Two years after the military coup, the testimony of Ashin Mandalarlankara, a Theravada Buddhist monk who studies the encounter with other religious traditions at the Angelicum in Rome in a program that bears the name of John Paul II. “In my land, people suffer and ask us religious not to dwell on words about peace.”
Rome () – “In Burma we have lived for too long without understanding each other between the different communities. This also made conflicts possible. And the military stoked the fire of these divisions.” Two years have passed since the coup in which generals swept away the government led by Aung San Su Kyi, bloodily suppressing civil society protests in Yangon and the rest of the country. That confrontation – as we constantly reported in our reports on – became a bloody war without quarter that has already left behind almost 3,000 civilian victims, as well as endless devastation and one and a half million displaced people in the areas where the clash between the army and ethnic militias is most intense.
All this is well in mind for the young Theravada monk Ashin Mandalarlankara, who moved from Mandalay to Rome a few months ago with a special task: to further his studies in interreligious dialogue. Ashin is, in fact, the first Buddhist selected by the John Paul II Center for Interreligious Dialogue, an institution born from the association between the Angelicum (the pontifical university of the Dominicans) and the Russel Berrie Foundation (a Jewish institution) with the objective of training leaders capable of working in their own countries for interreligious dialogue and the construction of peace. Each year he selects a dozen fellows from around the world, who attend a special training program at the Angelicum. Since its founding in 2008, some 130 young leaders from 40 countries have already passed through it. And this year, in fact, the class significantly includes a monk from Burma.
“It’s not an easy challenge for me,” says Ashin, “the linguistic and cultural distances in the study of monotheistic religions make themselves felt. I try to understand the differences and similarities with Buddhism without mixing things up. But, above all, this This experience is also helping me to better understand the other communities that live with us Buddhists in Burma. Dialogue is not a new experience for the young monk: born in a small village, in Mandalay he had already had the opportunity to cultivate the desire to meet other religious traditions. In 2015, he had participated in Vienna in another program promoted by KAICIID (the center for interreligious dialogue backed by Saudi Arabia). And once back in his country, he launched initiatives to bring together young Buddhists, Muslims, Christians, Hindus and Baha’is.
Today, however, the conflict opened by the coup d’état two years ago has made this issue even more delicate. We had democracy, but the military held economic power,” he comments. “They also want to manipulate the religious leaders, the Buddhists, but not only them. The result is that secularization advances: religions lose their appeal among people and with it their ability to unite people. And this further complicates the conflict.”
Hence the importance of dialogue between communities, which he considers a special field of work when he returns to Mandalay at the end of the academic year: “All religions speak of peace and compassion, at the heart of their teachings they have a humanitarian perspective,” he explains, “but what it is about is not staying in words and translating all this into concrete actions”. He talks about the Islamophobia that must be fought in Burma, the intertwining of political power – the military, but also many ethnic militias – with businesses related to the exploitation of resources. “People are angry and have many questions about religion. They ask us: ‘And what are you doing? If our leaders limit themselves to understanding the sacred texts, the distance will only increase.”
He talks about Buddhist monasteries that also opened their doors to welcome war victims. But he also mentions the question of the purification of memory and the psychological trauma that these two terrible years are leaving in Burma. “There will be so much need to heal and it will take so much dialogue.” A clear agenda of what awaits him after these months in Rome.
