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| Sunday, 21 March 2004 |
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The Bhikkhus in Politics - 3 : The Emergence of the 'Dharmishta Samajaya' SUNDAY ESSAY by AJITH SAMARANAYAKE At the beginning of this series of essays we argued that the present phenomenon of the JHU bhikkhus in politics was a new feature since it can be contended with some justification that it dates from 1977 when the open market economy was installed and liberalised trade introduced as part of the then Jayewardene Government's measures to incorporate Sri Lanka into the global capitalist economy. As a result of these measures the Sri Lankan social landscape was transformed in several significant ways. There was a free flow of every imaginable kind of consumer good at a price and a taste for these goods was induced among all classes of people by clever advertising on the newly-introduced television. The state sector in transport was overshadowed and stifled by a newly burgeoned private bus transport system employing a vast army of drivers conductors and runners. The flow of workers to the Middle East increased several fold the bulk of them being housemaids which meant that lower - middle and working class families would be deprived of their wives and mothers with far-reaching consequences particularly to the children. The newly introduced instant lotteries caught on immediately and large numbers of urban children of school-going age found employment as lottery sellers thus accelerating the rate of dropping out from schools. All this meant that even teenage children were finding employment although of a questionable nature and that there was a relative increase in the purchasing power of the middle and lower-middle classes although once again this money was being siphoned off into buying non-essential goodies which were being hawked on television. These economic measures combined with the installation of the Executive Presidency and the extension of President Jayewardene's rule as a result of the Referendum of 1982 to substantially circumscribe the national, political and intellectual debate. A set of booklets published by the organisation named 'Pevidi Handa' critical of the Government had been seized and when the head of the organisation Ven. Daramitipola Ratanasara went to courts the court found that the Police had been guilty of violating the bhikku's fundamental rights. The respected elder academic Ediriweera Sarachchandra who wrote a book titled 'Dharmishta Samajaya' criticising the prevailing order was assaulted when he spoke at the ACBC headquarters. All this was evidence that the Sangha was coalescing with influential sections of the laity to attack a socio-economic system which they saw as undermining the central tenets of the traditional social order. Then came July 1983 when following the LTTE offensive on a convoy carrying an officer and 12 soldiers in Jaffna there was a widespread attack on Tamil people in the rest of the country where large numbers were killed or maimed, burnt to death and raped and Tamil property and industry was destroyed and their houses and shops looted. What was most galling to the Sinhalese was that although only a small number was involved in these attacks and that too widely believed to have been instigated by sections of the administration, the reputation of the majority Sinhala Buddhists lay in ruins. There was a wave of tremendous sympathy for the Tamil people who were compelled to flee abroad where sympathetic western liberal governments gave them refuge and asylum from what was seen as the Sinhala terror. What was perhaps even more galling to thinking Buddhists was that a whole hillock of tracts, papers and essays was springing up offering elaborate ideological explanations for the Sinhala-Tamil antipathy. These articles written both by Sri Lankan and foreign scholars traced this schism to what was called the messianic outlook of the Sinhala Buddhists said to be rooted in the Mahavansa which had made successive Sinhala Governments after Independence embrace a majoritarian outlook which had made them discriminate against the Tamils driving the Tamils to ultimately ask for a separate state. It was also argued that although the Sinhalese were in a majority in Sri Lanka they suffered from a minority complex vis-a vis the large numbers of Tamils in the south of India and were therefore suffering from a sense of insecurity. These two sets of developments brought in their train their own consequences. The rampant spread of the open market economy and the consumerist lifestyle which this brought in its wake had a far-reaching impact on manners and morals. Most importantly for the Maha Sangha this led to a weakening of the traditional hold which the Sangha had on society as its leaders, guides and moral arbiters. There was an increase is organised crime and a dramatic increase in the incidence of drugs and drug-trafficking. Drugs became an organised business receiving political patronage. There was also a spectacular spread of the political underworld and an enormous injection of lumpen elements into the political structure. Criminal elements gained in respectability as they became the security arm of powerful politicians. The spread of popular culture and television was undermining traditional authority figures ranging from school teachers to the village monk. On top of all these disturbing changes came the explosion of the ethnic problem which was branding the Sinhalese as barbarians in the eyes of the world. To the Maha Sangha who had always cast itself as the guardians of the Sinhala race and of Buddhism all this was deeply unsettling. The ethnic problem placed the Sangha in particular on the horns of an acute dilema. The bhikkus were the followers and apostles of a faith which upheld compassion or 'maitriya' to all living beings but in the face of the increasingly violent separatist campaign by the LTTE the Sangha was, called upon to reconcile this faith with their historic perception of themselves as the guardians of the Sinhala race and Buddhism. Thus they were driven to take up the ambivalent position of supporting the Sri Lanka State's campaign of suppressing the LTTE and taking up an increasingly militant even militaristic posture on the issue. All these features have combined to produce the present phenomenon of the JHU. One other feature is worthy of note, namely the fact that this has taken on the complexion of a revolt of bhikkus belonging to those sects outside the Siam Nikaya against the hierarchical leadership of the Mahanayakes of the Malwatte and Asgiriya chapters of the Siam Nikaya who form the apex of the Sangha hierarchy. While the Siam Nikaya monks have been largely content to be cocooned in the traditional monastic ways the Amarapura Nikaya in particular from which the bulk of the dissidents are drawn has been more exposed to urban ways and it is no accident that the leaders of the JHU are all bhikkus who have made a name for themselves as preachers and who have been popularised by the relatively new medium of television and show some adeptness at handling this medium. Given the fact that the sects are demarcated on caste lines (quite contrary to anything one finds in the Buddha's teachings) this sudden explosion of the JHU bhikkus on the political landscape can be seen as the expression of a long fermenting revolt by those layers of the Sangha excluded from the magic circle to stake a claim for leadership against the Sangha establishment which has been astonishingly impervious to the multiple changes or our time a theme which we shall develop next week. |
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