Bruce Matthews | 40 seats available

Tuesdays, 4:00pm-5:30pm

February 4 – February 25  (4 sessions)

Treacherous situations involving religion, ethnicity and populist identity continue to compromise several Asian societies, bringing increased national and regional instability. Arguably most significant is Myanmar’s Rohingya crisis, which has festered since August 2017, when an estimated 730,000 Rohingya Muslims fled into neighbouring Bangladesh following a well-planned coordinated campaign of mass killings, gang rapes and other atrocities by Myanmar’s armed forces, whose troops are entirely from a Buddhist cultural background. The situation remains largely unresolved for the Rohingya and destabilizing for Myanmar as a nation. Burmese Buddhist nationalist organizations continue to contribute to this volatility. Somewhat similar challenges involving religion and culture have compromised the political and social stability of neighbouring India (the Hindutva issue) and Sri Lanka (the 2019 Easter day Islamist atrocity, and problematic Sinhala Buddhist nationalism). This mini-course reviews some of the central features involved in these examples, and provides opportunity for an up-date on religion and politics in a key part of Asia.

Bruce Matthews

Bruce is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Religion at Acadia. A former graduate student at the University of Ceylon (1970-71), he is the author of many articles on religion and politics in international journals, and has returned to the subcontinent and SE Asia many times.