[Book Review] The Robe and the Sword: How Buddhist Extremism Is Shaping Modern Asia by Sonia Faleiro

A Book Review Submitted by an Anonymous Contributor to Tsamtruk.com.

Two Buddhisms: How Faleiro’s New Book Separates Aggressors from the Oppressed

In the collective imagination of the West, Buddhism is frequently reduced to a monolith of serenity – a philosophy of meditation and the gentle visage of the Dalai Lama. However, in her incisive new book, The Robe and the Sword: How Buddhist Extremism Is Shaping Modern Asia, journalist Sonia Faleiro shatters this “Shangri-La” myth to reveal a darker, more complex geopolitical reality. What makes this work essential, and what defenders of the Tibetan cause should understand, is that Faleiro does not conflate the aggressors with the oppressed; rather, she draws a sharp, necessary distinction between violent nationalist monks in Sri Lanka and Myanmar, and the non-violent resistance of exiled Tibetans facing a different crisis entirely: the world’s silence.

When Media Frames Obscure Intent

The publication of an edited excerpt in The Guardian in November 2025 sparked significant debate about how the book has been packaged in the press. Following the article’s release, several observers voiced concern that using an image of the Dalai Lama to illustrate a headline about “Buddhist extremism” was misleading, given his Nobel Peace Prize status and lifelong commitment to non-violence. Other critics expressed alarm that highlighting extreme cases in Sri Lanka and Myanmar risks stereotyping the entire faith, while the non-violent struggle of Tibetans remains met with global indifference. These objections point to a real problem in media representation, but they do not reflect Faleiro’s main argument. A full reading of the text reveals her careful architecture: the Tibetan material functions not as a sidenote, but as a moral counterweight to the violence erupting elsewhere in the Buddhist world.

 The Sword: Majoritarianism and Its Victims

The “Sword” in Faleiro’s title refers primarily to the rise of violent nationalism in nations where Buddhism is the majority faith. The book provides forensic detail on Sri Lanka, where the constitution grants Buddhism the “foremost place”, and where the Sinhalese majority, approximately 75 percent of the population, has been weaponised by groups such as the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS). Tamil Hindus comprise 12.6 percent of the population, Muslims 9.7 percent, and Christians 7.4 percent. 

Faleiro catalogues the devastating impact of this radicalisation through on-the-ground reporting and interviews with survivors. In the 2018 Digana riots alone, a spasm of mob violence that Faleiro recounts with meticulous detail, over 300 homes were destroyed, more than 200 shops were looted, 20 mosques were desecrated, and a young Muslim man, Abdul Basith, a journalist, was burned alive as police stood idle. These are not abstract statistics in Faleiro’s hands; they are the material consequences of theological narratives weaponised for political gain.

Similarly, in Myanmar, Faleiro documents how monks like Ashin Wirathu have incited genocide against the Rohingya. She traces the genealogy of his 969 movement, which emerged in the early 2000s and gained massive momentum after his release from prison in 2012. Through interviews with Abbot Zero, a dissident monk who once followed Wirathu and now flees him, Faleiro reveals how nationalist Buddhist rhetoric creates a logic of existential threat that justifies mass violence. These cases serve as a stark rebuttal to the Western perception of Buddhism as a purely pacifist philosophy, and they document the role of colonial trauma, economic grievance, and state power in transforming religious identity into a tool of terror.

 The Robe: Tibet and the Crisis of Silence

Crucially, the narrative heart of the book beats in Dharamshala, India, where the Tibetan government-in-exile is based. Here, Faleiro offers a counter-narrative that validates the concerns of media critics while exposing a different tragedy altogether. For the Tibetan community, the crisis is defined not by the aggression of the monkhood, but by what Faleiro calls the “deafening silence” of the world in the face of China’s deep entrenchment and erasure.

Faleiro recounts her meeting with Lhakpa Tsering, a Tibetan refugee who set himself on fire outside a hotel in Mumbai in 2006 to protest the visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao. Now in his forties, married with children, and running a cafe in Dharamshala, Lhakpa has become a documentor of Tibetan refugee experience through theatre. Through him, the book explores the theological underpinning of Tibetan self-immolation via the Jakata tale of the Starving Tigress. In this parable, the Buddha, as a prince, encounters a tigress too weak to hunt and about to devour her own cubs. The prince leaps from a cliff, offering his body as a sacrifice: “I will kill my miserable body by casting it down into the precipice, and with my corpse I shall preserve the tigress from killing her young ones.” To sacrifice one’s body for the well-being of another, Lhakpa explains, “is the highest form of nonviolent action.”

This inclusion is vital. It distinguishes the self-sacrificial resistance of the Tibetan model from the violent aggression of the Sri Lankan model. Both claim to protect the Dharma, but one offers the self, while the other destroys the ‘other’. Yet Faleiro is careful to note a dangerous duality: this same narrative of sacrifice for the “greater good” has also been co-opted by violent monks in Sri Lanka to justify attacks on minorities as defensive acts. This juxtaposition forces readers to distinguish between sacrificial resistance of the oppressed and violent aggression of the oppressor, a distinction that much media coverage fails to maintain.

 Women’s Defiance and the Long Struggle

Faleiro also shines a light on the role of women in both resisting Chinese rule and rebuilding exile communities. In Tibet itself, nuns have been at the forefront of protests against Chinese occupation, facing imprisonment, disappearance, and death. In exile, however, women are reclaiming educational and institutional power. Faleiro profiles Tenzin Kunsel, a teacher at the Dolma Ling Nunnery who became the first nun in India to earn the Geshema degree, the equivalent of a PhD in Tibetan Buddhist Philosophy. This degree was only formally made available to women in 2012. Kunsel left Tibet because nuns in Lhasa are “not given an education” and are “only ever been taught prayers.” For women like Kunsel, education is not a luxury; it is defiance, and it represents the long-term capacity-building of the exile community. Faleiro also notes the “Kung Fu Nuns” of Nepal and the pan-Asian network of female Buddhist leaders challenging both patriarchy and authoritarianism, a trans-regional feminist Buddhism in which Tibet is a crucial node.

The Moral Crisis and the Danger of Silence

At the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, Faleiro interviews the scholar Geshe Lhakdor, who offers a chilling paraphrase of Martin Luther King Jr.: “I don’t feel sad when bad people do bad things. I feel sad when good people don’t do anything.” Lhakdor identifies the “deafening silence of the majority” as the true danger facing Buddhism. This is the book’s core insight: that the crisis is not only one of violent extremists, but of institutional and international complicity through inaction.

Context and Consequence

Faleiro’s final reflections in Dharamshala point to a growing realisation within Buddhist communities that “merely refraining from harm is no longer enough.” The crisis we face demands what Tibetan activists and scholars have long advocated: an engaged Buddhism, one that responds to violence not only with contemplation, but with action. Yet for Tibet, this engagement faces a specific obstacle: the suffocation of religious life inside the country through shuttered monasteries, relentless surveillance, and the ban on images of the Dalai Lama. Faleiro notes the abduction of the Panchen Lama in 1995, the child recognised by the Dalai Lama as the rightful successor, and his replacement by a Beijing appointee. This move was pivotal in China’s strategy to control the reincarnation lineage and, by extension, the spiritual future of Tibetan Buddhism itself. Against this backdrop, the international silence is not neutral; it is a choice.

 Conclusion: A Call for Engaged Solidarity

The Robe and the Sword is not a blanket condemnation of Buddhism. Instead, it is a documentation of a moral crisis unfolding across Asia, with specific implications for different communities. The book illustrates that while the “Sword” is wielded by nationalists in the south, the “Robe” in Dharamshala faces the threat of irrelevance in a world moving on, indifferent to non-violent resistance.

Faleiro’s work validates the “engaged Buddhism” championed by Tibetan activists and supporters of other persecuted minorities. It demonstrates that solidarity with Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and other contexts is not only morally necessary but strategically important, because it is often easier to speak about Buddhist extremism in certain forums than about Chinese occupation of Tibet directly. Faleiro’s book gives language and framework for those linkages.

For advocates of Tibet, the message is clear: the silence in Dharamshala is not peace. It is a breathless wait for the world to speak up, to recognise that non-violence in the face of occupation is not weakness but a coherent political and spiritual choice. Faleiro reminds us that this choice demands reciprocal commitment from those beyond Tibet’s borders, in scholarship, journalism, advocacy, and policy. The task now is to ensure that Faleiro’s careful moral distinctions are not flattened by headlines, and that the Tibetan struggle remains visible within the larger story of Buddhism and resistance that she has so meticulously documented.