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POLITICAL and LEGAL PROVISIONS If We Were to Draw from Textual CHAPTER FOUR POLITICAL AND LEGAL PROVISIONS If we were to draw from textual representations, the contemporary reli- gious position of a Buddhist nun is difficult to define since she is neither upāsikā (pious laywoman), as her “other-worldly” mendicant lifestyle sig- nifies otherwise, nor is she sāmanerī (female novice) since she cannot be a monastic apprentice in a true sense of the word. In other words, the religious position of a Buddhist nun is “betwixt and between,” “incom- plete” or “half-way,” especially when attempts are made to define it in terms of her deficiency in relation to the official status of a monk. Salgado describes this problem in stating that: “Previous studies have defined the liminal position of nuns by contrasting them to both laity and sangha (the fully ordained community of monastics), without fully exploring the status of the “renunciant” (pāvidi/pabbajjā) . .” (2004:936). She has drawn our attention to some of the distinct features of female renunciation that cannot be understood simply by comparing and contrasting it with the ideal of male renunciation (Salgado, 2000, 2004). Today there is no ordained bhikkhunī lineage in Myanmar. The high- est Buddhist authority: the Supreme Sangha Council has made an official statement in 2004 reaffirming this position of the sangha.1 On the other hand, there are many thiláshin—close to 45,000 of them in 2010, registered with the Department of Religious Affairs of the Religious Ministry. The large presence of these nuns despite the absence of the bhikkhunī lineage gives us a reason to examine how these nuns are defined and accepted in their social and political contexts. It is also important to understand why 1 Myanmar historian Than Tun (1988:33) states that bhikkhunīs existed until the thir- teenth century in Myanmar and they were patronized by queens and royal ladies in court. Ya We Htùn (1978:140), a monk writer, advocated that Myanmar nuns were remnants of those descended from female pandaranga paribbājaka, who were present even before the time of the historical Buddha. These ascetic women were not ordained in the Upasampadā tradition, but were affiliated with a group of mendicants who refused to be institutional- ized into the rigid sangha structure. In the last decade, a few Myanmar nuns have gone abroad to become ordained as bhikkhunī (see Kawanami, 2007). However, if they were to live in Myanmar, they are expected to affiliate themselves with the local community of thiláshin and abide by their communal rules and the position regarding the non-acceptance of bhikkhunī. 110 chapter four their number is on a steady increase despite such seeming ambiguity. This chapter explores Myanmar state’s religious policies, which are significant in determining the contexts in which these monastic members operate, and whether nuns are seen as insiders or outsiders in relation to the sangha. I also attempt to locate where the thilashin stand in the present state monastic organization and examine the legal provisions that safeguard their religious activities in the community. Since the early 1990s, the Myanmar government has seen the value of Buddhism as an effective political apparatus in what is viewed as a hos- tile international environment and has actively appropriated the notion of sāsana (Buddha’s dispensation) to consolidate its political legitimacy. Since then the imperative overall to spread the sāsana, referred to as thathana-pyú, has come to permeate every aspiration and activity of the monastic members in Myanmar. In particular, nuns engaged in pariyatti have come to play an important role in this new direction, and, increas- ingly, they perform an active role for the state as dutiful custodians of the sāsana. In this respect, Buddhist nuns are no longer seen as just “pious laywomen.” This is evidenced by the frequent usage of honorifics and deferential terms by the Myanmar public in addressing thilashin as inte- grated monastic members. The nuns themselves are in no doubt about their “other-worldly” status as they live and comply with the rules of the monastic community, which is supported by a positive shift in people’s perception that is becoming much more accepting of them. National Monastic Organization U Nu, the first democratically elected Prime Minister in modern times, introduced many policies in the 1950s to give protection to the sangha as he aspired to play a major role as a righteous Buddhist leader. Buddhism was made the state religion in September 1961, but the course of events that followed brought about opposition and resistance among various sectors of society. In 1962, U Nu was deposed in a military coup led by General Ne Win.2 His socialist military government showed little sign of being interested in Buddhism, but U Ne Win was wary of monks, whom he regarded as “insurgents donning the robe.” Faced with social turmoil and increasing activities of political monks, he implemented many policies to 2 The Revolutionary Council of General Ne Win ousted Prime Minister Nu on 2 March 1962..
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