Sri Lanka’s clash of faiths
The Easter Day bombings in Sri Lanka called to mind the bloodshed of the recent civil war. But, says ALAN STRATHERN, the island has long been home to religious tensions
The churches Day to the anyone bombings country, were in not with Sri they in only Lanka connections hotels were devastating on and also Easter to confusing. violence, and some in 500 The which injured, scale more and the than ruthlessness high 250 levels were of of killed the organisation bombers and involved, the targeting the use of hotels, of suicide all suggested Islamist violence. But why then were churches – in Colombo, Negombo and Batticaloa – among the targets? Historically, there has been little tension between the Muslims (at 10 per cent of the population) and Christians recorded incident (at about of 7 violence per cent): was the in last the 1890s.
If Muslims had reason to feel aggrieved, it would usually have been with hard-line elements among the Buddhist majority (70 per cent of the population), who had started to harass Muslims in recent years. Since 2013, some monks attacks have on Muslim even been businesses involved and in spreading encouraging scurrilous mob rumours about them. Little justice has been forthcoming.
The irony of the attacks is already painfully apparent, for while Sri Lanka did not in fact have any problem with Islamist violence, it was as if some were doing their best to create one. It is now clear that the bombers in the Easter Sunday atrocity were just the tip of an extensive local network, and it is likely that such grievances were key to their radicalisation. Yet somehow they chose to target Christian churches, their vision and passion now seemingly inspired by the imperatives of a global jihad.
Some may be surprised that Buddhists, including monks, were involved in these acts of harassment. But they have naturally been influenced by global news outlets repeatedly broadcasting images of Islamist violence. They may also regard such vast proselytising monotheistic faiths as inherently threatening – what looks like pious missionary work to Christians or Muslims, of course, can look like an existential
threat to Buddhists. In fact, similar feelings have also found expression in anti-Christian rumours and agitations of late. And in recent years, parts of the Muslim population had been moving towards a stricter interpretation of the faith as Wahhabi or Salafi currents emanated from the Arab Middle East. This would, no doubt, have also affected community relations.
But anti-Muslim agitation may also be considered as the by-product of an ethnic-nationalist-religious sentiment that was centuries in the making and which intensified during the civil war of 1983–2009. This was a deadly conflict that sucked in young men and women to fight a conventional war in the north and east of the island while the whole country was subject to terror campaigns by the LTTE (the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam), who were pioneering the use of the suicide bomb.
Fighting for a homeland
It is important to note that the Sri Lankan civil war was primarily an ethnic conflict rather than a religious one and that Muslims were largely bystanders. The war pitted the Tigers fighting for a Tamil homeland in the far north and east of the country against a state dominated by the Sinhalese. While the majority of Tamils are Hindu, the Tigers also included prominent Catholics in their ranks and espoused a broadly secular policy. Yet religious feelings did come to shape the conflict in important ways. Above all, the Sinhalese identity had long been associated with Buddhism, as both sides understood. It is for this reason, for example, that in 1998 the LTTE suicide bomb
The Sri Lankan civil war was primarily CP GVJPKE EQPʚKEV Muslims were largely bystanders in the war
ers targeted one of the most sacred sites for Buddhists in Sri Lanka, the Temple of the Tooth in Kandy, believed to contain a tooth from the Buddha.
When the war finally ended in 2009, following a ruthless final push to destroy the Tigers that led to the deaths of thousands of civilians and combatants, it was as if fired-up Sinhalese nationalism needed to find new targets. Now the Tamil rebels were neutered, attention seemed to shift to religious minorities.
This defensiveness about Buddhism in fact reaches back far into the past. Buddhism had arrived on the island in the third century BC following a mission from the Mauryan emperor Ashoka in India. The religion became a defining feature of the civilisation that was developing in the dry
zone of the island centred on the city of Anuradhapura. (The large numbers of tourists who visit it each year are essentially walking around the remains of huge monastic complexes and temples.) Around the fifth century AD, Sinhalese monks produced a chronicle, the Mahavamsa, which tells the story of the island and its kings from the perspective of Buddhism. The Buddha is said to have thrice cleared the land of demons in preparation for the arrival of the prince, Vijaya, who would go on to found Sinhalese society. In this vision then, the island is destined to be the sacred land in which the truth of the dhamma (Buddha’s teachings) will be protected and promulgated. At various times since, this has helped shape the sense among Sinhalese Buddhists that the island belonged to them by right,
while other peoples were there on sufferance.
Indeed, Sri Lanka did go on to play an important role in the expansion of Buddhism – at least of the Theravada variety that spread to the region of modern-day Burma, Thailand and Cambodia. This was based on the teachings set down by monks on the island using the ancient scriptural language of Pali, among the oldest Buddhist scriptures worldwide. Still, we should not overstate the importance of religious boundaries for most of Sri Lanka’s history. Much religious practice was remarkably cosmopolitan and pluralist, subject to waves of influence coming from the much larger Hindu societies of the Indian subcontinent. Meanwhile, a Tamil kingdom developed in Jaffna, in the island’s north. From the ninth century, Muslims came to play an increasingly important part in Indian Ocean commerce. Sri Lanka, situated right in the middle of this great trading zone, naturally came to acquire small communities of Muslim merchants, and their long-settled descendants eventually became known as ‘Moors’. By and large peaceful co-existence was the order of the day.
In 1506, the first Europeans washed up on Sri Lanka’s shores in the shape of the Portuguese. Intent on muscling-in on the trade in cinnamon, the island’s most desired spice, they made some of the kings of the island vassals. Then, in the 1590s, they launched a campaign of conquest, taking the lowland regions of the island. This was one of the earliest examples of European colonialism in Asia, and such was the missionary zeal of the Portuguese that their presence could not but politicise religious identity. Particularly receptive to their message were groups living along the coast involved
Such was the missionary zeal of the Portuguese that their presence could not but politicise religious identity
in fishing and trade. Already in 1544, for example, the people of the small island of Mannar in the north-west converted to Catholicism, inspired by the work of the missionary Francis Xavier nearby, perhaps in order to gain Portuguese protection. The Tamil king Sankili massacred 600 of them shortly afterwards. (It is possible that we have now found their resting place: a mass grave discovered in Mannar was suspected of being a recent war crime until a few months ago when the bones were radiocarbon-dated to different dates ranging from the 15th to 17th centuries. Once archaeological excavations are complete, we may find ourselves looking at the first act of mass violence against Christians in Sri Lanka.)
The Dutch fought with the Portuguese for control of the lowlands, which they achieved by 1658. Then, in the early 1800s, the British conquered the entire island and placed it under crown rule. Christian missionaries arrived and a smattering of inhabitants converted to Anglicanism. But these efforts stimulated a fightback in the form of a vigorous reassertion of Buddhism, and in the 20th century, this Buddhist revival became bound up with Sinhalese opposition to colonial rule.
Once independence was granted in 1948, it was rather inevitable that democratic politicians would seek to woo the majority Sinhalese Buddhist vote by pursuing policies that spoke to their identity. These were among the conditions that led to the outbreak of civil war in 1983. But after this long war ended in 2009, the country had finally got used to peace. The hotels were booming as tourists flooded in to sample the island’s many charms, and then – a sudden return to violence, of a most dreadful and unexpected kind.