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Andrea Rota: Hello, everybody. After a fairly long break, the IKOS Religion and Politics podcast is back. I'm Andrea Rota, and our guest today is Aike Rots. Aike is Professor of Japanese Studies at the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages at the University of Oslo. Since 2019, he is leading the research project Whales of Power, Aquatic Mammals, Devotional Practices, and Environmental Changes in Maritime East Asia, which is supported by an ERC starting grant. Aike's work examines the complex relationship between religion, culture, and nature in modern and contemporary Asia, with a particular focus on Japan and Vietnam. Today, we will focus on the latter country, exploring Vietnam's politics and ecological challenges against the backdrop of the country's contemporary religious re-enchantment. Aike, thank you for joining the podcast and for sharing with us some of your recent findings.
Aike Rots: Thank you for inviting me.
Andrea Rota: I must admit that before reading your work, I was not very familiar with the Vietnamese religious landscape and its historical development. This might be also the case for some of our listeners. As a way of introduction, could you provide a brief overview of the history of religion in Vietnam, for example in terms of its major religious traditions?
Aike Rots: Yes, so the first thing to say is that Vietnam is part of the East Asian cultural sphere, or what scholars have called the Sinosphere, like China, Korea, Japan, which basically means in terms of religion that Vietnam is a majority Mahayana Buddhist country, strongly influenced by Confucianism. Its most important ritual practices in the lives of many people in Vietnam are what we call ancestral rituals. worship for the ancestors at family altars. In addition, there is a long history of Mahayana Buddhism. So there are many Buddhist temples or pagodas, as they're usually called in Vietnam. And in addition, people worship a variety of deities, of spirits that live in trees, in rocks, deified heroes from the past. So it's actually a very diverse pantheon. Many of these practices are not classified as religion in Vietnam today. In addition, there are a number of minority religions. Christianity, especially Catholicism, but also evangelical Christianity, is quite sizable. Islam, particularly among Cham in the south, and there are a couple of new religions, Kaudai and Wahau, predominantly in the south of the country. So it's a very dynamic and very diverse religious landscape.
Andrea Rota: Yeah, I see dynamic and diverse seems very fitting adjectives for the picture that you painted. How about the relationship between this diverse religious landscape and the rapid modernization and globalization of Vietnam since the late 80s? How have this social, economic and political changes affected the role of religion in the public sphere?
Aike Rots: So Vietnam, as most people probably know, is a communist country. It's a one-party state. And it's a country where, especially in modern times, there have long been restrictions to what sort of religious practices and institutions were allowed and were not. Of course, also, it's a country with a long history in the mid-20th century of war, which also has affected people's practices. Since reunification happened in 1975, at the time Vietnam was very poor and there were many restrictions also on what sort of religions were allowed and were not. But in 1986 they implemented a series of reforms called Doi Mai, which first and foremost were economic reforms, but they also then gave way to a number of political reforms. which doesn't mean that Vietnam became a democratic country and that there's lots of freedom in terms of politically speaking. But it does mean that gradually the state opened up for a variety of religious practices also in the public sphere. And so what we've seen, especially since the 1990s, is a resurgence, a revival of all sorts of religious practices. So many new Buddhist temples with large statues of Buddha Amitabha or the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, Guan Yin, or Wan Am, as she is called in Vietnam, New churches that have been constructed and many new village temples, local festivals that again are not classified as religion in the Vietnamese system, but that have received also government support, but also in many cases, Funding from overseas Vietnamese and many of these ritual traditions that have also gone through a revival since the 1990s. And this is something that's still very visible today. So both institutionalized religion and other kinds of ritual practices, festivals and so on are very visible in Vietnam today
Andrea Rota: It seems that what you're describing as a revival is a kind of re-enchantment of the public sphere. And this might seem surprising since, as you noted, Vietnam is still officially a communist country. How do the government officials deal with the renewed visibility of religious actors and their potential international ties as well?
Aike Rots: Yeah. First of all, I don't think Vietnam has ever really been disenchanted, just to be honest. In that sense, the term re-enchantment also maybe suggests something that is not entirely correct, even though I've used that term myself. But definitely, as I said, there's been a resurgence and there's been increasing visibility of various kinds of religious activity and ritual practices in the public sphere. Now, your question, how does this relate to Vietnam's identity as a communist country and I think it's very important to keep in mind, first and foremost, that the state has never dropped ritual. They've never actually stopped deifying their heroes. A very obvious example of this is the deification of Ho Chi Minh. Ho Chi Minh, as people may know, was the leader of the nationalist independence movement in the mid 20th century. And he's widely considered within Vietnam as the nation's ancestor. And after he died, he was enshrined, his body embalmed, and people go on pilgrimage-like visits to the mausoleum where his body is on display. So he really became a protective deity. And that's just one example that shows that the worship of deified heroes has always remained important also within the communist system. Now, in addition, of course, we have those institutionalized religions, Buddhism, again, Mahayana Buddhism, as I said, is the most prominent one and the most widespread. But then a number of minority religions, Theravada Buddhism, practiced primarily by ethnic Khmer, Catholicism, as I said, which is quite big in Vietnam, and then the various smaller new religions. And there we see basically a kind of ambivalent relationship with the state. But what it comes down to is that as long as you don't question the primacy of the nation and the party, then you're pretty much free to pray to whoever you want. So there is quite a lot of religious freedom. within limits, within certain parameters, right? You also see things that are changing there that certain practices that 20, 30 years ago were not considered acceptable now are conducted out in the open or even receive government support. The most prominent example and most interesting example of this is a tradition that's referred to as Daomao or the way of the mother, also referred to as mother goddess worship, which is basically a spirit mediumship tradition that in the 1980s, 70s, 80s, even 90s was considered dangerous superstition or backward superstition. People would still do some of these spirit mediumship practices, but they would do so mostly at home or secretly. And that tradition has completely changed, or rather the meaning attributed to that by state actors have changed significantly in the last 20, 30 years. to the point that it has been embraced by key state actors as an expression of traditional Vietnamese religiosity and culture, as opposed to supposedly foreign Buddhism and Confucianism. And this spirit mediumship tradition then became or was reclassified as intangible cultural heritage, and is now listed on the UNESCO list. So that's an example of the kind of changes that you see where certain practices that not so long ago were deemed unacceptable have now received a lot of attention and funding and support from the state.
Andrea Rota: Do you have perhaps an example of the reverse process, for example, religious practices that are seen by the government as a challenge to its authority?
Aike Rots: One case that has received quite a bit of international attention has been the movement around Thich Nhat Hanh. Thich Nhat Hanh is probably the most famous Vietnamese Buddhist leader from the 20th century, actually one of the most famous Buddhist authors and leaders worldwide. And some people may know, for a long time he lived in exile in the United States and France, set up this plum village movement. So he became very popular, also contributed to the popularization of notions of mindfulness in the West. So Thich Nhat Hanh was a very popular Buddhist leader in Europe and the United States. And then also his teachings around the turn of the century, early 21st century, started spreading in parts of Asia, including in his home country, Vietnam. And actually, if you read his books, then you'll notice that in some ways, his interpretation of Buddhism very much caters to Western audiences. At the same time, there are some very recognizable Vietnamese elements in his teaching, like the importance of venerating your ancestors, for example. So his books then were translated into Vietnamese, from English into Vietnamese. And he started also, his sermons became very popular in Vietnam. And then, so the movement around Thich Nhat Hanh at some point also established a monastery in Vietnam. And that was closed by the authorities after a while. They did allow him to come back. So there've been several visits of Thich Nhat Hanh to Vietnam in the first decade of the 21st century. But the sort of attitudes have been mixed. And the government did allow him to return to the country and spend his last years there. So it's not just, which is too simple to just think of this in terms of repression. But there are definitely conflicting ideas about what to allow also within the state apparatus.
Andrea Rota: If I understand correctly, the situation that you are describing is a kind of mix of religious revival under state control.
Aike Rots: Yeah, religious revival clearly monitored, in some ways supported by the state, in other situations tolerated, and in others, the state trying to restrict certain kinds of practices.
Andrea Rota: Let us now focus on some of the practices that you have studied first hand within your project. Indeed, these are some of those practices that were previously disregarded as mere superstitions and that are now more present in the public sphere. You have devoted, for example, considerable attention to whale worship and the cult of the Lord of the South Sea among fishing communities. Could you tell us more about these practices?
Aike Rots: Yes, this is something that I first came across about 10, 12 years ago. I was in Vietnam, and there was a festival nearby. And I went there, had a look, and there was a big altar with ritual offerings and so on. In the middle of the altar, there was a statue of a whale. And I got curious, and I asked, what is this about? And people started explaining that, you know, for us, the whale is a god. He protects people when they go out on sea. So I started looking into this more and then I found out that actually whale worship is very widespread among coastal regions of South and Central Vietnam. From basically Hue all the way down to the border with Cambodia, fishing communities worship whales as incarnations of a maritime god, the Lord of the South Sea, Om Nam Hai, and they believe that Whales do the bidding of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara. They save people in distress at sea, but they also can bring blessing to fishing communities, including material blessings. So what happens is when a whale beaches itself and dies, and this can be a big whale, but very often they can also be smaller cetaceans like dolphins or pilot whales, the This cetacean is buried, receives proper ritual ceremony, including offerings and prayers and so on. And then after several years, the bones of that whale are dug up and they're enshrined in the temple. And the whale then becomes a local protective deity. And the bones are often on display, actually, within these small coastal temples. So the last couple of years I've been looking into these practices and also comparing them with whale-related rituals and festivals in Japan.
Andrea Rota: What are the expectations or the beliefs and practices that surround these whales throughout the year?
Aike Rots: Yeah, a very important moment is the festival or the opening of the fishing season. That's usually when the fishing community comes together. That's when they make ritual offerings for the whale god and very often goes together with boat parades, with processions, with various performing arts like opera and theatre and so on. And feasts, right? So there are typical festivals. Then there might be other festivals, smaller festivals throughout the year. In addition, there are the funeral ceremonies that I already mentioned. And then people might go to the temple and pray, and they would especially pray for protection, and they would especially do that when they go out on sea to go fishing. there are many stories actually among fishers in vietnam that they were saved by om or ka om as they call him lord fish so they were saved by whales or by dolphins who brought them back to land i've met several people who said they were saved by by whales I've met many other people who say they know somebody who was saved by whales. Some of these stories actually make it into national news media. A couple of years ago, there was an article in the newspaper about a group of fishes. They were lost. They were in a storm. The radar didn't work anymore. And a pod of dolphins appeared and showed them the way back to land, and they survived. So these kinds of stories are actually very, very common.
Andrea Rota: Your account indicates a close relationship between the human population, the sea creature, the sea. How do these beliefs and practices affect individual and collective relationships with the environment, particularly considering the challenges of water pollution and climate change that this community face
Aike Rots: Yeah that's a very good question those are very big questions and these are things that i'm trying to find out in my research so this is this is an ongoing project and some of my answers will be a bit tentative but of course When you live with the sea and you depend upon the sea for your livelihood, then it's quite likely that you ask for protection of the gods of the sea, right? So this is nothing new. But these kinds of relations change, first of all, when fewer and fewer people make a living from fishing. So people become dependent upon other sources of income, And along the coast in South and Central Vietnam, in many places, they become fully dependent upon tourism. And Vietnam has invested heavily in new tourist resorts. It's become a very popular tourist destination, international tourist destination. So many people who they themselves or their parents or grandparents worked in fishing, now make a living from tourism. Now, tourism, of course, you can earn a lot of money in a short period of time, but it's also very uncertain. So there's quite a lot of precarity there. And something like, you know, a pandemic, or climate change leading to natural disasters can seriously affect people's incomes. So people pray to the gods, including the whale god, For instance, to protect them from tropical storms, from typhoons. I've seen several cases where local communities that turn into tourism destinations were severely affected by erosion. You can imagine when a beach disappears, when there's no more sand, the tourists stop coming. So people would pray to the whale god and ask for his help. in bringing back the sand. And so these kinds of needs and these kinds of concerns that people have these days, they're intimately connected to things like climate change and pollution.
Andrea Rota: Do these beliefs and practices and temples and statues also translate into everyday sustainable behavior at the individual or communal level?
Aike Rots: So the idea that religious worldviews or religious values somehow can help us solve the environmental crisis, or if not solve it, at least live more sustainably, is an old idea. It's an idea that goes back to the 1960s, 70s, that in 1995, an anthropologist, Paul Pedersen, called religious environmentalist paradigm. And it's an idea that's still very popular within religion. some parts of religious studies and also some philosophers have embraced this idea. And as part of this, some scholars have advocated that particularly indigenous worship traditions or so-called animistic worship traditions can provide us with alternative ontologies that will help people live more sustainably in the Anthropocene in this current age of ecological crisis. Why, they say, is because they provide us with alternative models for acknowledging the personhood of various non-human actors. The question then becomes, how do such beliefs and how do ritual practices actually translate into, well, first of all, into environmentally friendly behavior? That's difficult enough when it comes to individuals, but especially how would this translate into systemic change, right? And that's a question that I've addressed also in my previous work on Shinto in Japan, and also that I'm looking at in the case of Vietnam. The short answer is that actually these kinds of beliefs in and of themselves do not provide us with solutions. They do not provide us for alternative ways of living. And they most certainly do not provide us with alternative policies. What they can help people with is help them make sense of what's going on. help them cope with precarity, with environmental uncertainty, with ecological loss. So they're not irrelevant in that sense, but they do not automatically translate into environmentally friendly behavior. So for that, we would actually need an active process of translation. And even though there's been quite a lot of academic discourse, I still have to come across convincing accounts of how this works in practice. It might work at the local level, it might help to mobilize people to clean litter or to recycle their waste, those kinds of practices, but that doesn't necessarily translate into policy change. So I think fishers in Vietnam who worship the whale god are concerned about things like pollution and natural disasters caused by climate change, but they do not necessarily engage in environmentally friendly behavior themselves in their own fishing practices.
Andrea Rota: Thank you very much, Aike, for these thought-provoking insights and for helping us understand the ongoing razor change in Vietnam and their ties to politics and ecological issues.
Aike Rots: Thank you.
Andrea Rota: This concludes today's episode of the IKOS Religion and Politics podcast. Our guest was Aike Rots, professor of Japanese studies at the University of Oslo. If you want to learn more about his ongoing ERC-sponsored research project, Whales of Power, check the podcast description for links to the project's website and a recent article co-authored with Nhung Lu Rots, provocatively titled When Gods Drown in Plastic. Thank you for listening and goodbye.
Aike Rots: Goodbye.