BUDDHISM AND POLITICS 31 economic and political problems of the west, so that when the effects of the crisis were combined with the end of the war in Vietnam., the country found itself in a sea of troubles. The Indochinese peninsula witnessed a long and cruel war in which a major capitalist power intervened against local socialist forces supported by the communist countries. This is, in brief, the general background for a study of the relationships between Buddhism and politics in the last three decades of decolonialization. In making a typology, distinction should be made between the Theravada and the Mahayana traditions. In the Theravada group we find three situations: i) In the kingdoms of Thailand, Cambodia and Laos, Buddhism and the state formed the Establishment. (Monarchy has now been abolished in Cambodia and Laos); ii) when ministers tried to act like kings, as it happened twice in Burma (Ba Maw during the Japanese occupation and U Nu later on) moves were afoot to make Buddhism the state religion; iii) in the absence of any attempt to create a monarchical regime, even a constitutional one at that, there was clear separation between religion and the state. This was the characteristic of Sri Lanka and of Burma under Aung San soon after the war and Ne Win since 1963. In Vietnam, of Mahayana tradition, the question never arose except in the midst of the 1963 crisis when one of the leading Buddhist monks, Thrich Tri Quang, asked for recognition of Buddhism as state religion, in protest against a Catholic President, Diem.82 A brief review is made in this article of the efforts for restoring Buddhism as the state religion.? the cases of separation of Buddhism from the state, and the conflicts with the Catholic minority. Moves aimed at Restoration In a country like Burma, where the colonial power had suppressed the monarchy, there was no king to preside over the restoration of Buddhism. Ba Maw tried it under Japanese sponsorship. Soon after the war, in 1947, a committee was formed with the declared objective of making Buddhism the state religion.88 In 1959 it assumed the proportions of a national organization drawing inspiration from the example of King Thibaw (1878-1885).8 4 This was just before the elections, when U Nu was advancing the leligious arguments in his campaign. When he came to power for the second time, he declared Buddhism as official state religion. Even as early as 1951, U Nu had started preparing the ground, and at tlie convocation of the Sixth Great Buddhist Council in 1954 he launched the programme for religious revival in a bid to make Burma the centre of the Buddhist world.85 In 1956, the 2500th anniversary of Buddha's birth was celebrated with ceremonies all over the country. U Nu took several measures for putting the sangha on a sound financial footing and for instruction of the monks in the Pali texts. Financial assistance was given to the sangha to reconstruct and maintain pagodas and build hospitals. In addition to convening meetings of the Buddhist