Hòa Hảo
Hòa Hảo ( Vietnamese . Đạo Hòa Hảo and Phật giáo Hòa Hảo , rarely Hoahaoism ) is the name of a Buddhist new religious movement (" sect ") that started in 1939 by the only nineteen-year-old Huỳnh Phú Sổ in the Mekong Delta in southern Vietnam - at that time Cochinchina under French colonial rule - was founded. Hòa Hảo was the name of his home village in Phú Tân County in An Giang Province , but literally also means "harmony" or "unity".
The Hòa-Hảo belief is based on the "genannteno Bửu Sơn Kỳ Hương" teachings of the 19th century mystic Đoàn Minh Huyên and aims at a rural and puritanical lay Buddhism. A central element is the veneration of the future Buddha Maitreya as the coming savior, combined with animistic practices of local popular belief. Splendid ceremonies and luxurious temples should be dispensed with in favor of supporting those in need.
This doctrine quickly found great acceptance among the simple rural population, who were impoverished and insecure by the economic crisis of the 1930s, so that within a year Hòa Hảo became a mass movement with a messianic - millenarist character and in several provinces along the border with Cambodia comprised the majority of the population. Since the Hòa-Hảo movement soon sought secular power, set up its own armed militias and sympathized with the exiled nationalist independence fighter Prince Cường Để , the colonial authorities tried to suppress it. Huỳnh Phú Sổ was imprisoned in a mental institution for almost a year . At this time - meanwhile the Second World War had broken out - French Indochina was occupied by the Japanese , who were benevolent towards the Hòa-Hảo movement and actively promoted it. After the Japanese surrender, the Hòa Hảo took advantage of the power vacuum and, armed with Japanese weapons, took over military control of several southern provinces. The Hòa Hảo, the competing syncretistic Cao Đài sect and the criminal syndicate Bình Xuyên now jointly controlled almost all of rural Cochinchina.
The Hòa Hảo initially cooperated with the communist-dominated Việt Minh , with whom they shared the goal of national independence; but both sides mistrusted each other. When Nguyễn Bình , the leader of the southern Việt Minh, learned in 1947 that the Hòa Hảo were secretly talking to the French secret service ( Deuxième Bureau ), he lured Huỳnh Phú Sổ into a trap and made him " disappear ".
After the death of their founder and prophet, the Hòa Hảo split into several groups, whose leaders and warlords Ba Cụt (Lê Quang Vinh), Trần Văn Soái , Lâm Thành Nguyên and Nguyễn Giác Ngộ fought against each other as well as against the Việt Minh. The majority of the Hòa-Hảo military leaders eventually worked with the French in the Indochina War and later with the Pro-French Bảo-Đại government, with their loyalty always uncertain. The French left the power of the Hòa-Hảo leaders intact in the rural regions of the Mekong Delta and gave the Hòa-Hảo combat units semi-official status. In return, the Hòa Hảo prevented the Việt Minh from entering the areas they ruled - quite successfully. The French made similar agreements with the Cao-Đài and Bình-Xuyên leaders. The only exception to this was the Hòa-Hảo officer Huỳnh Văn Trí , who defected to the Việt Minh in 1947 and obtained high-ranking positions in their command structure.
After the end of the Indochina War and the partition of Vietnam, Ngô Đình Diệm prevailed as the new prime minister in South Vietnam with US support . Immediately after taking office, the leaders of the Hòa Hảo, Cao Đài and Bình Xuyên put Dim under pressure with the aim of maintaining or even expanding their current position of power. Diệm did not allow himself to be blackmailed, but took military action against the groups in the spring of 1955 ( sectarian crisis and the battle of Saigon ). A year later, the last opponent, the Hòa-Hảo leader Ba Cụt, was captured and executed, with which Diệm had consolidated his position as a “strong man”. The Hòa Hảo were not completely defeated, however, at the time of Diệm's assassination in 1963 they still (or again) controlled several provinces. Many of the former Hòa-Hảo fighters joined the National Liberation Front (Viet Cong) . After Diệm's death, however, other supporters turned back to the government in Saigon, for example a Hòa-Hảo faction in the South Vietnamese parliament for several legislative periods.
In reunified socialist Vietnam, the Hòa Hảo were recognized as an official religious group, but restricted and monitored due to their anti-communist past. Today there are an estimated 2 million Hòa-Hảo followers (about two percent of the population of Vietnam) who live almost exclusively in the Mekong Delta. This makes the Hòa Hảo the third largest religious group after Buddhists and Catholics , roughly on a par with the Cao Đài.
Individual evidence
- ^ Nghia M. Vo: Saigon: A History , McFarland, Jefferson NC 2011, p. 274
- ↑ Christopher Goscha : Historical Dictionary of the Indochina War (1945–1954) - An International and Interdisciplinary Approach , NIAS Press, Copenhagen, 2011, p. 209 (entry HÒA HẢO )
- ↑ Jessica M. Chapman: Cauldron of Resistance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and 1950s Southern Vietnam , Cornell University Press, Ithaca NY 2013, chapter 4.
- ↑ Encyclopædia Britannica , online edition: Hoa Hao, Vietnamese Buddhist religious movement (as of December 2018)
- ↑ KW Taylor : A History of the Vietnamese , Cambridge University Press, 2013, pp. 524, 537f, 599, 608
- ↑ Zachary Abuza: Renovating Politics in Contemporary Vietnam , Lynne Rienner Publishers, Boulder CO, 2001, p 204
- ↑ CIA World Factbook : Vietnam : Buddhist 7.9%, Catholic 6.6%, Hoa Hao 1.7%, Cao Dai 0.9% (as of December 2018). Other sources, however, see the Cao Đài as significantly larger.