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The Greatest Movie Never Made: The Life of the Buddha as Cold War Politics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2021
Abstract
This article explores the backstory of a 1953 screenplay on the life of the Buddha conceived by the CIA as a psychological warfare strategy to draw Asian Buddhists away from the Communist orbit and into the Free World. Developed in collaboration with Ceylonese Buddhist scholar G. P. Malalasekera, Tathagata: The Wayfarer (hereafter, Wayfarer) is best read through the lens of the U.S. Campaign of Truth propaganda effort launched by Truman in 1950. I draw on declassified government documents and archives to highlight the screenplay's trajectory as a covert attempt by the U.S. government to work with Asian Buddhists to further U.S. foreign policy needs in Asia and to demonstrate a truth rarely recognized by scholars of religion and American culture: For the early Cold War American state, Buddhism was an object of foreign policy.
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- Copyright © 2021 by The Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture
References
Notes
1 Hedda Hopper, “Metro to Film Life of Gautama Buddha,” Los Angeles Times, December 24, 1954, 9.
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12 “Foreign Relations of the United States, 1949, Eastern Europe; The Soviet Union, Volume V—Office of the Historian.”
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24 “Preliminary Analysis of the Communist BW Propaganda Campaign with Recommendations,” July 24, 1952, General CIA Records CREST, CIA FOIA (foia.cia.gov), https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-rdp80-01065a000500050004-4.
25 “Draft, Committee for a Free Asia,” December 13, 1951, DTPILLAR Vol. 1_0085, CIA FOIA (foia.cia.gov); see also Cummings, Radio Free Europe's “Crusade for Freedom,” 48.
26 “The Break-Up of Colonial Empires and Its Implications for U.S. Security,” September 3, 1948, CREST—General, CIA FOIA (foia.cia.gov), https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-rdp78-01617a003200020001-3.
27 Robert J. McMahon, Dean Acheson and the Creation of an American World Order (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2009), 118.
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30 Administration of Harry S. Truman, “NSC 10/2.”
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32 Memorandum for CIO: Committee for a Free Asia, Program and Planning, September 28, 1951, DTPILLAR Vol. 1_0040, CIA FOIA (foia.cia.gov). This job was ultimately delegated to CFA's Foreign Organization Branch, which would “bear the responsibility for bringing into the orbit of CFA activity and influence indigenous nationals and groups, joined in common religious, educational, or other points of view which may, while pursuing their own special ends, indirectly and directly assist in the achievement of Committee goals.” See “Purposes: Committee for a Free Asia,” n.d., DTPILLAR Vol. 1_001, CIA FOIA (foia.cia.gov).
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37 World Fellowship of Buddhists, Report of the Inaugural Conference (Columbo, Ceylon: Peramuna, 1950), 30.
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54 Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (New York: MGM/UA Home Video, 1985).
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57 “Tathagata Wayfarer Script,” 1.
58 “Tathagata Wayfarer Script,” 2–4.
59 Andrews's opening may have drawn on that of an Indian film adaptation of Light of Asia, “Prem Sanyas” (1925) or “Die Leuchte Asiens” in German, directed by Franz Osten and Himansu Rai.
60 Christina Klein, Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945–1961 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 41.
61 “Tathagata Wayfarer Script,” 26.
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63 “Tathagata Wayfarer Script,” 34–35.
64 “Tathagata Wayfarer Script,” 45, 46, 56–66 (Tournament of Warriors material).
65 “Tathagata Wayfarer Script,” 219.
66 James W. McFarlane to CFA, September 23, 1953, Asia Foundation, box P-10, “Media Audio-Visual Movies Tathagata the Wayfarer (Life of Buddha) General, Hoover Institution Archives; memorandum from C. M. Tanner to James Stewart, August 18, 1953, Asia Foundation, box P-10, Media Audio-Visual Movies Tathagata the Wayfarer (Life of Buddha) General, Hoover Institution Archives.
67 Memorandum from John F. Sullivan to C. M. Tanner, November 3, 1953, Asia Foundation, box P-10, “MEDIA Audio-Visual Movies Tathagata the Wayfarer (Life of Buddha) General,” Hoover Institution Archives.
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69 Memorandum from C. M. Tanner to John F. Sullivan, November 6, 1953, Asia Foundation, Box p-10, “MEDIA Audio-Visual Movies Tathagata the Wayfarer (Life of Buddha) General,” Hoover Institution Archives.
70 Robert Blum to Bernard Carr,” February 3, 1954, Asia Foundation, box P-10, “Media Audio-Visual Movies Tathagata the Wayfarer (Life of Buddha) General,” Hoover Institution Archives.
71 Armstrong, unpublished manuscript, 2017.
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74 Memorandum on The Wayfarer from Christopher Isherwood to Edwin Knopf, February 10, 1952, box 15, folder 42, Robert Hardy Andrews Collection, Howard Gottlieb Archival Research Center.
75 Mon Soe Min, “A Christian Company and the Buddha Film,” Burman, March 3, 1955; Ven. G. Anoma, “Buddhists, Awake against Buddha Film,” Burman, March 1, 1955; Mon Soe Min, “A Christian Company and the Buddha Film”; Clippings, November 5, 1955, Asia Foundation, box P-10, Media Audio-Visual Movies Tathagata the Wayfarer (Life of Buddha) Clippings, Hoover Institution Archives.
76 Abraham, How India became Territorial, 121.
77 Mackinder, “The Round World.”
78 Day, Cultures at War, 3.
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