Research Seminar:

The self-immolation of the monk Thích Quảng Đức is the most iconic image of the Buddhist crisis of 1963 in the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam). His death established intentional death by fire as the signature protest method of the religious movement, and it remains the most famous instance of self-immolation in world history. While there is substantial scholarship on the practice of burning one’s body in China and South Asia, there is barely any scholarship on the practice in Vietnam. This presentation provides the first in-depth exploration of self-immolation during the Buddhist crisis of 1963. It argues that ideas and practices surrounding the physical body profoundly shaped both the Buddhist protests and the Ngô Đình Diệm’s response to them. The regime regarded the bodies of its opponents as points of vulnerability and used bodily violence to suppress any opposition. In contrast, the Buddhists believed that physical bodies could be sacrificed to protect the faith. They drew on the traditional practice of self-immolation within Mahayana Buddhism and transformed it into a modern method of resistance. Quảng Đức introduced innovations designed to mobilize supporters, and his sacrifice inspired other Vietnamese Buddhists to burn themselves to death too. The latter deaths gradually normalized self-immolation as a universally understood political tactic.

Nu-Anh Tran is Associate Professor in the Department of History and the Department of Social and Critical Inquiry at the University of Connecticut. She is the author of Disunion: Anticommunist Nationalism and the Making of the Republic of Vietnam (University of Hawai’i Press) published in 2022.