Civics Citizenship
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Having calmly lit his gasoline-saturated robes, the Buddhist bonze, Quang-Duc, 73, burns to death in a main intersection in Saigon. Surrounded by three hundred fellow monks and thousands of other Vietnamese observers, the old man committed suicide in protest against what he called government "persecution of Buddhists." The incident intensified opposition to the regime of Ngo Dinh Diem.
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Thich Quang-Duc's Story
On June 11, 1963, a Buddhist monk, Thich Quang-Duc, set himself afire in Saigon to protest the oppressive regime of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem. People around the world reacted with shock and horror to this spectacular event. One American called it "an act of savagery, violence, and fanaticism, requiring a condition of mental imbalance."
But to the Vietnamese, and especially to Vietnam's sizable Buddhist community, the monk's dramatic suicide had a powerful religious and political significance. The Buddhists traditionally believed that self-immolation was the act of a person free of physical needs and prepared to enter upon a completely spiritual existence. Fire served as the rite of passage to an eternal state of blessedness and peace. Politically this act of purification was designed to shame the government by contrasting the monk's virtue with the corruption and repressiveness of Diem's regime.
Thich Quang-Duc's suicide aroused international concern about South Vietnam's political situation. Within Vietnam it crystallized widespread discontent against the restrictions and controls brought about by the war and provoked a tumultuous movement of popular protest. Thus Buddhists, as they had been so many times before in Vietnamese history, were thrust into the role of providing moral and political leadership for the people and representing their interests to the government.
Although a religious minority in South Vietnam, Buddhists wielded an authority rooted in the ancient pagodas of the countryside. With the fiery death of Thich Quang-Duc, Buddhism became a critical political and social element in Vietnam for the remainder of the war.
Based on the criteria you have established, was Thich Quang-Doc a committed citizen or crazy?