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The Upattasanti Pagoda in Myanmar's New Capital of Naypyidaw

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The Upattasanti Pagoda in Myanmar's New Capital of Naypyidaw The Sacred Core: the Upattasanti Pagoda in Myanmar’s New Capital of Naypyidaw -by- Donald M. Seekins, Ph.D. The relocation of the capital of Myanmar (Burma) from Yangon (Rangoon) to Naypyidaw in late 2005 surprised both Burmese and foreign observers. Myanmar is one of Southeast Asia’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 Than Shwe, 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 China, Thailand and India; (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. Singapore: Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, November 2006; Dulyapak Preecharushh. Naypyidaw: the New Capital of Burma (Bangkok: 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 Aung San 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 major pagoda on a hill between Naypyidaw and the old town of Pyinmana 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 Theravada 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 Shwedagon Pagoda, 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 Capital City.” 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 stupa, 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 pagodas 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 Thein Sein do not live in the world of Anawrahta, 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 Bayinnaung and Alaungpaya, 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 refuge through which “Myanmar identity” can be protected and nurtured – and national unity maintained.
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