Again I’m picking up on Min Zin, now scaling the heights with an excellent op-ed in the New York Times. What he writes about in this piece is pushback from civil society against intolerant Buddhist leaders sponsoring sectarian legislation through 969, Mabatha, and so on – “the people vs. the monks”. He reaches an upbeat conclusion: “The unprecedented chasm between the monkhood and the people is for now a source of tension and turmoil. But it augurs well for the country’s political and social development in the long term. The advent of a countermovement to Buddhist extremism suggests that the people of Myanmar are emancipating from traditional elites and taking a major stride toward modernity and democracy.” Well, I certainly hope so.

In this time of tension and turmoil, it’s perhaps also worth providing a historical perspective on Min Zin’s topic by looking at the position taken by Aung San. In the opening pages of a brief biography of her father, published in 1984, republished in 1991 and in the same year packaged into Freedom from Fear, Aung San Suu Kyi reports on a debate during his first term at Rangoon University (in 1933). “Aung San rose from the floor to support the motion which had been proposed by his elder brother, that monks should not participate in politics.” She writes both in the next sentence and in a succeeding paragraph that this was one of his firmest beliefs. In full, this is the later paragraph:

“It is worth noting here that the motion Aung San supported in that first debate expressed one of his lasting convictions: that monks should not participate in politics. He was to say in a speech made little more than a year before his death that to mix religion with politics was to go against the spirit of religion itself. He appealed to the sangha (the community of Buddhist monks) to purify Buddhism and ‘broadcast it to all the world so that all mankind might be able to listen to its timeless message of Love and Brotherhood till eternity … this is the highest politics which you can do for your country and people.’”

Throughout Aung San’s life, political monks broadly shared the anti-colonial views he himself espoused. Indeed, in U Ottama in the 1920s and Saya San in the 1930s, the monkhood generated the most significant nationalist leaders and martyrs of the early independence struggle. Even against this backdrop, Aung San was committed to the principled position that monks should not enter the political realm, but rather should focus on promoting love and brotherhood.

As it happens, I don’t endorse Aung San’s call for a complete separation between religion and politics. Nevertheless, I do think it’s useful to be reminded today of his purist view of the spirit of religion, and his appeal for Buddhism to focus on its timeless core message.