Tired, and tired of post-colonial nonsense

Wow. So this morning, I managed to sleep through two alarms and a call from my girlfriend, missing my morning class in the process and waking up at 11:30am. I guess it was going to catch up to me eventually, what with me sleeping 3-4 hours every night and spending all day reading ethnomusicology journals. On the plus side, I’m hoping the extra rest this afforded me will allow me to push forward and get a little bit ahead in my classes so that it won’t have to happen again. I’d been doing so well too, but everybody has an off day, right?

But the real point of this entry is to rant about something I read on the BBC News about the political activity and clout of Buddhist monks in Burma. 90% of the Burmese population is Buddhist, so the monks and monasteries command a lot of power. While generally peaceful, they do occasionally rise to political action when they feel the cause necessitates their making a move, and this tends to rally the people together. That’s all well-established in the article. But here comes the silly part. In reviewing the history of Burmese monks’ political activity, BBC News had this to say (underlined text by me):

Their political role stems from the days of the Burmese monarchy, which operated until the late 19th century, under which monks worked as intermediaries between the monarch and the public, and lobbied the king over unpopular moves such as heavy taxation, said Mr Aung Kin.

They became more confrontational during colonial times, in protest at the failure of foreigners to remove their shoes in pagodas, he said.

There’s no way white men wearing shoes could be the main reason the Burmese monasteries decided to rise up against British colonial power. No monk was saying, “these white men keep dirtying Buddha’s holy rug with their big nasty boots, we better go send the peasantry to kick their asses.” Now granted, it probably annoyed them, and may have even been the straw to break the camel’s back, but you can’t tell me that their political work in this case was because of some nasty cracka’s shoes.

When will people start realizing that people in 3rd world countries might just have mental acuity comparable to their own? “Oh look at the cute little Asians that get mad when you don’t take off your shoes.” Rawrgh.

Photo from this BBC article

Wednesday, September 26th, 2007 : Current Events : No Comments

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