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| Sunday, 14 March 2004 |
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The Bhikkus in politics - 2 : Two faces of sangha militancy Sunday Essay by Ajith Samaranayake In this column last week we argued that the present intervention by the bhikkhus gathered round the JHU was in contravention of the two traditional roles assigned so far to the monks, namely as advisors and counsellors to the rulers at apex level and as leaders of the community at the village level. What we clearly see at work today is an implosion within the Sangha community itself which has ruptured the traditional structure of the Sangha and thrust it into an entirely new role of leadership. It is in this sense that it will be useful to examine two previous such interventions by the bhikkhus namely the Vidyalankara Movement of 1947 and the intervention of monks led by such figures as the Ven. Migettuwatte Gunananda in the Buddhist revival movement of the early decades of the previous century. During each such intervention the Sangha was clearly impelled to go beyond its traditional role and was almost seized with a sense of historic collective destiny which made it thrust itself into its new role with vigour. If we are to take the second instance first, the catalyst for Ven. Gunananda's intervention was the campaign of proselytisation carried out by the Christian missionaries with the support of the colonial state which was swamping the traditional religion of the Sinhala Buddhists of the day. The missionaries and their colonial patrons were making use of the newly-arrived printing press to bring out Christian tracts which were being propagated among the Buddhist pubic. It was as a reaction to this propaganda campaign that Ven. Gunananda a charismatic bhikkhu of the day engaged Christian missionaries in verbal battle and by all accounts triumphed in the historic Panadura debate which gave the Buddhist public a much-needed shot in the arm. It was as a result of the reports of the Panadura debate that Col. Henry Steele Olcott the theosophist arrived in Sri Lanka, a development which led to wide-ranging changes in the organisation of lay Buddhist society with the establishment of Buddhist schools and forming bodies such as the YMBA. If this intervention by Ven. Gunananda was mounted from a nationalist and militant Buddhist perspective against the colonial state of the day the intervention of the Vidyalankara monks during the twilight of the colonial era was staged from the opposite pole of a radical social commitment. The country was about to receive her Independence and was preparing for her first General Election. It was at this time that the bhikkhus belonging to the Vidyalankara Pirivena at Kelaniya decided to support the LSSP, the country's first political party against the UNP which had been formed just in time for the elections by the more conservative political luminaries of the time who had belonged to the former Ceylon National Congress. The UNP politicians were angry and they and their rich patrons even threatened to cut off alms to the recalcitrant monks but the Vidyalankara Bhikkhus were adamant. They believed that they had a larger vision and duty towards the oppressed, backward and impoverished masses of a colonial country than the mere enjoyment of alms given by rich dayakas and that this mission made it necessary to lend their support to the political party of the day standing for the most radical change in society, namely the LSSP. This was the basic thesis spelt out in the work 'Bhikshuwakage Urumaya' written by the Ven. Walpola Rahula which was the virtual manifesto of this movement. Therefore, if we examine these three interventions of the Sangha in the affairs of the nation, namely the Panadura Debate, the Vidyalankara Movement and the JHU election campaign, we see similarities between the first and the last since they were located in an essentially nationalist and militant Buddhist matrix while the second had its genesies in radical socialist politics although it is doubtful if any of the Vidyalankara monks saw themselves as orthodox Marxists. To the first category of militant Buddhism also falls the island-wide campaign led by the Eksath Bhikkhu Peramuna to bring the MEP Government of Mr. Bandaranaike to power in 1956. Historically therefore, we have seen two strands of Sangha activism at work in society in post-Independence times. One has seen as the Sangha's role to protect and preserve the 'desa, resa, basa' (country, race and language) while the other sees the Sangha's role as inseparable from radical political movements for social change. Note that the cry of 'country, race and language' does not include religion within its fold but it is taken for granted that this will be subsumed in the trinity (note again the similarity between it and the other trinity Buddha Dhamma and Sangha) so close is the relationship between Buddhism and the Sinhala race and language. In recent times, however, the tradition of bhikkhu radicalism has been on the retreat while there has been a compensatory rise in the nationalist militant tradition among the Sangha. Two factors which affected this phenomenon perhaps are the assassination of Prime Minister Bandaranaike by a bhikkhu and the incorporation of the Left parties in coalition politics. Now with this second cycle coming full circle with the JVP coming into an alliance with the SLFP the void seems to have been filled on the Right by the JNU. However, as we noted in this column last week as well the approach of the JHU Bhikkhus and the Vidyalankara bhikkhus are diametrically opposed. While the second movement addressed itself to social, political, economic and cultural problems from a Left-leaning perspective and supported the LSSP, the JHU bhikkhus are directing themselves to problems from a national-religious perspective and representing a Sinhala-centric political party whose economic policies have been blurred at the expense of its intensely Sinhala-Buddhist character. Thus the schools of thought and the strands of the Buddhist tradition from which the JHU derives its legitimacy are also quite different to that of the radical bhikkhu movement of the 1940's and this is what we will address ourselves to next week. |
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