Buddhist Nationalism and Sri Lanka's Christian Minority

By Nathaniel Milazzo on 10 December 2004

This just in from Sri Lanka:

* December 1, 2004, 8:00pm: Venerable Omalpe Sobhitha, a member of parliament in Sri Lanka for the Buddhist nationalist party Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU), appears on the Swarnavahini TV news program Live at 8 and makes three demands of the Sri Lankan government: (1) A Presidential commission should be appointed into the death of Ven. Gangodawila Soma Thero; (2) All liquor outlets in supermarkets should be closed down; and (3) A time frame should be specified for taking up the Prohibition of forcible conversions Bill in Parliament for a vote. Ven. Sobhitha then issues an ultimatum to the government: if these demands are not met by 6:00AM on December 12, 2004, the JHU will begin a fast-unto-death, according to a recent press release by the National Christian Evangelical Association of Sri Lanka (NCEASL), which represents all nine protestant Christian denominations on the island.

* December 2, 2004, 5:00pm: In the village of Kammalawa in Kuliyapitiya in western Sri Lanka, more than one hundred people arrive at the Believers' Church. They do not come to worship. They tell the pastor to stop holding worship services. They tell him that if he does not close down the church, they will kill him. Later that night, they attack with a barrage of rocks. Roof tiles are broken, one door and several windows damaged. Police take three people into custody, according to a December 6 press release from Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), a British human rights charity that promotes religious liberty for all.

What inspires members of Sri Lanka's 70 percent Buddhist majority to such anger and violence against the 7.5 percent Christian minority? Americans typically have only vague images of Buddhism, and are often unaware that it, just like any other religion, is susceptible to the manipulations of nationalism and ideology. We tend to picture a Buddhist monk as a man or woman with shaven head peacefully meditating in the lotus position, but some Buddhist clergy in Sri Lanka pass out hate literature, assault church workers, raze churches, stone pastors' houses, issue death threats, write inflammatory articles for Buddhist newspapers, and ultimately force churches to close down.

In 2003-2004 the NCEASL recorded 146 acts of violence against Christian churches and their communities. In January 2004, Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga said there had been more than 30 attacks on churches since November 2003, but Christian groups put it at double that, according to a January 27 article by the BBC. The number of attacks has risen sharply in recent years. In 2000, only 14 incidents were reported; in both 2001 and 2002 only 13 attacks were reported.

This new trend of attacks comes close on the heels of a campaign by Buddhist clergy against what they say are unethical efforts in proselytism by Christian groups. In 1991, a Presidential Commission, led by some anti-Christian members, investigated non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Churches were also categorized as NGOs and it was determined that any humanitarian project conducted by a Christian group was ""unethical"" because humanitarian assistance puts undue obligation on recipients to convert.

The date chosen for the beginning of the JHU hunger strike was no accident. Ven. Soma Thero, a leading figure in the anti-conversion movement died while on a visit to (Orthodox Christian) Russia on December 12, 2003, inspiring many conspiracy theories despite an autopsy that revealed the cause of death to be a heart attack. The event was a turning point. On December 29, dozens of Buddhist monks protested ""unethical conversions"" by Christians and demanded anti-conversion laws be enacted immediately. Christian websites widely reported color posters that appeared in Colombo's main streets showing the deceased monk rallying Buddhist soldiers to confront the ""diabolical conspiracy"" by a ""NGO mafia"" to convert and corrupt the Sinhalese Buddhist public.

Soma's death became a rallying cry of Buddhist nationalism. It resulted in an escalation of anti-Christian rhetoric and violence against churches that continues today as we approach the anniversary of this death. Such violence against the Christian minority is seldom reported in the Western secular press, drowned out by another Sri Lankan conflict, a civil war with Tamil separatists that has dragged on for twenty long years.

The JHU, a party of Buddhist monks, quickly organized a vicious anti-Christian campaign and won nine seats in Parliament in the April, 2004 national elections. President Kumaratunga's alliance of leftist and Sinhalese nationalist parties won only 105 seats in the 225-seat Parliament, a hung parliament. Today, it is still short of a 113-vote simple majority and as a result, the government is unstable, forced to form a minority government. The JHU has manipulated this instability to its advantage, using their votes as a wild card.

The situation in Sri Lanka makes the American ""culture war"" over issues like faith-based initiatives in social services seem like polite dinner conversation. In the United States, we have long debated the proper role of (Christian) religion in politics and policy. Religion or ""values"" played a large role in George W. Bush's presidential election victory over John F. Kerry, at least according to the popular story line developed by the mainstream American media. Recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions and the appearance of ""charitable choice"" language in legislation, first under President Bill Clinton and later acted upon and expanded under President Bush, have led to a debate about what restrictions should be placed on religious organizations that seek federal funding to provide social services.

Sri Lankans, too, debate the proper role of (Buddhist) religion in politics and on what restrictions should be placed on religious organizations offering social services, but the debate is not about the efficacy of separation between church and state. Rather, Buddhism is already appointed the ""foremost place"" in Sri Lanka's constitution. Now, the JHU has proposed a constitutional amendment to establish Buddhism as the state religion. The purpose of the bill (the 19th Amendment) as stated in the notification published October 29 in The Gazette of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is ""A Bill to amend the Constitution of Sri Lanka; to provide for declaration of Buddhism as the official religion of the Republic; to provide for binding persons practicing Buddhism to bring up their offspring in the same [faith]; to provide for prohibiting conversion of Buddhists; to provide for establishing a council to advise the President on such matters and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto."" In comparison, debate in the U.S. over charitable choice amounts to quibbling over a few bricks at the top of a high wall of separation between church and state.

The movement to establish Buddhism as the state religion by amending the constitution is a new strategy by Buddhist nationalists to end religious freedom in Sri Lanka. Two separate bills authored by the anti-conversion movement are known to exist. Introduced by the JHU on July 21, 2004, the Bill for Prohibition of Forcible Conversion remains stalled in parliament. Separately, a draft Act entitled Act for the Protection of Religious Freedom, which ironically calls for a total ban on religious conversion, was since introduced by the Minister of Buddhism and approved by the Cabinet, but has yet to resurface.

The JHU Bill would make any attempt to ""persuade or influence a person to… adopt another religion"" a criminal offense. Anyone convicted of offering ""moral support [or] material assistance"" leading to the conversion of a person from one religion to another could be imprisoned for up to seven years. Furthermore, ""[e]very director, office bearer, share holder, member, or employee"" of an organization found guilty of an offense would be subject to the same punishment. The desire and the effect would be to close down all religious organizations and jail all persons that do social work with the majority of the population, Buddhists.

Even if these bills never become law, recent Supreme Court decisions have demonstrated the courts willingness to ignore religious freedom provisions in the constitution in favor of the ""foremost place"" clause. Although the Supreme Court permitted 178 organizations of other religions to combine religious and charitable activities, it prohibited three Christian organizations from doing the same, according to the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a Washington D.C. based law firm and NGO. In January 2003 and 2002 respectively, the Supreme Court held that New Wine Harvest Ministries and the Sahanaya Doratuwa Prayer Center could not incorporate because a Christian organization cannot couple religious instruction with charitable deeds. Then, in the summer of 2003, it held that it was unconstitutional for an order of Franciscan nuns to offer social services and teach their beliefs.

A Chapter from History

To understand the origins of militant Buddhism, one must delve deep into history. Sri Lanka's national identity consists of Buddhism intertwined with Sinhalese nationalism. Its recorded history spans 2,500 years. Buddhist nationalists consider the island nation to be the last bastion of pure Theravada Buddhism that must be preserved, a citadel under assault from cultural invaders, enemies both foreign and domestic. Sinhala was the only national language from the mid-1950s until Tamil was added in the 1978 Constitution. The Tamil language is shared with the Indian provinces of Pondicherry and Tamil Nadu. The Sri Lankan Government headquartered in Colombo in the southwest of the island is dominated by Sinhalese, three-quarters of the population. In 1988 approximately 93 percent of the Sinhala speakers were Buddhists, and 99.5 percent of the Buddhists in Sri Lanka spoke Sinhala, according to one country study.

The Mahavamsa (Great Geneology or Dynasty), a chronicle compiled in the 6th century in Pali, the language of Theravada Buddhism, tells of the rise and fall of successive Sinhalese Buddhist kingdoms. Tamils first usurped the Sinhalese throne in the 3rd century B.C., and were a very real threat by the 5th and 6th centuries B.C.E. In the 14th century, a south Indian dynasty seized power in the north and established a Tamil kingdom. Dutthagamani is the outstanding hero of the Mahavamsa, and his war against Elara is sometimes depicted in contemporary accounts as a major racial confrontation between Tamils and Sinhalese. Sinnappah Arasaratnam, a Sri Lankan historian, suggests the conflict recorded in the Mahavamsa marked the beginning of Sinhalese nationalism and that Dutthagamani's victory is commonly interpreted as a confirmation that the island was a preserve for the Sinhalese and Buddhism. In the Library of Congress Country Studies this historian maintains that the story is still capable of stirring the ""religio-communal passions"" of the Sinhalese.

While the Tamil separatists are seen as a tool of India, the Christian Church is often portrayed as a ""tool of the West,"" a legacy of culturally insensitive and overzealous missionaries under the era of British colonialism. Sri Lanka gained its full independence from Great Britain in 1948. It had been under colonial rule since the sixteenth century, first under the Portuguese, then under the Dutch and finally under the British. While subject to British rule, missionaries fresh from England's evangelical revival pressured the government to stop patronage of Buddhist temples, a traditional role of the king. In one of many great ironies of history, this forced a confrontation that led to a reactionary movement, what Dr. Timothy Shah, Senior Fellow at the Pew Center for Religion and Public Life called a ""Buddhist Renaissance"" in which Buddhists became better organized, self-confident, and intellectually sophisticated. They built institutions and gained militant strength to confront the threat. Because Buddhism did not traditionally have institutions, the need to organize planted the seeds of Buddhist nationalism and ultimately today's anti-conversion movement.

Post-independence political affairs are a record of one-family politics and of one seemingly unlikely turn of events after another. With the British finally gone, Oxford-educated Anglican elitist Solomon Bandaranaike was elected Prime Minister in 1956 on a wave of Sinhalese nationalism after converting from Christianity to Buddhism. Sinhala was made the sole official language, among other measures introduced to bolster Sinhalese and Buddhist feeling. Although Bandaranaike used religious rhetoric to get elected, he resisted calls to adopt a hostile stance toward the Tamils. In 1959, Solomon Bandaranaike was assassinated by a Buddhist monk and succeeded by his widow, Sirimavo, who continued his nationalization program. Prior to 1972, Sri Lanka was called Ceylon. Under Sirimavo Bandaranaike, Ceylon changed its name to Sri Lanka and Buddhism was given the primary place as the country's religion, further antagonizing the Tamil minority.

Sirimavo's daughter, Chandrika Kumaratunga, became president in 1994. President Kumaratunga's government is a coalition with the left-wing and nationalist Sinhalese Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), a formerly outlawed Marxist party that launched an insurrection against the Bandaranaike government in April 1971.

Decades of civil war have taken a toll on the national psyche. The latest news is that Tamil Tiger rebels have threatened to resume the bloody war for autonomy, sparking fears of a return to the ethno-religious conflict between the Hindu-majority Tamils in the North and the Buddhist-majority Sinhalese government in the South. It is related to the conflict between Sinhalese Buddhists and Christians because for years the troubles of the Sri Lankan nation have been blamed on the Tamil separatists. After a permanent ceasefire agreement brokered by Norway in 2002, a generation that has known only war has found a new ""enemy within,"" the Christian community.

Unethical Conversions

There are rumors and propaganda posted by monks that speak of ""unethical conversions,"" by which they mean paying the poor to become Christians. While such a practice has been denied and denounced by Christian churches and organizations, it is important to note that Sri Lanka is a different country with a dissimilar concept of acceptable evangelism. The three major Christian groups in Sri Lanka — the NCEASL, the Catholic Bishops Conference, and the National Christian Council (NCC) — acknowledge there may be some truth to allegations of unethical conversion, but maintain that most are ""wildly exaggerated, unsubstantiated and based on rumor,"" according to a report by CSW.

More problematic is cultural insensitivity that gives the Church a poor image. Extreme evangelical or Pentecostal groups have contributed to the spread of allegations by using very aggressive methods. Some of these methods allegedly involve humanitarian aid dispersed conditionally. Evangelicals are known for their open-air events, even on ""Poya"" moon festival days, sacred to Buddhists. Meanwhile, Moonies, Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons evangelize door to door.

The Church in Sri Lanka is more Westernized than the rest of society, especially some evangelical and Pentecostal churches, which are relative late-comers compared to the mainline denominations. They have a reputation for loud music and Western dress, leading to the perception of Christianity as a foreign religion. Some foreigners working within or outside of local churches contribute to this perception with an ""aggressive urgency for evangelism,"" according to the same CSW report. In this climate, it is easy for organizations like Success, a strongly anti-Christian Buddhist organization founded to discredit the church, to circulate unfounded or wildly exaggerated accusations of ""unethical conversion.""

Conclusions and Recommendations

If politics is the alternative to violence, then political alternatives to the anti-conversion legislation must be earnestly pursued. Interfaith dialogue should be undertaken by the native Church to develop appropriate mechanisms to deal with alleged ""unethical conversions."" Internally, the NCC, NCEASL and Catholic Bishops Conference must find a way to police impassioned evangelists. Simultaneously, foreign governments should link human rights to trade. The U.S. Government should use the threat of interrupting business with Sri Lanka's textile industry as a stick, simultaneously holding out aid disbursed from the Millennium Challenge Account as a carrot contingent on Sri Lanka's commitment to protecting religious liberty.

Furthermore, the government of Sri Lanka needs to be reminded that under its treaty obligations, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), it has declared that religious freedom is an important right and committed to protect the rights of religious minorities. According to a legal opinion published by the Becket Fund, the proposed laws would violate Articles 17-21 and 26-27 of the ICCPR, a binding treaty which Sri Lanka has freely joined. Roger Severino, an attorney with the Becket Fund, states that ""the Sri Lankan government has appeased the enemies of religious liberty for far too long. Sri Lankans, particularly moderate Buddhists, must confront religious hatred now — before more blood is shed and before Sri Lanka's international reputation deteriorates further.""

The bottom line is that Christian individuals and organizations targeted by anti-conversion legislation are scapegoats for the inadequacies of institutional Buddhism to address needs in Sri Lankan communities. Historically, the Buddhist temple was at the center of Sri Lankan village life, providing education, acting as a moral guardian, and settling disputes. In modern Sri Lanka, however, some Buddhists have accused the monks of corruption and neglecting traditional duties.

In the face of the decline of the temple, Christian charities arouse ire because they are more effectively addressing some communities' poor than Buddhist institutions. Some missionaries or Christians NGO's may be guilty of cultural insensitivity, but there are no widespread ""unethical conversions.""

The broadly written laws that have been proposed will likely be used to suspend non-Buddhist religious activity, especially proselytization. Along with the proposed amendment to make Buddhism the state religion, these proposed legal changes are part of a broader ethno-religious nationalism that has led to increasing violence against the Christian minority.

The JHU and the anti-conversion movement is searching for demons externally when it should be looking within the Buddhist community and addressing real problems, not scapegoating a religious minority. In a country where Buddhism and the national identity are fused, cemented by decades of civil war with majority-Hindu Tamil separatists, Christians are caught in front of a tidal wave of Sinhalese and Buddhist nationalism, and unfairly targeted with violence and suppression. Let us hope that it is the radical elements of the Buddhist and Christian communities who are soon overshadowed by dialogue between moderates on both sides.¹"

Last updated 12 January 2009