Charles’ coronation and secularists’ blues

Sunil Ariyaratne who wrote Nanda Malini’s celebrated song ‘Nidahas Baila’ got it all wrong when he claimed that no blood was shed in the struggle for independence from British rule. He claimed that no one was beaten, as Nehru and Patel were in British India and that no lives were sacrificed (as Mahatma Gandhi did).

Mahatma Gandhi didn’t really sacrifice his life for India’s independence. True, Indian leaders were assaulted and imprisoned, but so were the leaders of Sri Lanka’s independence struggle. Indians were killed, so were Sri Lankans, from before formal subjugation in 1815 right up to February 4, 1948. Tens of thousands were slaughtered. Fields and libraries were torched. Temples were razed to the ground and churches built in their place. Reservoirs and wells were poisoned. Brutes. That's what the British were. And that’s a soft word.

Sunil Ariyaratne got one thing right though. The ‘sudda' left and yet did not: sudda yanna giyeth nae nogihin hitiyeth nae. British diplomats frequently act as though they are unofficial viceroys. When they are not demanding that we subscribe to their version of our reality, they use sway in multilateral organisations to seek punishment for intransigence. There’s insult, humiliation and caustic condescension.    
I don’t blame them. A nation in circumstances so reduced that they operate in international forums as an adjunct of the USA needs some kind of validation. Having claimed that the sun would never set on the empire, it must be hard to accept sunsets. It must be even harder since they have to live with the fact that their current comforts derive from the brigandry of their ancestors who pillaged, sacked cities, enslaved and murdered people. Thieves have to conjure thievery and condemn theft to look good. They have no moral authority. Others do.

I don’t blame those Sri Lankan who still think, talk and act as though the British haven’t left. After all, President Ranil Wickremesinghe feels compelled to leave the country to attend the coronation right in the middle of Vesak. After all, Sajith Premadasa's father wrangled an additional invite for Charles' wedding when he was Prime Minister (President J R Jayawardene had a legit invite as Head of State) in 1982!

Five hundred years of colonialism could leave traces of servility. Moreover, if you and your ancestors played Uncle Tom for a century, deriving benefits in exchange for agreement to inhabit the version of reality authored by the oppressor and, as was common, conversion to the faith of the oppressor, it is not unnatural to look to the ‘mother country’ and its representatives for succour of one kind or another.

Now here’s the problem. Both parties, i.e. the viceroy wannabes and the empire-salaamists can't get enough of democracy. They can’t get enough of secularism. And now they have to deal with Charles’ coronation which makes a mockery of both.

First of all the viceroy wannabes are representing a monarchy which the empire-salaamists, well, all but salaam. Secondly, the whole circus is handled by the Archbishop of Canterbury who, we are told, will say that the Church of England ‘will seek to foster an environment in which people of all faiths may live freely.’  In contrast, Article 9 of Sri Lanka’s constitution (which ensures foremost place for Buddhism and pledges to protect and foster the Buddha Sasana) is effectively negated by Articles 10 and 14(1)(e). Nothing big-brotherly about it.

The monarch, at his coronation on May 6, 2023, will be asked by the archbishop to uphold the Church of England and he will duly pledge to do so while also solemnly stating that he is a faithful Protestant. That faith, by the way, is not adhered to by half the population or more.

Coronation! Medieval!

The jocularity of these individuals and the organisations they represent notwithstanding, there is certainly a case for secularism and democracy. History stands in the way, though. If history counts, that is.

The 1815 Convention included a clear pledge by the British to uphold the foremost place of Buddhism. They ignored this immediately. They not only pillaged temples, they built churches and launched massive proselytisation campaigns complemented by unethical conversion. It makes sense, therefore, for a restoration the moment the British left.

S W R D Bandaranaike’s demagoguery and cunning (to essentially copy-paste the left agenda) aside, the angst that enabled ‘1956’ can be traced to the deliberate, vicious and pernicious crusades against Buddhists orchestrated by the British and by and large consented to by leaders representing or identifying with other faiths or else went along envisaging personal political gain somewhere down the line. Don Baron Jayatilleka was an exception.

Here’s one example. The official list of public and bank holidays, 1910. 

Yes, 1910. Long before ’56. Long before independence. The Christian holidays: Good Friday and the following day, Easter Monday and Tuesday, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and three subsequent days. That’s nine. Add the 52 Sundays and you get a whopping 61 days. Muslim holidays: Hadji Festival. Hindu holidays: Thai Pongal Day, Vel Festival and Dipawali (bank holidays). Buddhist holidays: Vesak. Get this: April 13th was a holiday: ‘Hindu New Year’s Festival.’  

Now consider the fact that although there were Tamil and Muslim elites (English educated, wealthy, upper caste and of the Christian faith) involved in the formal independence struggle, those who fought and died in their thousands from 1815 to 1948 were almost exclusively Sinhala Buddhists.  

That’s a lot of angst. ‘1956,’ then, one could argue was inevitable. In hindsight erroneous on certain counts though it is, the sheer numbers and the extent and nature of subjugation were sufficient preconditions, sufficient in terms of legitimacy too. Eminently logical in comparison with today’s realities in the UK a la the coronation.

But what of it? History is not cast in stone. We can throw it all away, someone might argue. Throw it all away and go with today’s reality!

Two problems. Today’s reality may change tomorrow. One can’t really legislate for every changed reality. Hey, the representatives of one community could ethnically cleanse another (as the LTTE ethnically cleansed Muslims from the Jaffna Peninsula) and then demand, ‘look, realities have changed, now re-legislate!’

Secondly, if history goes out of the window, so do any claims of ‘traditional.’ No history, no tradition, simple.

Want to secularise holidays even as you show respect to religious faiths? Sure. Designate religious holidays and permit any citizen to claim three (or four or any specific number) per year as religious holidays (like casual leave, sick leave etc). Others work. Take it to its logical conclusion and we might have to think of a weekend that excludes Sunday and Friday. But no holidays for Friday prayers, no leave on account of becoming a widow or widower or a divorcee. No extra maternity leave privileges for a particular community.

We are not a monarchy, but we have religions. There are percentages (without which we really shouldn’t talk about that kind of thing). We can be a country without any religious community having to feel marginalised, neglected or underprivileged. Informed, meaningful and logical secularism.  

Now that’s something for everyone talking about democracy and secularism to think about. 

Meanwhile, good luck Charles and better luck his subjects, his representative in Sri Lanka included. And Sunil Ariyaratne could write a new song about Sri Lanka. 

 

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So you want to take out ‘Buddhism’?

The ‘enlightened’ people entrusted with the grave task of recommending changes to the constitution have sought to turn Sri Lanka into an official secular state.  Although the Final Report of the Consultation Task Force on Reconciliation Mechanisms (CTF) doesn’t mention it, this particular recommendation clearly seeks to do away with Article 9 of the Constitution.

Article 9 reads thus: The Republic of Sri Lanka shall give to Buddhism the foremost place and accordingly it shall be the duty of the State to protect and foster the Buddha Sasana, while assuring to all religions the rights granted by Articles 10 and 14(1)(e).

Articles 10 and 14(1)(e) are as follows: 

10. Every person is entitled to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, including the freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice. 

14. (1) (e) the freedom, either by himself or in association with others, and either in public or in private, to manifest his religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching.

This recommendation should not surprise anyone.  The worthies on this committee are without exception either advocates of secularism and have on occasion been critical of Article 9 (and even openly been anti-Buddhist as judged by crass extrapolation of extreme Buddhist groups to cover the entire community and strange silence on the excesses of other religious groups) or are tainted by association with organizations that by and large do the same.  

This report claims legitimacy from both appointment and by claiming to have given ear to voices that cut across all categories, religious and otherwise.  

A report put together by the Committee on Constitutional Reform, headed by Lal Wijenayake, released last year, in contrast appear to have actually listened to people and recorded their representations faithfully, despite the problematic nature of the committee’s composition.  The CTF report, in contrast, is weak, slanted and quite in contrast to the reconciliation intent of the mandate, a recipe to deliver its very opposite.   However, given what has to be understood as real intent, the recommendation is what was always predictable.  

This is how it is worded: 

The CTF strongly recommends that meaningful steps should be taken through consultation with all stakeholders, towards a secular State and with equal respect accorded to the multiple religions practiced in the country.  

The logic of Article 9 draws from the clause related to Buddhism in the Kandyan Convention, the document that ceded the Kandyan Kingdom (to which the ‘land of the war-like Sinhalas’ — as described by the Dravidian marauder Raja Raja Chola I — or ‘Sinhale’ had shrunk by that time) to the British: ‘The religion of Buddhoo, professed by the chiefs and inhabitants of these provinces is declared inviolable and its rites and ministers and places of worship are to be maintained and protected’.  The British treated that as well as other protective clauses with utmost disdain (to put it gently) thereafter.  If the recovery of the nation from the invader was to make any sense, then reinstating those abrogated clauses was logical.  Hence Article 9, it can be argued, also considering the notion of ‘compensation’ for all the violence unleashed on Buddhists and Buddhist places of religious significance, and the burning and looting of Buddhist texts.  We could throw in the formal and informal advantages conferred on non-Buddhists, especially Christians, in all spheres, especially education and obtaining employment.

Someone might say, ‘but people, communities and geographies are always in flux — changing times and scenarios call for changed articles of faith’.  Correct.  If that’s the case, then we have to legislate for the moment, having duly dumped history in the waste-paper basked of constitution-making.  Out would go all talk of traditional/historical homelands (myth-lades though they may be) and with it calls for devolution.  Factored in would be the dispersed nature of the Tamil community (close to 50% live outside the so-called ‘traditional/historical homelands’).  Interestingly, that dumping is not called for by those who want to legislate for the here and now.

But what is this here and now?  Is it the number-erased, percentages-ignored thing described as multi-ethnic and multi-religious?  We are not talking of a population equally divided along lines of ethnic identity and religious persuasion.  We are not talking of a neatly ethnically enclaved geography.  So, in essence, Buddhists are asked to concede demographic edge in the interest of ‘a more enlightened’ political arrangement.  Perhaps Buddhists are being asked, in the name of the philosophy they subscribe to, to reflect on the Buddha Vacana, the notions of impermanence, the virtues of giving (dana) and equanimity (upekkha) and so on; essentially boiling down to ‘magnanimity’ and the celebrated of shared humanity.  

Let’s go with secularism. If secularism is what is sought and if Buddhists are being asked to waive demographic advantage in view of ‘enlightenment’ and ‘reconciliation’, if reconciliation can never be a clap with a single hand, and if secularism is citizen-focused in ways that keep religion strictly separate from state, we would have to consider alterations that are not limited to doing away with Article 9.  

Let’s begin with the simple things (things, please note that even the ‘enlightened’ West would not consider).  Holidays.  Religious holidays.  Communal holidays.  

No Poya holidays.  No extra holiday for Vesak.  No aluth avurudda on April 13/14.  No Easter. No Christmas.  No Ramadan.  No Thaipongal, no Mahasivarathri, no Idul Fitr and no Idul Adha.  No Deepavli or Milad-un-Nabi.  And Sunday, a day of religious significance for Christians will no longer be a holiday.  

Instead, let the work day be truncated by one and a half hours, Sunday through Friday.  Saturday, a religion-neutral days will be a holiday.  And yes, no half-days or short-leave for Friday prayers.  If employees want to be religious by all means, but on their time, not that of the organization that pays their salaries.  

Let’s take it further.  Not only will religion be taken out of the curriculum there won’t be morning prayers and there will no longer be schools based on religious faith.  No Buddhist schools, Muslim schools, Hindu schools, Catholic schools or schools run by or framed by other Christian religious organizations or faiths respectively.  The state cannot help in any manner whatsoever any private institution that has any association with any religious faith.  

Let’s get more serious.  Let this secular Sri Lanka of ‘equal citizens’ (never mind the inequalities that capitalism generate and depends on) be a land where there is one law: an eka-ratak, eka-neethiyak kind of entity.  

Nothing called 'Customary Law'.  No marriages under ‘Kandyan Law’.  It will no longer be possible to refer to Thesavalamai law in property-related litigation.  No Sharia law.   No ‘Muslim marriages’.  No Talaq.  No multiple wives.  

Come to think of it, if we want to be truly secular, then we need to revisit Roman-Dutch Law as well, since the man considered to be the founder of this system of jurisprudence, Hugo de Groot, was a Christian apologist.

The CTF has been quite cute in all this.   The CTF hasn’t gone into these important areas of secularism simply because it wants non-Buddhists to have religious privileges.   When they interject the phrase ‘towards a secular state’, they deliberately advocate ‘a start’ and the only ‘start’ that anyone has talked about so far in this business of secularizing Sri Lanka is doing away with Article 9.  That’s cute, ladies and gentlemen.  Very cute.  

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer.  Email: malindasene@gmail.com.   Twitter: malindasene.

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