"There is no doubt that Sinhala Buddhist revivalism and nationalism,
in the form we can recognise today, had its origin in the late 19th
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is in this earlier period that
we see most clearly the contours and impulsions of a movement that acted as
a major shaper of Sinhala consciousness and a sense of national identity and
purpose....
....The dominant leader of the revival movement was Migettuwatte Gunananda
"an aggressive and dynamic bhikkhu who was the first to start mass agitation
on Buddhist grievances among the urban and rural masses. In contrast to
other learned bhikkhus of the period, he was a fiery orator, pamphleteer and
a fighter who led the challenge to Christianity and the missionaries"
(Kumari Jayawardena, "Bhikkus," p. 13).
Gunananda was the acclaimed orator in the famous debate between Christians
and Buddhists staged in 1873. And together with several wealthy Sinhala
traders, arrack renters, and coconut planters, Gunananda became a member of
the Theosophical Society. Although in the following years the most prominent
Sri Lankan actors in the Buddhist revivalist cum nationalist movement would
be laymen such as Dharmapala, it is important to remember that some
prominent monks (such as Hikkaduwe Sri Sumangala, Valane Siddharta, Weligama
Sri Sumangala, and Ratmalane Sri Dharmaloka) were involved with the causes
promoted by the revivalist and nationalist upsurge, such as the
establishment of Buddhist schools and the temperance movements of 1904 and
1912 (Kumari Jayawardena, "Bhikkus," p. 14)
The most significant activity of the Buddhist revivalism stimulated and
sponsored by Colonel Olcott and the Buddhist Theosophical Society founded in
1880 was the establishment of Buddhist schools to counter the near-monopoly
that the Protestant missions (and to a lesser extent the Catholic Church)
had over the educational system. Looking ahead, we shall see that this issue
would surface again in the 1940s and I950s.
Dharmapala first found his vocation and acquired his propagandist skills
in association with the Theosophists, hut later broke away to propagate
Buddhist causes as he envisaged them....
The major features of Dharmapala's Buddhist revivalism are a selective
retrieval of norms from canonical Buddhism; a denigration of alleged
non-Buddhist ritual practices and magical manipulations (an attitude
probably influenced by Christian missionary denunciation of "heathen"
beliefs and practices); enunciation of a code for lay conduct, suited for
the emergent Sinhalese urban middle-class and business interests, which
emphasized a puritanical sexual morality and etiquette in family life; and,
most important of all, an appeal to the past glories of Buddhism and
Sinhalese civilisation celebrated in the Mahavamsa and other chronicles
as a way of infusing the Sinhalese with a new nationalist identity and
self-respect in the face of humiliation and restrictions suffered under
British rule and Christian missionary influence.
For our purposes it is most relevant to note that Dharmapala's brand of
Sinhala Buddhist revivalism and nationalism was supported by and served the
interests of a rising Sinhala Buddhist middle class and a circle of
businessmen and that some of these latter were implicated in the anti-Muslim
riots of 1915 directed against their competitors - Muslim shopkeepers and
businessmen, who were branded as exploiters of the Sinhalese consumer public
at large. [The anti-Muslim riots of 1915 are well documented. For
example, see Journal of Asian Studies 24, no. 2 ( 1970): 219-66, in which
there are three essays under the rubric "The 1915 Riots in Ceylon: A
Symposium," with an introduction by Robert Kearney; Ameer Ali "The 1915
Racial Riots in Ceylon (Sri Lanka): A Reappraisal of Its Causes," South
Asia, n. s., 4, no. 2 ( I 981): 1-20; A. P. Kannangara, "The Riots of 1915
in Sri Lanka: A Study in the Roots of Communal Violence,"Past and Present,
no. 102 (1983): 130-65.]
The ethnic overtones of the Buddhist-nationalist journalism of the time has
been amply documented. (See especially Kumari Jayawardena, Ethnic and
Class Conflicts in Sri Lanka Colombo: Navamaga Printers, 1986).
The newspaper Sinhala Jatiya, edited by the novelist Piyadasa Sirisena, not
only invoked a Sinhalese "national awakening" but also in tandem carried
anti-Moor stories in its columns shortly before the (1915) riots. In 1909,
Sirisena urged the Sinhalese to "refrain from . . . transactions with the
Coast Moors, the Cochins, and the foreigner. " In 1915, when the hostility
had reached a higher intensity, the Lakmina, a Sinhala daily, writing of the
Coast Moors, said, "A suitable plan should be adopted to send this damnable
lot out of the country," and the Dinamina, another newspaper, condemned "our
inveterate enemies, the Moors."
Dharmapala was an uncharitable propagandist in the same vein. In a 1910
issue of the Mahabodhi Journal, which he published, he denounced the
"merchants from Bombay and peddlers from South India" who trade in Ceylon
while the 'sons of the soil" abandon agriculture and "work like galley
slaves" in urban clerical jobs.(Mahabodhi Journal Oct. 1909.)
Sinhala Bauddhaya, also run by Dharmapala, was most vociferous in its
attacks; in 1912 this journal complained, "From the day the foreign white
man stepped in this country, the industries, habits, and customs of the
Sinhalese began to disappear and now the Sinhalese are obliged to fall at
the feet of the Coast Moors and Tamils." In this same paper Dharmapala later
printed verses describing how the Sinhalese were exploited by aliens
together with a cartoon that showed the helpless Sinhala in the grip of
alien traders, money lenders, and land grabbers. It should come as no
surprise' therefore, that the Sinhala Bauddhaya, together with the Sinhala
Jatiya was prosecuted and banned in 1915 for carrying inflammatory
statements that helped fuel the riots.
Dharmapala's letter to the secretary of state for the colonies, which he
wrote from Calcutta on June 15, 1915, demanding a royal commission to
investigate the causes of the riots and denouncing the Muslims gives some
idea of the anger that fueled this reformer's romantic search for and
reinstitution of a lost pristine Buddhism and an ancient robust, just, and
noble Sinhala civilization.(This letter is reproduced in Guruge. ed.,
Return to Righteousness: A Collection of Speeches, Essays, and Letters of
the Anagarika Dharmapala, Colombo, Government Press, 1965)
His condemnations of the alien influences that had spoiled his people and
religion were vigorous, even coarse:
"The Muhammadans, an alien people who in the early part of the nineteenth
century were common traders, by Shylockian methods became prosperous like
the Jews. The Sinhalese, sons of the soil, whose ancestors for 2,358 years
had shed rivers of blood to keep the country from alien invaders, . . .
today . . . are in the eyes of the British only vagabonds.... The alien
South Indian Muhammadan comes to Ceylon, sees the neglected, illiterate
villagers, without any experience in trade, without any knowledge of any
kind of technical industry, and isolated from the whole of Asia on account
of his language, religion, and race, and the result is that the Muhammadan
thrives and the sons of the soil go to the wall." (Guruge. ed., Return to
Righteousness p 540)
Dhamapala was duly interned in Calcutta in 1915 for his political efforts
and his previous activities in Ceylon."
*
Given
Buddhism's presumed non-violent philosophy, how can committed Buddhist monks
and laypersons in Sri Lanka today actively take part in the
