One man's perspective on political monks

by H. L. Seneviratne

The Work of Kings

The new Buddhism in Sri Lanka

Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 1999, xiii+ 358 pp

This book deciphers the interventions of bhikkhus in the socio-political processes of Lanka over the last 70 years. In these activities the monks take on the work of kings, a role that the nationalist reformer Anagarika Dharmapala advocated during the colonial period as essential for national regeneration. Seneviratne identifies two streams of activity, the one typically associated with the monks of Vidyodaya (VYO) and the other with the monks of Vidyalankara (VL).

The VL line was governed by pragmatic economic activity at the grass- roots seeking village uplift and stressing a monkish lifestyle of minimal consumption and spiritual guidance to the laity.

In contrast the VYO position was 'ideological' and called for 'social service' in a way that catered to middle class desires and has eventually resulted in the secularisation of the monks. Both are said to have been inspired by the thinking of Dharmapala who was, in turn, influenced by the models provided by Christian organisations in the course of his sturdy opposition to Christian expansion. Such inspirations notwithstanding, the VYO and VL monks explicitly argued against each other in the 1940s.

Seneviratne maps an urban/rural distinction unto this divergence and his book suggests that the line of emphasis advocated by the VO monks has secured primacy from 1956 onwards, enabling many bhikkhus to indulge in personal aggrandisement and partisan political work under the cover of social service.

Above all, it has resulted in the degeneration of Buddhism towards an intolerant chauvinism that has shed the accommodative, pluralist forms of pre-colonial Lanka. As such, many monks are 'conquered by the ideologies of ethno-religious hegemony' (p. 347), namely that of Sinhala Buddhism.

This is both an intellectual and moral failure.

Seneviratne's book, then, can be applauded because it is a personal political intervention that directs sharp criticisms at the 'political monk' embodied in such a figure as Walpola Rahula *Thera*. This type of monk makes the world into a monastery (pp. 335-7).

Even though Seneviratne's approach is by no means Marxist, 'ideology' is used in the old-fashioned and narrow Marxist sense. In this usage 'ideology' is a weapon of disparagement, an accusation levelled at the VL-type of monk for straying from the exemplary role demanded of bhikkhus by lay Buddhists as well as orthodox texts.

Seneviratne's research is strengthened by the use of rich source material in the Sinhala language, including diaries, virtually all of it untapped before. His prose is lucid and unaffected by post-modernist pretensions, while his translations are exquisite.

The method of exposition is that of a detailed intellectual biography of the influential monks advocating these programmes. His heroes are the VYO monks exemplified by such individuals as Hendiyagala Silaratana and Kalukondayave Pannasekhara.

Clearly, then, there is a preference for the Gandhian pastoral and the exemplary Buddhist role model.

At one point, in detailing the programmatic statement of one of the pragmatic monks, Seneviratne describes it as 'not theory at all but a practical guide', one directed by the 'basic idea of self-help' and the picture of 'numerous, decentralised, self-contained and self-sufficient village communities' (pp. 126-7).

To those of us who have broader conceptions of ideology, there may be some difficulty in accepting this policy as non-ideological, but that does not make Seneviratne's data any less fascinating.

Seneviratne's work is also marked by parsimony. The theoretical engagement is mostly devoted to an engagement with Max Weber's misleading ideal typical characterisations of Buddhism. In this sense the book is an exploration of the relationship between religiosity and the mundane world.

In its broad ethnographic thrust it also elaborates Tambiah's contention that a fetishization of the Buddhist religion has occurred in Sri Lanka as a result of colonial and post-colonial processes.

Parsimony also characterises Seneviratne's engagement with the considerable literature on religion and politics in Lanka. In the absence of a bibliography, one has to rely on the citations to evaluate his interests.

These suggest that he found the works of such individuals as Phadnis, Kearney, Kapferer and K. M. de Silva, among others, to be of little value.

These leanings encourage lacunae, especially in the delineation of the historical backdrop of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

'Village uplift' had many advocates and agencies (often mushroom) and may not have been Dharmapala's brainchild (p.59).

There is a considerable literature that would call into question his passing dismissal of the constitutional reform movement of the late British period for 'its slavish acceptance of imperialism' (p.134).

Ironically, the latter aspersion was a conventional shibboleth popularised in the mid-twentieth century by individuals such as Rahula as a means of boosting the political aspirations of the Left parties.