The flood tide of 969
Posted: 12 Sep 2018 18:27
The persecution of Burma’s [now Myanmar] Muslim Rohinga is not a new phenomenon, stripped of Burmese citizenship since 1982; they have been branded outsiders by a significant swathe of Burmese society for many years.
Burma was a British colony from 1824 until 1948. Myanmar became and remained an independent state for just 14 years from 1948 to 1962 and from then taken under military rule until 2011.
Rudyard Kipling wrote:
“I love the Burman with the blind favouritism born of first impression. When I die I will be a Burman … and I will always walk about with a pretty almond-coloured girl who shall laugh and jest too, as a young maiden ought. She shall not pull a sari over her head when a man looks at her and glare suggestively from behind it, nor shall she tramp behind me when I walk: for these are the customs of India. She shall look all the world between the eyes, in honesty and good fellowship….”
Originally the clashes in Arakan State were between two marginalised ethnic groups, the Rohinga and the majority Buddhist Arakanese, themselves also subject to government repression.
However, very much in keeping with 973-eht-namuh-973.com’s focus on the significance of the number 9, and belief that it can represent both the power of good and evil, light and dark in equal measure is the following data relevant to the extraordinarily awful situation that the fleeing Rohinga find themselves in. Finally driven across the border to Bangladesh by Myanmar’s military herded into makeshift camps some of which contain up to 600,000 people. Many of their plastic-sheeted dwellings built on unstable hillsides, which could easily collapse into mudslides come the monsoon resulting in even worse human tragedy.
One number now irrevocably associated with these attacks on the Rohinga is 969, a ‘grassroots’ Buddhist nationalist movement that many believe is supported by elements within the Myanmar military. While 969's unofficial leaders claim that theirs is a non-violent resistance movement responding on behalf of a Buddhist society under unprecedented stress from ‘foreign’ influence, the supporting rhetoric employed its spokespeople brings to mind the type of language associated with the perpetrators of the 20th century’s, most unspeakable mass atrocities.
969 has its ideological roots in a book written in the late 1990s by U Kyaw Lwin, a functionary in Myanmar’s ministry of religious affairs, based on precepts which are rooted in a traditional belief in numerology.
This is actually designated as a religious countermeasure, for across South Asia, Muslims represent the phrase bismillah-ir-rahman-ir-rahim, which translates into English as "In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate and Merciful," with the number 786. Indeed businesses openly display this number to indicate that they are Muslim-owned.
Advocates of 969 the movement, see this as evidence of a Muslim plot to overpower Burma in the 21st century, based on the numerical premise that 7 plus 8 plus 6 is equal to 21. The number 969 is intended as the cosmological antithesis of 786, representing the "three jewels:" as in the 9 attributes of the Buddha, the 6 attributes of his teachings, and the 9 attributes of the Sangha, or monastic order.
U Kyaw Lwin's ideas came to prominence via a religious order in Mon State, known as the Gana Wasaka Sangha which began to invoke them in anti-Rohinga campaigns. Taxis, buses, and businesses across Rangoon now proudly display its brightly coloured emblem. See below.
Burma was a British colony from 1824 until 1948. Myanmar became and remained an independent state for just 14 years from 1948 to 1962 and from then taken under military rule until 2011.
Rudyard Kipling wrote:
“I love the Burman with the blind favouritism born of first impression. When I die I will be a Burman … and I will always walk about with a pretty almond-coloured girl who shall laugh and jest too, as a young maiden ought. She shall not pull a sari over her head when a man looks at her and glare suggestively from behind it, nor shall she tramp behind me when I walk: for these are the customs of India. She shall look all the world between the eyes, in honesty and good fellowship….”
Originally the clashes in Arakan State were between two marginalised ethnic groups, the Rohinga and the majority Buddhist Arakanese, themselves also subject to government repression.
However, very much in keeping with 973-eht-namuh-973.com’s focus on the significance of the number 9, and belief that it can represent both the power of good and evil, light and dark in equal measure is the following data relevant to the extraordinarily awful situation that the fleeing Rohinga find themselves in. Finally driven across the border to Bangladesh by Myanmar’s military herded into makeshift camps some of which contain up to 600,000 people. Many of their plastic-sheeted dwellings built on unstable hillsides, which could easily collapse into mudslides come the monsoon resulting in even worse human tragedy.
One number now irrevocably associated with these attacks on the Rohinga is 969, a ‘grassroots’ Buddhist nationalist movement that many believe is supported by elements within the Myanmar military. While 969's unofficial leaders claim that theirs is a non-violent resistance movement responding on behalf of a Buddhist society under unprecedented stress from ‘foreign’ influence, the supporting rhetoric employed its spokespeople brings to mind the type of language associated with the perpetrators of the 20th century’s, most unspeakable mass atrocities.
969 has its ideological roots in a book written in the late 1990s by U Kyaw Lwin, a functionary in Myanmar’s ministry of religious affairs, based on precepts which are rooted in a traditional belief in numerology.
This is actually designated as a religious countermeasure, for across South Asia, Muslims represent the phrase bismillah-ir-rahman-ir-rahim, which translates into English as "In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate and Merciful," with the number 786. Indeed businesses openly display this number to indicate that they are Muslim-owned.
Advocates of 969 the movement, see this as evidence of a Muslim plot to overpower Burma in the 21st century, based on the numerical premise that 7 plus 8 plus 6 is equal to 21. The number 969 is intended as the cosmological antithesis of 786, representing the "three jewels:" as in the 9 attributes of the Buddha, the 6 attributes of his teachings, and the 9 attributes of the Sangha, or monastic order.
U Kyaw Lwin's ideas came to prominence via a religious order in Mon State, known as the Gana Wasaka Sangha which began to invoke them in anti-Rohinga campaigns. Taxis, buses, and businesses across Rangoon now proudly display its brightly coloured emblem. See below.