CULTURE

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When businessmen want to obtain a license or permit of some sort, they invariably make a donation to a pet project run by one of the ruling generals. And for Burma’s drug lords, who enjoy a status akin to aristocracy in the country’s capital, charity serves as a convenient way to convert illicit profits into social, political, and economic capital. Thus donation ceremonies, which routinely bring together generals, drug lords and businessmen, are highlighted daily on the state-run Myanmar TV news programs. Charity funds everything from the restoration of pagodas to the national football team; but ultimately, the real beneficiaries are those who control the flow of finances behind the scenes. Most ordinary Burmese are well aware of how the system works, and remain troubled by it, even after more than a decade of such abuses. "Steven Law of Asia World Company has offered a huge donation to build schools and fund multimedia classrooms," remarked Rangoon schoolteacher Mya Lwin recently. He added: "We all know where he gets his money from, but what can we do, except hang our heads in shame?" Law is known to be one of Burma’s leading narco-billionaires. While some of these practices are distinctly modern innovations, there is nothing new about Burmese rulers using charity to enhance their political legitimacy. The current regime has in many ways modeled itself after Burma’s pre-colonial kings. This has been most conspicuously the case in its patronage of the Buddhist Sangha, or monastic community. On a daily basis, the generals make religious offerings that serve not only as a form of personal merit making, but also as powerful symbolic gestures that exploit the Sangha’s historically important role as a unifying factor of the state. Pagodas, as the most visible symbols of religious beneficence, have long played an especially important role in reinforcing claims to political power. In his History of Burma (1925), G. E. Harvey noted that pagodas built by Burma’s King Bayinnaung in Ayutthaya (in present-day Thailand) and other neighboring kingdoms "are still to be seen, and in later ages the Burmese would point to them as proof of their claim to rule those countries." This mindset has persisted to this day, as seen in the current regime’s building of pagodas modeled after Rangoon’s renowned Shwedagon Pagoda throughout Shan State, as a way of asserting Burmese (i.e., ethnic Burman) sovereignty over this ethnically distinct region. The practice of co-opting religious symbolism for political ends literally reaches its pinnacle with the ceremonial hoisting of the htidaw ("umbrella") on the top of pagodas that have been newly constructed or renovated. This act is regarded as the ultimate merit-making event, and yet it has no basis whatsoever in Buddhist doctrine. According to historian Dr Than Tun, "This practice began in the 15th century, when a Mon king invaded Burman-dominated territory and put a big crown made like his own on top of each pagoda in the land he conquered." As retaliation, "The Burmese king put a likeness of his own crown on top each pagoda when he re-seized his land." In early 1999, Burma’s military rulers held a htidaw-hoisting ceremony to mark the completion of a major renovation of the country’s most sacred religious edifice, the Shwedagon Pagoda. The ceremony, which was treated as one of the most important religious events of the 20th century, culminated with the generals shouting "Aung Pyi! Aung Pyi!" ("We won! We won!"). Far from sharing in the generals’ sense of victory, however, local people were left feeling more defeated than ever. "When we heard what they were shouting, we felt crushed," recalled one Rangoon shopkeeper. "It was not act of dana but of sorcery. I was also frightened by the thought of this regime remaining in power for years to come," she added. By far the most appalling misuse of the principle of dana is the widespread practice of forcing people throughout the country to "donate" their labor to public works projects. The regime has repeatedly claimed that such "voluntary labor" is carried out in the spirit of dana, as if there were something spiritually uplifting about being forced to perform backbreaking labor at gunpoint. In some instances, people are genuinely willing to contribute to the upkeep of temples or to projects that directly benefit their communities; but this clearly does not apply to the construction of roads and other infrastructure for the tourism industry, for instance. "In some cases, people do not mind donating their time voluntarily for their religion," observed recently exiled social critic Tin Maung Than. "But the donation of labor for temple construction must be separated from being ordered to give free labor for government projects," he added. Some scholars have pointed out that the current regime is worse than the pre-colonial monarchy in the way it has conscripted labor.