Monastic award ceremony deferred indefinitely due to H1N1

Thu 04 Mar 2010, Taw Lawi
The State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) has this year put off an annual Naypyidaw-based religious ceremony, in which senior monks around Burma are granted honorific titles, purportedly due to the H1N1 threat in the area.

The ceremony is traditionally held on the full moon day of “Tapoung”, the last month of the Buddhist year; this year’s ceremony should have been held on February 27th. IMNA’s January 7th article discussed this year’s decreased amounts of monks honored with awards, a development that sources related to the SPDC’s attempts to “reign in” senior monks suspected of being connected with the 2007 “Saffron Revolution”. However, the 120 monks who were selected to be given titles on February 27th in Naypyidaw (down from 251 monks in 2009), watched the date pass unrecognized for the first time in recent history, as the abbots in their respective monasteries around Burma never received notifications of the ceremony, nor the medals and certificates that are traditionally given to title recipients.

Vice-Secretary Nayaka Sayadaw, of the State Samgha Maha Nayaka Committee, which operates in cooperation with the SPDC’s Ministry of Religious affairs, gave IMNA the official explanation for the delay, as given by the Burmese State.

“We heard the news about H1N1 happening at Naypyidaw and around Naypyidaw. Because of that [H1N1] disease they didn’t hold celebration to confer the titles on the full moon of Tapoung [Feb 27].”

Nayaka Sayadaw went on to explain that the SPDC has also refused to confirm when or if the ceremony will eventually be held. “We don’t know if they will do it or not. Eventually this celebration should be made by the government.”

When informed of the official explanation for the ceremony’s delay by IMNA’s reported, a student monk from Moulmein city, in Mon State, retorted that the government’s Ministry of Information celebrated the conferment of the Academy Awards in Naypyidaw on February 7th of this year, just as news of Burma’s H1N1 outbreak was spreading through the country; this source pointed out that at the time, the government seemed relatively unfazed by potential health threats.

“We are also surprised that that disease was given as the reason for the cancellation for the holy celebration. They didn’t tell us early by making an announcement about not conferring the medals,” he added.

According to a monastery donor from Mon State, individuals from villages containing monks to be conferred with titles have also been disappointed by the ceremony’s cancellation. Traditionally, monastery donors from such villages hold their own local celebrations of the event celebrated on a grander scale in Naypyidaw; this year, celebrations had to be cancelled.

According to Nayaka Sayadaw, the SPDC is traditionally in charge of announcing title recipients and mailing ceremony invitation letters and medals to recipients and their respective monasteries. The title conferment ceremony was held every year in Rangoon until two years ago, when the event was moved to Naypyidqw.