Sri Lanka Buddhists: Evangelism Issue May Swing Election

Posted September 27, 2005
COLOMBO, Sep 22 2005
Inter Press Service
Kalinga Seneviratne

Sinhala Buddhist monks and 'patriotic' forces, aligned behind the candidature of Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse, are determined to play a major role in the Nov.17 presidential elections announced this week.

Even before the official announcement of the elections on Tuesday, Rajapakse had entered into an alliance with the Jathika Hela Urumaya or National Heritage Party (JHU) that is led by Buddhist monks.

On Tuesday evening, a gathering of Buddhist monks, representing the Jathika Sanga Sammelanya (National Buddhist Convention), sought to set the campaign agenda by demanding that the Sri Lankan government move through parliament a bill to oppose religious conversions.

While Rajapakse has also drawn up alliances with pro-Sinhala, left-wing groups, such as the Marxist Nationalist Party and the Peoples Liberation Front (JVP), it is clear where he intends to draw his real strength from.

Last week, he made an unannounced visit to the Patriot National Movement (PNM) convention near Colombo and declared to loud cheers that he wants ''to save the nation for future generations'', but added he would solve the two-decade-old ethnic conflict problem on the island through dialogue with the Tamil minority.

About 70 percent of Sri Lanka's 19 million population is Sinhala Buddhist, while 18 percent is Tamil, mainly Hindu, and another 7.5 percent Muslim. Christians constitute about eight percent of the population, made up of both Tamils and Sinhalese.

Rajapakse is opposed to a Norwegian-brokered peace process that, in 2002, halted fighting between the Sri Lankan army and the militant Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) that is determined to carve out a separate Tamil homeland in the north and east of the island.

Following Rajapakse's speech to the convention, PNM leader and JVP spokesman Wimal Weerawansa said the presidential elections were a battle between patriotic forces and traitors. ''A line has been drawn between these two forces and there is no place for moderates''.

Rajapakse, a native from the deep south of the island, who sports the traditional white sarong and kurta (shirt) with a red shawl over his shoulders, is easily identified by the mainly rural, Sinhala Buddhist majority as one of their own.

In contrast, his main opponent, Ranil Wickremasinghe, is every bit the foreign-educated member of the anglicised ruling elite and committed to a Norwegian-brokered peace deal with Tamil militants, which could lead to a federal structure in Sri Lanka.

Refuting the 'racist' or 'chauvinistic' labels that non-governmental organisations (NGOs), local and foreign media give them, members of this 'patriotic' movement argue that they are trying to save the country from the forces of globalisation, that they say is being imposed from the outside.

The PNM is deeply opposed to the privatisation of nationally-owned assets, especially their sale to foreign interests, and have been campaigning against Christian fundamentalist evangelisation.

But most importantly, they are opposed to any interference in the national agenda by foreigners, including the peace process with Tamil militants, which, Rajapakse has vowed, will be overhauled and the plan for a federation dropped, if he is elected.

''Throughout the country, people are rising up to the injustices and if that is called Buddhist nationalismà I don't think that is correct,'' the venerable Athuraliya Ratana, a Buddhist monk and JHU member of parliament said in an interview with IPS. ''What is happening is that people have mobilised, using our language and cultural heritage, as the basis of the struggle''.

''Buddhism is not about prayers and worship, it is a way of life,'' argues Ratana. ''This way of life is disappearing under globalisation, which is robbing us of our livelihood and our social system. We need to protect our values and culture''.

A young, dynamic monk with a soft-spoken personality, he made a dramatic intervention at the International Tsunami Aid conference in Kandy in June, when he mounted the stage--uninvited--right after President Chandrika Kumaratunga's keynote address and made an impassionate plea to the international community to listen to the viewpoint of the Sinhalese people.

He described the donor community's demand that the government sign a joint mechanism with the LTTE, to disperse tsunami aid to the north-east of the country, as similar to asking the United States to sign a deal with al-Qaeda to assist in the reconstruction of Iraq.

''This world is shaped through competition and market economics based on people's external needs. We feel we need to change this mindset very consciously,'' he told IPS. ''We think Buddhist philosophy can stand up to the Western neo-liberal economics, Christian and Islamic fundamentalism, by its liberal composition, which encompasses all people''.

JHU had earlier accused Christian groups and evangelists of attempting to convert poor Buddhists to different sects of Christianity using charitable and social work as a pretext.

''These ultra fundamentalist groups offer money and other financial benefits to our poor people, and even the established Catholic Church is against (the evangelists), and have condemned these acts committed by these groups,'' the JHU said in a statement forwarded to the U.S. embassy.

Among other things, the statement emphasised that under the Sri Lankan constitution, Buddhism was to be given pride of place and steps were to be taken to protect and foster the religion.

Earlier this month, JHU launched the Sri Lanka Sanga Sabha (Sri Lanka Monks Assembly), to bring together monks from around the country and develop a grassroots development movement, which will use temples not only as spiritual centres but also for development activity.

The scheme includes setting up micro-credit institutions after the famed Grameen Bank model that would operate out of the temples and already the JHU has appealed to rich Buddhists in Colombo to donate generously for a corpus fund.

Proselytising by Christian evangelists and the activities of aid and welfare agencies among poor Buddhist communities first alarmed Buddhist monks and led to them entering parliament on JHU tickets. It is these monks who have tabled the anti-conversion bill in parliament.

Ordinary people and educated professionals are now steadily being attracted to the JHU rhetoric.

''Ninety percent of people living under poverty in this country are Buddhists and if you are to empower them, you need to give them education and values,'' argues P.N. Meegaswatta, an information technology (IT) consultant and former television executive.

''Sinhala Buddhist people feel that they have been neglected by successive governments. That is why they are agitating,'' he added.

Meegaswatta, a consultant to the Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka, which comes under Prime Minister Rajapakse's office, said that over 200 temples across the island will be given computers and linked to an e-library service under a scheme called ''Nanasala'', introduced this year by the agency.

He, however, disagrees with JHU's strategy of going to parliament to empower Sinhala Buddhists. ''We need to use our human resources to make Buddhists better Buddhists, by making them adopt better values and discipline, such as keeping away from alcohol, which is a big problem in this country,'' noted Meegaswatta. ''We can do this outside parliament through a civil movement''.

Jayadeva Uyangoda, head of the Political Science and Public Policy Department of Colombo University argues that Sinhala nationalists fear the ''Tamil Project'' (of a separate state) may succeed and that many Sinhalese intellectuals are capitalising on this fear.

Uyangoda believes that the LTTE may have indirectly contributed to this mobilisation by attacking symbols of Sinhala Buddhist civilisation, such as the Temple of the Tooth in Kandy and the sacred Bo-Tree in Anuradhapura, as well as killing Buddhist monks.

''The main political parties (Rajapakse's Sri Lanka Freedom Party and Wickremasinghe's United National Party) in the last decade have moved away from the conventional Sinhala Buddhist understanding of the ethnic issue as a terrorist problem, and now they advocate a negotiated settlement,'' said Uyangoda. ''But, with the JVP and JHU backing Rajapakse, he could go back to the pre-1994 view, if elected''.

''We don't see an ethnic problem here, we are part of a global chess game,'' argues Ratana. ''We need peace and we want to live in peace à but only if those Western imperial powers allow us to solve our own problems''.