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Sri Lanka The Sinhalese: Racial Uniqueness and Politicized Buddhism
Many Sinhalese view themselves as a "chosen people." The
Mahavamsa, an epic piece of "mythohistory" composed by
Buddhist monks around the fifth century A.D., traces the origins
of the Sinhalese to the regions of northern and eastern India
inhabited in ancient times by Aryan peoples. Evidence to back
this claim includes not only their language, which is related to
the languages of northern India including Sanskrit, but the
supposedly "fairer" complexions of the Sinhalese compared to
their Dravidian neighbors. The Mahavamsa depicts the
history of Sri Lanka as a bitter struggle between the Sinhalese
and darker-skinned Dravidian intruders from the mainland
(see Sri Lanka - Origins
, ch. 1). In the eyes of Sinhalese chauvinists, this
struggle for survival continues to the present day.
Religion has defined Sinhalese identity over the centuries
far more than race. Buddhism was brought to Sri Lanka around the
third century B.C. by missionaries sent by Indian emperor Asoka
and was fervently adopted by the Sinhalese king, Devanampiya
Tissa (250-c.210 B.C.). The Theravada school of Buddhism was
established after a great council of monks and scholars was held
on Sri Lanka in 88-77 B.C. to codify the Pali scriptures. The
faith was later transmitted by Sri Lankan monks to Southeast
Asian countries such as Burma, Thailand, and Cambodia. Sinhalese
Buddhists regard Theravada (or Hinayana) Buddhism as the purest
form of their religion, unencumbered by the superstitions and
false beliefs that allegedly contaminate the Mahayana sects of
Buddhism found in East Asia
(see Sri Lanka - Religion
, ch. 2).
Anthropologist S. J. Tambiah, himself a Sri Lankan Tamil
whose family includes both Hindus and converts to Christianity,
argues that in both traditional and contemporary Sinhalese
Buddhism the religion's original message of universalism,
compassion, and nonviolence was eclipsed by a narrower appeal to
nationalism and race: "the Sinhalese chronicles. . . in
postulating the unity of nation and religion constitute a
profound transformation of the Asokan message of dharma (rule by
righteousness and nonviolence) in a multireligious society of
Buddhists, Jains, adherents of Brahmanical values, and others."
This was clearly evident, he argues, in the Mahavamsa,
which describes King Dutthagamani's heroic defense of Buddhism
against invaders from southern India in the second century B.C.
as a holy war. Tambiah, a specialist in Southeast Asian Buddhism,
asserts that Buddhism in contemporary Sri Lanka has lost its
ethical and philosophical bearings ("the substantive contents
which make Buddhism a great religion and a source of a rich
civilization") and has become either a set of ritualized
devotions, undertaken by believers to obtain worldly good
fortune, or an aggressive political movement that attracts the
poorest classes of Sinhalese.
Politicized Buddhism in its modern form emerged in the
opening years of the twentieth century when adherents of the
religion, deploring the social evils of alcoholism, organized a
temperance movement and criticized the colonial government for
keeping taverns open as a source of tax revenue. The campaign
was, implicitly, anti-Western and anti-Christian. With the
passing of the colonial order, Buddhist activism was increasingly
preoccupied with Sinhalese "majority rights," including the
"Sinhala Only" language policy backed by SLFP leader S.W.R.D.
Bandaranaike (who was assassinated by a Buddhist monk on
September 26, 1959), and the agitation to give Buddhism special
status in the 1972 constitution. But the equation of nation and
religion also meant that any issue involving the welfare of the
Sinhalese community, including issues of social equity, were fair
game for activist monks and their supporters.
Thus, in 1986 leaders of the sangha (the community of
Buddhist monks) joined with former Prime Minister Sirimavo
Bandaranaike to establish the Movement for Defense of the Nation
to deter President J.R. Jayewardene from making significant
concessions to the Tamils. One Buddhist leader, the Venerable
Palipane Chandananda, head of one of the major orders of monks,
was labelled "Sri Lanka's Khomeini" both for his extremism and
his predilection for getting involved in political issues. Lowerranking monks also were frequent hardliners on the ethnic issue.
A survey of monks taken during 1983 and 1984 by Nathan Katz, a
Western student of Buddhism, revealed that 75 percent of his
respondents refused to acknowledge that any Tamil grievances were
legitimate. Many commented that the Tamils were an unjustly
privileged minority and "it is the Sinhalese who have the
grievances." Because of the tremendous prestige and influence of
Buddhist monks among Sinhalese villagers and the poorest, least
Westernized urban classes, the government in the late 1980s could
not ignore the monks' point of view, which could be summarized in
a 1985 comment by Chandananda to the Far Eastern Economic
Review: "They [the Tamils] are saying that they have lived
here for 1,000 years. But they are complete outsiders from India
who have been living here temporarily."
Data as of October 1988
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