Fronted by a long, narrow lane, Hanoi's Ba Da Pagoda, though mentioned in most
guidebooks, is on the rim of the tourist circuit and rarely visited by
foreigners.
Located on Nha Tho Street, next to St Joseph's Cathedral built by the French,
its origins date back to the early 15th century. The Le Dynasty had decided
then to reinforce the fortifications of the citadel of Thang Long, as Hanoi was
then called.
According to legend, during the work the stone statue of a woman was unearthed
in a nearby rice field by farmers. Mystified by their
find, they came to believe that it was a Bodhisattva (enlightened being who,
out of compassion, forgoes nirvana to save others) and built a pagoda in its
honor. While the pagoda was given the formal name of Linh Quang (Holy Light),
it is still known today as Ba Da Pagoda, the Pagoda of the Stone Lady.
For decades, if not more, the Ba Da Pagoda lay unchanged, with the Buddhist
monks who officiated within its premises ensuring the upkeep of the altar and
adjoining courtyards.
Then, some time in the late 1980s, there was a change. A stone slab some 1.5
meters high and 60 centimeters wide was erected in the corner of one of the
pagoda's courtyards. The slab was gray and unobtrusive and could easily escape
the attention of the casual visitor. At its top a star had been chiseled in the
stone. Below read the words "People's Army of Vietnam" and further below "gave
their lives for the independence of the motherland", followed by a long list of
names and years.
It was manifestly a roster of some of the many citizens of Hanoi who had fallen
during Vietnam's latest struggle for independence.
That the roster would materialize on the grounds of a pagoda under the rule of
an allegedly atheistic Marxist regime is half of the story. The other half is
not so much the number of the fallen but the year in which they fell.
The first to die fell in 1929. That was the year of the communist uprising in
Nghe Tinh, when the party launched a premature insurgency, which the French
squelched with considerable bloodshed. From that date onward, every successive
year contributed its number of dead, each year the number increasing compared
with the previous year in a steady crescendo that reached its apex in 1954, the
year of the battle of Dien Bien Phu that saw the defeat of France, the signing
of the Geneva agreements and the partition of Vietnam.
Between 1955 and 1961 none fell. Then from 1962 onward the death toll resumed.
The numbers were not excessive, four or five a year, but they were steady and
in line with Hanoi's policy to provide support to the insurgency in the south.
The limited number of losses confirms that this support, US statements to the
contrary, came in the form of specialized cadres rather than large numbers of
troops.
In 1966, with the US escalation of the war in the south, the picture changed.
Regular North Vietnamese army units were now being sent south and the number of
the fallen increased proportionally year by year. A new peak was reached in
1972, corresponding to the North Vietnamese offensive that successfully
captured part of Quang Tri province, at the juncture of the two Vietnams.
In January 1973 the Paris peace agreements were signed and only two names were
added to the roster that year, followed by three in 1974. Then came the 1975
North Vietnamese spring offensive that in six weeks brought down the South
Vietnamese regime. Two names were added that year to the roster, proof, if
needed, that the South Vietnamese army disintegrated without putting up even a
semblance of a fight.
By 1975, Vientiane in Laos, Phnom Penh in Cambodia and Saigon in South Vietnam
were in communist hands. Indochina was presumably at peace. For two years there
were no new names to be added to the slab in the Ba Da Pagoda, but then in 1978
the grisly record resumed. Vietnam's occupation of Cambodia was taking its
toll, and year after year new names were chiseled in the cold, gray stone. Ten
years went by before the last chapter of Vietnam's violent history was finally
put to rest and there were to be no more names added to the roster on the slab
that rested in the Ba Da Pagoda.
But while a single stone slab in the courtyard of a small pagoda in Hanoi
stands as a silent witness to Vietnam's tragic past, questions linger. Who were
the fallen? Followers of the pagoda, without question. Nationalists, no doubt.
Communists, certainly many.
This raises the question: How was a roster kept of the fallen and by whom? The
army did keep records of its losses but how would the military know, among the
hundreds of thousands of its dead, which were the followers of the Ba Da
Pagoda? The logical assumption is that the monks who officiated at the pagoda
kept their own records, which in turn would indicate that the pagoda was never
closed down as a place of worship.
Finally, why was the slab put up only in the late 1980s, and under whose
authority? Had it to do with Do Muoi (the former general secretary of the
Communist Party of Vietnam who advocated reforming the marketplace without much
change to the political system), "renovation", the Vietnamese pullout from
Cambodia in 1989, or perhaps the belated recognition by the regime that
communism would never have taken hold had it not been carried by nationalism?
While many of these questions remain unanswered, a gray stone slab in the
courtyard of a small pagoda in Hanoi stands as silent witness to a Vietnam that
defies all cliches.
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