There is a neat symmetry to the life of Burmese monks. As young boys, many are sent to monasteries to escape the deprivations of life under the repressive military regime.

Parents, especially the poor, send sons as young as five to monasteries. They do so partly to gain spiritual “merit”, but also to ensure that they are housed and fed, to give them an education, or to keep them out of the clutches of the military. The monasteries never turn boys away, they charge nothing and offer a better education than state schools. Some boys follow a secular curriculum. Others are enrolled as novices and receive a traditional monastic education. They are expected to lead a life of study and meditation, starting at 4am each day.

At the age of 20 novices have to decide whether to become fully ordained monks – roughly half do. Observers say that it is a life that allows plenty of time for listening to the BBC’s Burmese service and discussing the country’s many problems. It is also a life that attracts social activists, allowing them to start schools or orphanages without attracting the wrath of the authorities.

Ostensibly Burma’s estimated 500,000 monks follow the lead of a central body known as the State Maha Nayaka Committee, but its members are hand-picked by the regime and widely discredited. In practice the monasteries are largely autonomous.

Collectively the monkhood forms the strongest institution apart from the military, and it has not hesitated to flex its muscles. It played a key role in securing Burma’s independence from Britain in 1948. The monks were at the forefront of the 1988 uprising that brought down one repressive regime.

In 1990 they joined mass protests against the junta’s failure to recognise the general election victory of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy.

Since then the monkhood has helped the regime by soaking up young men who might otherwise have become troublemakers as Burma’s economy has collapsed. No longer. It has become the preeminent threat to the regime’s survival.

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