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By N. Sathiya Moorthy

“Previous Popes have publicly apologised to certain countries because they destroyed, they killed. We had a similar situation, where most of the Buddhist temples were destroyed by them and Buddhist monks were killed. We would like to see a public apology from the Pope,” Gnanasara was quoted by the local media as telling a meeting with foreign correspondents in Colombo, recently. “We are waiting till the Pope visits us to see what he is going to say about the crimes here,” he reportedly said adding, “The Portuguese, Dutch and the British are all the same to us.”

The Thero and his Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) have been in the news for all the wrong reasons over the past couple of years, all pertaining to anti-Muslim violence in the nation’s Sinhala areas. The inevitable and mostly justified negative coverage of the two has only increased after the Aluthgama incident in mid-June.  It’s unclear how Gnanasara wants the Pope to apologise to the Sinhala-Buddhists for the alleged past sins of ‘Christian-colonialists’ when not all of them belonged to the Roman Catholic denomination, which alone the Pope heads.

Even more untenable is the Thero’s expectation for the Pope to apologise for ‘past sins’ when the BBS does not seem to have expressed any remorse (leave alone apology in whatever form) to the Muslim community in the country, to the present violence, which has now become periodic and unending, if not pre-determined on every occasion. The ‘repeat performance’ of the kind has only made the Muslim community in the country feel insecure and unwanted.

The collective feeling that the Sri Lankan State and Government are either unable or unwilling to ‘protect’ them has only worsened the situation on the ground.  The helplessness of the situation stands out even more when Muslim Ministers from the political parties representing the community’s cause and concern at the national-level are unable to quit the Government or be able to protest strongly, as they too seem to have been convinced that they are not going to help, either.

Majority with a minority complex?

Through the decades of ‘ethnic issue’, war and violence involving the Tamil community since Independence, critics have often said that the Sinhala-Buddhist majority in the country has behaved with a ‘minority complex’ of insecurity. There is some truth in this, just as there is truth in the observation that the Tamil minority had behaved with a ‘majority complex’. Whatever the truth, the same cannot be said of the Muslim community in the country – or, most of its members.

Political parties in post-Independence Ceylon too have used the ‘ethnic card’ in electoral terms. In other democracies, similar constituency interests and concerns are whipped up from time to time. This is done with sophistication, hence is more visible in the Third World. In Sri Lanka, combined with the relatively high incidence of socio-economic backwardness across most of the lower layers of caste-ridden Sinhala-Buddhist society, education, employment and enabling instruments like language, became a politico-electoral tool.

It was no different in the case of the ‘minorities’, particularly the Tamils. But in Sinhala-Tamil comparative context, Tamils came to occupy the middle-rung and later higher rungs of available government jobs, the only source of family incomes and accompanying social status in the pre-Independence past. It’s easy to blame the ‘divide-and-rule’ of the British ruler of the day, as has happened elsewhere, too.

The socio-economic structures of the times meant that Tamils from the dry northern belt wanted/needed the jobs more than the Sinhalese in the South, with its rich soil and copious rains, for tending to their agriculture. They jumped at it. The Sinhalese lower class/castes were slow in catching up, controlled as they were by their aristocracy, which had used them as cheap farm labour.

The two ‘JVP insurgencies’ hold a candle to the socio-political churning processes of the time. The first insurgency of 1971 was the inevitable trickle-down effect after the ‘Sinhala Only’ law has unified these segments of the majority community under a common banner. This was particularly so after the universal adult franchise scheme did not deliver to the lower rungs of the Sinhala-Buddhist community, particularly the rural masses, what it had promised without being clear about anything, only a decade or more earlier.

The credit for having the voices of the ‘silent majority’ from within the ‘majority’ Sinhala-Buddhist community heard – and in clear, electoral terms – should also go to the ‘Christian colonialists’. This one owed incidentally to the British rulers of the Thirties. Under the Donoughmore Constitution, Sri Lanka, then Ceylon, became the first country in Asia to have universal adult franchise.

Politics in Sri Lanka, and social structure within the Sinhala-majority community would not be the same again. Democracy has the inherent capacity to cause the crumbling of traditional social structures and keep re-working and re-shaping them all the time. Sri Lanka was no exception.

One thus can blame it, if at all, on ‘western democracy’, not necessarily on religion – other than as exceptions to any rule. Of course, Sri Lanka was among the exceptions. Elsewhere in the western world itself, the European colonialists were driving local communities in the Americas and Africa to near-extinction. There was no feeling of guilt at the time. There is no feeling of remorse just now. Incidentally, the UK is not governed by the papal theological law and leadership. The Anglican Church takes care of the same.

Hijacking ‘Sinhala nationalism’

Blame it on the forced abortion of the first JVP insurgency, or on the untenable – and at time unserviceable, yet highly imaginative – ‘five classes’ of JVP founder Rohana Wijeweera, the second insurgency could not have taken off from where the first one had left. Instead, it had to necessarily hijack the ‘Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist’ agenda of an upcoming section of the ruling, majority UNP, the nation’s GoP, basing the political hopes and electoral aspirations, if any, on ethnicity-linked ‘Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism’.

Needless to say, factions within the Sinhala-Buddhist ethnic majority, namely, under the new UNP President Ranasinghe Premadasa and the JVP, had to fight it out among themselves – even to the exclusion of the LTTE terror-groups. With the Sri Lankan State’s armed forces at its command, and the JVP too not drawing the red-line that its militant cadres should not have crossed even if an armed insurgency against the State (alone) were to have been justified for argument’s sake, the ruling class could not have but finally won.

The irony of it showed all along. Fighting ‘LTTE terrorism’ in the name of defending the ‘Sinhala-Buddhist’ majority’s right and rightful place, the Premadasa Government struck a deal with the very terror group, to have the IPKF out. Throughout the period, and later, too, the JVP has never ever raised a banner of revolt against the LTTE, in militant/military terms. Yet, both claimed to be the competitive defender of ‘Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism’.

Colonialists, Yes, But…

Competitive ‘Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist’ political cause and its electoral exploitation would not have become possible but for the inherent sense of insecurity among a particular segment of the community as a whole. There is truth in the criticism that some colonialists targeted the population where they landed, either to proselytise, or to persecute them, or both.

In its time, Sri Lanka did not escape it at the hands of some early colonialists. The Sinhala-Buddhist population was the worst affected. The colonialists had chosen to land in the soil-rich, rain and river-bed areas of the South to the near-exclusion of the dry and sun-hit North for reasons of expanding their commercial – and later political – control. The scars remain centuries later.

The scars remain to date, and so do the symbols and symbolism from the past. In the names of individuals and families, they are visible. Many Sinhala-Buddhists thus continue to carry European/Christian names and titles, forced on them either when proselytised, or very rarely, otherwise. It hurts. It angers. It sends down a chill, even generations down the line.

The community’s elite down the decades and centuries, now respectfully at times and derisively otherwise dubbed the ‘Colombo Seven’, did more to curry acceptance from the colonial rulers than in assuaging the hurt and fear of their own people, those that were tending to their vast acreage of lands and farms – later, the tea plantations that the colonialists brought in, but had to leave behind. It was also a sure recipe first for non-militant traditional socialism and communism and later for JVP militancy and insurgency.

It is this sense of genetically codified – and unmodified – apprehensions and fears that rule the minds and mindsets of individuals and local and localised communities. It is more so in the case of those particularly the less educated, exposed and travelled. It is a vicious cycle, whose mode the ‘Sinhala Only’ might have helped break (even if it meant at the cost of meritocracy on the one hand, and the integration of the ‘minority communities’ in an independent Ceylon).

Neither of it happened. Instead, everyone lost. The religious class worked on those apprehensions, seeking to defend the faith under wholly changed circumstances.

The political class in those very circumstances sought to exploit those apprehensions, electorally – if only after a time. By then they have understood the advantages of constituency-driven ‘Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist cause’ as never before.

The LTTE’s targeting of innocent Sinhala-Buddhist villagers and their great places of worship only went on to revive the dying flames of those apprehensions. Combined with the ‘Second JVP insurgency’ (1987-89) nearer to their homes and villages, the LTTE’s war(s) on the Sri Lankan State, not very long away, but still removed from their immediate concerns and consciousness, the large populace of innocent Sinhala-Buddhist villagers could not have been expected to distinguish one threat from the other, and one cause from the other.

The immediate cause and concerns of these individuals was to save enough pennies to make that holy pilgrimage to Buddhism’s sacred places of worship in northern India – near, but not near enough, considering in particular the cross-sea travel that it entailed from time immemorial.

The more recent attacks on Sinhala-Buddhist pilgrims in the south Indian State of Tamil Nadu have not only brought out the fact of these annual pilgrimages. Video-footage also showed up the age and socio-economic background of these pilgrims, and on more than one occasion.

‘Triumphalism’ and more

Yet, all these do not explain the purported/suspected Sinhala-Buddhist ‘triumphalism’ over their young king, Dutugemunu, slaying the local Tamil ruler, Elara, then of Anuradhapura, in the era before Christendom. The fact that Elara was a Chola King from South India, and another, later-day Chola King, Rajaraja, based out of his south Indian Tamil kingdom, captured parts of Sri Lanka, full thousand years, later, did not help, either.

The Tamils another thousand years later, in the post-Christendom twentieth century would see Rajaraja’s invasion as avenging Elara’s defeat two thousand years back.

The Sinhalese would want to see it as a humiliation that had gone unpunished. LTTE’s Prabhakaran would only haunt those hurt feelings by choosing the Cholas’ ‘Tiger’ standard as his symbol.

The Sinhalese in general and the Sri Lankan State, otherwise, saw it as a symbolism, particularly after India got involved after the anti-Tamil ‘Pogrom-83’.  Not to let matters rest, the Tamil moderates, politicos and the people at large, did see India’s engagement much as the Sinhalese did – and with opposite effect on their own psyche.

The LTTE’s perception was even worse.

It paid the price for the same, not very long after, but only after inflicting enough and avoidable damage on the innocents, both Tamils and Sinhalese.

That the LTTE too did not spare the Muslims in its time is another sad footnote that the nation and the community cannot forget – though forgive, they seemed to have done long ago.

The question is whether the ‘Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism’ was born out of a sense of victimisation in their own land and circumstances in more recent centuries, or owed it to the ‘triumphalism’ from the era of Dutugemunu, a full millennium and half earlier. This is a question that the religious scholars in the country, particularly of the Sinhala-Buddhist faith, and political historians, should be asking themselves – and finding answers, too.

What’s happening instead is that some of them of the two beliefs have ended up quoting from the past, selectively, to argue an otherwise unarguable ‘chauvinistic’ case. Like elsewhere in the world, early ‘history’, if it could be called so, is etched in religious texts in Sri Lanka, too. Here, it’s the‘Mahavansa’, the Sinhala-Buddhist chronicle of the ‘great dynasty’, dating back to the fifth century after Christ. It has conferred on the current-day claims the kind of unquestioned sanction and acceptance unavailable to later-day historic works with relative proof.

The ‘Mahavansa’ incidentally does not bad-mouth Elara, or Ellaran in Tamil. It describes him as among the wisest and just kings, ‘Manuneedhi’ Chola, as he was otherwise known in native south India. That Elara ruled from Anuradhapura, which is among the holiest of places of worship of the Sinhala-Buddhist community as a whole.

The LTTE would target Anuradhapura, the seat of the holy ‘Maha Bodhi Tree’ and Temple.

Like Kandy, the seat of Buddha’s ‘Tooth Relic’, or ‘Dalada Maligawa’, Anuradhapura too became the target of the LTTE, this one particularly in the closing months of the decisive ‘Eelam War IV’.   Cadres of the ‘Black Tigers’ suicide-squad in particular would successfully target the Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) base in Anuradhapura, taking over a dozen and half of SLAF’s air assets, though said to be from their trainer fleet. Curiously, LTTE’s Prabhakaran was said to have code-named the attack, ‘Op eration Ellalan’.

The writer is Director, Chennai Chapter of the Observer Research Foundation, the multi-disciplinary Indian public-policy think-tank, headquartered in New Delhi.

http://www.thesundayleader.lk/2014/07/13/understanding-the-sinhala-buddhist-mindset/