Is Ethnotionalism The Religion Of Sinhalas?

By Suren Rāghavan –January 29, 2016

Dr. Suren Rāghavan

Outside a modernist paradigm, I have always doubted that all forms of nationalisms–especially an ethnonationlism is the rigorous form of religion that was seen in the 20th Century. Because like in religions, nationalism demands unquestioned worship of the unknown past/divine origin, an overflowing emotion capable of blinding the immediate realities and a pride in some kind of mission of the ‘choseness’. What is once again seen on the streets ( and now even in court houses) of Lanka is a historicized display of the ‘presenting’ the past. Not just the near past but a textualized glorious distant past.of the hegemony of powerful Sinhala Sangha. Lanka has witnessed island wide intercommunial unrest on the basis of Sinhala nationalism as a pattern of recurrence. In 1883 it was Catholic-Buddhist clash, in 1915 a Sinhala-Muslim clash and in post independent times, 1956, 1978, 1983. Of course between these were the much lesser regional clashes and the 1971 and 1988-9 two up rises largely a Sinhala-Sinhala confrontation. For most part like religion, ethno nationalism is a privately held deep believe waiting to conquer the public space. And the inclusion and exclusion who is ‘us’ and who is the ‘other’ is as evangelical in thick nationalisms as seen in Lanka. For Lanka’s true nationalists like Prof Nalin Silva, it is not enough to be a Sinhala Buddhist to be a real Lankaputra. He does not consider president Sirisena, PM Wickremesinghe or even my colleague Dr Nirmal Ranjith Dewasiri. Because they don’t subscribe to a thick monoethinc discourse. For Silva these are not true Sinhala Buddhists. Of course his list is ever narrowing to exclude the Sinhala Catholics, liberal moderates, those who believe in a universal cosmopolitanism and so on.

Looking from a comparative political prism, almost provocatively I have doubted if one can term the 20th Century Sinhala nationalism as a version of ‘Buddhist Zionism’ if such category could be identified. Now I can hear the fire breathing in most of my nationalist fellow citizens. However difficult it may be to fathom, the signs are so closely inter-reflective between ethno (religious) nationalism and Sinhala Buddhism. 
Mahāvamsa, the epic of the 5th century is the textual recodification of Dīpavamsa. Venerable Mahanāma of the Theravadian Mahavihāra begins saying his motivation is      Read More