MAHINDA Rajapakse, Sri Lanka’s prime minister and presidential candidate for the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), signed an election deal last week with the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU), a Sinhala supremacist party under the leadership of right-wing Buddhist monks.
In return for JHU backing, the prime minister agreed to JHU demands for a more aggressive stance against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The 12-point agreement included the revision of the current government-LTTE ceasefire; the abrogation of a government-LTTE agreement for the joint administration of tsunami aid; and the rejection of federalism as the basis for a peace deal with the LTTE.
Like a similar deal with the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), the unmistakable logic of Rajapakse’s agreement with the JHU is to set the course for renewed civil war. Despite protestations that he is for peace, the prime minister has effectively torn up the major planks of the so-called peace process that the current president Chandrika Kumaratunga and his own government have been claiming to revive. The deals, clearly signed for short-term electoral gain, have opened up sharp differences inside the SLFP.
As the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) commented on the earlier Rajapakse-JVP agreement, the differences within the SLFP reflect broader divisions in the ruling establishment between those who want a negotiated deal with the LTTE and those who want a return to war. Neither faction has anything to offer the working class.
The proponents of the peace process want a power-sharing arrangement between the Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim elites to step up market reform, integrate the island into global production processes and intensify their mutual exploitation of workers. Their opponents are prepared to plunge the working class back into the nightmare of a war that has already cost at least 60,000 lives and led to widespread misery.
The Colombo press is full of speculation and commentary about the outcome of the rifts within the SLFP, their implications for the November 17 election and the political ramifications of the JHU deal. But one aspect of the Rajapakse-JHU agreement was passed over in complete silence -— the ceremony itself. The prime minister travelled to Kandy for the signing, which took place in front of the Temple of the Tooth, with the JHU monks decked out in their orange robes. All of this carried a heavy symbolism for Sinhala Buddhist supremacists. Kandy was the last capital of the decadent Sinhalese monarchy. The temple purportedly houses one of Buddha’s teeth -— a relic that has political as well as religious significance as a symbol of Sinhalese power. Rajapakse knelt before the JHU’s chief monk Ellawala Medananda to formally accept his copy of the agreement. Both then entered the temple to worship together before the tooth’s container amid various Buddhist rituals. The document was finally placed before the relic in order to make it sacrosanct.
As far as the Sri Lankan press was concerned, none of this was in any way abnormal. Colombo politicians from all the major parties regularly make the pilgrimage to Kandy to receive the blessings of top Buddhist monks from one or other of the religious orders. Just days later, Rajapakse’s main rival -— the United National Party’s Ranil Wickremesinghe -— made his way to the Bellanwila Temple near Colombo to bow before the Buddhist hierarchy.
In other words, Rajapakse’s prostration before the JHU’s monks is just a particularly graphic example of the dependence of the entire political establishment on communal politics.
The JHU’s policies and programme express, in an extreme form, the ideology of Buddhist supremacism that permeates every political party, the state apparatus, the armed forces and the media. It was enshrined in the country’s constitution in 1972 in the clause that transforms Buddhism into a state religion, and in government policies that entrench anti-Tamil discrimination.
The JHU was formed prior to last year’s general election by transforming the existing right-wing Sihala Urumaya (SU) into a political vehicle for a section of the Buddhist hierarchy. Its outlook is little different from that of the right-wing Christian fundamentalists in the US, Hindu supremacist organizations like the RSS in India, or the Islamic extremists of Al Qaeda. Harking back to a mythical past of Sinhala Buddhist kings, the JHU asserts the “national right of the Sinhala nation” and calls for a state built “according to Buddhist principles”.
The JHU speaks for elements of the state apparatus, the armed forces and business whose interests are bound up with the maintenance of the continuing dominance of the Sinhala ruling elites over their Tamil and Muslim counterparts. These social layers are deeply hostile to any power-sharing deal with the LTTE and regard the peace process as a betrayal of the Sinhala nation.
It is no accident that sections of the Buddhist hierarchy are bitterly opposed to any peace deal. Their power and privileges were greatly enhanced by the constitutional provision turning Buddhism into a state religion. The Department of Buddhist Affairs has a substantial budget -— 185 million rupees in 2004 -— much of which finds its way into the hands of the monasteries. Any dilution of these anti-democratic measures would impact on the position of the Buddhist clergy.
The JHU, and its predecessor the SU, have been involved in a series of violent confrontations and provocations. The SU was widely held to be responsible for a series of attacks on Christian churches.
The JHU was in the forefront of the communal campaign against the agreement under which the LTTE and government agreed to temporarily work together to distribute tsunami aid. JHU secretary Omalpe Sobhitha, an MP and monk, planted himself in front of the Temple of the Tooth in Kandy and declared that he would fast until death to stop the deal.
All of this is well known to the Colombo media. Yet there is never a hint of criticism of the reactionary role of Buddhism and the Buddhist hierarchy in Sri Lankan politics.
The reason behind this studied silence has nothing to do with any reverence for Buddhism. Rather it is a reflection of just how vital the ideology of Sinhala Buddhist supremacism is to the maintenance of the existing establishment’s rule. Ever since national independence in 1948, the Sri Lankan bourgeoisie has fostered and whipped up Sinhala chauvinism as the means for justifying the creation of an artificial nation on this small island, for dividing people along communal lines and for securing a social base for its parties, the SLFP in particular.—Courtesy World Socialist website.
(The writer is the Socialist Equality Party’s presidential candidate)
