01-26-2004, 11:48 PM
<b>Sri Lanka may be heading for a Sinhala-Buddhist version of Hindutva</b>
COLOMBO DIARY | PK Balachanddran
Colombo, January 26
Sri Lanka is now witnessing the beginnings of a revivalist movement, the third in the last 100 years. Political circles here are abuzz with talk of the arrival of politico-cultural nationalism akin to Hindutva in neighbouring India. It is being described as Jathika Chinthanaya or National Consciousness, based on the island's 2,500 year old Sinhala-Buddhist heritage.
Sri Lankans are deeply troubled by the political and economic situation in their country, though the diagnosis and the treatment suggested may be contradictory. Politically, there seems to be an unbridgeable chasm between President Chandrika Kumaratunga and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. The stand off has adversely affected not only the peace process aimed at ending ethnic strife, but also economic development. The common man is still to reap any tangible benefit from the no-war situation prevailing for the last two years.
Among the remedies being seriously considered by a growing section of the people is a return to Sri Lanka's Sinhala-Buddhist roots, a tradition-based cultural nationalism, like Hindutva. Atal Bihari Vajpayee's success in making India an economic power house even while subscribing to the creed of Hindutva is influencing Sri Lankans, as an article by Rajpal Abeynayake in The Sunday Times suggests.
UPFA's cultural nationalism
The concept of Jathika Chinthanaya is not new, but it re-entered Sri Lankan political discourse after the formation of an alliance between the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), led by President Kumaratunga, and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) on January 20. The alliance, named United Peoples' Freedom Alliance (UPFA), declared that it would revive cultural nationalism to rescue the country from the clutches of neo-colonialism.
"Every attempt should be made to halt the rapid erosion of social values and direct society towards cultural rejuvenation based on traditional values, to rebuild a desirable political culture in our society, " the MOU between these two left wing, Sinhala-Buddhist parties said.
"The United National Front (UNF) government has rapidly brought the country to the brink of disaster," the MOU declared.
"The traditional values and culture of the country have been degraded in the guise of the open economy. A culture of greed and exploitation has been implanted. The principles of community, mutual responsibility and political decency have been replaced by a winner takes all philosophy which has no place for the poor, the underprivileged and the handicapped."
"Our foreign policy, which was based on regional cooperation and mutual respect, has been replaced by one of servitude and the absence of national dignity," the MOU said.
The document used the traditional Buddhist terminology Pancha Maha Pilliveth ( the Five Noble Objectives of Governance) to describe UPFA's agenda. It spoke of Sri Lanka as the "motherland" and called upon each and every one of its "patriotic" citizens to support the new agenda. The JVP leader Wimal Weerawansa hit the nail on the head when he said that the alliance, would take the country on a journey towards "cultural nationalism."
In the context of the possibility of snap elections to the Sri Lankan parliament in which the SLFP-JVP alliance is believed to have a bright chance of coming to power, the formation of UPFA has caused a stir in the country. It has triggered panic in the top echelons of the ruling classes, but is seen as a beacon of hope by the underprivileged.
Dr Gunadasa Amarasekara, thinker, writer and campaigner, is the author of the term Jathika Chintanaya. It was in 1986 that this well known dentist first used the term in an article in the popular Sinhala Sunday paper, Irida Divaina. "I would translate the term as Civilisational Consciousness rather than National Consciousness, because civilisation is a wider and deeper concept that nationality," Dr Amarasekara told Hindustan Times.
The eighties were very bad for Sri Lanka. The country was being torn apart by the violent Sinhala-Tamil conflict. The opening up of the economy in 1977 "to bring in foreign entrepreneurs even if they are robber barons" as President JR Jayewardene said, was destroying the fabric of Sri Lankan society. Thanks to "Yankee Dicky" Jayewardene, Sri Lanka was well and truly in the grip of neo-colonialism.
Dr Amarasekara was appalled by it.But he did not want the country to go back to the statism of the Sirimavo Bandaranaike era nor did he have any respect for the new revolutionary Marxism of the resurgent JVP. In Dr Amarasekara's view both Marxism and capitalism were Western concepts which did not suit the conditions prevailing in Sri Lanka and the nature and genius of its people. "Both had proved to be a failure," he asserts
He said that Sri Lankans should go back to their roots. "The civilisational consciousness, deeply ingrained in our society, especially in the rural areas, has to be rekindled. Solutions to modern day problems can be found in the light of the civilisational consciousness.It should be the touchstone of policy because it will eminently suit the country," he argued.
"Obviously, we cannot go back to the Anuradhapura or the Polannaruwa period, the conditions are not the same. But many of the values of that period are relevant to this day and cannot be ignored," he said.
Dr Amarasekara was not against equalitarian Marxism."But it has to be tempered by Jathika Chintanaya if it is to work," he maintained. "Every civilization with a long history, and Sri Lanka is one with a 2,500 history, has a consciousness, an ideology, which sets out its values, aims, goals, and what can be absorbed and what cannot be. Unless a programme or policy takes into account these factors, it will fail," he said.
The problem with Sri Lanka is that its Civilisational Consciousness got dimmed and even eclipsed because of 500 years of foreign rule, first by the Portuguese, then the Dutch, and lastly the British. "In the past 500 years, Sri Lankans have become great imitators, swinging from one cultural practice to another. This is lunacy," he said.
First attempt
Anagarika Dharmapala was the first revivalist. He went from village to village campaigning for the revival of Buddhism, the traditional values, temperance and the Sinhala language. He was opposed by the then elite, who were largely Christian and anglicised, and who had also made their money through liquor contracts. DS Senanayake, a Buddhist member of the elite, supported Dharmapala's temperance movement, but later abandoned him and became a votary of anglicisation. On Independence Day in 1948, the first Sri Lankan Prime Minister was in top hat and coat tails!
"While Indian leaders who fought for their country's independence promoted Indianism (Mahatma Gandhi was the first Hindutvite) and never forsook their Indianness, the leaders and the elite of Sri Lanka lost their Sri Lankanness," Dr Amarasekara observed.
Though neighbouring India took an anti-imperialist path in national and world affairs, the post independence Sri Lanka wanted Britain to keep its air and naval bases in the island.
Sri Lanka continued on its path of cultural and political Westernisation till 1956, when it became clear that the right wing, pro-Western policies of the United National Party (UNP) did not answer to the needs of the new generation.
Second attempt
SWRD Bandaranaike, clad in his native white dhoti and shirt unlike his predecessors, rode to power on a new wave -- the indigenous Sinhala-Buddhist rural, plebian, non-Westernised masses, representing Sri Lanka's "civilisational consciousness".
"Bandaranaike did not create this force. He used it to come to power. The force was created by the village to village work of Anagarika Dharmapala and the free Sinhala education system introduced by Dr Kannangara and Dr Malalasekera in 1943," Dr Amarasekara said.
However, Bandaranaike did make the government and the country less elitist and indigenous in its character. He gave respectability to the Sinhala-Buddhist cause.
But this too came up against resistance from the entrenched Westernised elite.This elite, many of them Christian, got rattled by this turn of events and a small group of Christian led officers of the armed forces, even tried to stage a coup. But this failed due to a timely tip off.
SWRD Bandaranaike's wife, Sirima, was a cultural nationalist too, but ultimately she failed because of the tremendous influence Marxists cast in the Western mould had on her. "The Westernised Marxists and their ideology had no roots in the country and they did not have the people's support," Dr Amarasekara said. Their regime only bred statism and shortages.
The disillusionment of the people with Sirima's leftist regime was exploited by JR Jayewardene (JR) of the UNP, who promised to usher in a Dharmishta (righteous) regime. But his "Open Door" economic policy (open to robber barons too, as he put it) ruined the country by making it a happy hunting ground of neo-colonialism. The common man began to count less and less.
Succeeding governments, with the exception of one led by President Premadasa, continued JR's policies.The economy was based on trade and imports. Local entrepreneurship and agriculture were throttled, for a few importers to make a killing. Public assets were sold to foreigners. Land from Tangalle to Negombo is being sold to foreigners, alleged Dr.Amarasekara. The historical Galle fort is being parceled out to foreign buyers.State bus and rail transport were allowed to go to seed to help private operators. While more than 400 government schools are being closed down, elitist international schools are mushrooming. "And we have become slaves of the IMF and the World Bank," Dr Amarasekara said.
Buddhist principles of governance
According to Dr Amarasekara, Sri Lanka will not be facing this tragedy if it had followed Buddhist principles. "Buddhism is not against materialism, but against greed. The Buddha had enjoined that anything in excess be distributed among the needy. Unlike Marxism, Buddhism does not think that materialism will give happiness. It stresses the avoidance of extremes. It is equalitarian and anti-heirarchical."
"Post-independence leaders neither grasped the Western system nor did they grasp our own native system," remarked Dr.Piyasena Dissanayake, who has authored a work on Buddhist governance.
"Buddhism says that spiritual development should proceed hand in hand with material development.The Kings were enjoined to promote both," he said. The Buddha had stated ten rules of governance and called them the Dasa Raja Dharma. "The Buddha enjoined the King to arrive at decisions based on consensus. His own Sakya clan was a democratic one with the Raja being directly elected by the clan annually.Dictatorship and domination were anathema for the Buddha," Dr.Dissanayake said.
The Buddhist principle of arriving at decisions by consultation and consensus should help solve the Tamil problem, Dr Dissanayake maintained.
The Buddhist King is expected to be impartial, punishment must be reformative and not retributive. He must give seeds and other inputs to the farmer if he cannot acquire these with his own resources. The employer must adequately reward the employees and look after their welfare. He should be pleasant, kind, balanced and be able to empathise with those who seek his help. "Sri Lankans need not go beyond Buddhism to learn the norms of good governance," Dr Dissanayake conclued.
Over dependence on foreign assistance in every matter, whether economic or political, was not only enslaving Sri Lanka politically and economically, but was also affecting the norms of governance, Dr.Dissanayake said. Greed, acquisitiveness, inequality and injustice, all totally alien to the cultural heritage of Sri Lanka, had become the order of the day, lamented Dr Amarasekara. To him Sri Lanka's salvation lay in rekindling Jathika Chinathanaya, both among the rulers and the masses. The formation of UPFA is seen as a step in that direction.
(PK Balachanddran is the Sri Lankan correspondent of Hindustan Times)
COLOMBO DIARY | PK Balachanddran
Colombo, January 26
Sri Lanka is now witnessing the beginnings of a revivalist movement, the third in the last 100 years. Political circles here are abuzz with talk of the arrival of politico-cultural nationalism akin to Hindutva in neighbouring India. It is being described as Jathika Chinthanaya or National Consciousness, based on the island's 2,500 year old Sinhala-Buddhist heritage.
Sri Lankans are deeply troubled by the political and economic situation in their country, though the diagnosis and the treatment suggested may be contradictory. Politically, there seems to be an unbridgeable chasm between President Chandrika Kumaratunga and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. The stand off has adversely affected not only the peace process aimed at ending ethnic strife, but also economic development. The common man is still to reap any tangible benefit from the no-war situation prevailing for the last two years.
Among the remedies being seriously considered by a growing section of the people is a return to Sri Lanka's Sinhala-Buddhist roots, a tradition-based cultural nationalism, like Hindutva. Atal Bihari Vajpayee's success in making India an economic power house even while subscribing to the creed of Hindutva is influencing Sri Lankans, as an article by Rajpal Abeynayake in The Sunday Times suggests.
UPFA's cultural nationalism
The concept of Jathika Chinthanaya is not new, but it re-entered Sri Lankan political discourse after the formation of an alliance between the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), led by President Kumaratunga, and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) on January 20. The alliance, named United Peoples' Freedom Alliance (UPFA), declared that it would revive cultural nationalism to rescue the country from the clutches of neo-colonialism.
"Every attempt should be made to halt the rapid erosion of social values and direct society towards cultural rejuvenation based on traditional values, to rebuild a desirable political culture in our society, " the MOU between these two left wing, Sinhala-Buddhist parties said.
"The United National Front (UNF) government has rapidly brought the country to the brink of disaster," the MOU declared.
"The traditional values and culture of the country have been degraded in the guise of the open economy. A culture of greed and exploitation has been implanted. The principles of community, mutual responsibility and political decency have been replaced by a winner takes all philosophy which has no place for the poor, the underprivileged and the handicapped."
"Our foreign policy, which was based on regional cooperation and mutual respect, has been replaced by one of servitude and the absence of national dignity," the MOU said.
The document used the traditional Buddhist terminology Pancha Maha Pilliveth ( the Five Noble Objectives of Governance) to describe UPFA's agenda. It spoke of Sri Lanka as the "motherland" and called upon each and every one of its "patriotic" citizens to support the new agenda. The JVP leader Wimal Weerawansa hit the nail on the head when he said that the alliance, would take the country on a journey towards "cultural nationalism."
In the context of the possibility of snap elections to the Sri Lankan parliament in which the SLFP-JVP alliance is believed to have a bright chance of coming to power, the formation of UPFA has caused a stir in the country. It has triggered panic in the top echelons of the ruling classes, but is seen as a beacon of hope by the underprivileged.
Dr Gunadasa Amarasekara, thinker, writer and campaigner, is the author of the term Jathika Chintanaya. It was in 1986 that this well known dentist first used the term in an article in the popular Sinhala Sunday paper, Irida Divaina. "I would translate the term as Civilisational Consciousness rather than National Consciousness, because civilisation is a wider and deeper concept that nationality," Dr Amarasekara told Hindustan Times.
The eighties were very bad for Sri Lanka. The country was being torn apart by the violent Sinhala-Tamil conflict. The opening up of the economy in 1977 "to bring in foreign entrepreneurs even if they are robber barons" as President JR Jayewardene said, was destroying the fabric of Sri Lankan society. Thanks to "Yankee Dicky" Jayewardene, Sri Lanka was well and truly in the grip of neo-colonialism.
Dr Amarasekara was appalled by it.But he did not want the country to go back to the statism of the Sirimavo Bandaranaike era nor did he have any respect for the new revolutionary Marxism of the resurgent JVP. In Dr Amarasekara's view both Marxism and capitalism were Western concepts which did not suit the conditions prevailing in Sri Lanka and the nature and genius of its people. "Both had proved to be a failure," he asserts
He said that Sri Lankans should go back to their roots. "The civilisational consciousness, deeply ingrained in our society, especially in the rural areas, has to be rekindled. Solutions to modern day problems can be found in the light of the civilisational consciousness.It should be the touchstone of policy because it will eminently suit the country," he argued.
"Obviously, we cannot go back to the Anuradhapura or the Polannaruwa period, the conditions are not the same. But many of the values of that period are relevant to this day and cannot be ignored," he said.
Dr Amarasekara was not against equalitarian Marxism."But it has to be tempered by Jathika Chintanaya if it is to work," he maintained. "Every civilization with a long history, and Sri Lanka is one with a 2,500 history, has a consciousness, an ideology, which sets out its values, aims, goals, and what can be absorbed and what cannot be. Unless a programme or policy takes into account these factors, it will fail," he said.
The problem with Sri Lanka is that its Civilisational Consciousness got dimmed and even eclipsed because of 500 years of foreign rule, first by the Portuguese, then the Dutch, and lastly the British. "In the past 500 years, Sri Lankans have become great imitators, swinging from one cultural practice to another. This is lunacy," he said.
First attempt
Anagarika Dharmapala was the first revivalist. He went from village to village campaigning for the revival of Buddhism, the traditional values, temperance and the Sinhala language. He was opposed by the then elite, who were largely Christian and anglicised, and who had also made their money through liquor contracts. DS Senanayake, a Buddhist member of the elite, supported Dharmapala's temperance movement, but later abandoned him and became a votary of anglicisation. On Independence Day in 1948, the first Sri Lankan Prime Minister was in top hat and coat tails!
"While Indian leaders who fought for their country's independence promoted Indianism (Mahatma Gandhi was the first Hindutvite) and never forsook their Indianness, the leaders and the elite of Sri Lanka lost their Sri Lankanness," Dr Amarasekara observed.
Though neighbouring India took an anti-imperialist path in national and world affairs, the post independence Sri Lanka wanted Britain to keep its air and naval bases in the island.
Sri Lanka continued on its path of cultural and political Westernisation till 1956, when it became clear that the right wing, pro-Western policies of the United National Party (UNP) did not answer to the needs of the new generation.
Second attempt
SWRD Bandaranaike, clad in his native white dhoti and shirt unlike his predecessors, rode to power on a new wave -- the indigenous Sinhala-Buddhist rural, plebian, non-Westernised masses, representing Sri Lanka's "civilisational consciousness".
"Bandaranaike did not create this force. He used it to come to power. The force was created by the village to village work of Anagarika Dharmapala and the free Sinhala education system introduced by Dr Kannangara and Dr Malalasekera in 1943," Dr Amarasekara said.
However, Bandaranaike did make the government and the country less elitist and indigenous in its character. He gave respectability to the Sinhala-Buddhist cause.
But this too came up against resistance from the entrenched Westernised elite.This elite, many of them Christian, got rattled by this turn of events and a small group of Christian led officers of the armed forces, even tried to stage a coup. But this failed due to a timely tip off.
SWRD Bandaranaike's wife, Sirima, was a cultural nationalist too, but ultimately she failed because of the tremendous influence Marxists cast in the Western mould had on her. "The Westernised Marxists and their ideology had no roots in the country and they did not have the people's support," Dr Amarasekara said. Their regime only bred statism and shortages.
The disillusionment of the people with Sirima's leftist regime was exploited by JR Jayewardene (JR) of the UNP, who promised to usher in a Dharmishta (righteous) regime. But his "Open Door" economic policy (open to robber barons too, as he put it) ruined the country by making it a happy hunting ground of neo-colonialism. The common man began to count less and less.
Succeeding governments, with the exception of one led by President Premadasa, continued JR's policies.The economy was based on trade and imports. Local entrepreneurship and agriculture were throttled, for a few importers to make a killing. Public assets were sold to foreigners. Land from Tangalle to Negombo is being sold to foreigners, alleged Dr.Amarasekara. The historical Galle fort is being parceled out to foreign buyers.State bus and rail transport were allowed to go to seed to help private operators. While more than 400 government schools are being closed down, elitist international schools are mushrooming. "And we have become slaves of the IMF and the World Bank," Dr Amarasekara said.
Buddhist principles of governance
According to Dr Amarasekara, Sri Lanka will not be facing this tragedy if it had followed Buddhist principles. "Buddhism is not against materialism, but against greed. The Buddha had enjoined that anything in excess be distributed among the needy. Unlike Marxism, Buddhism does not think that materialism will give happiness. It stresses the avoidance of extremes. It is equalitarian and anti-heirarchical."
"Post-independence leaders neither grasped the Western system nor did they grasp our own native system," remarked Dr.Piyasena Dissanayake, who has authored a work on Buddhist governance.
"Buddhism says that spiritual development should proceed hand in hand with material development.The Kings were enjoined to promote both," he said. The Buddha had stated ten rules of governance and called them the Dasa Raja Dharma. "The Buddha enjoined the King to arrive at decisions based on consensus. His own Sakya clan was a democratic one with the Raja being directly elected by the clan annually.Dictatorship and domination were anathema for the Buddha," Dr.Dissanayake said.
The Buddhist principle of arriving at decisions by consultation and consensus should help solve the Tamil problem, Dr Dissanayake maintained.
The Buddhist King is expected to be impartial, punishment must be reformative and not retributive. He must give seeds and other inputs to the farmer if he cannot acquire these with his own resources. The employer must adequately reward the employees and look after their welfare. He should be pleasant, kind, balanced and be able to empathise with those who seek his help. "Sri Lankans need not go beyond Buddhism to learn the norms of good governance," Dr Dissanayake conclued.
Over dependence on foreign assistance in every matter, whether economic or political, was not only enslaving Sri Lanka politically and economically, but was also affecting the norms of governance, Dr.Dissanayake said. Greed, acquisitiveness, inequality and injustice, all totally alien to the cultural heritage of Sri Lanka, had become the order of the day, lamented Dr Amarasekara. To him Sri Lanka's salvation lay in rekindling Jathika Chinathanaya, both among the rulers and the masses. The formation of UPFA is seen as a step in that direction.
(PK Balachanddran is the Sri Lankan correspondent of Hindustan Times)