This week saw the second largest City in Burma, Mandalay, experience Buddhist monk-led demonstrations against the Muslim Rohingya, receiving criticism from many observers.

Commenting on the situation, Phil Robertson, the Deputy Director for Asia Human Rights Watch said,

“If more people fail to speak up, Burma could be headed towards Buddhist xenophobia similar to the Sinhalese in Sri Lanka.

And that’s the concern that we see today in Burma that if this continues, if the Burmese monkhood continues to come out and press against the Rohingya in this way, we will be on the road to a kind of Sri Lanka situation with the Rohingya, where you have the Buddhists across Burma raising their hands against Rohingya.

Juliane Schover, a scholar studying Burma’s Buddhist traditions, outlined how Buddhism had been strongly infused with what constitutes to Burmese identity, saying,

“the saying you know, ‘to be Burmese is to be Buddhist’ is one that was first articulated in the early 1910s when the initial struggles for independence became and it was a way of asserting Burmese identity”

Rachel Fleming, the Advocacy Director for the Chin Human Rights Organization, noted that the, predominantly Christian, western Chin state were viewed as such a threat to national identity that monks were dispatched to try to convert them to Buddhism.
She stated,

“Those monks were primarily loyal to military rule and Burma army soldiers exacted forced labour from Chin Christians to build Pagodas and monasteries for those monks”

The Vahu Development Institute said that authorities have long sought to impose the Burman majority views on the population by keeping the minorities out of power.
Responding to the concerns, the Burmese authorities said that, although the discriminatory Buddhist monk demonstrations were allowed to take place, they tried to discourage it.

See here for full report from VoA here.
Burma’s monks have, at times, taken lead roles in times of popular unrest, earning them the reputation of being champions of democracy and freedom.

However, though some of the struggles may have been seen as noble, analysts have noted that “historically Burma’s Buddhism has been influenced by racist nationalism that occasionally resurfaces”.