Young Men's Buddhist Association (Burma)
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| ဗုဒ္ဓဘာသာကလျာဏယုဝအသင်း | |
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| Abbreviation | YMBA |
|---|---|
| Successor | YMBA |
| Formation | 1906 |
| Founder | U Ba Pe, Doctor Ba Yin, Sir Maung Gyi |
| Founded at | Yangon (Rangoon) |
| Purpose | Current: Ultranationalism[2][3] Buddhist nationalism[2] Historical: Anti-colonialism Burmese nationalism |
| Location | |
Chairman | U Ye Htun [1][4] |
Patron | Senior General Min Aung Hlaing [4] |
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 Myanmar portal |
The Young Men's Buddhist Association (YMBA; Burmese: ဗုဒ္ဓဘာသာကလျာဏယုဝအသင်း) is a Buddhist civil society organisation in Burma.
History
[edit]
The YMBA was founded in Rangoon in 1906 as a federation of lay Buddhist groups dating back to 1898, with prominent founders including Ba Pe, Sir Maung Gyi and Dr. Ba Yin. It was modelled on the Young Men's Buddhist Association founded in Ceylon in 1898,[5] and was created to preserve the Buddhist-based culture in Burma against the backdrop of British colonialism including the incorporation of Burma into India.
The YMBA started its first open campaign against British rule in 1916,[6] and after many protests obtained a ruling that abbots could impose dress codes on all visitors to Buddhists monasteries.[7]
The organization split in 1918 when older members insisted that it should remain apolitical, whilst younger members sought to enter the political sphere, sending a delegation to India to meet the Viceroy and Secretary of State to request the separation of Burma from India.[8]: p.153–154 Further lobbying delegations were sent to London in 1919 and 1920. Following its key involvement in the 1920 student strike,[8] the most nationalist elements of the YMBA broke off and formed a political party known as the General Council of Burmese Associations,[9] whilst a senior faction later formed the Independent Party.[citation needed] After Burma was granted independence in 1948, YMBA pledged to exit from politics.[10]
YMBA returned to the political scene in 2019, closely aligning itself with the Myanmar military and its proxy political party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party.[10] In October 2019, YMBA bestowed an honorary title, the Mahāmaṅgalādhammajotikadhaja, on Min Aung Hlaing, the military's commander-in-chief, and granted him the role of permanent patron.[11] In February 2020, YMBA granted Min Aung Hlaing its highest honorary title, the Aggamahāmaṅgalājotikadhaja.[11] The granting of honorary titles was heavily criticised on social media.[11]
Following the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état in February 2021, YMBA became the first civil organisation to issue a public statement supporting the Tatmadaw.[2] Political observers have speculated that YMBA has ambitions to succeed the Patriotic Association of Myanmar, which was banned by the civilian-led government in 2017.[10][11]
Membership
[edit]In August 2020, YMBA had 30,000 members.[11] Members pay annual dues, which are discounted for military officers.[11]
Activities
[edit]The organization has founded multiple schools. YMBA operates Dhamma training classes and Dhamma summer schools nation-wide, through its township chapters.[10] The schools have been criticised for stoking ethnoreligious tensions and promoting military propaganda.[10]
References
[edit]- ^ a b "YMBA အသင်းသူ/သားများအနေဖြင့် YMBA ဗဟိုအမှုဆောင်များအား ကြိုတင်အသိပေးတင်ပြခြင်းမရှိဘဲ မိမိသဘောဆန္ဒအလျောက် မီဒီယာများကိုဖြေကြားခွင့်မပြု". People Media (in Burmese). 11 January 2021.
- ^ a b c "Tatmadaw supporters march in Yangon". The Myanmar Times. 2021-02-03. Retrieved 2021-02-16.
- ^ "Complaints against YMBA's operations continue". The Myanmar Times. 2016-01-12. Retrieved 2021-05-28.
- ^ a b နေဝန်းထက် (23 October 2019). "ဗုဒ္ဓဘာသာကလျာဏယုဝအသင်းချုပ် (YMBA)အနေဖြင့် အမျိုး၊ ဘာသာ၊ သာသနာ၊ ပညာကို တစိုက်မတ်မတ် လုပ်ဆောင်ရန် အသင်း၏ ရာသက်ပန်နာယက ဗိုလ်ချုပ်မှူးကြီးမင်းအောင်လှိုင် မှာကြား". Eleven News (in Burmese). Eleven Media Group Co., Ltd.
- ^ Human Rights Watch (2009) The Resistance of the Monks: Buddhism and Activism in Burma p12
- ^ William Roger Louis (1999) Oxford History of the British Empire, Vol. 4, Oxford University Press
- ^ History of Burma Michigan State University
- ^ a b Fukui, Haruhiro (1985). Political parties of Asia and the Pacific. Greenwood Press. pp. 131–132.
- ^ Here Today, Gone Tomorrow The Irrawaddy, 8 November 2009
- ^ a b c d e "'Psychological violence': Nationalist Dhamma schools make a comeback under junta". Frontier Myanmar. 2023-05-24. Retrieved 2023-05-28.
- ^ a b c d e f Thar, Hein (2020-08-10). "Is the YMBA planning a return to politics?". Frontier Myanmar. Retrieved 2023-05-28.
Further reading
[edit]- Michale W. Charney. A History of Modern Burma. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. p. 31.
- Georgetown Berkeley Center article on this organization
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