Shenali D Waduge

No committee or government voted for a term of office or sponsors of regime change can touch an island held together by a Buddhist heritage of over 2600 years. All attempts to do so must be opposed and stopped. Buddhism is part & parcel of the National Identity of the Island.

From the 3^rd century BC to the present, Buddhism has held a special place at state level and no one can deny this. Even the South Indian Chola prince Elara patronized Buddhism. The artefacts that existed and the destructive attempts upon them and what remains today gives a clear indication of the superior place afforded to Buddhism by the People and the State. Buddhism is part & parcel of the National Identity of the Island & that identity cannot change using new nomenclatures of multiculturalism, multi-faith etc. No country will compromise their national identity least of all majority Muslim countries and staunch Catholic/Christian countries.

The royal/State status afforded to Buddhism changed only after the arrival of the 3 colonial invaders the Portuguese, Dutch and British. The goal of the invaders was to scale down that special place despite assuring to remain that status. It was a cosmetic assurance buying time until with used their policies to incrementally displace Buddhism – a quest that has been happening during their reign and even after their departure through their local agents willing to compromise Buddhism as per their wishes. Post-independence leaders were ever ready to dilute the place historically held by Buddhism if they could remain in power while begging for the Buddhist vote to come into power.

Through English-Christian education the colonials developed a set of people willing to inherit & promote a sub-culture that would challenge the ancient heritage culture. Thus, tragically the legacy of leaders were drawn away from demanding reverse discrimination of the historical injustices suffered throughout 443years of illegal colonial occupation. Though we lacked self-less leaders like Tagore, Subash Chandra Bose we did have Anagarika Dharmapala thuma who set out to revive the Sinhala culture, language & Buddhism and there were fearless Buddhist monks like Ven. Migettuwatte Gunananda thera whose Panadura debates continue to this day.

There is a reason for Sinhala Buddhists defending the nation. It was they who sacrificed lives against not only the South Indian invaders but the 3 colonial invaders as well. There were no Tamil Christians/Catholics or Sinhala Christians/Catholics at the time except much later following conversions. There is no evidence of Tamil or Muslims fighting in defence of the country against foreign invaders. Prior to the Kandyan Convention up to the 1818 / 1848 fight to regain the country it was the Sinhale people who fought against colonial repression. That defence of their motherland resulting in bloodshed & loss of life cannot be pooh-pooed and omitted from mention.

The invading Portuguese motto was God, Glory and Gold – propagating their faith Roman Catholicism and plunder. Kelani Raja Maha Viharaya, the famous Totagamuwe Vijayaba Pirvena, Padmavathi Pirivena of Keragala and Sunethra Devi Pirivena of Pepiliyana were all targets of destruction.

The Portuguese treatment of Buddhists were horrific – people were forced to convert those that refused suffered extreme violence – men were thrown to the crocodiles, women were tortured to death babies were stabbed with spikes while their parents watched and Buddhist priests were put to death. Libraries were scorched, Buddhist monasteries were looted and destroyed and the lands taken over and handed over to the Church.

Spiritual conquistadors were empowered by legislation passed in Goa to use force to take orphaned children and baptize them. What makes these different from the sophisticated methods adopted today to continue the same quest in different disguise?

Do Buddhists have no right to defend these insidious methods?

Thinking the Dutch to be better than the Portuguese was an irreversible faux pas leading to the famous saying ‘inguru dee miris gaththa wage” – giving ginger and getting chillies! Knowing what the Portuguese did, you can imagine what the Dutch would have done. Not learning lessons, the same mistake was made in thinking the British to be better than the Dutch. We do not need any more traitors. Bhuvanaikabahu VII sought Portuguese assistance against his own while Don Juan Dharmapala even changed his religion and wrote the kingdom over to the Portuguese.

The British in its 150 year rule gave pride of place to the Christian Anglican religion. In the end, they left about 100,000 Anglicans in Sri Lanka, about 1% of the population. Those speaking on discrimination are mum on British government policy was to deny Buddhists right to marry legally nor register birth of their child while missionaries distributed pamphlets denouncing Buddhism. Divide and rule policy meant setting one community against the other and minorities were given special privileges hereto denied as a policy to the majority unless they converted to Christianity. In 1870 only two Buddhist schools (Panadura & Dodanduwa) with 246 students while over 800 Christian schools with close to 80,000 students prevailed in minority areas.

These colonial occupiers destroyed Buddhism to such extents that missions had to be sent to Burma to bring monks to revitalize the Sangha. Incremental dilution of Buddhism was the policy of colonial rulers. They had no qualms about introducing and promoting pseudo Buddhism and using that to ridicule Buddhists/Buddhism. There are plenty of such players of late and they have a clueless following too. All these are part of a well-planned and systematic program.

No one can argue about the place of Buddhism for even the British to take over the entire island had to agree to include a clause in the Kandyan Convention of 1815 that they would give foremost place to Buddhism. This clearly establishes the royal status given to and held by Buddhism which even the British had to agree to honor before the chieftans signed the Convention the religion of the Budhoo professed by the chiefs and inhabitants of these provinces is declared inviolable and its rites, ministers and places of worship are to be maintained & protected”.

Those who claim separate independent kingdoms prevailed must now explain why the British did not sign separate agreements with them instead of one agreement in 1815 that took the entire island under the British domain!

Similarly, why did the British agree to only honor Buddhism as the foremost religion throughout the entire island and not Hinduism or Christianity/Catholicism if followed by Tamils in this supposed independent kingdom.

The Native Indians said the white man speaks with a forked tongue and they couldn’t have said it any better. While professing to give Buddhism its historically held place, the British administration had other plans. All three colonial rulers began converting from the coastal areas and working inwards. Governor Robert Brownrigg assurance to the British Parliament that Christianity would be propagated is really no different to the British High Commissioner to Nepal insisting that its new constitution should have the right to convert!

The supposed ‘white gentlemen’ have not learnt lessons and these are the very nations promoting the concept of ‘sovereignty’ ‘non-interference in internal affairs of a nation’ etc. Saying this they demand Sri Lanka be turned into a secular state and notice how education systems are creeping ‘liberal’ concepts all with an aim to inculcate an anti-Buddhist pro Christian/European thinking mindset creating a new elite that is groomed to believe that their ‘elite-ness’ comes only in ridiculing and mocking at Buddhist concepts and philosophy.

Notice how the western-educated elite in Sri Lanka are now congregating their attacks on Sinhala Buddhists in multiple ways and methods. These are not isolated mumbo jumo, they are well executed & well-timed insults part of a bigger agenda. The notion being drilled into us is that Sri Lanka is accepted by the West only if we denounce our eastern culture and traditions and embrace all that even the West themselves are now slowly rejecting after realizing their fault lines!

The seizure of lands & monasteries by the British can be compared to the present step motherly treatment afforded by the government going so far as to withdraw support for the monastic ceremonies while a well-funded campaign is on to withdraw the perahera elephant citing animal abuse while none of these campaign groups will say a word on animal ritual sacrifice – killing animals to appease a God is far worse than isolated & inflated abuse cases of elephants!

Globally the persecution of Buddhism goes unnoticed and is devoid of media attention. Bamiyan Buddhas were demolished, scores of Buddhist temples in Bangladesh have been scorched, Buddhist artefacts stolen and Buddha statues destroyed in many majority Buddhist countries including Sri Lanka. Thousands of Muslims attacked Buddhist sites and killed Buddhist priests in Bangladesh but world attention goes only  to isolated cases when Buddhists try to defend whatever remains of their heritage. The museum in Maldives was destroyed and artefacts ruined. What makes these incidents different from the spate of destructive attempts on ancient Buddhist ruins in the North where vandals are getting away by destroying heritage amidst calls by Tamil political leaders claiming Sinhalese are not welcome in the North and East where historical evidence clearly establishes Sinhalese had been living far before Tamils from South India or Muslim traders from Arabia and India arrived to settle down in Sri Lanka. (Refer works of Queroyz, Baldeus, British Colonial records).

The majority-minority classification was also by West and aligned with schemes planted by them to start rifts. The 1915 communal riots were used by British to claim ‘foreign plot’ and declared martial law to arrest Sinhalese of whom D S Senanayake was one.

Not only was education and culture under attack – the native economy too. Rural Sinhale people were too proud to work as slaves for the colonial rulers and that left no choice but to import South Indian Tamil laborers and these ended up the new demographic composition. Using the ‘Wastelands Ordinance’ lands belonging to peasantry were stolen without compensation. Temple lands were forcibly taken too. All these needs to be returned to original hands though the present government has allowed foreigners to buy land removing all legal restrictions.

Colonial rulers ensured the economic independence of the country was destroyed and replaced with an unstable economy growing products that would not only destroy the fertile soil resulting in landslides, erosion, flooding & severe drought.

We should be happy that inspite of all the covert efforts to destroy the Buddhist heritage & identity there are still Sinhalese who are proud of their past and are determined to protect it.

It is no surprise that present citizens have little or no knowledge about the islands past seen by their ignorance in claiming the island to be ‘independent’ without realizing that a Dominion status means that the island’s head of State was not its PM but the Queen of England while British maintained military bases in Katunayake & Trincomalee. The Queen remains Head of State till 1972 when the island introduced a republican constitution. We should be ideally celebrating 22 May 1972 and not 4 February 1948 for this reason.

Yet every time any revival or attempt to create a national movement to protect the island’s history and heritage, systems were switched to create impediments. When the Bauddha Jatika Balavegaya sprang the Catholic Action was secretly at work culminating in the faith Catholic Army Officers coup in 1962 to overthrow the government of Mrs. Bandaranaike. The Buddhist Commission Report/Press Commission Report of 1964 showing the Catholic control over the media & its influence over the readership reveals that nothing has changed almost a half century later. Newspapers are reluctant to portray Buddhist opinion, media is shy to highlight incursions or violence against Buddhists/Buddhism though they have no hesitation to ridicule and pounce against them. Columns are given to non-Buddhist writers even for Poya-Day. The media has negatively influenced readers against Buddhists/ Buddhism thus proving its role as the paid 4^th estate. The damage media has done and is doing is shocking and a content analysis will reveal true status.

Since 1948 a scale of issues were timed to ensure Sri Lanka remained stagnate. The uprisings of JVP in 1970s in the South while Tamil youth were trained clandestinely in the North. Both JVP and Tamil militants targeted and killed thousands of Sinhalese – the people that would defend the nation. Internationalization of terrorism (foreign funded/foreign controlled) was branded ‘ethnic’ to enable foreign interference. The secret minds that plotted and funded these parties remain open secrets. Even after 30 years of terror and ending it, Sri Lanka remains in limbo. The same parties that helped terror are re-entering as conflict resolutionists now trying to solve the problem they created by dividing the island. While Buddhist priests, intelligence operatives, armed forces personnel are put into prison, LTTE cadres are being released without charge and the government deproscribes LTTE fronts while even allowing Tamil racist political parties to commemorate LTTE terrorists even inside the state university in Jaffna as well as to erect grave stones for these dead terrorists.

The west still hounds Nazi’s. Men in their 90s still get arrested & imprisoned. The citizens of the west are well informed of the history of the Nazis and these arrests don’t get public disapproval as a result. It is the lack of understanding or knowing the scale of terror unleashed by the LTTE that has people silently watching LTTE terrorism being commemorated.

This is why it is important that all citizens know their country’s history. Whether citizens do not belong to Buddhism or not they must know of and respect the Buddhist heritage of this island. Buddhism is part of the islands national identity. If anyone doesn’t like it they are not compelled to live in Sri Lanka. There are enough of countries they can migrate to. However, simply because they don’t like or want to accept the history & heritage of the island they have no right to plot and plan to change & replace it.

Buddhism has shaped the history & culture of Sri Lanka. All kings that ruled followed the ideology and precepts of Buddhism in their governance. The island was known as a Dharmistha Society. Our people were known as the Aryavamsa (noble race). The high moral and ethical governance changed with the arrival of colonial rulers – animals were cruelly killed, slaughtered for rituals, sacrifices and became a prize treat at the dinner table. Millions and millions of animals have been cruelly laid to rest.

When we have a rich & sacred history, why do we want to copy cultures that are foreign to us? Let us not forget that Buddhism prevailed across the globe embracing its compassionate doctrine 1000 years before other religions were even birthed. The West managed to create political Buddhism to further dilute the essence and teachings of Buddhism and influence the weaknesses of some Buddhist clergy who are being used to tarnish Buddhism.

Therefore, no government should be allowed to remove history as a subject from school syllabus. In fact, it should be made compulsory.

The actions of the present government, the scheming by Western & Indian change agents have awoken both youth and adult in Sri Lanka. They see the threats and the eventual likely results and now people are getting anxious about how to react to safeguard the history and culture. There are however attempts to demean the culture by laying blame on Buddhism & Buddhists for all the ills taking place ignoring who are introducing them and with what objectives which are no different to how the colonials subtly began changing the Aryavamsa Dharmishta society into people who indulged in false values, copied cultures and with no regard for one’s roots.

Citizens who migrated to countries go in search of their roots, a journey they feel they must complete before they depart….when our history & heritage are well rooted with much to be proud of our so-called leaders & stooges on foreign payroll want to erase that sacred and proud past. This cannot be allowed and we must now all rise against attempts to do so.

Shenali D Waduge