Sangha and sovereignty in the age of the

republic

Wednesday, 8 November 2017

Buddha is the physician. Dharma is the medicine. Sangha is the nurse. This
luminously lucid analogy explaining the Buddhist concept of the three jewels
Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha is given by Professor Richard Gombrich.

In the age of our republic, the Sangha are bent on being physicians. Some wish to
be surgeons such as those in BBS and the more learned ones wish to be
anaesthetists, insisting that elephants are essential to sustain Buddhist traditions.

This is the conundrum we are trapped in. Sanctimonious framers of the new
constitution have become derailed trains intimidated by pseudo profundities of a
priestly class cocooned in privilege from the time of our last kings of Kandy.

A paradox confronts us
A paradox confronts us: Prince Siddhartha is back in the Palace.

Monastic indolence and canonical caprice have repealed and replaced the
essential Buddhist wisdom renunciation and nonattachment.

Our purpose here is not to rediscover the distilled truth in Buddhism. It is an

attempt to understand how the Sinhala Buddhist Sangha, in post-independence
years particularly after the 1956 political transformation, have succeeded
demonstrably to run with the spiritual hare and hunt with the political hound.
Their political punch drives ruling elite to call on the two principal monasteries in
Kandy routinely to exchange pedestrian pities. Their presumed spiritual
saintliness as custodians of the sacred tooth relic is above and beyond public
scrutiny. It allows them an undeserved and an unearned invincibility in public
discourse. In the 21st Century, our Republic is taken hostage by a phantom
kingdom in Kandy.

The Asgiriya Chapter fired the first volley by a clever chemistry of the thinkable
and the unthinkable. We do not approve of the actions of Galabodaaththe
Gnanasara but his protestations have merit. They condemned the bigot,
endorsed his bigotry. In effect, the Asgiriya monastic order was signalling the
government that inclusive governance was subject to boundaries that they will
determine.

Confronting literate bigotry is less complicated

The three main Nikayas have now decided to oppose Governments
constitutional reengineering and if at all undertaken to limit it to what they
consider as needed.

Venerable Professor Dr. Bellanwilla Wimalarathane Thero, Anunayake of the

Kotte Chapter, Chief Incumbent of Bellanwila temple (film maker Asoka
Handagamas choice as the refuge of insecure minds of Colombo Buddhist
middleclass in Agey Asa Aga), Chancellor of Sri Jayawardenepura University, has
assumed a pivotal role of presenting a learned opposition to constitutional
changes.

We are elated. Confronting literate bigotry is less complicated.

The two monasteries Malwatte and Asgiriya manifest the Sangha community in
our popular mind. The sangha community of Sri Lanka is not unitary. The largest
and the most influential is the Siam Nikaya which is Govigama-centric, decidedly
aristocratic and feudally administered. The top layer of Malwatte and Asgiriya
were manor born. The practice remains intact.

The Ramanna nikaya is a subsequent development catering to non-Govigama

castes. Malwatte and Asgiriya higher echelons in the time of kings were manor
born.

The Amarapura Nikaya is yet another offshoot with its origins in the south. The
irony is that its federal structure escapes their blinkered minds.

The Sri Lanka Sangha is not a timeless institution either in practice or by tradition.
Their claim to have preserved the Theravada tradition for two and half millennia
and more is endorsed only by cagey and conniving politicians. The 2,500 years of
unbroken Buddhist tradition is an idea that invaded Buddhist popular mind when
the State decided to celebrate the 2,500th year in the Buddhist calendar.
Constraints of space prevents further amplification. India the land of the
Buddha also appointed a special committee headed by Vice President
Saravapalli Radhakrishnan the philosopher. He celebrated the life of Buddha
he was born a Hindu and died a Hindu who reformed the caste-ridden Brahmin
society.

The story of our Sangha preserving our 2,500-year-old Sinhala Buddhist heritage is
not untrue. It is stating the obvious with a pinch of salt. The Sangha was integral
to society and thrived or decayed parallel to the rest of society. Any religion
leaves an imprint on the landscape, culture and lifestyle of the territory it
dominates. Cagey clerics spin yarns on it and conniving politicians enthusiastically
spread them.

Sangha in Sri Lanka

Sangha in Sri Lanka the three Nikayas Siam, Ramanna and Amarapura as we
know them today do not represent a timeless, homogenous institution of
antiquity or sanctity. We need not strain ourselves to prove it. We can look
around.

With a crown and kingship trapped in uncertainty, turmoil in the kingdom of

Kandy did not spare the Sangha. The clerical order was in decay and neglect. The
kingdom was bereft of monks who had obtained the higher ordination
Upasampada. They remained Samaneras novice monks. Deprived of supervised
discipline or peer review some degenerated to being regular householders
abandoning celibacy. They wore a yellow thread or shawl around neck to signal
their priestly vocation.

King Wimaladharmasuriya, the first consecrated king of Kandy, to erase an

inconvenient past of fraternising with the Portuguese, and to legitimise his rule
built a new palace to house the sacred tooth relic. The new King needed a
functional Sangha to observe the elaborate rituals associated with the tooth relic
and to perform their historical role as mediators between subjects and king. He
got down monks from Rakkhangadesa a part of Myanmar to reinstate the
Upasampada order. The experiment was short-lived.

Historian Lorna Devaraja assesses the impact of the Siam Nikaya founded on the
full moon day of the month Esala in 1753.

The establishment of the Siam Nikaya was the climax of centuries of endeavour
on the part of the Sri Lankan rulers and it is considered an event of singular
importance in the religious, cultural and political history of the island and is
recorded in elaborate detail not only in the Mahavamsa but also in several
contemporary and near contemporary literary works.

Sinhala Buddhist society at the time

Sinhala Buddhist society at the time was a rigid caste-based society. At

its apex was a king whose divine right to rule was incidental to his responsibility as
the custodian of the Sacred Tooth Relic and the royal superintendent of the
Dalada Maligawa, the Temple of the Tooth.

The king made tenurial grants of huge swathes of land to Malwatte and Asgiriya,
the two monasteries assigned with the exclusive right and responsibility of
performing the rites and observing the rituals of and related to the Temple of the
Tooth.

The people ordinary folk worshipped the Dalada from a distance. The sanctum
sanctorum was the preserve of aristocratic priests of Malwatte and Asgiriya and
officials of noble birth assigned duties as required by priests.
It was an interdependent relationship between the king and the two monasteries.
The priests exercised sacerdotal authority and the King minded the state. This
equilibrium was lost when the King was dethroned. The British despite their
undertaking to continue state patronage handed over all responsibilities to the
two monasteries and one lay official the Diyawadana Nilame.

The rituals of the Palace were intended for an enshrined relic with mystical
powers. One such ritual was the symbolic bathing of the relic with a special herbal
preparation with fragrant flowers and scented water. The holy water from the
ritual Nanumura Mangallaya was believed to contain healing powers.

Rituals of the palace were and still are expressions of homage to a sovereign.
Throughout history, the sacred tooth relic was the symbol of sovereignty. In the
besieged kingdom of Kandy, it was more than a symbol. It was the suzerain
around which governance revolved.

To the present day, the two monasteries cling to this belief system. A Minister
justifying the cost of the central highway leading to the palace in Kandy clings on
to the same belief system.

The Esala Perahara mirrored the social hierarchy of the time. It was a grand
choreographed event where provincial chiefs had to coalesce at the centre
assuring fealty to the king.

British takeover in 1815 changed the system. They humoured the priests in the
beginning but under pressure from their own missionaries were content to leave
matters to the two monasteries and an official Diyawadana Nilame.

The social reawakening of 1956 unfolded while Malwatte and Asgiriya

monasteries remained in peaceful slumber. They were enjoying the tithes from
land holdings, secure in the knowledge that by birth and family tradition they
were the custodians of the symbol of the nations sovereignty.

It took a little longer for them to parlay it for a real political punch.
Political transformation

of the system
The serious political transformation of the system occurred when Nissanka
Wijeratne, civil servant and Sinhala Buddhist activist, contested for the position of
Diyawadana Nilame.

It was a curtain raiser for a subsequent foray into national politics. The then Prime
Minister devoutly Buddhist, devotionally feudal, fielded a relation with a superior
manorial pedigree.

He lacked the poise and punditry of the historian civil servant Nissanka Wijeratne,
whose election as Diyawadana Nilame irretrievably politicised the institution in
our representative democracy. The controversial contest propelled the two
Mahanayakes into political prominence. If they had any influence on the election
of the lay official, now they became indispensable arbiters.

Soon after, the then Leader of the opposition J.R. Jayewardene used the Maha
Maluwa as the venue for a satyagraha with the permission of the Diyawadana
Nilame.

When the police dispersed a LSSP protest in 1991 held with no permission from
temple authorities, Bernard Soysa filed a Fundamental Rights petition on the
grounds that the Maha Maluwa was a public space.

The Supreme Court ruled that the Maha Maluwa of the Dalada Maligawa was a
place to which the public had access for the purpose of worship and it could not
be treated as a public place for the purpose of holding a satyagraha by persons
standing together in a single line and displaying posters and placards and
sometimes shouting slogans or other vociferous protests. Satyagraha was a
political event for which no implied permission can be presumed in relation to the
Dalada Maligawa and express permission would be required for the purpose.

President Premadasa chose the Octagon of the Palace to take his oath as
President. He fixed a golden canopy over the main shrine.

Historian and Sinhala scholar Anuradha Seneviratne was consulted over its official
Sinhala nomenclature. He called it a Runviyana and got into bad books of the
President. A mischief maker had informed the President that the term viyana
had a caste connotation.

We must reframe the nations sovereignty and traditions attached to its

expression in the age of the republic.
Posted by Thavam