A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Wednesday, June 21, 2017
The Case For A Sangha Rebellion: Revolution Or Reform? Who Will Bell The Cat?
My colleague in the CCS, C. R. De Silva has asked me for my comments on the article,”Buddhism & Good Governance: The Case for a Sangha Rebellion”
published recently in the Colombo telegraph in two instalments, for his
information. CR was keen to have my comments as he had recently
published ideas on the same line. Though I do not have the background to
comment on the ideas of an international anthropologist and sociologist
like Prof. H. L. Seneviratne,
I decided to share my views with the reading public in general. I am
only a lay Buddhist who identifies himself with the being at the edge of
the universe. These comments are made from that point of view.
In his article, the Professor has made a distinction between the worldview of ‘Sinhala Cultural Buddhism’ and that of ‘Philosophical Buddhism’. His challenge is
to try and imbue the society with the universalist ethicality of
Philosophical Buddhism, and its ethos of urbanity, civility and
modernity’ He is calling upon the more educated and dynamic sections of
the saṅgha to accept that challenge, and give leadership to a social movement for meeting it. The Professor has logically analysed the path of deterioration of Philosophical Buddhism to Political Buddhism.
He
traces the development from the time of the Buddha, when an attempt was
made to harmlessly purge the island of non –Buddhist elements or to
convert them. According to the worldview, classically expressed in the national chronicle Mahāvaṃsa,
Sri Lanka belongs to its ethnic and religious majority, the Sinhala
Buddhists. It has been foreseen by the Buddha that it is in Sri Lanka
that his dharma would shine, making it the Dhammadipa,
“the island of righteousness”. The Sinhala Buddhist worldview did not
wither away, but within the reality of day-to-day social relations it
had no relevance, and people of different ethnicities and religions
interacted with each other freely, pragmatically and profitably.
The
conquest of Sri Lanka by the British resulted in a framework of modern
democratic governance but did not change the traditional world view of
governance. A revolutionary change took place with the fall of the
conservative government in 1956 and until now (2017) it is a story of
compromising that view in turn by both major political parties. It
was a shift in the value system that underlay political action. In
contrast to the government just voted out of office, the newly elected
coalition championed ethnicity, language, religion and “culture”, i.e.,
the ingredients of the Sinhala Buddhist worldview. For
this purpose they designed a platform whose main ingredients were the
replacement of English with the majority language Sinhala as the
official language, and giving recognition and material support for
religion and “culture”. The electoral appeal of this platform was so
powerful that the relatively secular and cosmopolitan UNP gradually
accepted it, making it virtually the non-negotiable clause in the
platforms of both major national parties.
It
was a shift in the value system that underlay political action. In
contrast to the government just voted out of office in1956, the newly
elected coalition championed ethnicity, language, religion and
“culture”, i.e., the ingredients of the Sinhala Buddhist worldview. The reforms of 1992 and 1998 lead to the
increasing spread of bribery, corruption, and nepotism; the
politicization of all institutions; fraud, inefficiency and
unaccountability in everything; breakdown of the judiciary, the police
and the administrative service; indiscipline at work, leisure, and on
the roads; and more.
Although
I agreed with the Professor’s learned analysis of the origins and the
development of cultural development of Buddhism to the detriment of good
governance, I was left with some doubts. Having named certain monks who
took a positive interest in advancing the pragmatic world view of
Buddhism, he expected the Sangha to initiate a revolution that would
usher in that view. The movement led by the Vidyōdaya monks in the 1930 and 1940s that they termed “rural development” (grāma saṅvardhana) that combined the religious and the economic, the moral and the material came
closest to such a revolution but it fizzled out without making a
lasting impact on Buddhist society. For myself, I doubted the emergence
of a lasting revolution headed by the sangha.
These doubts have been eloquently expressed in the CT by Dr. Siri Gamage, the Professor’s former
pupil in Sociology and anthropology at the Peradeniya University, with
the following questions on his former teacher’s recommendations with
which I identify myself.
1. How far a rebellion of the educated and cosmopolitan Sangha aimed
at reviving the society’s value system based on philosophical Buddhism
and ethics can be a solution to what is essentially a political and to
some extent an economic problem?