Much has been written about Mahatma Gandhi and his pivotal role in India’s struggle for independence. While Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violent resistance and Swadeshi inspired millions across the world, it also had a profound impact on a Buddhist monk in neighbouring Burma (present-day Myanmar), who would go on to ignite the country’s independence movement.
This is the story of Sayadaw U Ottama, and how he came to be known as the ‘Gandhi of Burma’.
Born in 1879 near Akyab in northwestern Burma, Sayadaw U Ottama attended an Anglo-Burmese school and became a novice at the age of 15. A year later, with the help of a wealthy family, he visited Calcutta and pursued three years of Western education.
For the next decade, he travelled between India, Burma and Japan as well as other parts of Asia. “During these travels, his encounters with other variants of Buddhism as well as other religions led him to reflect deeply on his own tradition,” writes anthropologist Charles F Keyes in Fundamentalisms and the State: Remaking Polities, Economies, and Militance (1993).
A scholar of Pali and Sanskrit, U Ottama had a pluralistic worldview. Keyes notes that in India, he became involved in the Indian nationalist movement, which later inspired his fight for Burmese independence.
U Ottama’s politics
After his return to Burma in 1919, U Ottama began travelling extensively, preaching patriotism and organising Wunthanu Athins (Nationalist Societies) across the country. According to U Ottama, it was possible to be a monk alongside being a political activist. “On the contrary,” says Keyes, “he argued that for people to attain the ultimate goal of nibbana [nirvana] they must first free themselves from enslavement by an alien government.”
U Ottama’s followers preached his framework of nationalism and spread his vision to villages across Burma. “The movement by U Ottama was fundamentalist not only in its opposition to an “evil” political order but also in its critique of traditional religious practice,” Keyes adds.
In the 1920s, U Ottama and his followers initiated a series of demonstrations of civil disobedience, modelled along the lines of Gandhi’s movement in India. The movement aimed to boycott foreign goods, detest undue government taxes, protest against colonial institutions such as courts and encourage the formation of schools run by Burmese Buddhists rather than foreign Christians.
Keyes notes that his campaigns paid particular focus on the abstinence from liquor, as per the norms of Buddhist morality. The monk was also fond of yoga, much like Gandhi. In Burma In Revolt: Opium And Insurgency Since 1948 (1994), author Bertil Lintner writes, “In the Gandhian way, he transformed a basically political issue—nationalism and independence for Burma—into a religious one which appealed even to those who had not received British education.”
From being charged with sedition to dying in jail
However, the imperial government responded to U Ottama’s demonstrations with force and suppression. His detentions, interestingly, were also similar to those of Gandhi.
In 1921, he was arrested for an infamous speech known as “Craddock, Get Out!”, a harangue against Sir Reginald Craddock, then the governor of British Burma, and his repressive policies.
“It was the first time a nationalist had been charged with sedition and, adding insult to injury, he was a Buddhist monk of the eminence of a sayadaw, or great teacher. It was a challenge to the dignity of the entire nation,” notes Lintner. In 1924, he was arrested again for three years. Less than a year after his release, U Ottama was back in jail, where he died in 1939.
“Although he had an immense influence on the nationalist movement in the 1920s, by the 1930s leadership of the movement had shifted from political monks to lay people,” argues Keyes. Burma would later attain independence in 1948.
Today, U Ottama is remembered by some as a Buddhist saint, and by others as the ‘Gandhi of Burma’
Left to right, Sayadaw U Ottama and Mahatma Gandhi (Source: Wikipedia) 
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