THE MYTH OF SECULARISM
Many pundits who are not even quarter-bright but claiming to be full-bright scholars whether Professors Ph. D.s or not preach from their pulpits that Sri Lanka should be a secular country. Some of these pundits claim that Sri Lanka is a Buddhist theocracy, without of course understanding that in Buddhism there is no theology or any God in whose name a government can be established. In fact even the word Buddhism is a misnomer and only an anglicised corrupted version of the term Budusasuna. The western Christians who could not understand the term Budusasuna coined the term Buddhism.
Without going into a philosophical discussion on Buddha Dhamma and Budusasuna let us concentrate on the secularity of the Sri Lankan and other states in Europe and United States of America. The latter states are all Christian in culture and in some states various denominations of Christianity are the religion of the state as well. There are two arguments that the pundits can bring forward against this observation. Before discussing their intended arguments let us remember that the queen of the United Kingdom, Britain or England depending on whether the Welsh and the others especially the former members of the IRA are prepared to accept Ms. Elizabeth Windsor as their queen, is the head of the Anglican Christian Church.
What we have to remember is that Ms. Windsor is the defender of the faith meaning the Anglican Christian church, and of course the union jack is nothing but the union of crosses of some saints in England, Scotland and Wales. The national anthem of Britain commences with the words God save the queen and not with "devo vassatu kalena" or "Hare Krishna". Though there is no written constitution of Britain it is all over written that Britain is a Christian state, not only in culture but in religion as well. The Parliament meaning not only the house of commons but the house of lords, the privy council which is the supreme appellate and a body of the house of lords are all Christian institutions and it is the Archbishop of Canterbury and not the Viharadipathi of the London Vihara who officiate at the coronations of the king or the queen of England. The sarvagamika concepts are not valid in the Westminster Abbey.
Norway the Godfather of the peace agreements with the LTTE is much ahead of England when it comes to religion and by no stretch of imaginary can Norway be called a secular state. The USA is also Christian though it may not be written in the constitution and as we have mentioned in a previous article Obama did not find it proper to end his acceptance speech with "Theruvan Saranai". Instead he said God bless America and the Americans ignoring the non Christian Americans and thus perhaps hurting their feelings according to the pundits. The pundits do not mind even if the feelings of the Buddhists are hurt as long as the blessings of God are invoked on a group of people who do not believe in an all mighty.
The pundits could always argue that we are not bound by what is happening in the other countries and that we should set an example to the others. Of course we have set an example by almost defeating a guerrilla terrorist movement and it is said that after the British defeated the "terrorist movement" in Malaysia this is the first time that an army has come closer to defeating a terrorist movement. The pundits will also argue that until 1972 Sri Lanka or Ceylon was a secular state and that it was Mrs. Bandaranaike with the help of the Trotskyite Dr. Colvin R. de Silva who made Sri Lanka a Buddhist theocracy.
As we have said there are no so called secular states in the world. The states are interconnected with the cultures, and religions are born in cultures and not in vacua. In that sense states are associated with religions and even if one were to argue that religions have no link with cultures one cannot get away from the idea that states are bound with cultures. Thus though states may not be secular in a strong sense it can be argued that the dependence of state on culture makes states secular in a weak sense.
Now coming back to the so called secular state Ceylon was according to the pundits, it can be easily seen that the state from about 1840 to 1972 was very much Christian. To begin with Lanka or Sinhale had been a Sinhala Buddhist state at least from the time of king Gemunu. There would have been Buddhists in Lanka even before the arrival of Arhant Mahinda. During the reign of king Devanampiya Tissa the Budusasuna was officially established in Lanka and the king Gemunu established the Sinhala Buddhist state which the Sinhala Buddhists are not ashamed of. In the fifth century the Sinhala Theravada Bhikkus with the help of the Theravada Bhikkus from Andra Pradesh such as Buddhaghosha Thera and Buddhadatta Thera took steps to translate Buddhist texts into Pali and took upon themselves the task of protecting Budusasuna. Since then the Sinhalas have protected Theravada Budusasuna and when the so called Kandyan convention or Sinhala English agreement was signed in 1815, the Sinhala leaders made it a point to insist on the inclusion of two important clauses. In these two clauses the English promised to govern the country according to the Sinhala laws and to protect Buddhism and Devagam or Buddhism as practised by the Buddhists then.
In essence what this meant was that Lanka or Sinhale continued to be a Sinhala Buddhist state as established by king Gemunu and the English took over the task of protecting Budusasuna as the custodians of the country. However in 1817 the English (if one insists the British) appointed a Muslim revenue collector in Vellassa and thus violated one aspect of the condition that the country should be ruled according to the Sinhala customs. In about 1840 the English violated all the aspects of this particular clause and also violated the clause on protection of Budusasuna. They handed over the Dalada Maligawa to the Diyawadane Nilame and officially washed their hands off from the responsibility of protecting the Sasanaya. It could be said that it was from this day Sri Lanka became a full Christian state under the English imperialism.
Ceylon or Lanka from 1840 was not a secular state at all as England, Britain or UK was not a secular state and Lanka or Ceylon was governed by one of those countries depending on one's taste. In 1948 the independence that was given to us was restricted by the infamous clause 29 which allowed the citizens of the country to appeal to the privy council, among other things. The privy council being a body of the house of lords was not a secular institute and the law being a product of the English culture was not dissociated from the Anglo Saxon Christianity. Even the Roman Dutch Law cannot be considered as a secular law and we are still not independent of the Christian culture. Further the system of knowledge including the so called Science is not independent of the Christian culture as will be demonstrated soon, and we have a long way to go to become a Sinhala Buddhist theocracy in the terminology of the pundits.
In 1972 a correction was made in the constitution by including the clause on the protection of Buddhism. This was nothing new and had been there in the unwritten constitution of king Gemunu and also in the Sinhala English agreement of 1815. I would say it was only a beginning of correcting all those injustices to the Sinhala Buddhists and Budusasuna by the English and western Christian modernity. However, the quarter-brights and other pundits are upset as they think that the privileged positions that they hold and the hegemony of western Christian modernity would be undermined if the process continues.
Professor Nalin de Silva
>
>
>