Buddhism Peacefulness

When Asia rose up against empire and oppression, Buddhist monks, with their moral command and plentiful numbers, led anticolonial movements. Some starved themselves for their cause, their sunken flesh and protruding ribs underlining their sacrifice for the laity. Perhaps most iconic is the image of Thich Quang Duc, a Vietnamese monk sitting in the lotus position, wrapped in flames, as he burned to death in Saigon while protesting the repressive South Vietnamese regime 50 years ago. In 2007, Buddhist monks led a foiled democratic uprising in Burma: images of columns of clerics bearing upturned alms bowls, marching peacefully in protest against the junta, earned sympathy around the world, if not from the soldiers who slaughtered them. But where does social activism end and political militancy begin? Every religion can be twisted into a destructive force poisoned by ideas that are antithetical to its foundations. Now it’s Buddhism’s turn.”  

Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah is professor of anthropology at Harvard University and curator of South Asian Ethnology at the Peabody Museum. He is a past president of the Association for Asian Studies. His numerous books include Sri Lanka: Ethnic Fratricide and the Dismantling of Democracy, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Buddhism Betrayed? Given Buddhism's presumed non-violent philosophy, how can committed Buddhist monks and laypersons in Sri Lanka today actively take part in the fierce political violence of the Sinhalese against the Tamils? Even before Sri Lankan independence, Buddhist activists and ideologues—monks and laypersons, educators and politicians - accused the British raj of "betraying" Buddhism and spoke of a need to restore Buddhism to its rightful place in the life and governance of the country. Tambiah sympathetically portrays and critically assesses the ways in which these views gave rise to discriminatory anti-Tamil policies. He details the increasingly volatile nature of the participation of monks in national politics from its first stirrings in the 1940s to its final phase, when some monks themselves become parties to violence. The successive transformations of "political Buddhism" and what some vocal Buddhist monk ideologues now conceive as an ideal Buddhist-administered society are outlined and evaluated.

 Buddhism Betrayed? skilfully combines detailed scholarship with the author's own passionate plea for an end to hostilities. In the eloquent essay on the "burdens of history" in Sri Lanka that concludes the book, Tambiah examines the Sinhalese Buddhists' alleged long-term historical consciousness, with its anti-Tamil sentiments as portrayed in chronicles written by monks over the centuries, and advances countervailing evidence in Sinhalese history of tolerant assimilation and incorporation of peoples and traditions from South India.

The book Buddhism Betrayed gives another side of story. 

http://world.time.com/2013/06/20/extremist-buddhist-monks-fight-oppression-with-violence/