KAMALIKA PIERIS
The Tamil Separatist Movement has met the claims of the Buddhists, by issuing a counter statement which is a mirror image of what the Buddhists are saying. Buddhists say that Buddhists was there in the north and east before the Tamils. The Buddhists built the Buddhist monuments. Then these monuments were destroyed by Tamils who settled there. Tamil Separatist Movement says Hinduism was in the north and east long before Buddhism. Sinhala Buddhists came later, destroyed the Hindu temples and set up the Buddhist sites that are seen there today.
Tamil Separatist Movement also put forward a second argument, that the Tamils in the north- east were initially Buddhist. Tamil Buddhists were there in Sri Lanka from the very ancient past, they said. The Buddhist ruins found in the north and east were the remains of Buddhist monuments built by Tamil Buddhists. Later the Tamils gave up Buddhism and embraced Hinduism.
This argument went further, it said that these Tamil Buddhists were Mahayana as well as Theravada. The Mahayana group had their own temples in the north and east. There are still some Tamil Mahayana Buddhist establishments in the east and possibly in the Jaffna peninsula, said J.L. Devananda. This fabrication was concocted because the East Coast has many Mahayana temples, such as Tiriyaya and it was necessary to show that those temples were also Tamil.
The Sinhala Buddhists, on the other hand, were not so advanced. Sinhala Buddhists never became Mahayana. They incorporated Mahayana gods and beliefs into their practices, but the doctrine remained Theravada. The Mahayana temples along the East Coast followed this principle.
Tamil Separatist Movement then went on to criticize Sinhala thinking on the matter. The impression among the Sinhalese Buddhists is that Buddhism in Sri Lanka is exclusively for the Sinhalese . There seems to be an unwillingness to accept that Tamils too were Buddhists in an earlier era. Why do the Sri Lankans believe that the Buddhist sites in Sri Lanka belong only to the Sinhalese and not to the Tamils, asked J.L.Devananda. [1]
Tamil Separatist Movement then turned on the Dipavamsa and Mahavamsa .Dipavamsa and Mahavamsa were criticized on two counts. Both charges were fabricated ones. Firstly, that Buddhism flourished in South India in ancient times, but Dipavamsa and Mahavamsa remained silent about the introduction of Buddhism to South India.
This is because, continued Tamil Separatist Movement, when Hindu/Brahmanism started reappearing in India and posed a threat to Buddhism, the Mahavihara monks, in order to protect Buddhism in Sri Lanka , wrote the Pali chronicles Dipavamsa/Mahavamsa just to glorify Buddhism and the Buddhist kings of Sri Lanka and not to record objectively what happened.
Secondly, Dipavamsa and Mahavamsa created the Sinhala ethnic identity , yoked it to Buddhism and created a new ethno-religious identity in Sri Lanka known as Sinhala-Buddhist, to sustain the religion in the country for 5000 years, said the Tamil Separatist Movement, using its imagination.
Tamil Separatist Movement also said that the ancient Sri Lankan Kingdom (Anuradhapura) was ruled by both Buddhist and Hindu kings. There is no evidence what so ever to prove that they were Sinhala, said Tamil Separatist Movement , ignoring the fact that there is no evidence to prove that they were Tamil either.
The Buddhist past is unpleasant to many Tamils today, said the Tamil Separatist Movement . The Tamils are reluctant to admit the reality that their ancestors had been Buddhists in the past. Today most Tamils in Sri Lanka are Hindu or Christian.
Further, the present Tamil speaking occupants of the lands in the North and East are uneasy about the discovery of Buddhist sites, admitted the Tamil Separatist Movement . That is because these discoveries strengthen the case for Sinhala-Buddhism in the north and east, said critics.
There is absolutely no evidence to show that Sri Lanka was ruled by Tamil kings, but there is plenty of tangible evidence to show that Sri Lanka was ruled by Sinhala kings, said critics. This evidence starts with the Anuradhapura kingdom and continues unbroken up to the Udarata kingdom. Further, the Sinhala kings created a strong, stable monarchical state, which was recognized internationally, by India, China, Iran and other countries.
There is an abundance of such evidence, not just a fragment or two, continued critics. There are thousands of stone inscriptions , also sculptures, large monuments, irrigation schemes and a vast literature which includes histories and commentaries
Not only is the evidence there in abundance, it keeps on arriving. There is a continuous run of discoveries. The chief priest of a kovil, had come across the ruins of a Buddhist temple and some Buddha statues, stone carvings as well as a Bo tree when he was clearing the jungle in Kilinochchi, reported Daily News in 1965.[2]
The torso of a Buddha statue, was found at Pulmoddai some miles away from the Mineral factory , said the Handbook for the Ceylon Traveler , in 1974.[3] A standing Buddha statue 7 ½ feet in height was found at Mannar, said E.T Kannangara in 1984. [4] During our work for Mahaweli , north of Kala Weva, in every jungle area we saw very old small Buddhist temples with the Buduge in caves, said Randeniyage. [5]
800 new Sigiri graffiti dated to7th to 13th Centuries were found by Benille Priyanka and published in 2010. A Buddha statue dated to Anuradhapura era was found in Kantale in 2012.[6] A large number of archaeological remains were found at Arisimale beach , Pulmoddai in 2017. [7] A huge inscription was found in 2023 at Dimbulagala Aranya Senasana.
There is also another new stunt that the Anti Sinhala-Buddhist Movement, is attempting which locks in nicely with Eelam. The Anti Sinhala Movement says that the Sinhala-Buddhist history is all bogus, it is a figment of the imagination, it is a Sinhala Buddhist Imaginary.”
Elizabeth Harris provides us with a description of this Imaginary”. She says that there is a Sinhala Imaginary” that sees the entire island as belonging to the Sinhala people. This Imaginary” sees the island as belonging to both Buddha and the Sinhala people. The island was the dream land of the Buddha himself. That is why there is Sinhala attachment to Sri Lanka, said Harris.[8]
The Sinhala-Buddhist history of ancient Sri Lanka was an invention of the British rulers, continued Harris. The ancient cities of Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa and Sigiriya, so important for the Sinhala imagination, were nineteenth century inventions. They were created by the British colonial officers and amateur archaeologists’. They were not known before. They gained prominence only when the European gaze fell on them, said Harris.
Anuradhapura’s ‘ancientness” is a modern, colonial invention continued Harris. The Buddhist pilgrimages to Buddhist places of worship was part of an Imaginary that pictured those sites as part of a larger island-wide Buddhist drama. The area around the Bodhi tree, (she means the Sri Maha Bodhi in Anuradhapura ), was all but deserted for centuries until it was reclaimed in the British colonial period, concluded Harris.
Elizabeth J. Harris studied English for her first degree. . After teaching English in Jamaica, she took up a position at Christians Abroad in UK and became involved in inter-religious groups in London . She worked as the Inter Faith Officer for the Methodist Church in Britain.
After becoming involved with my local interfaith group in London, I went to Sri Lanka to study Buddhism on a World Council of Churches scholarship, said Harris. She was in Sri Lanka from 1986 to 1993 and obtained a Ph.D. degree from the Postgraduate Institute of Pali and Buddhist Studies, University of Kelaniya, mentored by some wonderful people, including Dr Aloysius Pieris .
Harris has worked in several universities including Lund University, Liverpool Hope University, and Westminster College . She was Oxford Honorary Senior Research Fellow within the Edward Cadbury Centre for the Public Understanding of Religion, University of Birmingham. Harris was President of the UK Association for Buddhist Studies. She has been a trustee of Churches Together in Britain and Ireland” and also Secretary for Inter-faith Relations in the Methodist Church in London.
We now return to our topic, which is the Imaginary. This novel approach to Sinhala-Buddhism as an Imaginary” will infuriate Buddhists when they get to hear of it. It is outrageous certainly, but those with a sense of humor will consider it hilarious too.
It is also unethical. History is a respected academic discipline which fills a cultural need in society. There are ethics in the writing of history, also standards and controls. There is such a thing as historical accuracy. This is difficult to achieve in ancient and medieval histories, but not impossible. Distorting the history of a country, deliberately and with a political purpose, should be treated as a matterfor the courtsof law. There is a legal precedent , see the law on Holocaust . There is also discussion going on today in USA on how to interpret the American Civil War.
This Anti-Sinhala Movement glibly argues that it is the British who gave the Sinhalese their history. The Sinhalese did not even know that they had a history till the British told them, they said. This is nonsense.
It is the other way round. British administration acted on information from the natives. For instance, The British could not have discovered the Mahavamsa on their own.. The Sinhalese would have spoken about the Mahavamsa to the British. It was held in temple libraries and in private collections. It was known to the Sinhalese. About five copies of Mahavamsa were found in personal collections in 1933 by the Historical Manuscripts Commission.
The same goes for archaeology .The suggestion that the British found archaeological monuments and presented them to the Sinhalese, is absurd. The British administration did not posses divine vision. The natives would have directed the British administrators to the sites , which were in thick jungle. Villagers living close by would have informed their superiors and the information would have gone up the grape vine to the top officials. The facilities for excavating and conserving the ancient monuments was exclusively in the hands of the British administration .The Sinhala intelligentsia would have wished to utilize this and get their monuments restored.
It was not only the Sangha who were history conscious ,the intelligentsia who lived in the British period, also valued history and preserved historical documents. Henry Marshall ( 1776-1841) who was an administrator in British Ceylon, said the Sinhalese have many books , (he meant olas), in verse and prose on many subjects. These book collections included a very complete history of the kings of Ceylon.”
The findings of the Historical Manuscripts Commission, established in 1931, supports this. [9]The commission found that temple libraries had manuscripts on the history of the island. Nagolle vihara library, searched in 1933, had a copy of Mahavamsa and Maha Bodhivamsa. Yapahuwa temple had an ola with the dates of the coronation of deaths of kings and other important events in the life of the Udarata kings.
Other manuscripts found in temple libraries were: three copies of a history of Ceylon including the Udarata kings, a manuscript on history of Vijaya’s arrival, a kadaimpota containing a historical narrative of Sinhala kings from Vijaya, a vittipota with kings from Vijaya to Kirti Sri, containing also the names of cities in which the ministers of Vijaya lived and names of the chiefs who were given grants of village by kings up to Rajasinha I and a historical narrative of Sinhalese kings from Vijaya to Parakrama bahu containing names of places in several parts of the island and their boundaries.
The Historical Manuscript Commission also found in temple libraries two manuscripts describing battles between Sri Wickrema and the British and one giving dates of the death of Udarata kings, such as Kirti Sri Rajasinghe. A manuscript giving the exact dates and hours of death of Wimaladharmasuriya II, Kirti Sri, Rajadhi and other kings was found at Polgahawela. There were notes in Sinhala attached. one manuscript on history of the vihara at Gunadahe in Tumpane from time of Vikramabahu and several manuscripts dealing with the place names within the three divisions of the island, Ruhunu, Maya, and Pihiti.
Historical Manuscripts Commission (1933) found many historical manuscripts in personal collections of the Sinhalese. They found histories of Ceylon up to the Kandyan kings, inclusive, and many copies of Kurunegala vistaraya ,about five copies of Mahavamsa and a 19 century copy of the Dipavamsa. Also Rajalekhanaya”, which had the chronology of the kings of Ceylon and the Matale Maha Disava lekam Pota which had a historical and statistical account of Sri Lanka in time of Rajasinha II .
The Commission found the following manuscripts in the large Mahavalatenne collection at Balangoda. ‘Manuvamsa ‘ giving the names of the kings of Ceylon and the period they reigned, ‘Rajavaliya’, ‘Lanka kadaimpota,’ and a list of king up to Buvanekhabahu VI.
T.W. Maralande, Ratemahatmaya had in his collection copies of Kurunegala vistaraya,” Dambadeni asna,’ a kadaimpota with the story of Vijaya, an account of Sri Wickrema Rajasinghe, an account of the revolt by Daskon disawa against king Wimaladharmasuriya II and a manuscript of 72 leaves on Kira valiya or Bandara valiya. Jinatissa Madawela owned 2 copies of Rajavaliya, 3 of Kurunegala vistaraya. A personal collection at Talgodapitiya, yielded vittipota, Bandara valiya, Vijaya Rajavaliya.
Historical Manuscripts Commission found at Padiyapelalla, a kadaimpota of 14 century, on Ruhunu, Maya, Pihiti with names of subdivision, the ratas, Kelaniya, Panadura, Dambadeniya and so on. At Polgahawela they found a manuscript giving the exact dates and hours of death of Rajadhi, Wimaladharmasuriya II, Kirti Sri Rajasinghe and subsequent kings, with notes written in Sinhala. ( Continued)
[1] JLDevananda https://thuppahis.com/2020/02/28/the-tamil-buddhists-of-the-anuradhapura-civilization .
[2] Daily News on 5.6.14 p 3
[3] Handbook for the Ceylon Traveller, Studio times, 1974 p 113
[4] ET Kannangara. Jaffna and the Sinhala heritage. P 21..
[5] Comment on Hindu Invasion of Okanda Dewalaya Lankaweb. August 31st, 2019
[6] Island 4.5.12 p 5 .
[7] Daily News Travel suppl. 20.7.17 p 14 .
[8] Elizabeth Harris Religions , Space and Conflict in Sri Lanka.
[9] 1st report of the Historical Manuscripts Commision.1933 SP 9 of 1933
3rd report of Historical Manuscripts Commission 1951, SP 19 of 1951
Liby Ousmane Lougué (Burkina Faso), Papa Roger, 2020. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. On 2 October 1958, Guinea declared its independence from France. Guinea’s President Ahmed Sékou Touré clashed against France’s President Charles De Gaulle, who tried to strong arm Touré into abandoning the project for independence. Touré said of De Gaulle’s threats, ‘Guinea prefers poverty in freedom to riches in slavery’. In 1960, the French government launched a covert operation called Operation Persil to undermine Guinea and overthrow Touré. The operation was named after a laundry detergent, used to wash away dirt. This provides a clear window into the French attitude toward Touré’s government. France’s weapons shipment to opposition groups in Guinea was interdicted in Senegal, whose President Mamadou Dia complained to the French government. France would not tolerate African independence, but the people of Africa would not tolerate French dominion. That fervour for African sovereignty remains intact. ‘France, get out’ was the slogan then and remains the slogan now, from Senegal to Niger. To better understand recent developments in this struggle, the rest of this newsletter features a briefing from No Cold War and the West Africa Peoples’ Organisation on the manifestation of that sentiment in the Sahel. 
Briefing 13: The Sahel Seeks Sovereignty. The call ‘La France degage!’ (‘France, get out!’), against the ongoing legacy of French colonialism in the region, has long echoed across West Africa. In recent years, this call has reached a new pitch of intensity, from the 2018 grassroots movements in Senegal and newly elected President Bassirou Diomaye Faye’s campaign promise to unshackle his country from the neocolonial monetary system of the CFA franc to the popularly supported military coups in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger and the ejection of French military forces from these countries between 2021 and 2023. The military-led governments of the central Sahelian states (Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger) have taken steps to wrestle their sovereignty from Western monopolies – such as reviewing mining codes and contracts and expelling foreign militaries – and to establish new regional cooperation platforms. On 16 September 2023, the governments of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger signed the Liptako-Gourma Charter, a mutual defence pact that established the Alliance of Sahel States. This trilateral partnership is a response to the threats of military intervention and economic sanctions that have been levied against Niger by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) following the July 2023 popular coup that took place in the country. A few months after reaching this defence cooperation agreement, the three countries withdrew from the ECOWAS regional bloc. Some political commentators have claimed that these events – combined with the ejection of French military forces from the region – ‘spell trouble’ for regional social security, economic development, political stability, and regional integration. What is behind the tidal wave sweeping through the Sahel, and what does it mean for the region? 
Suncréa (Mali), Racines (‘Roots’), 2016. The Legacy of French Colonialism Anti-imperialist sentiment has been brewing in the Sahel for years. To look at the case of Niger, which is emblematic of the wave of resistance in the region, during the July 2023 coup, the people took to the streets against the French colonial hangover that has facilitated rampant, structural corruption and disenfranchised large sectors of the population. Much of this corruption has taken place in Niger’s mining sector, which represents one of the world’s largest high-grade uranium deposits. For instance, in 2014, prior to the coup, then Nigerien President Mahamadou Issoufou lowered taxes on mining activities that directly benefited French monopolies, receiving indirect pay outs in return. Meanwhile, the French military in Niger operated as the gendarme for mining companies and against those seeking to migrate to Europe. Société des Mines de l’Aïr (Somaïr), a purported ‘joint venture’ between Niger and France in the uranium industry, is yet another example of the continued French influence in the region and on the continent. While France’s Atomic Energy Commission and two French companies own 85% of the company, Niger’s government owns a mere 15%. While close to half of Niger’s population lives below the poverty line and 90% lives without electricity, as of 2013 uranium from Niger powers one in three lightbulbs in France. It should come as no surprise that, shortly after the 2023 coup, Nigerien citizens seized the French embassy and military base in the capital of Niamey. France withdrew its troops soon after. 
Amy Sow (Mauritania), Énergie durable (‘Sustainable Energy’), 2015. Sovereignty, Security, and Terrorism On 16 March 2024, the Nigerien government revoked a decade-old military agreement with the United States, just two days after a US delegation met with local authorities to raise concerns over the nation’s partnerships with Russia and Iran. In a public statement, the government of Niger ‘forcefully condemne[d] the condescending attitude, accompanied by the threat of retaliation, from the head of the US delegation towards the government and people of Niger’. The statement added that ‘Niger regrets the intention of the US delegation to deny the sovereign Nigerien people the right to choose their partners and the types of partnerships that are capable of truly helping them fight terrorism at a time when the United States of America has unilaterally decided to suspend all cooperation’. The government also cited the following as reasons for revoking the agreement with the US: the cost it has inflicted upon Nigerien taxpayers, the lack of communication around domestic operations and US military base activities, unauthorised aircraft movements, and the ineffectiveness of its so-called counter-terrorism work. The US has established the single largest foreign military presence on the African continent, beginning with the 2002 Pan-Sahel Initiative and followed by the creation of the US Africa Command (AFRICOM) in 2007, which set up a significant network of US military bases across the Sahel (of which there are nine in Niger alone as well as two in Mali and one in Burkina Faso). In 2007, US State Department adviser J. Peter Pham defined AFRICOM’s strategic objective to US House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs as follows: It is unlikely that any amount of public relations work will fully quench anti-imperialist concerns that AFRICOM is fundamentally an attempt to erect a bulwark in Africa against trans-national terrorism and China’s appetite for Africa’s oil, minerals, and timber… The proposed structure of AFRICOM, consisting of four or five relatively small bases with no force deployments, means that these will be largely invisible even in their host countries and societies. In the aftermath of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s (NATO) war on Libya led by France and the US, the Sahel region has been embroiled in conflicts, many of them driven by emerging forms of jihadist armed activities, piracy, and smuggling. France and the US have used these conflicts as a pretext to increase their military interventions across the region. In 2014, France set up the G5 Sahel (a military arrangement that included Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger) and expanded or opened new military bases in Gao, (Mali), N’Djamena (Chad), Niamey (Niger), and Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso). In 2019, the US began conducting drone strikes and aerial surveillance across the Sahel and the Sahara Desert from its Air Base 201 outside Agadez (Niger) – the largest construction effort in US Air Force history. The Global Terrorism Index found that the Sahel region was the most impacted by terrorism in 2023, accounting for nearly half of all terrorism-related deaths and 26% of terrorist incidents worldwide. Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger each ranked among the top ten countries most impacted by terrorism, a fact often held up to allege the failure of the new military-led governments. However, this reality predates the coups of 2021–2023 and instead speaks to the impact of US and French military intervention. Between 2011 (the year of NATO’s war on Libya) and 2021 (the year of the first of the recent wave of Sahelian coups, in Mali), Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger soared from positions 114, 40, and 50, respectively, on the index of countries most impacted by terrorism to 4, 7, and 8. It is clear that the US and French ‘war on terrorism’ has done little to improve security in the region and has in fact had the opposite effect. 
Niankoye Lama (Guinea), Marché de Zali (‘Zali Market’), 2022. Seeking New Partners and Paths The people of the Sahel have grown disillusioned not only with the West’s military strategies, as seen by the increasing security cooperation agreements with other countries, but also with Western economic policies that have yielded little social development. Despite the region’s abundant energy resources (including Niger’s aforementioned uranium reserves), the Sahel has some of the world’s lowest levels of energy generation and access, with at least 51% of the population unable to access electricity. Though the Alliance of Sahel States began as a defence pact, political autonomy and economic development are a core focus. This includes, for instance, pursuing joint energy projects and exploring the possibility of establishing regional civil nuclear power initiatives. Burkina Faso has already signed agreements with Rosatom, a state-owned Russian company, to build new power plants while Mali is advancing its application of atomic energy through the National Nuclear Programme, overseen by the Malian Radiation Protection Agency. Ultimately, the Alliance of Sahel States represents an attempt to uphold the demands of sovereignty and the right to self-determination – an agenda that the people of Niger, Burkina Faso, and Mali have poured into the streets to support. 
Ibrahim Chahamata (Niger), Emity Na-Zahir (‘Climate Change’), 2015. Events in the Sahel are unfolding at a rapid pace, but as the Malian novelist Aïcha Fofana wrote in La fourmilière (‘The Anthill’) in 2006, modernisation is tempered by the rigidities and wisdom of the old ways. ‘We have always been generous’, the griot in La fourmilière says to a young man who has many ideas about transforming society. Patience is necessary. Change is coming. But it is coming at its own pace. Warmly, Vijay
