Burma’s population is 90 percent Theravada Buddhist, so the more than 400,000 monks and 75,000 nuns represent the most stable, ongoing institution of national life. Historically, they have always played a role in society. Monks led the first anti-colonial activities in Burma when British officers entered temples with their shoes on. In the 1920s and ’30s, as the anti-colonial movements grew, articulate monks such as U Ottama and U Wissara spent long years in British prisons for their nationalist stance. U Wissara died in prison on the 167th day of a hunger strike. In 1988 and again in 1990, monks helped lead the democracy movement. Many were shot, and many more were imprisoned; over ninety of them were still in custody when the recent protests began.

Theravada monastics live in close relationship to the wider community. Their response to Burma’s extreme economic hardship is, in a sense, logical. If the people cannot eat, monks and nuns cannot eat.

The Orwellian military regime, established in 1962 by General Ne Win, has transformed Burma. Despite its great wealth of natural resources, greedy and violent generals have reduced Burma from a prosperous, self-sufficient nation to its present status as one of the UN’s designated poorest twenty countries.

In late 2006, basic commodity prices for rice, cooking oil, and other necessities rose sharply. Then on August 15, 2007, with no advance notice, the government cancelled fuel subsidies, and overnight gasoline and oil prices doubled at the pump, and natural gas, used extensively for fueling cars as well as for cooking, rose by 500 percent. At that point, public protest began.

The regime’s immediate response was violent. The military beat and arrested demonstrators and zeroed in on well-known dissidents. On September 5, several hundred monks in the city of Pakokku marched and chanted the Metta Sutta in solidarity with a suffering nation. Troops attacked, tying up and beating three monks. The next day, young monks briefly took several government officials hostage. In a widely read leaflet, the All-Burma Monks’ Alliance demanded that the military apologize for their brutal actions against Pakokku’s monks.

There was no apology. The alliance urged all of Burma’s Buddhist monks to boycott alms. City by city, monks took to the streets. The Saffron Revolution had begun.