"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
