BUDDHIST NATIONALISM AND RELIGIOUS VIOLENCE IN SRI LANKA

While this Sangha. . . has democracy, it has neither [a] special country nor nation nor caste.  To such a society which has no country, nation, or caste, every human being is the same. . . . Those who fight against the Tamils are not Buddhists.

—Naravila Dhammaratana[1]

Introduction

            Recently the Sri Lankan people have witnessed more religious violence than ever before.  It has spread from the conflict with the Tamil Tigers to Buddhist attacks on Muslims and Christians, and now counter attacks by aggrieved Muslims.  During the 1990s the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) forced thousands of Muslims out of their northern “homeland,” but at an April, 2002 press conference they announced that they were reconsidering this rash and destructive decision as well as committing themselves to a Norwegian brokered cease fire.^[2] There were also been positive signs from the Buddhist leadership, who successfully opposed three previous attempts at settlement.  Starting in April, 2005, however, political murders, committed mostly by the LTTE, increased to one per day, and one year later full scale war has resumed between the LTTE and the Colombo government.

While the world community has rightly condemned the LTTE and its brutal acts, but fewer people are cognizant of the role that militant Buddhists have played in this conflict.  Here, for example, are excerpts of songs, published by the government, of the Buddhist monk Elle Gunavamsa:

The sword is pulled from the [scabbard], it is

Not put back unless smeared with blood.

I turned by blood to milk to make you grow

Not for myself but for the country

My brave, brilliant soldier son

Leaving [home] to defend the motherland

That act of merit is enough

To reach Nirvana in a future birth.[3]