The Sacred Core: the Upattasanti in ’s New Capital of

-by-

Donald M. Seekins, Ph.D.

The relocation of the capital of Myanmar (Burma) from

(Rangoon) to Naypyidaw in late 2005 surprised both Burmese and foreign observers. Myanmar is one of Southeast ’s poorest countries. The construction of an entirely new city as the national capital was not only prohibitively expensive, but seriously disrupted the smooth running of the state, as thousands of civil servants were obliged to move from their old homes in Yangon to their new work-site, located in the center of the country.

There was considerable waste of scarce resources; for example, new facilities such as a National Library and National Museum had been built in Yangon after 1988, but were rebuilt in Naypyidaw. Yangon has a Zoological Garden, built during the British colonial era, but another zoo was set up in the new

 I wish to express my deep thanks to the Graduate Research Program of the University College of the University of Maryland for providing me with a grant in 2012 that made possible fieldwork in Naypyidaw.

1 capital, complete with an air-conditioned pavilion where penguins happily frolic, protected from the merciless tropical sun.1

After 2005, there was much speculation concerning the motivations of Senior General , military strongman and chairman of the State

Peace and Development Council (SPDC) junta, in decreeing the capital shift.2 These can generally be placed in three categories, which in order of descending credibility are: (1) strategic factors, especially the military regime’s fear of continued popular unrest in the crowded old capital of

Yangon and the advantages of moving the capital inland in terms of controlling the unstable ethnic minority and border areas, adjacent to ,

Thailand and ; (2) historical and symbolic factors, including the long history of Burmese kings building new capital cities for themselves and

1 Helen Beaton. “Penguins and golf in Burma’s hidden capital.” The Independent (September 19, 2008) in BurmaNet News (September 19, 2008) at www.burmanet.org (accessed May 23, 2013). 2 See, for example, Maung Aung Myoe. “The Road to Naypyidaw: Making Sense of the Myanmar Government’s Decision to Move its Capital.” Working Paper, no. 79. : Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, November 2006; Dulyapak Preecharushh. Naypyidaw: the New Capital of Burma (: White Lotus, 2009); Donald M. Seekins. “’Runaway Chickens’ and Myanmar Identity: Relocating Burma’s Capital.” City, vol. 13: 1 (March 2009): pp. 63-70; and Guy Lubeigt. Nay Pyi Taw: Une Résidence royale pour l’armée birmane. Paris: les Indes savants, 2012.

2 Than Shwe’s desire to quit a city that was a symbol of the shameful colonial past; and (3) occult factors, particularly the Senior General’s fears, stirred up by his personal astrologer, that if he did not quit Yangon, his regime would fall.

To pro-democracy Burmese and their supporters abroad, the capital shift was testimony to the SPDC’s indifference to the hardships and suffering it caused its own people, including the forced relocation of villagers living in the new capital district. But following the disbandment of the junta in early 2011, the establishment of a formally civilian government and the

(so far) successful cooperation between Than Shwe’s successor, President

Thein Sein, and opposition leader Daw Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s political system now has a measure of international legitimacy, and

Naypyidaw’s raison d’être is no longer severely questioned. Presently, it seems to be assumed that it will remain Myanmar’s capital, while Yangon functions as the country’s commercial center.

If the establishment of Naypyidaw (which in Burmese means “royal

3 city” or “abode of the king”) was itself a mystery, Than Shwe’s inauguration of the construction of a pagoda on a hill between Naypyidaw and the old town of in November 2006 surprised no one. Since 1988, when the military junta (known initially as the State Law and Order Restoration

Council, or SLORC) came to power, it has carried out what one foreign observer has called a “Buddhist building boom,” sponsoring ambitious religious construction projects in Yangon and other parts of the country.3

Some of this construction was supported by foreign companies with investments in post-socialist Myanmar, who wished to gain the favor of the

SLORC/SPDC top commanders.4

In this paper, I wish to describe the role of Buddhist pagoda religion as a form of traditionalism in post-1988 Myanmar, looking

3 Sylvia Fraser-Lu. “A Buddhist Building Boo m: Works of Merit Sponsored by the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC).” Bulletin of the Burma Studies Group, 59, 1997: pp. 4, 5. 4 For example, the South Korean company Lucky-Goldstar donated an elevator to the , so visitors would not have to ascend a long stairway to the pagoda platform. Donald M. Seekins. “Rangoon’s Changing Buddhist Landscapes: ‘Pagoda Religion’ and Military Rule in Burma’s .” In Amitav Archarya and Lee Lai To, eds., Asia in the New Millennium: APISA First Congress Proceedings. Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Academic, 2004: p. 576.

4 specifically at how both the construction and devotional rituals performed at

Than Shwe’s , known as the Upattasanti Pagoda, constitute an attempt by the Senior General and his successor to legitimize the new national capital and a new constitutional order.5 The immense and gaudy pagoda is also a symbol of Myanmar’s status as premier among Buddhist countries, where the religion forms the core of national identity (as expressed in the old phrase, “to be Burmese is to be Buddhist”).

If modernization or modernity often creates confusion about what is

“native” and what is “foreign,” “eastern” and “western,” “ours” and “theirs” – spawning a kind of mental homelessness and alienation – traditionalism is designed to show people what is authentic, what is “real,” what actually belongs to “us” as a national, ethnic or racial community. By clearly defining

“Self” and keeping the “Other” at a psychological distance, social harmony and stability can be defended, even in the face of unavoidable or unwanted foreign influences.

5 After a very long period of deliberation by a constitutional convention, the new basic law of the “Republic of the Union of Myanmar” was ratified in a popular referendum in May 2008.

5 In other words, while even the autocratic Than Shwe realized that the Myanmar Kingdom of the pre-colonial past could not be restored whole-cloth (despite his naming the new capital “the abode of the king”), he attempted to – in part – reconstruct it, to create what one Myanmar journalist has called “a kingdom without a king.”6 And in Myanmar, the most readily available medium through which this can be done is the sasana, the Buddhist religion, which brings people together on the platforms of alongside (or under) their leaders, to offer homage to the Buddha and his teachings.

As Joseph Levenson argues in the first volume of his Confucian

China and Its Modern Fate, ideas do not exist in isolation. Chinese

Confucianists in the past regarded the Sage’s teachings and those of his successors as having universal validity, applicable to all human situations.

However, China’s traumatic encounter with the West in the nineteenth

6 Comment made to me in March 2003; he was referring to the vision of a state and society that is (technically) modern, but also imbued with traditional “Myanmar” values of hierarchy and deference to superiors. In other words, Myanmar’s constitution and state structure are republican (there is no ruling dynasty), but its values are traditional, monarchical.

6 century transformed this attitude into one in which Chinese viewed the teachings of Confucius as less a universal system of thought than a Chinese one, embodying an important element of Chinese national identity.

In these circumstances of material change and iconoclastic

challenge, tenacious traditionalists seemed to have become not

simply men believing in intellectually compelling ideas, which by

chance were the products of Chinese history, but Chinese having

a will to believe, an emotional need to feel the intellectual compul-

sion, just because the ideas in question came down from a Chinese

past. When Confucian traditionalism comes to be accepted not from

a confidence in its universal validity but from a traditionalistic

compulsion to profess that confidence, Confucianism is transformed

from a primary, philosophical commitment to a secondary, romantic

one, and traditionalism from a philosophical principle to a

psychological device.7

Than Shwe and do not live in the world of ,

7 Joseph R. Levenson. Confucian China and Its Modern Fate, vol. I, The Problem of Intellectual Continuity. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965: pp. xv, xvi.

7 and , the three old conqueror-kings whose statues glare down upon a parade ground in the Military Zone northeast of

Naypyidaw where Myanmar’s most important secular holiday, Armed Forces

Day on March 27th, has been observed by the country’s top leaders every year since 2006. Their world is much the same as ours – a world in which the gap between rich and poor continues to grow, dominated by capricious big countries, especially the United States and China, where the steady

“globalization” of Myanmar’s population feeds discontent and unrest and in which a devil’s deal with resource-greedy foreign businessmen seems - in the post-socialist world - to be the only way to ensure the economic development of the country and the military elite’s own survival.

In this inhospitable environment, the leaders’ promotion of

Buddhist symbols (especially the “royal pagoda”) offers a through which “Myanmar identity” can be protected and nurtured – and national unity maintained. While orthodox Theravada teaches the need for radical non-attachment in order to attain Enlightenment, which is universal

8 and impersonal, traditionalism tries to attach individual citizens or subjects to the illusion of a recoverable past and past identity that are non-universal, specific to a single national community – although how this can be done is usually reduced to sterile ritualism, an attention to appearances rather than an inward transformation.

Without claiming that the top generals in Myanmar use Buddhism and its symbols cynically, as a means of manipulating the superstitious masses (there seems no doubt that most of them are, in their own way, devout Buddhists), it also seems true that the Buddhist belief system in the country has undergone a crucial transformation comparable to that of

Confucianism in nineteenth century China, as described by Levenson: from a universal truth, which in the past nurtured in the minds of Burmese

Buddhists an all-encompassing worldview (reflected, for example, in everything from hierarchical human relationships to the design of the traditional royal capital), to a core element in a Myanmar identity that struggles to assert itself in a diverse, modern world. Thus, the militant,

9 pagoda-building piety of the old conqueror kings is regarded by the founders of modern Naypyidaw in a singularly idealized and “romantic” way, though certain historical details – for example, their un-Buddhist cruelty and violence – may be conveniently forgotten.

The Contours of the New Capital City

Although population figures in Myanmar are still imprecise (an official census has not been completed), Naypyidaw, with around one million people, seems to have become the country’s second largest city, narrowly surpassing the old royal capital of with its population of around

800,000 to one million. In part, this results from the inclusion of older settlements such as Pyinmana and within the new capital district

(Pyinmana alone has a population of 200,000).8 Yangon, reconstructed after

1852 by the British as their colonial capital, presently has between five and six million people, assuring its status as Myanmar’s primate city, despite the capital relocation. Each of these three capitals, old and new, is quite distinct,

8 Lubeigt, Nay Pyi Taw, p. 110.

10 and the differences between them in terms of two important criteria – urban design and the possession of a “royal pagoda” – are shown in the figure, below:

Figure 1: Myanmar’s Three Capitals and their Spaces

Capital City Design: the equivalence Sacred spaces: “royal” of the macrocosm and pagoda(s) the microcosm

Mandalay 〇 ◯

Yangon (pre-, × ◯ post-colonial)

Yangon (colonial) × ×

Naypyidaw × ○

(key: ◯ - presence; × - absence)

Of the three capitals, only Mandalay, built by King Mindon (r.

1853-1878) in the 1850s after his realm’s defeat in the 1852 Anglo-Burmese

War, displays a design that was once a distinct feature of Mainland

Southeast Asian royal capitals: a structural replication of the Cosmos (or the

11 macrocosm) in the microcosm of the city, or the palace, according to Hindu and Buddhist concepts. This schema had been used in the building of earlier

Myanmar royal capitals such as (Ava), and .

Surrounded by a moat, the Mandalay palace walls, eight meters high and about two kilometers long on each side, form a square which is aligned to the four cardinal points of the compass; each side is pierced by three gates, which are surmounted by wooden pyat-that, or tiered roofs in the elegant Burmese style. Within the walls, the teak wood palace was constructed on a platform, and its center was the grand audience hall, also surmounted by a seven-tiered pyat-that.

The grand audience hall of the palace complex was seen as analogous to Mount Meru, the center (pillar) of the world (axis mundi). Just as Indra, the king of the gods, dwelt on the summit of the mountain surrounded by other gods and goddesses, so the king, his earthly counterpart, occupied the throne, surrounded by his courtiers. According to Robert

Heine-Geldern, not only the physical design of the palace but also the royal

12 administration and even the number and status of royal wives were meant to convey a cosmic balance and meaning.9

However, the design of nineteenth century Mandalay did not neglect practical considerations. The walls of Mindon’s palace-city were designed to afford maximum security in an environment of political instability and chronic rivalry within the royal family, and were so firmly built that repeated Allied bombardments in March 1945 failed to breach them. 10

Naypyidaw’s equivalent to Mindon’s sturdy walls are surface-to-air missiles to protect it from air attack and a system of underground tunnels and shelters that were constructed by North Korean engineers, who are considered masters in the design of subterranean fortifications.11

In their layout, however, neither colonial Rangoon (Yangon) nor

Naypyidaw possess this structural equivalence of the macrocosm and

9 On the Mandalay palace, its design and symbolism, see Robert Heine-Geldern. “Conception of State and Kingship in .” Data Paper, no. 18, Ithace NY: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 1956: pp. 5-7; and Dhida Saraya. Mandalay: the Capital City, the Center of the Universe. Bangkok: Muang Boran Publishing House, 1995: pp. 176-207. 10 Louis Allen. Burma: the Longest War, 1941-45. London: Phoenix Press, 1984: pp. 420-424. 11 Guy Lubeigt. Nay Pyi Taw, pp. 93, 95, 101, 102.

13 microcosm and are both, in their own distinct ways, “modern” cities, designed to function efficiently as administrative, military and (in the case of

Rangoon) commercial centers. In other words, they contain preponderantly profane rather than sacred space, “infrastructure” and “real estate” rather than places that provide a psychic or symbolic connection to a higher order of

Reality. After the Second Anglo-Burmese War left the old port city of

Yangoun (“the End of Strife” in Burmese) largely devastated, British military engineers constructed what could be called a “generic” colonial port city, which possessed: a grid pattern of streets; an extensive waterfront along the Rangoon River where products for the tropical export trade (especially rice, teak and petroleum) could be easily loaded aboard ships; light industrial areas where rice could be milled and timber sawn; a Merchant

Street lined with banks and trading companies; the Cantonment, controlled by the British Indian army; Government House and the offices of the British

Indian civil service; and dwellings for a multi-ethnic population of whom

Burmese people were a minority, including spacious residences for

14 Europeans and wealthy Asians (mostly Indians and Chinese) north of the central business district. Although not lacking in monuments (including a statue of Queen Victoria in Fytche Square, right across from the High Court building, and a Jubilee Hall celebrating her 60th year on the throne),

Rangoon, with its many somber red brick and masonry buildings resembled not only its tropical sister cities, Singapore, Penang and Saigon, but also provincial towns back in Britain, where urban design was guided not by visions of a higher Reality, but by considerations of profitability and efficiency, presenting a noisy, utilitarian spectacle which often proved a disappointment to western travelers in search of the exotic and mysterious.12

Naypyidaw’s modernity is distinct from that of Yangon not only because of different architectural styles and technologies, reflecting the early twenty-first rather than the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but also because of the two capitals’ different physical environments: while

12 In The Gentleman in the Parlour, novelist Somerset Maugham wrote that “It is impossible to consider these populous modern cities of the East without a certain malaise. They are all alike, with their straight streets, their arcades, their tramways, their dust, their blinding sun, their teeming Chinese, their dense traffic, their ceaseless din. They have no history and no tradition . . . “ (Bangkok: White Orchid, 1995: p. 150).

15 Yangon is located on the banks of a river in a low-lying, alluvial region near the sea, northeast of the fertile Irrawaddy Delta, the Naypyidaw capital district has been built in the upper valley of the Sittang River, a transitional zone between Lower and Upper Burma, on the fringes of the Dry Zone of central Burma. Though it is bordered by the Pegu Yoma range of low hills to the west and the Shan Plateau to the east, it is a large and relatively unsettled area filled with creeks, rice paddies and low-lying hills, affording plenty of space for the construction and expansion of the new city. According to the geographer Guy Lubeigt, the capital district, consisting of the three townships of Pyinmana, Lewe and Tatkon, has an area of 7,045 square kilometers.13

If Yangon is a dense, tightly-packed grid of east-west and north-south streets, at least in its central area, Naypyidaw is spread out, a diffuse array of official buildings, housing, shopping centers and other facilities connected by wide and (at the present time) usually empty highways. Thinly interconnected by these highways, its built environment

13 Lubeigt, Nay Pyi Taw, p. 23.

16 follows the contours of the land rather than the humanly-imposed (or cosmically-imposed) pattern of the old royal city or the generic colonial capital.

Thus, Naypyidaw’s layout is decentralized, composed of clusters of work-sites, settlements and recreational areas constructed around peripheral sub-centers, which include: the area where government ministries and other organs of the state are located; the civil servant housing area; an extensive luxury hotel zone where foreign visitors can stay

(including diplomats of foreign countries, most of whose embassies are still located in Yangon); golf courses; the old towns of Pyinmana and Lewe; the airport at Ela; the heavily guarded Military Zone (which is not shown on official maps and where foreign visitors cannot usually enter); and recreational facilities such as the new zoo, safari park and the National

Landscape Garden, a theme park-type place that recreates in miniature

Myanmar’s most famous natural and man-made wonders inside an area that has been constructed in the shape of the whole country, on the shores of

17 Yezin Dam.

Much of the architecture can be described not as “modern” but

“ultra-modern,” such as the Convention Centre, a large facility where the government plans to hold the Association of

Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in 2014, the Zabu Thiri Sports

Stadium and the establishments inside the luxury hotel zone which cater largely to foreign visitors; others, such as the ministry buildings and the for civil servants (numbering as many as 1,200 multi-family buildings), look similar to the sort of conventional modern structures found in cities such as Bangkok or ; while only a few of the buildings embody specifically Myanmar architectural styles, most notably, the

Hluttaw (national legislature) building, constructed on a huge scale, and the

Naypyidaw City Hall, which was inspired by the semi-traditionalistic design of the colonial-era Rangoon Municipal Corporation building. Although there are open air markets and arcades similar to those found in other Myanmar cities and towns, there are also modern shopping malls or “hypermarkets” in

18 enclosed spaces, imitations of those found in affluent countries. In one, the

Junction Shopping Centre, located near the hotel zone, there is a local equivalent of on the ground floor serving coffee and sweets - quite different from the traditional Myanmar teashop, which since at least colonial times has been a major contributor to the vitality of urban life. While tea shop patrons traditionally linger for a long time, often perusing books or newspapers or deep in conversation with their friends, the new type of coffee shop invites people to have a quick snack and be on their way.

With its ample spaces and apparent lack of a center, an American visitor to Naypyidaw could easily be reminded of one of those thinly populated and strung-out suburban developments that were built in semi-rural areas of his own country before the collapse of the housing bubble in 2007, in which transportation is possible only along wide and largely empty freeways and public transport is virtually non-existent.14 Unlike

Mandalay or Rangoon, there does not seem to be in the new capital much

14 As Lubeigt writes: “In consequence, nobody really knows where the center of Naypyidaw is located” (“Par suite, nul ne sait où placer le centre géographique de Nay Pyi Taw”). Nay Pyi Taw, p. 24.

19 open or public space, easily accessible from all parts of the city, where people can congregate and enjoy each other’s company – a negative feature of

Myanmar’s new urban life that seems similar to the over-commercialization and anonymous spaces of suburban Middle America.

Roundabouts or circuses, often decorated with large artificial flowers in a style that according to one observer is Chinese, mark the intersections of these major highways, and provide Naypyidaw with a

“galactic” array of sub-centers. Again, in contrast to the crowds and liveliness (and social unrest) of Yangon and Mandalay, the visitor to the new capital is likely to be reminded of Gertrude Stein’s famous comment about

Oakland, California: “there is no ‘there’ there.”

A “Royal” Pagoda (Zedidaw)

It is a mistake, however, to consider Naypyidaw to be completely without a center. In the Naypyidaw Exhibition Hall, located in the National

Landmark Garden, there is a huge relief model of the capital district; a

20 console containing buttons labeled with all the major landmarks is provided for the benefit of visitors (who are prohibited, apparently for security reasons, from taking photographs inside the building). By pressing a button, one can see each spot of interest illuminated with a small light. Right in the center of the model, which fills a very large room, is situated the Upattasanti Pagoda, whose golden spire can also be seen at a distance from many parts of the city

– much as the Shwedagon, the pagoda that inspired its design, can be seen from different points in Yangon. In other words, the Upattasanti Pagoda serves as Naypyidaw’s “sacred core” or “sacred center” in a settlement that seems otherwise rather incoherent or de-centered.

According to Buddhist legend, the Emperor Ashoka built 84,000 pagodas or throughout his empire on the Indian Subcontinent in the third century BCE, in order to make it possible for his subjects to perform devotions at the sacred sites and earn merit. In our own time, Myanmar is unsurpassed among Asian countries for the plenitude of these Buddhist relic chambers, numbering in the tens of thousands, since they continue to be

21 built – and the more famous ones renovated – even today. A close examination of one of the maps of Naypyidaw published in Myanmar shows small symbols representing pagodas spread throughout the countryside around the new capital, and not only in areas of relatively dense human settlement such as Pyinmana.15 Some are venerable, having a long history of patronage and devotion, but only the Upattasanti Pagoda, constructed by

Than Shwe, can claim the status of zedidaw, a “royal pagoda.”

Using the term “the buddhification of space” (“la ‘bouddicisation’ de l’espace”), Bénédicte Brac de la Perrière argues that it is not only true that a pagoda cannot be constructed in a location that does not have an association with Buddhist legend or history, but also that the construction of a major pagoda in a (new) city marks the urban space’s connection with the Buddhist religion, what she calls the “urban imagination” constituted by Buddhism.16

15 “The Map of Naypyitaw,” which has no publication information but was sold on the street in Yangon near the former National Archives. It is one of the few available flat maps (as opposed to map books) that gives a clear indication of the city’s districts and configuration – that is, the location of each area in relation to the others. However, the map does not include the ultra-secure Military Zone. 16 Bénédicte Brac de la Perrière. “Urbanisation et Legendes d’Introduction du Bouddhisme au Myanmar (Birmanie).” Journal des Anthropologues, 62

22

Burmese rulers, establishing their authority in territories where

they have established a Buddhist regime, manifested this principle

through construction of such monuments that were situated in a

local imagination within Buddhist space. In the cities, the pagoda

legends formed the weft of the urban imagination, and the

shafts of the stupas became landmarks and poles that functioned

as points around which space was oriented, at different levels in

a hierarchy.17

In this manner, the establishment of King Mindon’s new capital of

Mandalay was legitimized in terms of a prophecy allegedly made by the

Buddha when he visited Myanmar: that twenty-four centuries after the establishment of his religion, a glorious Buddhist city would arise in the plains below .18 Mindon asserted the connection of his new capital with the life and teachings of the Buddha through construction of

(1998): p. 45. 17 Ibid., p. 45 (translation by writer). 18 Ministry of Union Culture, Union of Burma. Mandalay Palace. Rangoon, 1963: p. 9.

23 many Buddhist sites, of which the Kuthodaw (Royal Bounty) Pagoda is the most famous. Within this sacred space there are small pagodas containing marble steles inscribed with the entire Buddhist scriptures, 729 in all, making this, in the words of tour guides, “the largest book in the world,” constructed in order to commemorate King Mindon’s sponsorship of the Fifth

Great Buddhist Conference in Mandalay in 1871, just as the Kaba Aye

(“World Peace”) Pagoda in Yangon commemorates Union of Burma prime minister ’s holding of the Sixth Great Buddhist Conference in

1954-1956.

A royal pagoda is recognized as one that not only has the patronage of the king or the ruler, but meets other criteria, namely:

(1) through his donations, the king/ruler creates the opportunity for

the common people to make their own donations and earn merit,

thus expressing, like Ashoka, his compassion for his subjects;

given this context, the royal pagoda becomes (or is supposed to

24 become) a special locus for community life and collective action;

(2) the pagoda asserts the king or ruler’s domination of the region

where it is located; and,

(3) the pagoda is believed to have especially strong, protective

powers, ensuring social stability, prosperity and peace.

Historically, the most prestigious Zedidaw is the Shwedagon, located on the top of Theingottara Hill north of Yangon’s central business district, considered by the Burmese to be the holiest Buddhist sacred space, and the most revered pagoda, in Myanmar – if not in the entire Buddhist world. It is said to contain the relics of not one but four Buddhas (thus, it is referred as the “four relic pagoda”) and is closely connected in legend to the lifetime of Gotama Buddha, who according to fifteenth century Mon chronicles is said to have given eight hairs from the top of his head to Mon merchants to take to their own country (in what is now modern Yangon) to enshrine on the hill where the other three relics were concealed.

25 Since at least the fifteenth century, the Shwedagon Pagoda has received homage and donations from Myanmar’s most powerful monarchs and in the post-colonial era from the country’s civilian and military leaders – including the SPDC, which sponsored the donation of a or finial to the pagoda in 1999. The presence of the Shwedagon gives the city of Yangon a rather unusual status. Never a royal capital, it only functioned as a seat of political-administrative power between 1852, when it became the center of

British-controlled Lower Burma, and 2005, when Than Shwe decreed the capital shift. However, it contains Burma’s premier sacred space, its most powerful spiritual center.

As Figure 1 shows, Mandalay, pre- and post-colonial Yangon and

Naypyidaw all contain(ed) royal pagodas. However, under British rule from

1852 until independence in 1948, the Shwedagon and other Buddhist sites were “dis-established,” since the rulers themselves were non-Buddhist and sought to promote a policy of religious neutrality and the confining of religious life to the private – or community – sphere. Despite imperial

26 support for the activities of the Church of England in British India, the spheres of religion and public affairs were seen as separate and discrete.

When colonial Rangoon was constructed during the 1850s, the new government gave grants of land to each of the religious communities – Hindu,

Buddhist, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, et al. – to build or maintain their own sanctuaries. Also, it established a legal framework in which the Shwedagon

Pagoda was administered by lay trustees who were elected by members of the Burmese Buddhist community. The government’s impartiality and disinclination to interfere in the life of any of the religious communities was seen by the foreign rulers as key to their colony’s stability and prosperity, but it created problems in relations between the British and Burmese because colonial religious neutrality severed the traditional connection between the

Buddhist religion and the ruler which was made material and concrete through royal sponsorship of the zedidaw. This policy was made explicit when the British prohibited King Mindon from coming personally to Yangon to donate a new hti to the Shwedagon in 1871; although the royal gift of a

27 pagoda finial was accepted by the colonial authorities and it was placed on top of the Shwedagon, the British permitted this only under the condition that the elevation of the hti be recognized as the meritorious work of the

Buddhist community of British (Lower) Burma, rather than the king.19

Because of the “royal” as well as a sacred nature of the Shwedagon and certain other pagodas, the British constantly encountered problems trying to integrate them into their colonial legal and social framework. In the end they failed, and the Shwedagon – aside from being a sacred site – emerged as the most potent public space for resistance against the colonial regime, as students, monks and other activists made the pagoda platform and the monasteries located around the stupa “strike centers” for the launching of nationalist campaigns against the British government. This practice has continued during the post-colonial era, as the Shwedagon became a rallying point for opposition against the socialist regime of General

19 See Donald M. Seekins. “Sacred Site or Public Space? The Shwedagon Pagoda in Colonial Rangoon.” Pp. 139-159 in John Whalen-Bridge and Pattana Kitiarsa, eds. Buddhism, Modernity and the State in Asia: Forms of Engagement. London: Palgrave-Macmillan, forthcoming.

28 in 1988 and the so-called “,” led by Buddhist monks, a series of popular demonstrations against the SPDC which took place in September 2007.20

Building the Upattasanti Pagoda

A year after the formal announcement of the establishment of the new capital, in November 2006, a ceremony was held to consecrate the ground upon which the new stupa would be built, with Than Shwe, his wife and his close military associates playing the major roles, including the driving of nine “bejeweled” stakes into the ground with golden hammers

(“maces”) and the anointment of the area with perfumed water.21 Although topographically prominent, located north of a main road running between

Pyinmana and the new sites of Naypyidaw under construction, Shwelinpan

Hill, the site chosen for the stupa, seems an odd choice as the place to construct a royal pagoda, since it is said to contain an old cemetery which

20 Ibid. 21 “Than Shwe watch.” magazine (November 12, 2006) on-line at www.irrawaddy.org (accessed November 15, 2009).

29 people in Pyinmana traditionally considered inhabited by malevolent nats or spirits. According to Guy Lubeigt, during the celebrations marking the completion of the pagoda in March 2009, these spirits were rumored to have appeared, frightening away some spectators!22

However, construction of the sacred site, including not only the main stupa but subsidiary buildings on the pagoda platform, was carried out without interruption: the regime campaigned vigorously to collect donations of , gemstones and other precious items from lay people, including top military officers and “crony capitalists” with close ties to the SPDC. Gold plates and leaf were needed to gild the exterior of the structure. Buddha relics (including Buddha images made of precious materials, votive plaques and small artificial trees with leaves of gold, jade and silver) were collected and sealed inside the pagoda (large numbers of these “tribute trees” can be seen at the museum on the platform of the Shwedagon in Yangon, where donations to the Yangon stupa are displayed).

22 Lubeigt, Nay Pyi Taw, pp. 117, 118, 126. In fact, an accident occurred during the inauguration of the pagoda at an amusement park on the platform, which resulted in the death of twenty people.

30 Than Shwe and his family contributed what was the most prominent relic: a replica of the renowned Buddha Tooth Relic, which is enshrined in a Buddhist monastery near , China, and had been brought to Myanmar twice during the 1990s on China-sponsored missions of

“relic diplomacy,” designed to promote a friendly image of the atheistic communist regime in a devoutly Buddhist country.23 In this way, the Senior

General made sure that Myanmar’s present as well as two former capitals each possessed a Tooth Relic replica, since he sponsored the building of two pagodas in Yangon and Mandalay in the 1990s, each housing a replica.24 In addition, four jade images of the Four Buddhas of the present era (whose relics are said to be enshrined in the Shwedagon Pagoda) were placed inside the “cave” or hollow cavity of the pagoda.25

23 “Than Shwe’s New Pagoda hides more than a Buddha relic.” The Irrawaddy magazine (March 11, 2009), on-line at BurmaNet News, www.burmanet.org (accessed May 7, 2013). The Irrawaddy describes it as coming from China, but it is clear that it was actually a replica. 24 Apparently powerful Buddha relics can “reproduce” themselves by having placed in their proximity other objects, which “become” sacred and powerful, like the originals. The Buddha Tooth Relic replicas in Yangon and Mandalay are apparently made of elephant ivory. 25 “Four Images of Maha Manimaya Buddha Patima conveyed into cave of Upattasanti Pagoda.” The (Mach 2, 2009), p. 10.

31 The Upattasanti Pagoda was completed and inaugurated in elaborate ceremonies that occurred in early March 2009. A total of 1,080 monks (an auspicious number) were invited by the regime to preside over the celebrations, and were given customary offerings as well as state-conferred honorary degrees confirming their high status within the ranks of the

Sangha, or community of Buddhist monks.26 The hti or umbrella, which adorns the spire of the pagoda, was raised by Than Shwe and his family, again playing the most prominent role in the ceremonies as described by the official media, followed by their raising of the “diamond orb” (yadana seinbudaw) and “pennant-shaped vane” (yadana hngetmyatnadaw) into position above the hti.27

A Shwedagon Replica

26 Lubeigt, Nay Pyi Taw, pp. 125, 126. 27 “Upattasanti Pagoda hosts ceremony of enshrining upper reliquary and hoisting Shwehtidaw.” New Light of Myanmar, vol. XVI: 324 (, 2009), pp. 1, 8, 9; “Senior General Than Shwe, wife Daw and family hoist Yadana Seinbudaw, Yadana Hngetmyatnadaw atop Upattasanti Pagoda.” New Light of Myanmar, vol. XVI: 325 (March 9, 2009): pp. 1, 8, 9, 10.

32 The claim that Naypyidaw is a royal city (“abode of the king”) derives from the presence within its boundaries of a royal pagoda, the concrete manifestation of Than Shwe’s ambition to re-establish a seamless connection between the power of the state he controls (or controlled) and the realm of absolute truth, the teachings and person of the Buddha (or

Buddhas). This ambition had been evident during the “Buddhist building boom” after 1988, but was expressed most extravagantly in the construction of the new capital’s sacred center.

The official name of the pagoda, Upattasanti, is taken from a “minor paritta” (Buddha sutta or scripture) of the sixteenth century, and can be translated as “peace,” “stability and development,” or “protection from calamity,” according to different sources. The Upattasanti paritta was customarily recited during times of peril, to obtain supernatural protection.28

The naming of this colossal religious project reflected Than Shwe’s preoccupation with the threat posed by disruptive (foreign and internal)

28 Lubeigt, Nay Pyi Taw, p. 117; comment of Yangon resident to author, January 2012.

33 forces, giving credibility to those observers who argued that the establishment of the new capital was motivated largely by strategic considerations.

However, not only the site of the pagoda (allegedly an ancient cemetery), but also its design raises questions as to the message the Senior

General wished to send in sponsoring its construction. The Upattasanti

Pagoda is from the exterior a faithful replica of the Shwedagon, although its height, a little over 99 meters, is 30 centimeters shorter than the original in

Yangon (99.4 meters). In one major way, however, it differs from the “four relic pagoda”: it is hollow, containing a huge, enclosed space under its dome supported by a central column rather than being a solid structure. While images of the Four Buddhas of the present era are placed in tazaung (prayer halls) built on the periphery of the Shwedagon stupa, at the four cardinal directions of the compass, their equivalents in jade are placed around the

Upattasanti stupa’s central supporting pillar, inside the hall. In being hollow, the Upattasanti Pagoda resembles several famous pagodas in Yangon, such

34 as the Botataung, Maha Wizaya (sponsored by the socialist dictator Ne Win) and Tooth Relic Pagoda (sponsored, as mentioned, by Than Shwe).

What is interesting is that while some observers, such as Michael

Aung-Thwin, interpret Than Shwe’s decision to relocate the capital as his determination to return the seat of power to the Myanmar (or Burman)

“heartland” of the Upper Burma Dry Zone,29 the Senior General’s most important religious monument – meant to be “his” pagoda and the symbol of the new capital – is built along the lines of a pagoda in Lower Burma, whose origins in legend and history, in fact, are not Burman but Mon. If indeed

Than Shwe (a native of , near Mandalay) was motivated by the desire to return to his Burman “roots,” it is surprising that his personal stupa was not modeled on those of (Pagan) or another old Upper

Burma capital. It is also clear that by deciding to build the stupa 30 centimeters shorter than the original, he did not wish to challenge the

29 “The Dry Zone of Upper Burma . . . is the ancestral home of the Burmese people, and is very much part of their psyche.” Michael Aung-Thwin. “From Bangkok to Pyinmana.” The (November 28, 2005) in BurmaNet News (November 28, 2005) on-line at www.birmanet.org (accessed May 2, 2013).

35 premier status of the “four relic pagoda” as the holiest Buddhist site in his country. In other words, in his new capital he has attempted to assert

“Myanmar (religious) identity” in terms that are not at odds with the expectations of ordinary Myanmar Buddhists.

Conclusions

Like other royal pagodas, the Upattasanti provides a place where

Buddhists can congregate for collective devotions, presided over by the ruling elite, an arrangement that is mutually beneficial as it provides the people with the opportunity to make merit and the leadership to acquire political as well as spiritual legitimacy. Such devotions include the sponsorship of the reciting of paritta (protective Buddhist verses) by monks, the release of animals from captivity, and the offering of robes and other items to monks by devout laymen, especially the military leadership and their families.

Because of the Upattasanti’s high status as the new capital’s royal pagoda, it has become the locale of special state-sponsored events. For

36 example, in June 2010, a white elephant was found in the forests of Rakhine

() State and was conveyed with great ceremony to a pavilion adjacent to the pagoda. In Southeast Asian Buddhist folklore, the appearance of a sacred white elephant in a country is a sign that it will enjoy peace and prosperity, and the title “Lord of the White Elephant” was highly prized by old Burman and Mon monarchs. By autumn of 2010, the white elephant, a female to which was given the name “Bhaddawadi,” had been joined by four others, and in the following year, she gave birth to still another white elephant.30

The abundance of such highly esteemed creatures, which look very much like ordinary elephants but have certain identifying signs, has been much celebrated in the state media since one was discovered in Rakhine

State in 2001 and housed at near the White Stone Buddha complex, a major

30 Khin Maung Nyunt. “White Elephants of Myanmar.” The New Light of Myanmar (August 29, 2010), p. 8; “Fifth White Elephant arrives in Nay Pyi Taw,” The New Light of Myanmar (October 22, 2010, p. 1; “White Elephant Bhaddawady gives birth to female white elephant.” The New Light of Myanmar (November 29, 2011), p. 1.

37 project in the post-1988 “Buddhist building boom” in northern Yangon.31

According to Dr. Khin Maung Nyunt, this was the first white elephant to be found in Myanmar since 1958. 32 When the People’s Republic of China allowed the original Beijing Buddha Tooth Relic to be brought to Naypyidaw in November 2011, it was transported around the Upattasanti Pagoda by one of the white elephants in an elaborate ceremony.33

Although thinly interconnected by wide and mostly empty highways and ultramodern in its layout and design, the new Myanmar capital of

Naypyidaw conforms to traditional expectations that a royal city must have a major pagoda at its spiritual, if not physical, center, connecting the capital to the history and legends of the Buddhist religion. What is interesting in the case of Naypyidaw is that just as Than Shwe sponsored the creation of reproductions of the original Buddha Tooth Relic enshrined in China, in

31 Chief patron of the White Stone Buddha project was Lt.-Gen. , Secretary-1 of the SPDC, the third most powerful figure in the junta until he was purged and put under arrest in 2004. 32 Khin Maung Nyunt, “White Elephants of Myanmar,” p. 8. 33 “President U Thein Sein and wife Daw Khin Khin Win attend ceremony to convey sacred Buddha Tooth Relic from PRC and consecration ceremony.” The New Light of Myanmar (November 7, 2011), pp. 1, 8.

38 order to have relics of his own, so he ordered the construction of a reproduction of Myanmar’s most revered stupa, the Shwedagon, in order to have his down pagoda.

Although not without a certain history and identity of its own, the site of Naypyidaw, the upper valley of the Sittang River, does not loom large in Myanmar’s dynastic or Buddhist history. For Than Shwe, that may have been an attractive feature, since the region presented a tabula rasa where he could construct “his” capital, complete with “his” royal pagoda. However, the success of his pagoda-building enterprise is open to doubt because, in contrast to the perpetually crowded platform of the Shwedagon in Yangon, the Upattasanti Pagoda seems to be largely deserted, even on occasions when major state-sponsored rituals are held. For the foreign visitor, Yangon’s

“Golden Pagoda” provides ample opportunities for watching and interacting with local people, while the Upattasanti Pagoda has an empty, gloomy atmosphere.

The continued popularity of the Shwedagon could also be

39 interpreted as a rebuke to the Senior General and his regime, especially since the Yangon stupa was the site of a pivotal speech by in August 1988, when she said the student protests of that year constituted a

“second struggle for national independence”; in 2007, it became the center of renewed demonstrations by monks and lay people during the “Saffron

Revolution.”34 Although the military elite has striven to use pagoda religion for its own purposes, through generous donations and the building of still more stupas and other Buddhist sites, a counter-discourse of resistance to the state has also grown up around the pagoda, which runs deeply through

Myanmar’s colonial and post-colonial history.

Doubts also arise concerning the whole project of asserting

Myanmar identity through Buddhism. The experience of other countries suggests that traditionalism is much more successful at drawing boundaries between “Us” and “Them” and stimulating inter-group (or international) conflict than it is in preserving traditional values, especially religious values,

34 Of course, Yangon has between five and six times the population of Naypyidaw and surrounding settlements, but SLORC/SPDC-sponsored pagodas in the old capital are also unpopular.

40 inside a society. Political liberalization and friendlier, more constructive ties with western countries indicate that the situation inside the country after the retirement of Than Shwe in 2011 is improving; but Buddhist-Muslim violence, which broke out in Rakhine (Arakan) State last year and in the central Myanmar town of this year, as well as an ongoing military campaign by the government armed forces () against the largely

Christian Kachins in the northern part of the country, show that creating a society of Buddhist insiders and non-Buddhist outsiders is sowing the seeds of new disorder, which could undermine not only progress toward democracy and development, but Myanmar’s national unity.

41