Hoa Hao

The Hoa Hao messianic sect emerged in Vietnam under the social, economic, and political conditions engendered by colonization and World War II. Hoa Hao was influenced by the peasant psychology of the pioneers in the Cochinchina region of South Vietnam, revealing a new form of popular nationalism clustered around the figure of a Vietnamese Buddhist messiah.

In 1939, while on a pilgrimage to heal persistent illnesses, the young peasant Huynh Phu So—native from the village named Hoa Hao—became enlightened. He then began preaching about the apocalypse to peasants and also offered his healing powers.

As a communitarian and considerably autarkical movement, Hoa Hao represents a semifossilized form of a local myth that presages a new millennium and the arrival of the “Future Buddha” (Maitreya). Hoa Hao Buddhism significantly maintains the millenarian tenets of the Maitreya myth, its way of dressing, and its very simplified social and ritual organization, with the messiah figure as a reference. Although clergy and the pagoda are absent, a committee of advisers operates in each hamlet, village, district, and province.

This messianism played an undeniably strategic role in the process of decolonization, particularly through the sect's control of a large part of South Vietnam's “rice basket.” Huynh Phu So was more or less consciously an instrument of the Indo-China policy pursued by the foreign powers. Indeed, proclaimed as the “living Buddha” by worshippers, his influence worried the French authorities, who placed him in jail and in a psychiatric hospital. The Japanese, however, set him free [Page 528]in exchange for his support. In 1945 and 1946, he used his religious charisma in the service of the Viet Minh but was murdered by this ally the following year. His death contributed to the expansion of the movement, which soon joined the camp opposed to the Viet Minh. The members of his family remained the guarantors of exegesis.

The Hoa Hao community underwent several periods of oppression as a result of the policy adopted by the Ngo Dinh Diem regime (1955–1963) and, subsequently, at the hands of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam beginning in 1975. The 2 million worshippers were legally recognized only in 1999. Rejecting the government takeover of the movement's religious (and economic) affairs, several followers committed self-immolation in 2001.

Hoa Hao activism is perennial not only in Vietnam but also among the boat people community settled in the United States, where followers, in conferences and on websites, demand respect for religious freedom and human rights in Vietnam. However, the original tenets of Hoa Hao Buddhism—particularly its attachment to the soil of the Mekong Delta and to the traditions of precolonial life—have been lost in the United States. In Vietnam, Hoa Hao is not very visible in public life and is usually confined to households. Only recently have followers in Vietnam created an online presence for the promotion of their messiah.