A Book Review

The Work of Kings: The New Buddhism in Sri Lanka.
H L Seneviratne; Chicago University Press, 2000.

I have a folder on my hard disk called “Sinhala ethnonationalists”. There, I keep the writings of Sinhala ethnonationalists for the future. I have to objectify them sometimes for my research. Several of them are ex-academics and they behave like ex-academics. One of them is the Sinhala extremist Nalin de Silva. He has now reviewed a book written by H L Seneviratne called “The Work of Kings; The New Buddhism in Sri Lanka”. It describes in detail what is called political Buddhism. It is an important book and it deserves to be reviewed seriously. Nalin de Silva has got space for long articles in The Island beginning from March 14th, 21^st and on Internet to give air to his hate, frustration and anti-intellectualism.

He mixes Tambiah with Seneviratne and criticises Seneviratne on the basis of a review on the book by a Buddhist monk who was positive in his review. The monk is of course also criticized, because he was not born in Lanka! Nalin de Silva heaps invectives in virulent verbal attacks on the person Seneviratne. He takes in Islam and the Old Testament for which he has no predisposition to handle. These two articles are bewildering-like the journal in which it is published. The Island is the most unsophisticated of all daily papers in Lanka.

I cannot accept that an important scholarly book is distorted in such a way. Let Nalin de Silva’s attack be counterproductive. Start to read Seneviratne’s book like you did with Tambiah’s. In part, it describes martial, anti-Ilavar pro-Sinhala Buddhism, but it presents also alternative, authentic forms to these martial forms of Buddhism. Justice is done to the complexity of the religious map in Ilankai.

Seneviratne himself describes the contents as follows: “My book is a critique of the activities of Buddhist monks, especially their role in Sinhala Buddhist hegemony which has led to the destruction of a nation. I question the theory that Buddhist monks had political power in pre colonial times, as generally believed and argued by Bhikkhu Walpola Rahula in his ‘Heritage of the Bhikkhu’, and also implicitly in ‘History of Buddhism in Ceylon’. I trace the theory of monastic power to the work of Anagarika Dharmapala. I argue that Vidyodaya monks took over Dharmapala’s good side, his economic side, which led these monks to take a cosmopolitan view whereas the Vidyalankara monks took over Dharmapala’s dark side, that of Sinhala Buddhist hegemony, which prevailed while the Vidyodaya view lost its prominence.

Dharmapala’s dreams about the monk’s role has led to a self aggrandizing, vociferous and aggressive monk whose activities are detrimental to the growth of a peaceful, harmonious, democratic society. The chapters are as follows:

1. Buddhism, civil society and the present study. (This places Sri Lanka within a comparative perspective)

2. Dharmapala and the monk’s mission (How and why Dharmapala defined a new role for the monk, thinking that it was an old role)

3. The economic stage:Vidyodaya and Rural development (How the Vidyodaya monks put into practice Dharmapala’s good side)

4. Vidyalankara: The Descent into ideology (The foundation of Sinhala Buddhist hegemony laid by the Vidyalankara monks, leading to their victory in 1956, and Sinhala Only, which was the fatal blow to civility in the nation. This victory led to the image of an invincible monk, which has frightened politicians, and prevented them from making a reasonable accommodation of the rights of the minorities. In another piece of writing, which I did after the book went to the press, I call this fear “monachophobia”)

5. Social Service: the anatomy of a vocation (I show how the ideal of “social service” has been compromised beyond imagination)

6. The critique of the monk hood (I document the indigenous critique of the activities of monks, coming from different groups)

7. Conclusion: from regeneration to degeneration. (I summarise the book’s argument by saying that what was to have been a regeneration as Dharmapala imagined, has in fact led to a degeneration of the monkhood)”.