{"id":59083,"date":"2016-09-25T22:26:30","date_gmt":"2016-09-26T04:26:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=59083"},"modified":"2016-09-25T14:44:18","modified_gmt":"2016-09-25T21:44:18","slug":"total-or-quasi-secularism-is-not-the-issue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/09\/25\/total-or-quasi-secularism-is-not-the-issue\/","title":{"rendered":"Total or quasi secularism is not the issue"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Rohana R. Wasala<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

Secularism is wrongly believed to be something negative, or something that denies the importance of religion, and it is seen (quite wrongly) as promoting immorality. When the term \u2018secular state\u2019 is translated into Sinhala as \u2018anaagamika rajyaya\u2019, many average Sinhalese speakers tend to think that such a state is against religion or that it denies religious freedom. But this is a serious misconstruction. Secularism in government means simply keeping religion out of politics; it is not anti-religious, but non-religious. The origin of the concept of secularism in Western democracy can be traced to the first amendment to the American constitution, which was really meant to safeguard the freedom of religious belief in a multicultural society, along with the freedom of speech and of the press (the media).<\/p>\n

\u2018Amendment I \u2013 Freedom of Religion, Press, Expression (Ratified 12\/15\/1791)\u2019 runs as follows:<\/p>\n

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thomas Jefferson mentioned above was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America and is generally acknowledged as the principal author of the Declaration of Independence (1776). He was the third president of the US. Writing to President Jefferson, Nehemiah Dodge et al, members of a committee of the Danbury Baptist Association in the State of Connecticut, raised some concerns about religious freedom. In his reply letter dated January 1, 1802, Jefferson wrote, implicitly invoking the first amendment:<\/p>\n

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should \u2018make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof\u2019, thus building a wall of separation between Church and State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jefferson was a deeply religious man. But he believed that priests were a hindrance to liberty. Actually, he was far ahead of his times in his religious beliefs, which far deviated from conventional ideas. He focused on the ethical content of Christianity, not on its dogmas. While accepting the ethical tenets of Christianity as the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man\u201d, he held that the original teachings of Jesus had been misrepresented by his early disciples, and that this had eventually led to a Bible with diamonds\u201d of wisdom and the dung\u201d of ancient political programs. Jefferson\u2019s rational mind was behind his justification of the wall of separation between Church and State\u201d (i.e., the principle of secularism) that he was referring to in his letter to the Baptists.<\/p>\n

Jefferson\u2019s ideas find unquestioned acceptance in western secular societies even today. Graeme Smith, a university professor of theology, is a student of the role of religion in society. Though, usually, his or someone else\u2019s religion leaves me cold, I find him useful in arguing that privileging a religion as an ethical basis in government without prejudice to other religions does not violate secularism. In his book A Short History of Secularism\u201d (I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd, UK. 2007), Smith shows that secularism does not necessarily outlaw religion. Smith writes:<\/p>\n

Secularism is Christian ethics shorn of its doctrine. It is the ongoing commitment to do good, understood in traditional Christian terms, without a concern for the technicalities of the teachings of the Church. \u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026 In Western secular society we talk about good deeds, and on the whole we are charitable to our neighbours and those in need. But in public we do not talk much about Christianity. \u2026\u2026.. Secularism in the West is a new manifestation of Christianity, but one that is not immediately obvious because it lacks the usual scaffolding we associate with the Christian religion.\u201d<\/p>\n

The nationalist demand for Buddhism to be accorded in Sri Lanka the same preeminence that Christianity is given in democratic Western societies can be and often is misinterpreted negatively by interested parties including federalists. They argue that it is a sign of Buddhist supremacy, which is discriminatory towards people of other faiths; they usually try to portray Sinhalese Buddhists as traditionalist reactionaries on that basis in order to justify their own separatist demands. But the truth is that no religion practices tolerance towards other religions better than Buddhism.<\/p>\n

If what we read and hear about the proposed new constitution that is allegedly going to be first passed in parliament, and then ratified through a referendum early next year is reliable information, the Sri Lankan state is poised to lose its already weakened unitary character before long unless the strong opposition that is still growing against that development successfully thwarts it. The country\u2019s political and cultural identity as an island nation built on Buddhist cultural values which has survived for well over two thousand three hundred years is in real danger. We know that the Sangha has helped initiate, sustain and protect the island civilization down the ages and today they are being called upon to ensure \u00a0its survival for many centuries to come.\u00a0 Their historic role of defending\u00a0 the country, the nation and the Buddhasasana is a responsibility that they cannot be expected to relinquish. For that responsibility to be fulfilled effectively, there must be unity among the Sangha, and this unity has to be created by them with or without the support of the incumbent Mahanayake theras, who seem to have failed to totally extricate themselves from partisan politics.<\/p>\n

There are some 15,000 Buddhist monks residing in 6000 monasteries in the country according to the 2012 general census. Since Buddhists number just over 14 million, there is roughly only one monk to every hundred persons of the Buddhist population. \u00a0Of the total number of Buddhist monks in the country only a very small handful are in active politics. The Sinhalese account for 75% while Buddhists for 70% of the Lankan population. The history of the Sinhalese and of Buddhism in the island is one and the same. If Sri Lankan politics is subject to Buddhist clerical influence, it is a fact that there is nothing to complain about. The preeminence of Christianity in American, British, and Norwegian national cultures is explicitly asserted, despite their diversity. Similarly, the strong link between the Sri Lankan state and Buddhism need not be stressed. Chapter II (or Article 9) of the current constitution is an explicit recognition of this reality:<\/p>\n

\u2018The Republic of Sri Lanka shall give to Buddhism the foremost place and accordingly it shall be the duty of the State to protect and foster the Buddha Sasana, <\/em>while assuring to all religions the rights granted by Articles 10 and 14(1)(e<\/em>).\u2019<\/p>\n

The privileged status given to Buddhism does not lead to any infringement of the rights of citizens professing other religions. Such constitutional recognition of the preeminence of Buddhism is, on the contrary, a perfect confirmation of the non-religious ethical basis of modern democracy that stresses the importance of protecting human rights (because, unlike any average religion, Buddhism is an ethical philosophy exclusively based on wisdom, compassion, and self realization, independent of any mystical belief in some imaginary divine authority, and hence it is, strictly speaking, \u2018non-religious\u2019). At the same time, the prominence given to Buddhism is in no way comparable to a breach of what Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) described as \u00a0the \u2018wall of separation between Church and State\u2019 that the American Constitution built in that country\u2019s context.<\/p>\n

The western nations of America and Britain are considered secular democracies despite their special recognition of a particular religion (Christianity) in their multi-religious multicultural societies. While western political ideologues and their local followers seem to take this apparent contradiction in western democracy in their stride, they argue that the inclusion of the Buddhism clause in the Sri Lankan constitution is prejudicial to its secular credentials, and that it should therefore be dispensed with when the proposed new constitution is formulated. However, as I have argued before (Lankaweb\/2016.08.18), the removal or revision of that particular Article is not likely, but there is a distinct possibility that a sham threat to the status of Buddhism may be exploited to lead public attention away from the really more substantive issue of total federalism What we already have had ever since the forced adoption of the 13A is a quasi federal structure. And we are today faced with the task of reversing the slide towards total federalism \u2013 the \u2018union\u2019 solution that the outgoing UNSG Ban Ki Moon is reported to have (so outrageously) advocated during president Sirisena\u2019s recent UNGA appearance.<\/p>\n

Many of those who express concern about Buddhism being denied its rightful place in the proposed new constitution are \u00a0laboring under a misconception of the term \u2018secular\u2019 in this context. The popular confusion of the meaning of \u2018secularism\u2019 among ordinary Sri Lankans is exploited by antinational elements to \u00a0criticize the constitutional recognition of Buddhism and to attack the conspicuous involvement of some firebrand monk-activists in nationalist politics.<\/p>\n

Just as former British PM David Cameron unselfconsciously described Britain as a Christian nation, we can describe Sri Lanka as a Buddhist nation that is nevertheless a secular state that protects the right to religious belief of all its citizens. There is no better guarantor of secularism than the \u2018non-religious\u2019 ethical philosophy of Buddhism. We need not worry about Buddhism being dislodged from its preeminence in the constitution. What is to be feared is total federalism which will invariably fragment the island into separate ethno-religious states in which fundamentalist religious sects opposed to secularism could dominate the polity with perhaps lethal consequences to those they condemn as infidels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Rohana R. Wasala Secularism is wrongly believed to be something negative, or something that denies the importance of religion, and it is seen (quite wrongly) as promoting immorality. When the term \u2018secular state\u2019 is translated into Sinhala as \u2018anaagamika rajyaya\u2019, many average Sinhalese speakers tend to think that such a state is against religion or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rohana-r-wasala"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59083\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}