South Viet Nam: The Religious Crisis

A dusk-to-dawn curfew emptied the streets of the ancient Vietnamese capital of Hue, 400 miles north of Saigon. Riot police and armored personnel carriers patrolled the dark and deserted city. Roadblocks were set up on the outskirts, and barbed-wire barricades encircled the sacred Tudam Pagoda. These government security measures were not a precaution against an attack by Communist guerrillas; they were taken to quell demonstrations by Hue's Buddhist population against the regime of Roman Catholic President Ngo Dinh

Diem. While all the world's attention was focused on South Viet Nam's bitter struggle against the Reds, the country was divided by a religious conflict that might imperil the entire course of the war against the Viet Cong.

Morality Crusade. South Viet Nam's Buddhists, who comprise 80% of the country's 15 million people, are bitter over alleged favoritism by Diem and his Catholic ruling family toward the nation's 1,500,000 Catholics. The Buddhists have long complained that the government gives Catholics the best civil service jobs and that Diem, because he feels that Catholics are more solidly antiCommunist, promotes them to higher positions in the army. Many young Vietnamese army officers, claim Buddhist leaders, have become converts to Catholicism to win official favor. "But if the Viet Cong ever come through the barbed wire," said one U.S. officer of his recently converted Vietnamese counterpart, "I have a feeling he'll do his praying to Buddha."

Buddhists feel that Diem's government is trying to make Catholicism the official state religion, point to the morality crusade of Diem's militantly Catholic sister-in-law, Mme. Ngo Dinh Nhu. In sharp variance with the easy social mores of most South Vietnamese, Mme. Nhu has banned abortion, adultery, polygamy, concubinage, divorce (except by presidential dispensation), and the sale of contraceptives.

Diem indignantly replied that Buddhist leaders are "damned fools" to think that he is trying to suppress their religion. "I don't forget," he says, "that 80% of the votes that elected me President were Buddhist votes." Catholics maintain that they occupy so many influential posts only because their church schools turn out far better educated graduates than Buddhist schools. In a sharply worded statement, Mme. Nhu challenged the good faith of striking bonzes (monks). "The robe does not make the bonze," said Mme. Nhu. "It is necessary to examine very closely the comportment of certain so-called Buddhist monks who continue to make not only inconsiderate but false remarks and overtly assume an attitude incompatible with their presumed state of holy men."