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Greetings:<br>
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
<font face="Times New Roman, Times"><i>The Origins of Religious
Violence. </i>All that I've done so far can be found at
<a href="http://www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/orv.htm" eudora="autourl">www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/orv.htm</a>.
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.<br><br>
<br>
</font><div align="center"><b>BUDDHIST NATIONALISM AND RELIGIOUS VIOLENCE
IN SRI LANKA<br><br>
</b>By Nick Gier<br><br>
<br>
</div>
<x-tab> </x-tab>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. <br>
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.<br>
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. <br>
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.”<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>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. <br>
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. <br>
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.<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>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. <br>
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. <br>
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. <br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>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. <br>
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.”<br>
Buddhist Scripture does not use <i>arya</i> 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.<br>
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. <br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>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
3<font size=1><sup>rd</sup></font> Century BCE. <br>
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.<br>
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.<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>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. <br>
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. <br>
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.<br><br>
<x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
<font size=2>"The god you worship is the god you
deserve."<br>
~~ Joseph Campbell<br>
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