By Rohana R. Wasala

Continued from April 16

Part II of this write-up concluded with a reference to the perceived anti-Buddhist (and anti-Hindu) mindset of the ex-Marxist strategist who advocated the abolition of the institution of executive presidency as the single pivotal goal to be fought for by the promoters of the engineered regime change  at the 2015 January presidential election. (I describe the 2015 regime change as ‘engineered’ with powerful external support and corresponding internal collaboration, not based on any special information that I have discovered on my own; I do so based on what I have heard and read from dozens of highly knowledgeable and trustworthy political commentators in and on the free media.) The late Kumar David (whom I used to respect as an intellectual with advanced linguistic capacity, despite his politics) held that an executive president undermined Sri Lanka’s democracy. But the architects of the executive presidential system introduced with the adoption of a new constitution in 1978 by the UNP  believed that a strong executive presidency was essential for preserving the unitary status of the Sri Lankan state as a bulwark against ethnicity based fragmentation of the country by ethnicity based separatists that threatened intercommunal peace, national security, political stability, and economic development. 

Under the presidential system, the president became both the head of state and the head of government, whereas under the Westminster style parliamentary system that survived the proclamation of the first republican constitution of 1972, the prime minister held the most power and the non-executive president was only the nominal head of state. Under the current several times amended 1978 constitution, national sovereignty lies in the people. The president is directly elected by the people. He or she acts as the people’s supreme representative as well as the symbolic personification of national sovereignty. But the president is under the constitution, not above it. A morally adequate executive president does not jeopardize democracy. 

Regime change supporters have made much against Article 9 of the constitution that offers the foremost place for Buddhism, though it does so without making it the state religion. They argue that it threatens the secularism of Sri Lankan democracy.They have also objected to describing Sri Lanka as a Buddhist country/nation. (May the impartial reader judge the fairness of this criticism in comparison with the status given to majority religions in other democratic countries, except in neighbouring India, where 80% of the people are Hindu, but Hinduism is not the state religion.. The only democratic country in the world that shares Sri Lanka’s susceptibility to criticism in this respect is Israel, which has no state religion but ensures freedom of religion to all its diverse ethnic groups, while giving Judaism a privileged place, and calls itself a ‘Jewish democratic state’.) It is beyond dispute that Israel, Sri Lanka, and India are the most accommodating towards religious multiculturalism.  

Despite this, a trend towards relaxing the observance of Article 9 emerged during the civil conflict, especially in the worst affected northern and eastern provinces, and it became more apparent after January 2015. Acts of discrimination against the Sinhalese Buddhists left  after ethnic cleansing by the separatists in those areas, and vandalizing of pre-common era Buddhist archaeological sites notwithstanding the protection provided by  the supposedly powerful Antiquities Ordinance, sabotaging of the commemoration of the 270th anniversary of the bringing of the Higher Ordination ritual from Siam (Thailand) in 1753, that was being organized by the Siyam Nikaya during UNP’s Ranil Wickremasinghe’s presidency in 2023; the fate of its 275th anniversary in 2028 is yet to be seen.  The same propensity seems to be continuing under the ruling JVP/NPP, whose leaders made common cause with the regime changers who had sought the abolition of the executive presidency. Concerned legal experts might accuse incumbent Anura Kumara Dissanayake of having subjected Article 9 to constitutional neglect by effectively scrapping (?) a separate ministry for Buddha Sasana and by appointing an alleged non-Buddhist to take care of Buddha Sasana-related affairs, and a Muslim Maulavi, an alleged owner of madrasas, as his deputy. The seemingly subtly sabotaged progress of the Walk for Peace under the apparently unsolicited patronage of the government is leaving a bad taste in the mouth.This is in spite of the president having been recently trying to downplay his secular persona.    

A gesture that president Anura Kumara Dissanayake made towards that was when he invited  Pope Leo XIV to visit Sri Lanka on a still unspecified date in the future. His official invitation was handed over to Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, Holy See’s Secretary for Relations with States, at the Vatican by Minister Bimal Ratnayake on March 3, 2026 during the latter’s recent state visit to Italy. President Dissanayake has also opted to offer state patronage to the Walk for Peace monk delegation headed by Vietnamese American Theravada Buddhist Bhikkhu Ven. Pannakara Thero of the Huong Dao Vipassana Bhavana Center in Fort Worth Texas, USA, currently visiting Sri Lanka. 

President Dissanayake might deserve Sri Lankans’ appreciation for these hopefully pious decisions. But he should remember the following lines from Verse 1 of Dhammapada:

If with an impure mind a person speaks or acts – suffering follows him like the wheel that follows the foot of the ox.”

Verse 2 says:

If with a pure mind a person speaks or acts – happiness follows him like his never-departing shadow”

Both verses state a natural law. There is nothing magical or mysterious here, because

Mind precedes all mental states –  mind is their chief, they are all mind-wrought.” 

The responsibility for the cultivation of sound mental states, arriving at well thought out decisions, and taking the right actions weighs infinitely more heavily on the ruler of a country than it does on a single individual.

Hence the daily prayer of Buddhist monks: raja bhavatu dhammiko ‘May the ruler be righteous!’  

Leader of the Walk for Peace Bhikkhu Pannakara constantly stresses the importance of restraining our ever-shifting ‘monkey mind’ (that is always in a state of restlessness, confusion, and continuous chatter) to let inner peace and happiness bloom. 

Although the Walk for Peace monks are absolutely devoid of any political or missionary motive beyond disseminating that simple but profound message of peace and compassion, the people of Buddhist majority Sri Lanka could unobtrusively use their visit to raise the  image of Sri Lanka as a nation with a rich Buddhist cultural heritage that has survived for over twenty-three centuries based on a moral framework that asserts the values of karuna (compassion), metta (loving-kindness), ahimsa (non-violence), mindfulness, panna (wisdom), and shanti (deep inner peace) which is the genesis of national and world peace. These are the humane values that the Walk for Peace monks demonstrate and teach for individuals to assert in their lives in order to reduce their own suffering, while helping create a society that is peaceful and happy. This is broadly what the Buddha advised his first sixty disciples to do, when he started his ministry after  setting the Wheel of the Dhamma” in motion:  Go forth O bhikkhus, for the good of the many, for the happiness of the many, out of compassion for the world, for the benefit, welfare and happiness of gods and men”. 

Right now, though, as strongly hinted by the independent media and as constantly argued by the Opposition, President Dissanayake is living a lie, nay, is lying in a bed of lies with sharp teeth that he has himself made. He pretends to be committed to a secular liberal democracy that he seems to have no clear idea about, and tries to show proof of his secular credentials by implicitly disowning the Sinhalese Buddhist culture he was born into. His conduct as president doesn’t reflect any awareness, on his part, of the remarkable compatibility of that culture with the ethical standards of modern secular democracy. The socially egalitarian and ethically progressive spirit of democracy that Buddhism, across all its denominations, infuses into societies is being increasingly recognized and respected around the civilized world. Dissanayake’s profound ignorance of, or callous insensitivity to, this fact is a glaring instance of his internalized racism (i.e., involuntary adoption of Western prejudices and stereotypes against one’s own non-White race), which prompted him to disparage Sri Lanka as a ‘hunduwa’ for what he has identified as its underdeveloped economic capacity. 

Be that as it may, his efforts are apparently expended on appeasing the handful of racist Tamil separatists and the few religious extremists hiding safely in plain sight, taking refuge within the larger peaceful Tamil, Catholic, and Muslim mainstream minority communities. The latent resurgence of political (Tamil separatist) and religio-political (Catholic and Islamist) extremism has become a complex social, political, and security issue for the Sinhalese Buddhist majority Sri Lankan state. This problem gets more complicated by the interventionist attention that is focused into its internal affairs by competing global and regional superpowers in the geostrategically supersensitive Indo-Pacific, where Sri Lanka is located, especially by the powerful Western countries that have taken in large Tamil diaspora populations. The Buddhist majority community is not totally free from its own variety of extremists. The agitating monk activists like Balangoda Kassapa Thero and Galaboda-aththe Gnanasara Thero who criticise the Walk for Peace having misunderstood its genuine purpose, are examples; they are doing a great disservice to the genuine causes they are trying to bravely champion. ………..

The most frightening echoes in the next, hopefully the final, part.