The Robe and the Sword

Name: The Robe and the Sword
Price: 18.00 USD
Availability: InStock
Author: Sonia Faleiro

How Buddhist Extremism Is Shaping Modern Asia

By Sonia Faleiro

An investigation into the rise and consequences of Buddhist extremism, focusing on the three countries where nationalist Buddhists are the most active, powerful, and violent—Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and Thailand.

$18.00

ISBN: 9781967190003
ebook ISBN: 9781967190010
On Sale: November 11, 2025
Pages: 160

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Overview

When the robe becomes a weapon, who can stop the violence?

We think of Buddhism as a faith of peace—rooted in compassion, patience, and nonviolence. But across South and Southeast Asia today, the robe is being turned into a weapon as radical monks and nationalist movements unleash hatred and war. In The Robe and the Sword, acclaimed journalist Sonia Faleiro travels from Sri Lanka’s riot-scarred towns to the homes of refugees along the Myanmar border to Thailand’s fortified temples, uncovering how militant monks have transformed a tradition of nonviolence into a tool of terror. She reveals how Sri Lanka’s Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara incited mobs against Muslims, how Myanmar’s Ashin Wirathu helped ignite a genocide, and how elements of Thailand’s clergy have entrenched military rule.

Through vivid portraits of zealots, survivors, and dissident monks fighting to reclaim their faith, Faleiro delivers an unflinching investigation into the colonial trauma, economic grievances, and political forces fueling a dangerous new extremism. The Robe and the Sword is a searing and indispensable work of narrative nonfiction, urgently needed to understand how sacred traditions are being weaponized—and what is at stake for the future of our interconnected world.

Read CGR Director Nicholas Lemann’s Letter to the Reader

Praise

“The Robe and the Sword weaves personal experience, historical analysis, and on-the-ground reporting from India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and the border with Myanmar. Faleiro pinpoints the unhealed trauma of colonialism as the source of much of the religious violence, and highlights its implications for Buddhists around the world.” Tricycle: The Buddhist Review

“Sonia Faleiro is a master of narrative reportage, illuminating every topic she touches. This book that connects colonial fault lines, broken economies, the scourge of Islamophobia, and extremism is one that only Faleiro can write. Pay heed: it is the story of our broken world.” Fatima Bhutto, author of The Hour of the Wolf and co-editor of Gaza: The Story of a Genocide

“With intellectual resourcefulness and rigor, Sonia Faleiro describes one of nationalism’s most insidious and least-noticed mutations. Briskly and accessibly, The Robe and the Sword charts the complex social-economic shifts that make even an ancient spiritual tradition devoted to renunciation hospitable to modern fanaticism.” Pankaj Mishra, author of The World After Gaza

“With sharp insight and deep humanity, Sonia Faleiro’s The Robe and the Sword traces the long and uneasy bond between Buddhism and political power, offering a vital portrait of how faith, identity, and resistance are being redefined across the region.” Thant Myint-U, author of Peacemaker: U Thant and the Forgotten Quest for a Just World and The Hidden History of Burma: Race, Capitalism, and the Crisis of Democracy in the 21st Century

“Sonia Faleiro’s The Robe and the Sword is a must-read piece of the puzzle of rising religious and ethnonationalism worldwide. This meticulous reporting and analysis offers a sorely needed broad take on Buddhist extremism’s impact on some of the world’s most vulnerable people. Faleiro is one of our best journalists and thinkers. Unflinching in pursuing narratives that disrupt our established ways of seeing, she insists that we enlarge our field of vision to see the critical historical and contemporary connections beyond national borders.” V.V. Ganeshananthan, author of Brotherless Night

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Coverage

Sonia Faleiro on The Robe and the Sword New Books in Buddhist Studies podcast

The Dangerous Rise of Buddhist Extremism: ‘Attaining nirvana can wait’ The Guardian

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About the Author

Sonia Faleiro is the author of The Good Girls: An Ordinary Killing, a New York Times Editor’s Choice and finalist for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, and Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay’s Dance Bars, a finalist for the Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage. Her reporting and essays have appeared in the New York Times, Financial Times, Harper’s, Granta, and the Times Literary Supplement. She lives in London, where she is a Royal Literary Fund Fellow and the founder of South Asia Speaks, a mentorship program for emerging writers. soniafaleiro.com