.

In order to obtain a working definition, the first glimpse is into how the term is contemporarily applied in Laos, where the concept of ethnic group/ethnicity can be translated as sonpao (). The term sonpao is embedded in the discourse of everyday life in the villages as well as in the more municipal areas. For instance, “ethnic travel eco-guide service” is only one of the innumerable advertisements that can be found in travel agencies concerning visits to see ethnic groups. In this discourse, ethnicity depicts something ancient, traditional, and foreign and is defined by the unchanging traits of a group.

This is the opposite of how the term “ethnicity” is defined in the scientific discourse of today. Following the contemporary scientific consensus, social relations exhibit ethnic features when cultural differences are articulated and stressed. And, just as important, the social identity of a person or group is negotiable and changeable, depending on the context, and not fixed throughout space and time. A group or person may choose between several identities through self-attribution as well as by the attribution of others. Thus, Thomas Eriksen, who did fieldwork among multiethnic Mauritius suggests the use of the term “social identity” instead of ethnicity, which can be applied in a wider sense (Eriksen 1993, 157). This seems to be wise, especially as the term ethnicity connotes problematic concepts such as tribe, race, nation-building, and globalization. With regard to globalization, for instance, on the one hand arguments state that the ongoing modernization has a homogenizing effect on society—i.e., ethnic groups—in trying to adapt to the state lose their identity. On the other hand, it became clear that ethnic groups are stressing their borders and identity even more. But it is beyond the scope of this article to deal with these concepts as well; what is important here is the religious component of ethnicity.

Ethnicity can indeed scarcely be written about without considering religion, especially if one goes back to precolonial Southeast Asia. At that time, Southeast Asia was a ragbag of conjoined territories, also entitled a “mandala-structure.” In this mandala, power was at the center and radiated to the peripheries, where it became weaker and weaker. Politics and religion were intertwined: at the core of each mandala stood a king, legitimating his power by being a Buddhist king. Thus, religion linked territories and people, and borders were not strongly marked. But at the same time, religion distinguished people from one another: the Buddhist state-elite were at the center, cultivating wet rice, and the “animist minorities” were at the periphery in the high mountains, growing slash-and-burn fields, with no supra-village political order. Still, it is important to note that this dichotomy never was exclusive, as there also were combining elements. For instance, both sides were economically linked through trade.

The French colonialists, arriving in the seventeenth century, did not care for the fluid borders they found. They applied Western concepts of territorial borders and nationalism and they divided the region they called “Indo-Chine” into arbitrary and artificial political and administrative units (Pholsena 2006, 22–24, 28, 29, 35). The political heteronomy of today’s Southeast Asia resulting from Western forces not only changed the profile of Southeast Asia, but it also generated conflicts. In Laos, for instance, the French colonial rulers, by their politics of taxation and classifying the population in order to create easy-to-govern units that did not depict reality, fueled national pride and caused revolts among some highland groups, which otherwise would not have occurred (Pholsena 2006, 19, 32ff.). But even in academic writing, the oversimplified view of the majority and some easily defined and well-demarcated ethnic groups persisted; for instance, the Shan and the Kachin or the Thai and the Karen. Each ethnic group was described by applying culturally defined labels, such as languages, clothes, or religion, and was very often invented by the colonial rulers, missionaries, and the state, or even by scholars.

In the 1960s, the scientific discourse started to do away with this oversimplified picture. After Edmund Leach (1970 [1954]), who had already stressed social organization more heavily than the harder-to-define term “culture,” it was Fredrik Barth (1969) who changed the emphasis from the cultural traits of a group to the border, distinguishing groups or people. Barth showed how ethnic identity is ascribed, both through one’s own group and through other groups. Thus ethnicity is more an aspect of a relationship than a set of criteria in its own right. Each group applies identity markers in relation to other groups or to the state. The identity marker itself is not important, but how it is valued in relation to other groups. For instance, the Samtao, a small Mon-Khmer-speaking group of—following the state census—about 3,533 people living in the north of Laos use religion as a major identity marker. They define themselves as Buddhists, while the Khmu with whom they live are practicing saatsanaa phi ( literally translated: religion spirits, thus believe in spirits). In their case, clothes and language are not identity markers anymore. Other Samtao groups in Laos, China, Burma, or Thailand may choose clothes or language as an identity marker. Thus the Samtao do not exist. This line of argument comes from Michael Moerman (1965) and Frederic Lehman (1967), writing in the tradition of Edmund Leach.

Still, far from accepting their heterogeneousness and distinctness, many Southeast Asian states are trying to equalize and homogenize ethnic groups. Their differentness is, in another way, too well stressed, used, and promoted. An example of this phenomenon is mentioned above; many Southeast Asian states market their ethnic groups for tourists. In this instance, the “majority” often defines itself with regard to the “minority.” In the first place, it can be seen that the terms “minority” and “majority” are highly relational. Secondly, many majorities are minorities at the same time, such as the Lao Lum, who are the majority in Laos but a minority in the northeast of Thailand. Thirdly, if ethnicity comes into play, the general opinion that minority equals ethnic is misleading. For example, the Lao Lum valley-dwellers predominantly define themselves as Buddhists, as distinct from the people living in the highlands (especially the Khmu) who are associated with “animism.” Thus, the Lao Lum in this sense are as ethnic as any minorities in the country; but still, in Laos there is no travel agency declaring “visit ethnic Vientiane” (the capital of Laos), and the term ethnic is reserved for the groups living in the hills. Thus, in the scientific discourse, the term “ethnicity” has to be applied carefully. It may be difficult to throw this term completely overboard, as the people who are being investigated use it in this way, and this has to be taken into account; but still it is important to thoroughly define the term or, where possible, use “social identity” instead.

Yet there is another level at which ethnicity can be observed, namely the state level. Laos, for instance, has created and still creates its self-identity by providing demarcation from Thailand. Thailand is identified with the modern West, and the state tries to promote a picture of the “traditional” Lao family, with the mother wearing the sin (the long skirt for women) and of the families of ethnic groups living in stilt-houses, the opposite of new houses made of stone. But if one observes the youth of today, it also can be seen that Thailand is very much copied (Pholsena 2006, 52ff.). Nevertheless, both countries have in common that their identity is first and foremost preserved and created by Theravada Buddhism. When the communist regime came into power in Laos in 1975, they tried to get rid of Buddhism (and the spirit cults) at first, but noticing that this policy was not working well, they installed and promoted Buddhism again. In Thailand, Buddhism, with the king as its guardian, is the state religion. In addition, Myanmar and Cambodia in mainland Southeast Asia are also Theravada Buddhist. Religion, especially in Southeast Asia, is one of the major ways of creating, defining, and expressing identity.

Eva Sevenig

See also: Cambodia; Colonialism; Laos; Minorities; Myanmar (Burma); Thailand; Vietnam; Women.

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EDUCATION

Further Reading

ENGAGED BUDDHISM

Vietnam

Myanmar (Burma)

Cambodia

Further Reading

ETHNICITY

Further Reading