KAMALIKA PIERIS

Hinduism is not a   world religion. It is confined to India. Hinduism was introduced to East Asia but failed to take root there.  Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia retained the Ramayana but rejected the Hindu religion.

Hinduism was not allowed to enjoy its position even in India.  In India, there is an ongoing tussle between the Hindus and Muslims. Hindus cannot even claim a temple without a fight erupting like at Ayodhaya.  When Supreme Court awarded Ayodhaya to the Hindus, they were jubilant.

The term Hindutva” is used disparagingly in India.  It was created in 1922   as a label for Hindu nationalism with the hope of establishing Hindu hegemony within India. It should have been an uplifting,   stirring, rousing concept. Instead it is today used very disparagingly by those who oppose Hindu political parties.

Hinduism did not take root in Sri Lanka either.  Hinduism came with Chola rule (993-1070) but the country did not embrace Hinduism. There is no mention of kovil or mosques in the Udarata kingdom (1469-1815) either. The Esala Perahera was originally a Devala perahera   of   three gods Kataragama, Pattini, and Natha. Kataragama and Pattini were Hindu gods, but they did not come from kovils, they came from devala. Natha was not Hindu, he was Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara.

Modern Hinduism   came to Sri Lanka with the Tamil laborers who arrived in the north during Dutch and British rule. They would have worshipped in the way they did in their villages back home. Hinduism was modernized much later by   Arumuga Navalar of Jaffna (1822-1879).He imitated the American missionaries active in Jaffna at that time.

Sri Lanka had a limited number of small kovils until the 1980s when there was a sudden burst of Kovil building and kovil expansion.  Small kovils became huge and elaborate.  New kovils started to appear in critical locations. All the kovils in Sri Lanka   are new ones, said Susantha Goonetilaka in 2011.

K. C Logeswaran  (2021) has given us information on   contemporary Hindu temples in Sri Lanka .Hindu temples belonged to two categories,  he said, one where there was a Brahmin priest to conduct the ritual of the temple.  These are less than a thousand in number. Of these, the Colombo and Jaffna temples were rich. They had powerful devotees.

The second category is small temples of the Madaalayam type, where no Brahmin poosaries and pandarams officiate. My impression is that more than 70% of the Hindu temples were these, said Logeswaran. These kovils were poor.

There are no legal provisions for registering Hindu temples, said Logeswaran.    The ownership of the Hindu temple is vested not in the priests but in the person who built the temple .The owner of the temple got to keep the donations given to the temples.

The Hindu religion has been given a visible boost in Sri Lanka in recent times. It now receives state patronage. Hindu festivals are    celebrated at Presidents House and Temple Trees. There is considerable coverage in the state newspapers of Hindu festivals and Hindu chariot processions in different parts of the country. The leading   kovils such as Nallur regularly get large, prominent write ups in the media. This encourages the public to think hospitably about Hindu kovils in Sri Lanka.

The public have also been fed the notion of a Tamil-Hindu north and east.  In 2017 Hindu MPs asked that   the 378 acres around Thirukoneshwaran Eeshwaran Kovil in Trincomalee be declared a sacred site. MP Douglas Devananda said the Kovil had been there since 1300 BC even before King Vijaya arrived in the country. This is nonsense. This was the site of Gokanna vihara. The Hindu kovil came up    during British rule. In the 1950s it was a small, insignificant looking temple. It started to blossom only in the 1980s.

Buddhists need to look critically at   the mushroom kovils” that are sprouting in the north and east. These trident-only” kovils are located inside Buddhist ruins found in the north and east of Sri Lanka.  During the Eelam war, the Tamil Separatist Movement explored the Buddhist ruins of the north and east and placed tridents in them. Ellawela Medhananda found many such tridents in the Buddhist ruins he saw in the east.

It is unlikely that a kovil fit for worship can be created by simply planting a trident anywhere. When the trident is planted inside a Buddhist ruin, which is alien territory, it is merely   a ruse to take over   Buddhist land for Tamil Eelam. Such kovils need not be taken seriously.

The conservaton of Kurundi has led to much frantic Tamil agitation. This is unique. I cannot recall anthing like this taking place ever before.The Department of Archaeology has been conserving stupas for decades, without anybody objecting or caring.

But Kurundi is different. The opposition at Kurundi is due to the geographical location of Kurundi. Kurundi is in Mullaitivu. Mullaitivu is important for Eelam.  The north and eastern provinces meet at Mullaitivu .Tamil Separatist Movement is therefore desperate to halt the forward march of Kurundi monastery.

 One strategy is to get Kurundi declared a ‘contested site’.   That is done by barging in and disturbing   Buddhist rituals at Kurundi. But these intrusions can be challenged on two fronts, ethics and law.

These kovils and their supporters are violating the accepted ethics relating to religion. Religions usually   respect each other’s places of worship and take   particular care not   to intrude when prayers are going on.  Non-Muslims do not march into mosques and disturb prayers on Fridays. Buddhists would not dream of introducing a Buddha statue on to the altar of a Christian church and the church will not allow it either.

 At Kurundi, we saw disrespect and misbehavior in a place of worship.  The crude, rough, aggressive manner of the Tamil demonstrators showed a lack of respect for Buddhism.

There was also intrusion and disruption of religious worship. When the archaeological work was just starting, Tamil protestors blocked the installation of a Buddha statue at the temple site. They were triumphant about this.

 After that, Tamil Separatist Movement disrupted two   rituals. The two events were highly publicized. They took place with media conveniently present.

The first intrusion was when the Buddhist authorities were getting ready to enshrine relics in the Kurundi stupa. Tamil demonstrators barged in and stopped the function. They surrounded the stupa so that no one could approach it.  They shoved the monks out of the way, and trampled and destroyed the decorations around the stupa.  They were crude, aggressive and showed no respect for Buddhism.  The agitators were led by two Parliament MPs and two Provincial councilors.

The second intrusion took place when a pinkama was in progress. Hindus devotees barged in, disturbed the proceedings and said that they wished to conduct a Pongal at the stupa.  They were offensive and rude. Arun Siddharthan said that one of those shouting is a Christian called Peter .I recognized him.  The Swami was a person expelled from a temple. There was resistance on both sides and eventually, three ceremonies took place first Buddhist, then Hindu, then Buddhist again. Why Kurundi, when there are enough other kovils to celebrate Pongal, asked Buddhists. The motive was clearly political not religious.

The Tamil   protests and demonstrations at Kurundi are on record on You Tube. They show the aggression and coarse behavior of the Tamil protestors, the total lack of respect for a Buddhist place of worship.The protests on relic enshrinement day can be seen onhttps://youtu.be/S1JVMDA3_1o . The Pongal protest can be seen on https://youtu.be/XkInlXpKoRg and https://youtu.be/ysjQ4GgXEoI .

The Tamil Separatist Movement has violated the law in entering the Kurundi reserve.  Kurundi ruins are in an archaeological reserve. No one can enter without permission. Also, no one can meddle with the ruins in it.  They cannot trespass or cause any damage.

 But there is evidence that the Tamil Separatist Movement has entered both the Kurundi archaeology reserve and the Norochcholai forest reserve which also has Buddhist ruins. In the Norochcholai forest reserve, they had taken away items that would be useful for their own buildings from the   Buddhist ruins found there. 

They deliberately damaged the ruins at Kurundi. They broke an inscription into six pieces.  They also broke the muragala and korawakgala and crushed the yantragala.   They created a rudimentary kovil at the Kurundi pilimage. They cut down the forest near Kurundi, but did not dare cultivate the bogus ‘paddy fields’. That would have been a visible offence.

Tamil Separatist Movement knows that it is up against a formidable opponent when it comes to squashing Kurundi. They have therefore asked for support from abroad. The Tamil Separatist Movement has written to The Federation of Saiva (Hindu) Temples U.K. on January 27, 2021. They said that government of Sri Lanka    has declared virtual ‘holy war’ against Hindus and their places of worship. United and concerted action by Hindus all over the world is urgently needed to halt the large-scale Buddhistization and colonization of lands belonging to Hindu Tamils. (Continued)