[Vision2020] Religious Violence in Sri Lanka

[Nick Gier]

Greetings:
Some of you may have remembered by essay on Hindu fundamentalism about a 
year ago, and here is another piece criticizing militant Buddhists in Sri 
Lanka.  These are the meager beginnings of a book The Origins of Religious 
Violence.  All that I've done so far can be found at 
www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/orv.htm.  The thesis of the book is that there 
has been far less religiously motivated violence in Asia than in Europe and 
Muslim countries.  A corollary of that thesis is that Hindu and Buddhist 
fundamentalists learned their exclusionary views from colonial powers.


BUDDHIST NATIONALISM AND RELIGIOUS VIOLENCE IN SRI LANKA

By Nick Gier


         Recently the Sri Lankan people have witnessed more religious 
violence than ever before.  It has spread from the conflict with the Tamil 
Tigers to Buddhist attacks on Muslims and Christians, and now counter 
attacks by aggrieved Muslims.
During the 1990s the Tamil Tigers forced thousands of Muslims out of their 
northern "homeland," but at an April, 2002 press conference they announced 
that they are reconsidering this rash and destructive decision as well as 
their call for a separate homeland.
There have also been positive signs from the Buddhist leadership, who 
successfully opposed three previous attempts at settlement.  This time, 
however, there has been no effort to undermine delicate negotiations with 
the Tamils, who are mostly Hindu.
Therefore, it is all the more regrettable to read about monks such as Elle 
Gunavamsa who, borrowing a militant Muslim idea, calls for a "holy war" 
against non-Buddhists and believes "that those soldiers who die for the 
motherland will achieve Nirvana."
         During 2003-04, 165 Sri Lankan Christian churches were attacked, 
resulting in the complete destruction of some, the stoning of parsonages, 
the smashing of statues, and the burning the Bibles and hymnals.
Sri Lanka has the largest percentage of Christians in South Asia, and 25 
percent of those are Tamils. The father of Tamil nationalism was not a 
Hindu but a Malaysian Christian.
Christians say that one reason they are being targeted is that they are 
accused of being Tamil sympathizers.  The other reason is that Protestant 
Christian missionaries have had considerable success in recent years, which 
has led to Buddhist charges of unethical conversions.  One website claims 
that Evangelicals and Pentecostals have increased from 50,000 to 240,000 
since 1980.
         Taking a page out of the book of Hindu fundamentalists, who have 
passed anti-conversion law in six Indian states, Buddhist legislators have 
drafted a similar bill that would outlaw the conversion, "by the use of 
force or by allurement or by any fraudulent means," of a person from one 
religion to another.
Some Buddhist extremists have spread rumors that Christians had 
assassinated the Buddhist monk who initiated the bill, even though an 
autopsy showed that he had died of a heart attack.
Sri Lankan police have been criticized for being slow in making arrests and 
for dismissing the attackers as mere drunks, but some observers suspect 
that they are encouraged by radical elements of a socialist party that has 
supported a strong nationalist platform for decades.
         Over the centuries effective rituals were developed to reconcile 
the presence of non-Buddhists in what some Buddhists perceive to be the 
cosmic center of the Dharma.  These premodern systems of integrating the 
"other" have now been supplanted by a modern concept of a Buddhist nation 
state that is exclusionary rather than inclusionary.
In 1908 Dharmapala, the father of Sri Lankan religious nationalism, 
declared that "Buddhism was completely identified with the racial 
individuality of the Sinhalese people." As scholar Peter Schalk states: 
"This is probably one of the most conflict creating public statements made 
in the 20th century. . . . He stated explicitly that Sri Lanka belongs to 
the Buddhist Sinhalese and for the Tamils there is South India."
Buddhist Scripture does not use arya as a racial term; rather, it is an 
honorific for all those who embrace the Dharma.  Literally, it means "the 
noble ones." Like the Body of Christ, there are no distinctions within the 
body of the Buddha.  Both Buddhist and Christian nationalists distort their 
religious texts to promote their own racial and ethnic agendas.
It is unfortunate that American evangelical Christians spread the myth of 
the Aryan Sinhalese.  One of their websites states that the Buddhist 
portion of the island's population (72 percent) is Sinhala and Aryan, 
unwittingly implying that the Sri Lankan Christians, Muslims, and Hindus 
are inferior.
         Nationalist claims to ethnic and religious purity have never been 
borne out by the facts.   Sri Lanka's founding myth involves the 
intermingling of native peoples with Hindu immigrants from North and South 
India.  Historically, Buddhism did not arrive in Sri Lanka until the 3rd 
Century BCE.
It is a fact that Buddhist frequently kings fended off military invasions 
from South India, but just as often they formed alliances with Hindu rulers 
and traders from Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Most Buddhist kings welcomed South 
Indians with open arms, giving them lands and titles, just as South Indians 
welcomed Jews and Christians to their Southwest Malabar coast.  It was the 
Dutch who destroyed the Jewish cities and the Portuguese who forced the 
Indian Christians to convert to Roman Catholicism.
The supreme irony is that the Tamil kings of Sri Lanka (1739-1815) did the 
most to restore the Sinhalese Buddhist priesthood and promote Buddhist art 
and architecture.  When the British took over in 1815 and favored Christian 
missionaries, Buddhism went into an 80 year decline.
         The flag of Sri Lankan contains two stripes, green embracing the 
Muslims and orange integrating the Hindus, thus validating their Sinhalese 
identity in the Country of the Lion (=Sinhala).  Buddhist nationalists have 
removed these colored strips from their flag, so the sword in the lion's 
hand must now appear much more menacing to Hindus, Muslims, and Christians, 
the Hindus comprising 12 percent of the population with Muslims and 
Christians claiming 8 percent each.
The Tamil Tigers are just as much to blame for their many atrocities, but I 
believe that terrorists, whatever their nationality or religion, are made 
not born. For decades Tamil moderates proposed a reasonable federal 
solution as they pleaded for social, economic, and linguistic inclusion 
with some autonomy. Until the 1970s a great majority of Tamils would not 
have supported a separate state, just as most Indian Muslims did not 
support Partition.  Tragically, Muslim and Hindu extremists won out in 
1948, but let us hope that the Sri Lankans can avoid the catastrophic 
dislocation that ravaged India.
Fortunately, the Tamil Tigers do not embrace the Hindu fundamentalism that 
many Indians do. Their grievances are primarily economic and linguistic not 
religious. The first step to peace for Sri Lankans is the acknowledge the 
fact that for over 2,200 years their beautiful island has been, is now, and 
must always be a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society.


"The god you worship is the god you deserve."
~~ Joseph Campbell
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