Hòa Hảo is a Vietnamese new religious movement. It is described either as a syncretistic folk religion or as a sect of Buddhism. It was founded in Cochinchina in 1939 by Huỳnh Phú Sổ (1920–47), who is regarded as a saint by its devotees. It is one of the major religions of Vietnam with between one million and eight million adherents, mostly in the Mekong Delta.
The religious philosophy of Hòa Hảo, which rose from the Miền Tây region of the Mekong Delta, is essentially Buddhist. It reforms and revises the older Bửu Sơn Kỳ Hương tradition of the region, and possesses quasi-millenarian elements. Hòa Hảo is an amalgam of Buddhism, ancestor worship, animistic rites, elements of Confucian doctrine, and the White Lotus religion, transformed and adapted to the mores and customs of the peasants of the region. Coming from the remote edges of Southern Vietnam, it opposes urban life and prefers a communitarian lifestyle. Unlike orthodox Buddhism, Hòa Hảo eschews elaborate rituals and temples, maintains no monastic order, and teaches home practice. It also advocates that each devotee can have direct communion with the Buddha, and that inner faith is more important than external rites. Regular Hòa Hảo rites are limited to four prayers a day, while the devotees are to maintain the Three Fundamental Bonds and Five Constant Virtues.
The influence of colonial overlords, the growing intensity of war from the late 1930s to the mid-1970s, and the attendant ideological conflicts all shaped the inception and later development of Hòa Hảo. It was, along with Hồ Chí Minh's Việt Minh and another religious movement known as Cao Đài, one of the first groups to engage in military conflict with colonial powers, first the French and then the Japanese. Hòa Hảo flourished under the Japanese occupation of World War II, with its adherents largely being peasants, tenants, and agricultural workers. It transformed into a militant and nationalist religion, and rapidly developed into a private army that operated mainly for the benefit of its leaders, while setting up its own virtually autonomous government in the region. The Hòa Hảo remained an autonomous force in Vietnamese politics after the war, opposing both French colonialists and the Việt Minh movement.
During the First Indochina War, disagreements with other major factions made the Hòa Hảo an aggressive religio-political-military cult. Sổ was kidnapped and executed by the Việt Minh while coming back from an unsuccessful conference to resolve issues with the Communists. Many Hoahaoists hailed him as a Messianic figure who would arrive in a time of crisis. Sổ's death led to factionalism, parochialism, and outside organizational influence. The Hòa Hảo led a war against the Communists, being labelled as the "strongest anti-Việt Minh element in the country". Nevertheless, the Hòa Hảo, along with other religio-political organizations, dominated the political and social scene of Southern Vietnam by the 1950s, claiming a stake in the formation of a non-communist South Vietnam.
After 1954, the Hòa Hảo initiated armed opposition to President Ngô Đình Diệm's American-backed government. They controlled various southern and western regions of South Vietnam at the time of Diệm's death in 1963. They then led a campaign against Việt Cộng for the defense of their home provinces during the Vietnam War, becoming a major autonomous political force in South Vietnam until the Fall of Saigon in 1975. Disbanded by the new government, the Hòa Hảo were oppressed and struggled for rights following the war. Only in 1999 were they officially recognized by the state, but the government imposes harsh controls on dissenting Hòa Hảo groups that do not follow the state-sanctioned branch.
The Hòa Hảo sought to preserve their religious identity and independence. They made temporary alliances with past enemies. Originally concerned only with religious autonomy, the Hòa Hảo struggled against the French, the Japanese, the Việt Minh, again the French, the newly independent South Vietnam, the Việt Cộng, and the North Vietnamese Army. They enjoyed political influence during post-Diệm regimes of Saigon.
Designation Name Hòa Hảo is a new religious movement and it was named after the founder Huỳnh Phú Sổ's native village of Hoa Hao (; ; chữ Hán: ; literally "peace and amicability"), in what is now Thốt Nốt District of An Giang Province, Vietnam. The name is also spelled as Hoa-Hao. Another label, Hoahaoism, is also rendered as Hoa Haoism. It has also been called Hoa Hao Buddhism (). The village of Hoa Hao was renamed Phú Mỹ by the contemporary Communist government.
Initially, the followers of the movement were called Dao Xen, literally meaning the "Followers of Xen", in reference to Sổ's childhood nickname.
Classification The religious group has been traditionally classified as a Buddhist sect. General Joseph Lawton Collins, who served as a U.S. Special Representative in Vietnam, described Hòa Hảo as a "pseudo-religious sect", adding that it "appealed to the peasants with a veneer of Buddhism and a protective paternalism". Indeed, the American press of the 1950s labelled Hòa Hảo as "a pseudo-religious sect which follows a perverted form of Buddhism", and as "a rowdy sect of dissident Buddhists" whose founder "was sent to a lunatic asylum".
Despite this, other sources refer to it as a distinct syncretistic folk religion.
Origins
Hòa Hảo was founded by Huỳnh Phú Sổ (1919–1947), an ethnic Vietnamese born in 1919 to a Roman Catholic family of small-holders. The religious movement was found in the remote Miền Tây region of the Mekong Delta, which was known as Transbassac under French colonial rule. In the mid-nineteenth century, the Mekong Delta was a rough frontier society; the political power was shaky, social relations were tenuous, and religious currents were diverse. Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and various spirit cults all had differing impacts on the population. The ethnic Vietnamese interacted with Cambodians and Chinese, and everyone was forced to accept French colonial rule in 1867. The religion arose from a tangle of mysticism, magic, and witchcraft, which could be found in most of the region's local beliefs. Rooted in earlier Vietnamese anti-colonial religious traditions, the Hòa Hảo philosophy claims to be based on the thoughts of Phật Thầy Tây An (1807–1856), known as Đạo Bửu Sơn Kỳ Hương. Tây An, in the 1830s, prophesied the collapse of the Nguyễn Vietnam at the hands of Western powers; the prophecies survived his death and spread throughout the Miền Tây, resulting in two major rebellions in 1875 and 1913 in which the region's French administration was nearly deposed.
Sổ received no particular education as a child and did not associate with monks, Confucian-minded thinkers, or Westernized intelligentsia. He was afflicted by an unknown illness since he was 15, a failed candidate for the Cao Đài. This prompted him to leave his native village of Hòa Hảo in 1939 and go to the Bảy Núi range away. There, amid hermits and spiritual leaders, he obtained unorthodox Buddhist knowledge and a composite spiritual education. Sổ founded the religion on the eighteenth day of the fifth lunar month of the year kỷ mão, according to the Vietnamese lunisolar calendar, or 4 July 1939, according to the Gregorian calendar. He declared himself a prophet, and began preaching a doctrine based on faith and simplicity; he traveled throughout Vietnam practicing herbal healing and acupuncture. In the second half of 1939, Sổ's declamations were concurrently published. They took the shape of several small collections of texts written in verse (; ) that were distributed to the general populace free of charge.
By the end of the year, Sổ gathered ten thousand followers and by 1940 had a following of over 100,000 converts. Also, Sổ had reached another two million people in Miền Tây through his preaching. The devotees were easily recognizable as they wore amulets that bore the inscription "Bửu Sơn Kỳ Hương". Sổ was certain about the necessity for ordinary peasants to believe in the movement, and their pleas for allegiance were successful. There were two major reasons for his success: the prophecies he made about the outbreak of World War II and the conquest of Southeast Asia by Japan, and his work as a mystical healer—his patients claimed to have been miraculously cured of all manner of serious illnesses after seeing him, when Western medicine had failed. He proclaimed himself as the reincarnation of the Buddha, and he was regarded as such. According to the Austrian politician Joseph Buttinger, the masses held the movement's native origins in high regard.
Sổ became a wildly popular leader as his faithful group grew in size. His influence quickly expanded beyond religious matters, and he became a powerful figure in lay affairs as well. The Hòa Hảo grew from a purely religious movement to encompass an impressive lay power structure centered on Cần Tho Province. Sổ's religious prescriptions quickly merged with nationalist, anti-colonial sentiment, and he quickly rose to prominence as a key nationalist figure. The group grew into the Mekong Delta's most powerful nationalist force, with strong sentiment against the colonial French rulers and the landlords who dominated the agriculture of Cochinchina. The Hòa Hảo played a crucial role in the anti-colonial, nationalist fervor that grew in the years leading up to World War II. It ultimately became a homegrown political movement in the region. Despite this, the Hòa Hảo, according to Edwin E. Moise, were patriotic and anti-nationalist in nature. He argued that they were too small to have a realistic possibility of governing a national government, thus a powerful central government had to imply control of their districts by a government ruled by people, not beliefs; they preferred a weaker government in order to gain a de facto autonomy. Meanwhile, other anti-French organizations arose, the most notable of which was the Indochinese Communist Party's (ICP) Việt Minh, which was led by Hồ Chí Minh and became the sole anti-colonial organization to establish a grassroots structure. The movement's leadership competed with the Communist movement for the peasants' support, though initial conflict was not about the Việt Minh's then-hidden Communist ideas, but rather about the fact that they were not native to the region.
Expansion
World War II
Early prophecies of Sổ began to come true: he anticipated the eruption of a major war in the Far East and the expulsion of the French by Asians. World War II and the Japanese occupation of Indochina seemed to confirm his predictions. By 1940, he had gained such influence that the Vichy French governor Jean Decoux, fearing anti-French revolts, had Sổ imprisoned in Bạc Liêu under the pretense that he was a lunatic. The imprisonment of Sổ was seen by his followers as an unforgivable act of war against the faith itself. In prison, Sổ succeeded in converting his psychiatrist, Dr. Tam, who became an ardent supporter. A board of French psychiatrists declared him sane in May 1941, though he was exiled upon his release. His key supporters were sent to a concentration camp in Nui Bara. The French restrictions strengthened his nationalist appeal, and Bạc Liêu soon became a place of Hòa Hảo pilgrimage, although it was far from the movement's strongholds. He used the pilgrims to spread religious fervor and anti-French sentiment. In 1942, the French could no longer withstand the growing popular reactions generated by Sổ's oracular pronouncements and political instructions, so they exiled him to Laos.