By Rohana R. Wasala

Five hundred years of European colonial occupation could not destroy the dominant Sinhalese Buddhist cultural identity of Sri Lanka. The Sinhalese have a distinct language called Sinhala that evolved entirely out of indigenous roots over thousands of years. It is one of the few still extant oldest languages in the world. It got enriched in contact with other languages of the world. They have what is accepted as the purest form of Buddhism, the Theravada Buddhism, which, according to the prevalent tradition, they got from North India about 2255 years ago.  ‘Tripitaka’ in Pali (the Buddhist scriptures contained in ‘Three Baskets’) which had been passed down through oral tradition was committed to writing at Aluvihara, Matale during the reign of King Valagamba in the first century BCE. Commissioned by King Dhatusena (455-473 CE), the Mahavamsa was composed in the 5th century CE. Both these monumental literary tasks were done by Buddhist monks at times like the present when the island state and its head and heart the Buddhasasana were facing or had just overcome alien threats (military and doctrinal/ideological, respectively) to their survival. All the ancient place names throughout the country are in Sinhala. Those in the North and East  still survive in the form of Tamilized versions. This shows that the Sinhalese inhabited the whole of the island. The feeling of proprietorship over the island is in the Sinhalese DNA as it were. Of course, all communities need to think of themselves as Sri Lankans, but it is doubtful whether non-Sinhalese feel that way – the way the Sinhalese do – towards Sri Lanka, the geographical territory, the land.  

The statement of an unalterable historical fact like this should not be interpreted as an assertion of so-called Sinhalese supremacism. What is supremacism? The www.google.com definition of ‘supremacism’ is that it is ‘an ideology which holds that a certain class of people is superior to others, and that they should dominate, control, and subjugate others, or are entitled to do so’.The same source defines the adjective ‘supremacist’ as ‘relating to or advocating the supremacy of a particular group’. The majority Sinhalese do not want to ‘dominate, control, and subjugate others’, and do not believe that they have a right to do so. Considering the beleaguered state of  the Sinhalese )esp. Sinhalese Buddhists), both internally and externally, it looks as if they are obliged to show cause for their survival as a distinct race, or as if they ought to apologise for being what they are.

The Sinhalese are the oldest inhabitants of the island, no doubt coeval with the veddas, though the latter are identified as a separate aboriginal race by European anthropologists who used to faithfully copied by their local clones parroting their Eurocentric ideas until recently. The Sinhalese have been the majority in the country for countless millennia. No wonder the country used to be named after them. It is actually embarrassing for them to be talking so much about their racial identity and their special relationship with the land, and their Buddhist culture that evolved over the last 2255 year phase of their dateless history. But they are obliged to do so because of the racist discrimination  against them by a handful of minority politicians who fear the legitimate self-assertion of the Sinhalese as a threat to them. The more accommodating the Sinhalese are towards others, the less recognition of the fact seems to be forthcoming from the latter. 

The Sinhalese Buddhist majority are not racist, neither are they fanatical Buddhists. There’s no need to prove that something is not there. It is up to those who say that the Sinhalese Buddhists are this and that to produce evidence, it looks like they don’t have any. The term ‘fanatical Buddhist’ is self-contradictory. Fanaticism is possible only  with faith-based religions. Buddhism says ‘ehi passiko’ ‘come and see’, if you don’t agree, go your way in peace. It is not a political religion unlike Christianity and Islam. The system of government that is most compatible with the Buddhist philosophy is democracy. Democracy has a chance of flourishing in a Buddhist country. Buddhism cannot have any issue with secularism, and vice versa. 

At least 70% of the population in Sri Lanka are Buddhist. Since Buddhism’s tolerant attitude dominates in the country, the minorities are able to practice their  religions in perfect freedom. The same sort of religious freedom can probably be found in some Chritian countries like America and Britain. But, do the Christian and Buddhist minorities in  Muslim Pakistan and Bangladesh respectively enjoy the same freedom? Fundamentalist forms of Christianity and Islam (each of these religions monopolizes ‘God’ and claims to be the only true religion) threaten the very foundation of human civilization. A ‘non-religious’ spiritual moral philosophy like Buddhism is little tolerated by fundamentalists. That is why the few Buddhist majority countries there are – Thailand, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka, for example – have begun to have problems with their Muslim minorities. Sri Lanka had no religious problem because of its entrenched Sinhalese Buddhist cultural infrastructure. But the curse of Wahhabism has gradually been visited on Sri Lanka over the past decade or so. 

Fundamentalist activity increased in the past three or four decades behind the smokescreen of the civil war. Its progress was facilitated largely by the passivity of the divided Sangha and the Sinhala politicians’ reluctance to take action against fundamentalists for fear that they’d fail to get the minority vote. So they play it safe, by taking refuge in the dishonest policy of political correctness. Patriotic individuals and groups who urged the Mahanayakes and the successive governments to address this issue by making use of the available legal mechanisms were often condemned as racists, tribalists and extremists and they turned a blind eye to the cases of  physical destruction of archaeological sites by treasure hunters and political vandals, and a deaf ear to the pleas of the peaceful activists to intervene. Ven. Galaboda-aththe Gnanasara who has been a fierce anti-fundamentalist for many years, and who, for that reason,fell foul both of the authorities and fundamentalist sympathisers, is just coming in out of the cold.

Ven. Gnanasara never raised his voice to create communal unrest or foment violence targeting any community. He raised his voice only to awaken the political authorities and the Ven. Mahanayake Theras who were indifferent to his early warnings  and pleas about the worsening danger of murderous religious extremism for their own selfish reasons. It is only the satanic propaganda that turned him into a hate figure, particularly in the biased media eyes. It can be seriously suspected that money plays a central role in it. Otherwise, how could the true situation in this regard be misrepresented in the press in the distorted manner it usually is?

The fear that the release of Ven. Gnanasara Thera from prison would cause a conflagration of racial or religious conflict because of the alleged devilry on his part is entirely misplaced. Contrary to such fears, it can be argued, Ven. Gnanasara, set free, has become a symbol of hope for a nation unexpectedly betrayed barely five years after its return to normalcy at the end of three decades of devastating civil war in May 2009. He adopted a roughneck-like manner when demonstrating his ‘righteous anger’ at the failure of politicians successively in power and the leading Buddhist clergy to address the chronic problem of Christian and Islamic fundamentalist religious onslaught on Sri Lanka’s Buddhist cultural space. (The idea of righteous anger is alien to the Buddhist teaching; but even Ven. Gnanasara is a patujjana, an ordinary human, a worldling). That strategic posturing must now be consigned to the past. He said his prison experience was a kind of postgraduate education for him. 

This fundamentalist infringement on the ancient Buddhist cultural heritage of Sri Lanka  is sometimes done by brazenly crude methods (e.g., forced conversion of, particularly, helpless impoverished Buddhists and Hindus in remote rural areas through blandishments, or by getting them to desecrate their religious symbols as a rite of passage, such as trampling on Buddha statuettes, and home visits by fanatical preachers on morality as taught in their religions, sometimes accompanied by gullible or simply mercenary uneducated Buddhist monks or monk imposters. There has been authentic video). Religious subversion is sometimes done in more sophisticated ways in urban areas, something difficult to criticize or condemn without arousing opposition both among the proselytizers and the potential proselytes. For example, there is the case of a Christian or Catholic Brother who preaches well on ethical matters that are superficially identical between Christianity and Buddhism. He, having mesmerized a mixed crowd by the manner of his preaching, suddenly exclaims ‘Jesus is the SupremeTruth’!

Now, no two religions agree totally in terms of their metaphysics, nor in terms of their ethical principles. The differences between Theravada Buddhism preached/practiced in Sri Lanka and Catholicism professed by the majority of Sri Lanka’s Christians are unbridgeable, as the first is based on the idea of Causality, and the second on Creationism. To ignore these differences is hypocrisy. The audiences in these programs consist not only of Christians, but Buddhists, Hindus, and probably others as well. Even Buddhist monks are sometimes present on the stage with this Catholic Father. If the Buddhists in the audience and the monks on the stage have an iota of brains, they should realize that what the preacher is implying is that Buddhists and others who are not Christians are spiritually deluded, and that his intolerant, totalitarian assertion is not consonant with his purported desire to generate goodwill among diverse religious communities. No Buddhists will quarrel with Catholics or Muslims about their beliefs; nor will they oppose conversion through conviction. But, they will object to them trying to convert Buddhists by unethical means including force or deception. (If a courageous monk or layperson, hearing the proselytizing Father’s assertion of his personal religious belief or conviction, had raised objections, they’d have been roundly condemned on all sides. Of course, what is ‘unethical’ in a multicultural context is problematic. So, it is best to avoid such situations in the interest of religious harmony among the people.)

Ven. Gnanasara Thera’s is an unimaginably worse predicament than that hypothetical monk’s or lay Buddhist’s. What he exposed and challenged were infinitely greater and much more public and even violent instances of fundamentalist aggression. He endeavoured to do this in the calm and composed way characteristic of a Buddhist monk, without expecting any reward (‘nissaranadyashayen’  as he puts it); he has no political or other materialistic ambitions. For many years he tried to alert the lay Buddhist leaders (politicians in power and those out of power) to the danger. In a few instances clashes between Buddhists and Muslims occurred for which only the former were blamed; Muslims were portrayed as the sole victims. The true situation was otherwise. Buddhists never initiate any violent incident. Unruly elements from the Muslim side started the trouble. For example, videos are still available in the social media that show how Muslim youths threw stones from a mosque at a peaceful Buddhist procession at Aluthgama and how this led to violence in 2014, which quickly spread to a number of other towns (including Panadura, Beruwala, Welipenna, etc) in south-western Sri Lanka. On that occasion, thousands of innocent Muslims and and similarly innocent Buddhists were affected and their shops, houses, and places of worship were attacked. Though the then government did its best to stop the violence and restore normalcy, the incidents were not adequately investigated, and not enough was done to clear the name of the BBS which was solely blamed for all that happened. The leaders of both the present and previous governments didn’t take Ven. Gnanasara seriously enough, while pretending to do so, because they thought that if they took any decisive action against the handful of powerful communalists among minority politicians allegedly responsible for questionable acts such as anti-Buddhist subversion, illegal felling of trees in the state forest reserve in Wilpattuwa, settling foreign illicit Muslim immigrants  there, encroaching on and even vandalizing historic Buddhist places of worship in the North and East, and so on, they would lose the support of the mainstream Christian and Muslim communities, which being minorities, naturally tend to form themselves into ‘block vote’ bastions at the instance of opportunistic politicians. (But I believe that this is a misplaced fear on the part of Sinhalese politicians. The majority of ordinary Muslims do not want to support racist politicians, but they are often in the thrall of those politicians, because of the latter’s ability to ‘deliver’ whichever major party or alliance happens to be in power.)