Faith identities in Sri Lankan politics

At university, AKD – as the president is popularly known – belonged to a hard-left students union, and that spirit has stayed with him. Before this year’s presidential election, however, he shifted to a more centrist position. The media covered his meetings with Buddhist faith leaders and published pictures of him offering gifts to monks.

AKD also softened the image of his party, the People’s Liberation Front (PLF) and formed a new party, the National People’s Power (NPP). He leads both, and some people close to him serve executive functions in both as well. Despite the connection to the PLF, which has a violent past, the NPP attracted voters from the middle and upper classes who were disgruntled with former governments.

Multi-ethnic nation

Sri Lanka is a multi-ethnic nation. The Sinhalese are predominantly Buddhist and account for about the majority of the population. Tamils, who mostly tend to be Hindus, make up 15 % and Muslims not quite 10 %. About seven percent are Christians.

For obvious reasons, politicians – whether Buddhist themselves or not – have sought the blessings of the Buddhist clergy. The Rajapaksa clan, which dominated Sri Lankan politics for about two decades, emphasised the Sinhala-Buddhist identity most prominently. Their influence on the country largely resulted from the victory in a decades-long and devastating civil war against the separatist militia Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). In 2022, however, a financial meltdown led to a popular uprising which ended the clan’s grip on the country. It will take a few years for any new government to get the country back on track economically.

The new president’s PLF also has a history of violent insurrection. It led uprisings against elected governments in 1971 and 1987 to 1989 but later abandoned armed struggle. In the past, younger monks often supported the PLF, but not the Buddhist establishment. That seems to have changed now, even though the establishment had long shunned the PLF after it had tried to steal a holy relic – a tooth of the Buddha – from a temple in Kandy in the late 1980s.

Syncretic traditions

Sri Lankan Buddhism is shaped by various influences. Given the closeness to India, Hindu influences are evident from pre-Buddhist times. Most temples have individual shrines with statues dedicated to Hindu Gods. On the other hand, animist beliefs in demons and spirits have been integrated into Buddhism too. Traditionally Sri Lankan Buddhism is thus a syncretic belief system that does not draw sharp lines to distinguish itself from other world views.

Buddhism saw a revival against Christian influences in the 19th century. Henry Steel Olcott, an American pantheist philosopher, played an important role. This resurgence gave birth to the idea of Buddhist-Sinhala nationalism.

Political analyst Harshana Rambukwella links the politicised Sinhala-Buddhist identity to colonialism. The British Empire thrived on divide and rule strategies, and its censuses often did not only serve planning purposes but also helped to pit local communities against one another. Rambukwella adds, however, that the identity link between Sinhalese and Buddhism was not firm in the early 20th century.

The scholar sees 1956 as a turning point. It was the year of a major Buddhist festivity, a general election and the publication of a report that endorsed a narrative of long-standing Buddhist grievances. The guiding idea was that the British had made promises to Buddhists but had not kept them. The message of victimisation resonated with Sri Lanka’s majority population. Rambukwella notes that “from 1956 onwards, you see slowly a kind of an institutionalisation and politicisation of Buddhism that was not visible before.”

Civil war 

The constitution of 1972 gave Buddhism an elevated status, though it did not declare this faith to be the state religion. The idea was certainly to please the Sinhalese, but a side effect was a stronger sense of alienation amongst the Tamil community. Many of them had agitated for equal rights when Sri Lanka gained independence from Britain. In the late 1970s, their frustration led to an armed struggle. Both Sinhalese and Tamils are guilty of brutal violence, and political parties on both sides used it for their gain. The LTTE, which became the main Tamil militia, was decisively put down after three decades of civil war in 2009. That victory benefited the Rajapaksa clan politically.

The financial crisis of 2022, however, has ushered in a new sense of nationhood. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa resigned and temporarily fled the country when economic hardship hurt people of all communities and income levels. AKD proved good at zooming in on their grievances. He built his brand and established the NPP as a force against nepotism corruption. That promise caught the attention of the nation, while he also shed his previous aversion to the clergy.

His NPP faired very well in October’s parliamentary election, winning 159 of 225 seats. It prevailed in predominantly Sinhala regions, but also in the Tamil stronghold of Jaffna. Voters have thus decisively confirmed AKD’s previous victory in the presidential elections in September.

Arjuna Ranawana is a Sri Lankan journalist.
arjuna.ranawana@outlook.com