Wars & Conflicts
Vietnam War
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The Vietnam War, fought between the communist north and the American backed south from the mid 1950s to the fall of Saigon in 1975, was a Cold War proxy conflict with a religious crisis at its centre. The Catholic president of the south, Ngo Dinh Diem, governed a Buddhist majority, and the confrontation of 1963, from the flag ban at Hue to the self immolation of Thich Quang Duc, brought down his government and put Buddhist monks at the centre of Vietnamese politics. Out of that decade came engaged Buddhism, and after 1975 a state that placed every religious body under supervision.
Facts
Disputed
Death TollThe lower named camp: Hirschman, Preston and Vu's 1995 peer reviewed demographic survey, using retrospective kin mortality data from the 1991 Vietnam Life History Survey, reports a most likely national total of 882,000 Vietnamese dead between 1965 and 1975, with a stated range of 791,000 to 1,141,000. This atlas records the low end of that range as its own lower bound. A separate camp puts the toll far higher: Vietnam's own 1995 government estimate for 1955 to 1975 totals roughly 3.1 million Vietnamese military and civilian dead on both sides, and historian Guenter Lewy's 1978 estimate for 1965 to 1974 alone is 1,353,000. The wide spread reflects genuinely different methodologies, survey sampling against government tallying against battlefield reporting, rather than a single contested number. Death TollThe higher named camp: Obermeyer, Murray and Gakidou's 2008 study in the BMJ, using sibling survival histories from the World Health Survey Programme, reports 3,812,000 Vietnamese dead between 1955 and 2002, of which 3,091,000 fall between 1955 and 1975, the same war years the lower camp's 1995 demographic study covers. The two studies cover overlapping but not identical windows and use different survey methods. This atlas records both named camps' own totals as its bounds rather than resolving the disagreement, and does not merge either figure with United States or allied military deaths, which are recorded separately. Displaced (Low Estimate)The regional total a UNHCR press release marking the June 1996 closure of Malaysia's last refugee camp gives: since 1975, 840,000 Vietnamese asylum seekers had reached the countries of South East Asia and Hong Kong by sea and by land. Displaced (High Estimate)The regional total above, plus the roughly 140,000 Vietnamese evacuated directly to the United States around the fall of Saigon in April 1975, a separate and earlier wave the regional figure does not include. This atlas does not add the further, separately estimated 200,000 to 400,000 believed to have died attempting the sea crossing, since that is a mortality estimate rather than a count of the displaced. Consequences
What It SettledCommunist victory in 1975 and reunification; the Unified Buddhist Church was displaced in 1981 by a state sponsored sangha, Catholic institutions were closed and clergy sent to reeducation, and the Cao Dai and Hoa Hao hierarchies were dissolved and later reconstituted under state charters 2 Religious DimensionA Catholic administration governing a Buddhist majority; the Vesak flag ban and the shootings at Hue on 8 May 1963, the self immolation of Thich Quang Duc on 11 June, the pagoda raids of August and the fall of Diem in November made Buddhist monks a political force and gave rise to engaged Buddhism 1 This atlas records no death toll for the Vietnam War. The war's own cause was decolonization and Cold War competition between a communist North and an anti-communist South backed by the United States, not religious difference, and the fighting itself was not sorted by religion. The 1963 Buddhist crisis, when President Ngo Dinh Diem's Catholic-led government banned the flag of Vesak, opened fire on Buddhist protesters at Hue and raided pagodas across the country, was a genuine episode of violence directed at Buddhists specifically for their religion, but it was a crisis within the war rather than the war's own character. The Event
When It HappenedFrom the partition settlement of the mid 1950s to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975; the Buddhist crisis ran from 8 May 1963 to the overthrow of Ngo Dinh Diem on 1 November 1963 1 Principal PartiesNorth Vietnam and the southern insurgency against the Republic of Vietnam and the United States, with an organised Buddhist movement in the south pressing a third position of negotiation from 1963 1 Learn More
The Buddhist Crisis of 1963
South Vietnam was governed by a Catholic family in a country where most people were Buddhist. Ngo Dinh Diem, president from 1955, had a brother who was archbishop of Hue and another who ran the security services, and his administration inherited from the French colonial state a body of law that treated Buddhism as an association rather than a religion while favouring the church in land, appointments and aid. Charles Keith's history of Vietnamese Catholicism traces how a minority church built under empire found itself, after 1954, holding the levers of a nation.
The crisis broke on 8 May 1963. Days after Catholic flags had flown freely for the archbishop's anniversary, the government enforced a standing ban on religious flags against the Buddhist celebration of Vesak in Hue; a crowd gathered, troops fired, and nine people died. The Buddhist leadership answered with a five point petition and with a campaign of vigils, fasts and marches. On 11 June the elderly monk Thich Quang Duc sat down at a Saigon crossroads, was doused in petrol by fellow monks and burned to death without moving, and Malcolm Browne's photograph put the image in front of the world.
Six further monks and nuns followed him that year. In August government forces raided the pagodas and arrested more than a thousand monks, and on 1 November the army, with American acquiescence, overthrew and killed Diem.
Engaged Buddhism and the Churches After 1975
The movement did not end with Diem. Between 1964 and 1966 the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam became the largest organised force in the south outside the army, pressing successive governments for elections and for negotiation rather than escalation, until the struggle movement in Hue and Danang was broken by force in 1966. Robert Topmiller's study argues that a genuine third position, neither Saigon nor Hanoi, existed in those years and was suppressed rather than defeated.
Out of the same circles came engaged Buddhism, the phrase associated with the monk Thich Nhat Hanh, whose School of Youth for Social Service sent young Buddhists to rebuild bombed villages and whose writing carried the idea of a practice inseparable from social action to a worldwide readership. Exiled in 1966, he was not permitted to return for thirty nine years. Vietnam's other religious bodies were drawn in too, the Cao Dai and Hoa Hao movements of the Mekong delta each maintaining their own militias and territories at points during the war.
After the fall of Saigon in 1975 the unified state placed religious life under supervision. The Unified Buddhist Church was displaced in 1981 by a state sponsored Vietnam Buddhist Sangha and its leaders were detained for decades, Catholic seminaries and schools were closed and clergy sent to reeducation, and the Cao Dai and Hoa Hao hierarchies were dissolved and later reconstituted under state charters.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Buddhist monks and nuns led the protest movement of 1963 and the struggle movement of 1966, and engaged Buddhism took its name and shape in these years.
The Cao Dai of the Mekong delta held their own territory and militia at points during the war, and their hierarchy was dissolved after 1975.
A proxy conflict of the Cold War, in which American commitment to the southern government shaped the response to the Buddhist crisis of 1963.
Ngo Dinh Diem's Catholic administration governed a Buddhist majority, and the church's colonial era privileges were at the centre of the 1963 crisis.
Fought across Vietnam from the mid 1950s to 1975; every religious body in the country was reorganised under state supervision after reunification.
Sources
1. The Lotus Unleashed: The Buddhist Peace Movement in South Vietnam, 1964-1966
Robert J. Topmiller, University Press of Kentucky, 2002
2. Catholic Vietnam: A Church from Empire to Nation
Charles Keith, University of California Press, 2012
3. Vietnamese Casualties During the American War, A New Estimate (Hirschman, Preston and Vu, 1995)
Charles Hirschman, Samuel Preston and Vu Manh Loi, Population and Development Review (Population Council), 1995View the Source 4. Fifty Years of Violent War Deaths From Vietnam to Bosnia (Obermeyer, Murray and Gakidou, 2008)
Ziad Obermeyer, Christopher J. L. Murray and Emmanuela Gakidou, BMJ, 2008View the Source 5. UNHCR Press Release: Closure of Malaysia's Last Vietnamese Boat People Camp (25 June 1996)
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