Sinhala Buddhist Nationalism & Women In Sri Lanka
By Rohini Hensman –
Rohini Hensman
Introduction
Myth and reality are intertwined in accounts of how Buddhism was brought to Sri Lanka. According to the Mahavamsa, a 6th century CE epic, the Buddha himself visited Lanka on three occasions, but this myth has effectively been demolished by scholars[1]. There is more evidence for the story that in the third century BCE, when Ashoka ruled India, he sent his son Mahinda, a Buddhist monk, on a mission to the Sinhalese king Devanampiya Tissa, who ruled from his capital Anuradhapura. Mahinda converted Devanampiya Tissa and his cabinet of ministers, at least one of whom became a monk following the ten precepts required for ordination. Subsequently the king set up a series of shrines and monasteries presided over by various orders of monks (bhikkhus) throughout his kingdom, and a section of the population became male and female lay devotees (upasakas and upasikas). Mahinda’s sister Sanghamitta, a Buddhist nun, also came over, bringing with her a branch of the Bodhi tree under which the Buddha attained enlightenment, which was planted in Anuradhapura. Subsequently, more saplings were planted throughout the country. She also set up an order of nuns (bhikkhunis). Mahinda and Sanghamitta are believed to have lived in Lanka until they died there[2].
The reality was more complicated. Buddhism had already come to South India and Sri Lanka before Devanampiya Tissa was converted, albeit without setting up any bhikkhu sangha (order). There is even evidence that Mahinda himself spent time in modern-day Tamil Nadu, where he preached the Dhamma, and then came to Anuradhapura via Jaffna. Thus Buddhism was as much a Tamil religion as a Sinhalese one, with some of the major contributions made to Buddhist thought and learning, including five epics, being by Tamil monks. There were strong links between Buddhists in South India and Buddhists in Lanka, and several viharas (temples or monasteries) in Tamil Nadu and the Jaffna peninsula. While Theravada Buddhism was dominant, some Mahayana Buddhists also came over from Tamil Nadu and established themselves in Lanka. Around the beginning of the 7th century CE, when Vaishnavism and Saivism regained prominence in Tamil Nadu and Buddhism and Jainism came under attack from Brahminism, it was mainly Theravada Buddhists who fled to Sri Lanka and settled there[2].
Monks, nuns, and the introduction of hierarchies
Sri Lanka was one of the few countries where a bhikkhuni sangha (order) was initiated, and presumably while Sanghamitta was alive, they would have enjoyed equality. The Buddha always affirmed that women could achieve parinirvana (a state of enlightenment and freedom from suffering and rebirth), but according to the Vinaya (rules for monastics), he was reluctant to ordain women, and agreed to do so only under pressure from his aunt and foster mother Mahapajapati, who wanted to be ordained as a nun, and his attendant Anand, on condition that nuns follow eight additional precepts (garudhammas). One of them specifies unquestioning subservience to their male counterparts regardless of age or experience, another requires them to go through two years of training before ordination, and yet another requires them to be ordained by the bhikkhuni sangha before they can receive final ordination from the bhikkhu sangha.
The bhikkhuni sangha in Sri Lanka died out around the 11th century, but lay female devotees (upasikas) continued to be active. In the early 20th century, Buddhist women founded a vibrant movement of dasa sil matavo who followed the ten precepts and played a role similar to that of nuns without being ordained. In the 1980s and 1990s, calls for the official ordination of these women were raised by Theravada Buddhists in the West. Since the ten nuns required for ordination were not present in Sri Lanka, Mahayana nuns from East Asia came over for fulfil the quorum, and ordinations took place in 1988 and 1996. Significantly, however, many dasa sil matavo preferred not to get ordained, thus escaping from subordination to the monks, many of whom in any case considered the ordinations invalid[4].
These developments point to a common problem that occurs when a religion becomes institutionalised, especially when the institution is headed by male clergy: a hierarchy develops between higher and lower clergy, clergy and lay people. Discrimination against women seems to follow almost inevitably, even if the religion originally held out hopes for emancipation and equality for women, resulting in some women rebelling against such discrimination in various ways. In fact, a scholarly investigation by Tathaaloka Bhikkhuni into the original Pali texts documents numerous anomalies and anachronisms in the story about the introduction of the garudhammas, concluding that the ‘story is, as it stands, in full, historically impossible.’ She finds that the Buddha himself ordained women, including Mahapajapati, without invoking the eight garudhammas, and directed bhikkhus to do the same for hundreds of women accompanying her as well as others. She thinks it is likely that ‘the eight garudhammas story may have been added into various Vinaya texts comparatively late.’[5] Another scholar agrees with her, citing, for example, the Buddha’s repeated insistence on having four categories of disciples – bhikkhus, bhikkhunis, upasakas and upasikas – which contradicts the notion that he was reluctant to ordain women[6].
Buddhism and state power
The Buddha had made it clear that Buddhist monks should have nothing to do with state power, although alms given by kings could be used by clergy for welfare purposes, and his own life followed this prescription. By contrast, the close relationship between the monarch and the sangha in Lanka involved gifts that enriched the bhikkhus as well as drawing them into politics. Linking Buddhism to the state encouraged the growth of bhikkhu orders which were more interested in political power, land and wealth than in propagating the Buddha’s teachings. In the Kandyan kingdom, for example, most Maha Sangha chiefs (Nayaka bhikkhus) came from landed families and continued to own land and engage in economic activities exploiting ordinary villagers, who nonetheless looked up to them as religious leaders. Since their continuing relationship with the ruler was important for them as well as the ruler, a symbiotic relationship developed whereby each influenced the other[7].
As we saw earlier, linking Buddhism to Sinhala nationalism is historically wrong, and this is admitted implicitly in the founding myth of Sinhala-Buddhist Sri Lanka in the Mahavamsa. Prince Vijaya, grandson of a lion (sinha), is banished from his parents’ kingdom in India for bad conduct, along with a retinue of 700 men, and lands in Lanka, which is inhabited by the indigenous yaksas and yaksis who are hunter-gatherers (now called Veddas). He marries a yaksi, Kuveni, and has two children by her, but then slaughters many indigenous people, abandons Kuveni and his two children by her, and marries a Tamil princess from South India, who brings with her women for Vijaya’s ministers and thousands of craftsmen and their families. The supreme irony of this founding myth is that it describes considerable ethno-religious diversity and harmony, including intermarriage: the very opposite of ‘racial purity’. An earlier chronicle, the Dipavamsa of the 4th century CE, had described the military campaign of Buddhist King Duttagamini (161–137 BCE) to unify the island by conquering all the other kingdoms in it including that of Tamil King Elara. In the Dipavamsa, Elara is portrayed as a just king, and only 13 stanzas are about Duttagamini, whereas over half the Mahavamsa is devoted to him. Notably, the latter recounts that when he grieves for the thousands of Tamils killed in battle, Buddhist monks console him that only one-and-a-half real persons were killed, one who embraced the full Dharma and another who followed five precepts: an early example of anti-Tamil racism and contradiction of the Buddha’s teaching on the equality of all human beings[8].
It might be acceptable for a monarch to promote one religion over all others, but in a democracy, the state is supposed to treat all citizens equally regardless of their religion, ethnicity or any other characteristic. This was not how Buddhist revivalist Anagarika Dharmapala (1864–1933) saw Sri Lanka, then called Ceylon. He campaigned vigorously against the British colonial state, but the ideal he wished to substitute for it was an exclusively Sinhala-Buddhist state. He wrote: ‘This bright, beautiful island was made into a Paradise by the Aryan-Sinhalese before its destruction was brought about by the barbaric vandals. Its people did not know irreligion … Christianity and polytheism [i.e. Hinduism] are responsible for the vulgar practices of killing animals, stealing, licentiousness, lying and drunkenness …’[9] Kumari Jayawardena explains that the 19th-century European ideology characterising ‘Aryans’ as a superior race was ‘eagerly picked up by the Buddhist revivalists in Sri Lanka who… adopted a doctrine of racial superiority, glorified an idyllic past and associated the Sinhala people with the chosen “Aryan race,” and the chosen Buddhist faith.’[10]
Again, although Muslims (‘Moors’) had already been ‘othered’ by some Sinhalese from around the 14th or 15th centuries, the use of antisemitic language was new when Dharmapala wrote in 1915, ‘The Muhammedans, an alien people, who in the early part of the 19th century were common traders, by Shylockian methods became prosperous like the Jews. The Sinhalese, sons of the soil, whose ancestors for 2358 years had shed rivers of blood to keep the country free from alien invaders…are in the eyes of the British only vagabonds…’ [11]Shamara Wettimuny points out that ‘Elsewhere, Dharmapala used antisemitic language in his scathing attacks on Christianity: he called Jesus a ‘half-insane Jew’, and Christianity ‘Semitic Monotheism’. Crucially, in his landscape view of world religions, the ancestry of the three Abrahamic religions is emphasized.’[12]
Although Dharmapala disparaged the culture and religion of the British colonisers and propagated the myth of a glorious Sinhala-Buddhist past, he incorporated many elements of the culture he rejected, including rules of middle-class respectability, for example prescriptions of cleanliness. He adapted these to Buddhist tradition, publishing a pamphlet entitled Gihi Vinaya or The Daily Code for the Laity in 1898, encompassing 200 rules under 22 subjects including food, behaviour at temples and in front of clergy, how servants and children should behave, and so on. No less than 30 applied to women, prescribing how they should wear sarees and dress modestly, keep their households, personal belongings and bodies clean, avoid indolence, avoid combing their hair or picking lice in public, beautify their gardens with flowering plants, and so on[13]. They were supposed to be devoted to their husbands and children, and although schooling – including in English – was pursued by Sinhalese Buddhist girls, partly because it was seen as helping them to be better mothers, wives and housewives, they were discouraged from pursuing further education. As late as the 1950s, when my mother was teaching English in a prestigious missionary-founded school, she had difficulty persuading the parents of even some of her brightest pupils to allow them to go to university.
Post-Independence Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism[14]
In pursuit of Dharmapala’s exclusive Sinhala-Buddhist paradise – which of course had never existed – post-Independence Sinhalese politicians enacted laws and implemented policies that privileged their own community and discriminated against minorities. The constitution inherited from the British at Independence in 1948 ruled out discrimination against any community and the first government of the United National Party (UNP) claimed to be democratic and secular, yet it lost no time in disenfranchising Tamils of recent Indian origin, mostly plantation workers, and depriving them of their citizenship. The main opposition, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), was overtly communal, and came to power on the promise to make Sinhala the only official language, enacting legislation to this effect – the so-called Sinhala Only Bill – in 1956. The Sinhala-Only policy had far-reaching consequences, not only discriminating against Tamils but also creating an obstacle to communication between communities which had lived together for millennia. Buddhist monks were central to the campaign and to the subsequent violence against non-violent Tamil protesters. The violence peaked in May 1958, with anti-Tamil pogroms in many parts of the country and especially Colombo.
SWRD Bandaranaike, leader of the SLFP, had been at the forefront of the campaign, but perhaps felt the violence had gone too far. In August he introduced the Tamil Language (Special Provisions) Act allowing for the reasonable use of Tamil. The very same Buddhist monks and others who had supported him to the hilt in the campaign for the Official Language Act now turned against him, and in 1959 organised his assassination. The fact that the pogroms and the assassination went against the very first precept that was supposed to govern the Sangha – the prohibition of killing – did not seem to matter to these monks.
Both the main parties, the UNP and SLFP, were now competing to be seen as more committed to a Sinhala Buddhist state. The main left-wing parties – the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) and Communist Party of Ceylon (CPC, later to become the Communist Party of Sri Lanka) had opposed legislation and policies privileging Sinhalese Buddhists and discriminating against other communities. However, in the 1960s they formed an alliance with the SLFP, and were thus jointly responsible for the Constitution of 1972, which provided a special status to the Sinhala language and Buddhist religion. A separate ministry to promote Buddhism was established. Sadly, a far-left party, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), which criticised the main left parties for joining hands with what they characterised as the bourgeois SLFP, was extremely authoritarian and also imbued with Sinhala nationalism. When they staged an uprising, the supposedly Buddhist SLFP had no qualms about crushing them militarily, also putting many of them in jail.
After the UNP came back to power in 1977, the new constitution of 1978 concentrated power in the hands of the Executive President, JR Jayewardene. Deadly violence was unleashed against Tamils, culminating in the horrific anti-Tamil pogroms of 1983 and setting off the civil war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). At the same time, the democratic rights of ordinary Sinhalese too were violated egregiously. Freedom of expression was crushed, trade unionists and worker activists assaulted, dismissed and killed, elections and referendums were rigged. Appointments to supposedly independent institutions, including the Election Commission and Supreme Court, were taken over by the President. Democracy and the rule of law were demolished. Many people think that ‘democracy’ means elections, and the ‘rule of law’ means that any laws in force are followed, but this is not correct. The rule of law means that everyone is equal before the law and has equal protection of the law, and without the rule of law, there is no democracy. Even in Nazi Germany there were elections and referendums, and there were laws that allowed the political opposition and sections of the population to be persecuted and ultimately exterminated. But that was fascism, not democracy.
The fighting in the North and East halted temporarily after Jayewardene signed an accord with Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in July 1987 granting Tamil the status of an official language and providing for limited devolution of power to the provinces. Fighting shifted to the rest of the country as the JVP launched its second insurrection. The state, controlled by the UNP, responded with indiscriminate slaughter of Sinhalese youth. This is what resulted in the gruesome atrocities and massive death toll (estimated at 40,000-60,000) during the second JVP insurgency, which ended in November 1989. On the pretext of fighting the JVP, government death squads killed unarmed critics, political rivals and even dissidents within the UNP, and this repression went on after the JVP was defeated. In 1990, fighting between the state and the LTTE broke out again.
Chandrika Kumaratunga was elected president in 1994 on the promise of ending the war by satisfying the demand for the rights of Tamils and abolishing the Executive Presidency. Democratic rights were mostly restored in the parts of the country under government control, but the LTTE sabotaged her efforts to end the war by assassinating two Tamil politicians engaged in crafting a constitution that would devolve significant authority to the North and East and trying to assassinate her too. Nor did she succeed in abolishing the Executive Presidency. But the 17th Amendment to the constitution was passed, taking away the power of the president to unilaterally appoint people to institutions that ought to be independent, like the Election Commission and Supreme Court.
In 2005, Kumaratunga was succeeded as president by Mahinda Rajapaksa, who was then in the SLFP. Human rights violations against Tamils, which had declined under Kumaratunga, increased sharply. In the South, freedom of expression came under severe attack, and death squads targeting critics of the government resurfaced. Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who was Defence Secretary at that time, not only controlled the armed forces and multiple intelligence agencies, but also higher education and urban development. As the war moved towards its terrible end in 2009, the UN estimates that around 40,000 civilians were killed in the last few months alone, partly because the LTTE used them as human shields but also because the Defence Secretary directed government forces to bomb and shell civilian targets, including hospitals and safe zones. Buddhist monks instigated and led violent attacks on Muslims and Christians, with the collusion of the state.
Buddhist women in the Sinhala Buddhist state
The only issue on which Buddhist women campaigned as Buddhist women during this period was the drive for ordination of bhikkhunis. Unsurprisingly, they were not supported by many chief monks (Maha Nayakas), nor by the government Ministry of Buddhist Affairs controlled by them. During these years, a National Identity Card (NIC) was introduced and became compulsory for every official purpose, from taking exams to applying for a job, from opening a bank account to getting a passport. Unlike male bhikkhus, female bhikkhunis had great difficulty getting identity cards, and sometimes had them taken away even after obtaining them, leaving them in limbo, without the basic rights of citizens[15]. This struggle also draws attention to another problem: the ordination of bhikkhus and bhikkhunis as novices at a very young age, sometimes as young as 6 years old. This is surely much too young for a child to decide on a life in a religious order or understand complex issues of doctrine. At best, it contributes to an authoritarian culture where chief priests must be obeyed without question and independent and critical thinking and action are suppressed. At worst, it leads to psychological, physical and sexual abuse that leaves deep and often lifelong scars on these unfortunate victims[16]. Sinhalese women, mostly Buddhist, also organised themselves as the Mothers’ Front during the gruesome counter-insurgency against the JVP, demanding to know what had happened to their children who had disappeared.
While some Buddhists, including women, went along with the violent agenda of Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism, many did not, and resisted in multiple ways. As individuals, they saved innumerable lives during pogroms by providing shelter to Tamils and helping them to escape from violent mobs. One of my most vivid childhood memories is of our Sinhalese neighbour Menike, who was like a member of our family, coming over in great distress, insisting that we leave our home at once and go somewhere safe because a bloodthirsty mob was heading our way. At around the same time my mother’s former student Yasmine, who had become a family friend, also Sinhalese, came over in a car, offering to shelter us at her parents’ place. My father was Tamil, we were living in an overwhelmingly Sinhalese neighbourhood, and it was May 1958. It was our Sinhalese neighbours who helped us to escape, and Menike who organised the operation.
Thirty years later, when I was doing research on Sri Lankan refugees and internally displaced people, I came across numerous similar stories in which Tamils had been saved by Sinhalese friends, neighbours, colleagues, or even total strangers, and women often played a major role. I have reported these incidents in testimonies from Tamil refugees in my book Journey Without a Destination: Is there a solution for Tamil refugees? and fictionalised some of them in my novel Playing Lions and Tigers. These actions were not without risk, because the mobs threatened anyone who sheltered Tamils, but the Buddhist outlook they had internalised told them that they had to save lives to the best of their ability.
Other incidents illustrate the attitudes among ordinary working-class and rural poor Sinhalese women. When I was conducting a workshop for garment workers, all of whom were young Sinhalese women, a workshop for young Tamil women displaced from the North by the war was going on in the same conference centre, and during mealtimes, the Sinhalese women went over to talk to the Tamil women, finding bilingual interpreters to help them to communicate. There was curiosity as well as sympathy for women suffering a different form of oppression from what they themselves suffered. Sinhalese widows of civilian victims of the counter-insurgency against the JVP learned from their own experience that they had a great deal in common with their Tamil brothers and sisters. ‘If the army can do this to us, what must they have been doing to Tamils?’ they asked. Such attempts to break through the solid wall of disinformation propagated by the state and expressions of solidarity are what led to the victory of Chandrika Kumaratunga in the presidential election of 1994, when she campaigned on a platform of restoring the rights of Tamils.
The other way in which Sinhalese Buddhist women fought for women’s rights as well as for democracy and minority rights was as members of groups and organisations that included women, or both women and men, from other communities. Their participation in common efforts to fight against the Sinhala-Buddhist state was in itself a form of resistance to the divide-and-rule policy of that state. Of course, groups like the Mothers and Daughters of Lanka didn’t include the majority of women, but they were able to influence opinion and counteract the censorship and relentless propaganda of the state.
Thus, the introduction of Buddhism in Sri Lanka has had contradictory results for women. On one side, the Buddha’s teachings of equality, non-violence and compassion as well as the encouragement of literacy and education have benefited women, who traditionally suffered less oppression than women in India. On the other side, monks linked with the state have promoted the very opposite values in the name of Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism. This has had a negative effect not just on bhikkhunis but on women in general, resulting in violence, war and mass murder not only of Tamils by Sinhalese but also of Sinhalese by Sinhalese. Relatively few women were involved in the actual fighting, but all were affected in less obvious ways. Countless years of love and care lavished on their children were destroyed when those children were killed, while the large number of survivors with disabilities created an even heavier burden of care combined with the necessity of earning a livelihood. Militarisation and war encouraged a violent machismo which had not been common before, resulting in increased domestic violence, sexual harassment and sexual assault.
Conclusion
The experience of Buddhism in Sri Lanka confirms the correctness of the Marxist insistence on the separation of state and religion, showing how putting state power in the hands of a religious community – indeed any ethnic group – has negative consequences for minorities, women and democracy. The only involvement of the state with religion should be to ensure that all individuals should have equal rights regardless of their religion or lack of it. It doesn’t mean that the state should treat all religions equally, because as this example shows, and the same can be shown for all major religions, there can be multiple interpretations of a religion. The right to freedom of conscience and religion must include the right to follow your own religion in your own way. On every issue – workers’ rights, capitalism, gender justice, ethno-religious minorities, LGBT+ rights, welfare, immigration, and so on and so forth – there could be opposite positions taken by people who see themselves as following the same religion and, conversely, the same position taken by people who follow different religions or none. It is not the job of state institutions to decide which interpretation is correct, only to ensure that no interpretation infringes on the fundamental rights of others.
It is worth noting here that Tamil nationalism has added to the problems created by Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism rather than helping to resolve them. It is true that the LTTE’s nationalism was largely secular, yet its totalitarianism and insistence on a mono-ethnic state made its temporary de facto rule in parts of the island as oppressive for minorities and Tamil dissidents as the Sinhala-Buddhist state. There is also Tamil-Hindu nationalism, exemplified by C.V. Wigneswaran’s ‘history’ of the island, which is as mythological as its Sinhala-Buddhist counterpart or perhaps even more so. At least the Mahavamsa admits the existence of the indigenous hunter-gatherers of Sri Lanka who practised ancestor-worship and animism, but according to Wigneswaran ‘The original inhabitants of this country were Saivite Tamils.’ His contemptuous comment that ‘Muslims and Upcountry Tamils have no such common historical background to stand on’ suggests a hierarchy, probably caste-based, even among Tamil-speaking peoples[17]. By endorsing ethno-religious nationalism, such a position ends up reinforcing Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism.
Postscript
Marx writes that ‘Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions.’[18] He may well be right that for many believers, religion is a comforting illusion, a distraction from trying to make the world a better place; shared rituals certainly provide a much-needed sense of belonging.
What is wrong with this view, however, is that it conceives of ‘religion’ as a monolith about which sweeping generalisations can be made, leaving out the enormous differences within every major religion. If we take ‘fundamentalism’ to mean adherence not to the original fundamentals of a faith tradition but to an authoritarian, patriarchal and misogynistic version of it, and link religious fundamentalism to state power, then ‘religion’ can mean horrific violations of human rights, including mass murder. Conversely, a different version of the same faith tradition can mean a spiritual quest for universal love and freedom from oppression, and action to try and realise these on earth. Believers in these progressive versions of various faiths can make, and have made, substantial contributions to emancipatory movements. Marxists should not merely tolerate them but work with them.
Notes
[1] Ranjan Gooneratne, ‘Did the Buddha visit Sri Lanka?’ Sunday Times, 13 December 2009. https://www.sundaytimes.lk/091213/Plus/plus_12.html
[2] ‘Buddhism in Sri Lanka,’ Facts and Details. https://factsanddetails.com/south-asia/Srilanka/
[3] History_Srilanka/entry-7933.htmlP.K. Balachandran, ‘In Sri Lanka, the Tamil link with Buddhism is brushed, under the carpet,’ The Citizen, 8 August 2021. https://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/en/NewsDetail/index/6/20730/In-Sri-Lanka-the-Tamil-Link-with-Buddhism-is-Brushed-Under-the-Carpet; J.L. Devananda, ‘The Tamil Buddhists of the past and the future,’ Ilankai Tamil Sangam, October 2010. https://sangam.org/2010/12/Tamil_Buddhists.php?uid=4177
‘[4] The Ordination of Nuns in Sri Lanka,’ (a case study), Harvard Divinity School Faculty of Religion and Public Life. https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/religion-context/case-studies/gender/ordination-nuns-sri-lanka
[5] Tathaaloka Bhikkhuni, ‘Non-historicity of the Eight Garudhammas,’ 2009. https://alokavihara.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/ayyatathaaloka-8garudhammas-2009.pdf
[6] Analayo Bhikkhu, ‘Gender discrimination and the Pali Canon: A letter to Ayya Tathaaloka from Ven. Analayo Bhikkhu,’ Alliance for Bhikkhunis, December 2009. https://bhikkhuni.net/gender-discrimination-and-the-pali-canon-a-letter-to-ayya-tathaaloka-from-ven-anaalayo-bhikkhu/
[7] Shantha Gamlath, ‘Social Movements, Power Politics and Politicization of Buddhist Priests in Sri Lanka,’ IOSR Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 21 (3), March 2016,18–30. https://www.academia.edu/25690508/Social_Movements_Power_Politics_and_Politicization_of_Buddhist_Priestsin_Sri_Lanka?uc-g-sw=49301298
[8] N.F. Gier, ‘Buddhist nationalism and religious violence in Sri Lanka,’ https://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/ngier/slrv.htm#_edn1
[9] Anagarika Dharmapala, Return to Righteousness: A Collection of Speeches, Essays and Letters of the Anagarika Dharmapala, ed. Ananda Guruge (Colombo: Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs, 1965) p.482.
[10] Kumari Jayawardena, Labour, Feminism & Ethnicity in Sri Lanka, (Colombo: Sailfish,2017) pp.279–280.
[11] Anagarika Dharmapala, Return to Righteousness: A Collection of Speeches, Essays and Letters of the Anagarika Dharmapala, ed. Ananda Guruge (Colombo: Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs, 1965) p.540.Shamara Wettimuny, ‘“The Jews of Ceylon”: Antisemitism, prejudice, and the Moors of
[12] Ceylon,’ Modern Asian Studies, 2023,1–25. p.6.
[13] Neloufer de Mel, Women and the Nation’s Narrative. Gender and Nationalism in Twentieth Century Sri Lanka, (Colombo: Social Scientists Association, 2001) pp.105–106.
[14] This section mostly draws on Rohini Hensman, ‘Political dimensions of the crisis in Sri Lanka,’ New Politics, 7 June 2022. https://newpol.org/political-dimensions-of-the-crisis-in-sri-lanka/
[15] Saroj Pathirana, ‘Sri Lanka’s Bhikkuni nuns and their fight for identity papers,’ BBC News, 22 December 2019. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-49979978
[16] Sahan Wiratunga, ‘Betrayal of trust: Child abuse by Buddhist monks,’ Groundviews, 5 September 2023. https://groundviews.org/2023/05/09/betrayal-of-trust-child-abuse-by-buddhist-monks/
[17] C.V. Wigneswaran, ‘How do you expect Tamils to march together with other communities?’ Colombo Telegraph, 14 December 2019. https://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/how-do-you-expect-tamils-to-march-together-with-other-communities/
[18] Karl Marx, ‘A contribution to the critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right,’ 1844. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm
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