Persecution of Buddhists
In 1963, in Saigon, the Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc burned himself to death, protesting the persecution of Buddhists in South Vietnam. The photograph of that act was published around the world. The persecution of Buddhists has taken many forms across nearly two thousand years. It has included unwarranted arrest, torture, and execution. It has also meant the destruction of temples, monasteries, and sacred manuscripts. Perpetrators have ranged from Zoroastrian officials in the 3rd century CE to Communist governments in the 20th. They have included colonial administrators, religious nationalists, and military regimes. What drives such different powers to target the same tradition? And what remains when the physical sites of a faith have been repeatedly leveled? On the 7th of July 2013, ten bombs exploded in and around the Mahabodhi Temple complex at Bodh Gaya. Five people were injured, including two Buddhist monks.
Kartir held the title of mowbadan-mowbad in the Sasanian Empire. He dominated the empire's official religious policy during the second half of the 3rd century CE. He ordered the destruction of several Buddhist monasteries in Afghanistan. His rationale was theological: a blend of Buddhism and Zoroastrianism, which had emerged in the form of Buddha-Mazda, appeared to him as heresy. Despite his campaign, the Sasanians generally tolerated Buddhism and permitted new vihara construction. It was during their era that the Lokottaravadins erected the two Buddhas of Bamiyan. Buddhism recovered quickly after Kartir's death.
Two centuries later, the Hephthalites swept through Central Asia and Northwestern India. Around 440 CE, they conquered Sogdia, then pushed through Gandhara into the Indo-Gangetic Plain. Their king Mihirakula, who ruled from 515 CE, suppressed Buddhism as he advanced, destroying monasteries as far as what is now Prayagraj. Chinese scholars traveling through the region between the 5th and 8th centuries wrote of a general decline in Buddhist communities. Among them were Faxian, Xuanzang, and Yijing. Xuanzang in particular described numerous monasteries in north-western India reduced to ruins.
Emperor Wuzong of Tang reigned from 814 to 846 CE. Buddhism had grown into a major force in the Tang empire, and its monasteries held tax-exempt status. Wuzong shuttered many Buddhist shrines, seized their assets, and sent the monks and nuns back to lay life. His motivation was partly financial but also ideological. As a devoted Taoist, he considered Buddhism a foreign religion harmful to Chinese society. He extended his purge to other foreign faiths, nearly eradicating Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism in China. His persecution of Nestorian Christian churches sent Chinese Christianity into a decline from which it never recovered.
The Buddhist Iranic Saka Kingdom of Khotan had resisted both the Turkic Buddhist Uyghurs and the Qarakhanid states. In 966, the Karakhanid ruler Satuq Bughra Khan converted to Islam near Kashgar, launching a conflict that would last for decades.
The Iranic Saka Kingdom of Khotan sat at the eastern end of the Tarim Basin. Its ruling family used Indian names. Its population was devoutly Buddhist. Khotan had a close partnership with the city of Dunhuang to its east. The Khotan royals funded the Mogao grottos and Buddhist temples at Dunhuang, and their likenesses were painted in the grottoes. Facing the growing Karakhanid threat, Khotan's rulers arranged for growing numbers of divine figures to be added to the Mogao grottos alongside their own portraits.
The war against Khotan was later recorded in a text called the Tazkirah of the Four Sacrificed Imams. Written sometime between 1700 and 1849, it is in Eastern Turkic, the language that became modern Uyghur. The text describes the advancing Muslim forces killing the Buddhist defenders across years of battle. It uses phrases such as "blood flows like the Oxus" and "heads litter the battlefield like stones." According to the text, four imams from a city in modern-day Iraq traveled to join the conquest. They were assassinated by the Buddhists before the final Muslim victory.
Around 1006, the Karakhanid leader Yusuf Qadir Khan conquered the city. The Japanese scholar Takao Moriyasu described the war as a jihad. The Karakhanid poet Mahmud al-Kashgari recorded the conquest in verse. His poem includes the lines: "We tore down the idol-temples, We shat on the Buddha's head!" After Khotan fell, Dunhuang's Cave 17, which held Khotanese literary works, may have been sealed. Khotan had ceased to be Buddhist.
At the Bezeklik Thousand Buddha Caves, the eyes and mouths of Buddhist figures in the murals were gouged out by the local Muslim population. Pieces of the murals were broken off and used as fertilizer.
At Kaukhali Bazar on the 25th of March 1980, indigenous Buddhist people arrived to discuss repairs to the Poapara Buddhist Vihara. A Bangladesh Army commander had summoned them there. Bangladesh Army soldiers and Muslim settlers then attacked the crowd, massacring an estimated 300 Chakma and Marma Buddhists in Rangamati district.
Kaukhali was the first of at least 13 major massacres in the Chittagong Hill Tracts between 1980 and 1995. The Tracts border India and Myanmar and are home to around 500,000 indigenous people. These include the Chakma, Marma, Tripura, and Mro, most of whom practice Buddhism. In 1947, at the time of India's partition, the region was 98.5 percent Buddhist and Hindu. The British transferred the territory to East Pakistan against the wishes of its people. After Bangladesh gained independence in 1972, successive governments sponsored Muslim migration into the Tracts. By 2000, the indigenous share of the population had fallen from 98 percent to 50 percent. The Bangladeshi government sent a full third of its military to the region to support the settlers. This sparked a guerrilla war between the hill tribes and the army.
The Barkal massacre of the 31st of May 1984 killed more than 400 Chakma Buddhists across several villages. Amnesty International collected 67 names of the dead. The Logang massacre of the 10th of April 1992 began when Muslim settlers spread a false accusation after a brawl. Bangladesh Army soldiers and settlers then attacked indigenous villages, killing more than 500 people. No military personnel or settler was ever tried for any of the 13 major massacres.
Thousands of indigenous women and girls were raped by armed forces and settlers from 1971 onward. The Bangladesh government tacitly encouraged this as a tool of expulsion. The conflict officially ended in 1997. In 2012, during the Ramu violence in southern Bangladesh, a mob estimated at 25,000 set fire to at least five temples and dozens of homes.
Pol Pot considered Buddhism a decadent affectation. Under the Khmer Rouge, which held power in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, state atheism was actively imposed across the country. A third of Cambodia's monasteries were destroyed, along with numerous Buddhist texts and items of artistic value. Buddhist monks and teachers were killed in large numbers. Twenty-five thousand Buddhist monks were massacred by the regime.
Tibet endured a parallel campaign. Over 6,000 Buddhist monasteries had existed in Tibet before the Cultural Revolution. Nearly all were ransacked and destroyed by the Chinese Communist Party. Witness statements record that many Tibetan monasteries were destroyed by Chinese Communist authorities even before the Cultural Revolution began. Monks and nuns were incarcerated, tortured, and killed. Xiao Huaiyuan, a leader in the Chinese Communist Party Propaganda Department in Tibet, stated that promoting atheism in the region had a specific purpose. It would, he said, "help peasants and herdsmen free themselves from the negative influence of religion."
In Mongolia, Khorloogiin Choibalsan declared 17,000 monks to be enemies of the state and deported them to Siberian labor camps. Many perished there. Almost all of Mongolia's more than 700 Buddhist monasteries were looted or destroyed. The Soviet Union similarly closed many monasteries and sent monks into exile in 1929. In Vietnam after 1975, the leaders of the Unified Buddhist Congregation faced imprisonment. Thich Huyen Quang and Thich Quang Do were imprisoned for decades.
The Oxford Handbook of Atheism states that North Korea effectively exterminated all signs of Buddhism during the 1960s and 1970s.
As early as 1953, complaints surfaced about raids against Buddhists in Vietnam by French-armed Catholic militiamen. Ngo Dinh Diem came to power in South Vietnam with United States backing. He dedicated the country to the Virgin Mary in 1959. In May 1963, his government forbade the flying of Buddhist flags on Vesak. When Buddhist protesters clashed with government troops, nine people were killed. On the 21st of August 1963, the Xa Loi Pagoda raids led to a death toll estimated in the hundreds.
In South Korea, a series of Buddhist temple burnings occurred during the 1980s and 1990s, carried out by Christian fundamentalists working by stealth of night. Buddha statues were decapitated. Red crosses were painted on temple walls and murals. In one instance, a Protestant minister smashed temple paintings and a statue by wielding a microphone on a cord as a weapon. In 2006, a worship leader at a Christian rally in Busan prayed: "Lord, let the Buddhist temples in this country crumble down."
In Indonesia, nine bombs detonated at the Borobudur Buddhist temple in Central Java on the 21st of January 1985, badly damaging nine stupas. No one was killed in that attack. A Buddhist monastery in Jakarta was attacked by suspected Islamic militants on the 4th of August 2013.
The Rana government of Nepal deported Buddhist monks in 1926 and again in 1944. The monks were Newars, reviving a form of Theravada Buddhism that had disappeared from Nepal more than five hundred years earlier. The Rana regime disapproved of both their religious activities and their promotion of Nepal Bhasa, the Newar mother tongue. These were the first monks seen in Nepal since the 14th century.
Common questions
What does the persecution of Buddhists include?
Persecution of Buddhists has encompassed unwarranted arrest, imprisonment, torture, execution, and the destruction of temples, monasteries, and sacred manuscripts. It has also included the confiscation of property, the closure of centers of learning, and forced conversion. These acts have been carried out by governments, religious authorities, and armed groups across nearly two thousand years.
What did Emperor Wuzong of Tang do to Buddhism in China?
Emperor Wuzong, who reigned from 814 to 846 CE, closed many Buddhist shrines, seized their assets, and sent monks and nuns back to lay life. He was motivated partly by a financial crisis and partly by his Taoist belief that Buddhism was a foreign religion harmful to Chinese society. His purge also nearly eradicated Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism in China.
How was the Buddhist kingdom of Khotan conquered?
Around 1006, the Karakhanid leader Yusuf Qadir Khan conquered the Iranic Saka Buddhist Kingdom of Khotan, ending its existence as an independent state. The conflict had begun when the Karakhanid ruler Satuq Bughra Khan converted to Islam in 966. The Japanese scholar Takao Moriyasu described the war as a jihad.
What happened to Buddhists in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh?
Between 1980 and 1995, Bangladesh Army soldiers and Muslim settlers committed at least 13 major massacres against indigenous Buddhist people in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. The Kaukhali massacre of the 25th of March 1980 killed an estimated 300 Chakma and Marma Buddhists; the Logang massacre of the 10th of April 1992 killed more than 500 people. No military personnel or settler was ever tried for any of these killings.
How many Buddhist monks were killed by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia?
Twenty-five thousand Buddhist monks were massacred by the Khmer Rouge, which ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. A third of Cambodia's monasteries were destroyed during this period, along with Buddhist texts and artwork. Pol Pot considered Buddhism a decadent affectation and sought to erase its presence in the country.
Why did the Rana government of Nepal deport Buddhist monks?
The Rana government of Nepal deported Buddhist monks in 1926 and again in 1944 because it viewed their activities as a political threat. The monks, all of whom were Newars, were reviving Theravada Buddhism, which had disappeared from Nepal more than five hundred years earlier. The regime also objected to their promotion of Nepal Bhasa, the Newar mother tongue.
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