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Press Release

Release date: 29 March 1999

This book deals with the Buddhist dimensions underlying the politics of Aung San Suu Kyi and the Burmese democracy movement in general. Today, Aung San Suu Kyi is identified in the international arena as an icon of democracy hemmed in by conservative military forces. Within the country, however, the military manipulates this ‘foreign’ sentiment as a welcome addition to its propaganda armoury. It portrays Aung San Suu Kyi as a puppet, an honorary ambassador of the foreigner who is driven by foreign interests in disregard of her own native traditions. This book argues that neither the international image of her, nor the military misuse of her international image within the country come to terms with Burmese political values as expressed in the Burmese language.

Gustaaf Houtman analyses military politics as a politics of authority (ana) and confinement that emphasises the local delineation of boundaries under the guise of benevolence, using the discourse of culture, archaeology and race, and the threat of imprisonment. By contrast, he analyses the democracy movement as a politics of influence (awza) that aims to transcend these boundaries. This elaborates on political terminology in terms of Buddhist mental culture leading to ‘non-self’ (anatta), promising freedom from imprisonment and confinement. The ideals of the four byama-so tayà – in particular loving-kindness (metta) and compassion (karuna) – stand for democracy, just as they have stood for ideal true socialist government. The senior NLD leaders all closely identify with this and with the practice of Buddhist mental culture in general. Furthermore, though the lower forms of magic are more common amongst the military, many retired military responsible for imprisoning and disqualifying the NLD from office also proclaim to be engaged in the practice of mental culture and patronise the same Buddhist meditation centres. Mental culture, while strongly represented as democracy politics, thus plays a role as a conciliatory third force in Burmese politics.

The author decodes the present political situation in terms of continuities with past colonial politics and assesses commonalties between the two sides. The book argues that, through association with Buddhist ideas emphasising substantive commonalties in all forms of life, Burmese political vocabulary itself has the promise within it to promote reconciliation in this divided polity.

Gustaaf Houtman is currently Assistant Editor of Anthropology Today at the Royal Anthropological Institute. He was Visiting Professor at the Institute for the Study of Languages and Tokyo University of Foreign Studies between 1997-98 and held the first Leach-RAI Esperanza Trust post-doctoral Fellowship in Manchester between 1991-92. After completing a first degree in Burmese language and literature and anthropology in 1980, he was awarded in 1990 a PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies on the anthropology of the Buddhist traditions of vipassana contemplation practice.

A copy of Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics is now available as Adobe Acrobat PDF files for free downloading from the Internet at: http://homepages.tesco.net/~ghoutman (it will later also be placed somewhere within the RAI http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk site).

Further information may be had from the author: Dr. Gustaaf Houtman, ghoutman@tesco.net, 11 James House, Wolfe Crescent, London SE16 1SH, United Kingdom, tel +44-(0)207-394 6927.