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Writing Violence and Buddhism in Sri Lanka

Author: Nimmi N. Menike

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-04-19

Total Pages: 187

ISBN-13: 1000570320

This book examines the idea of violence in the context of religion and literature. It addresses the question of freedom and peace, and violence, with reference to the Buddhist nationalist discourse in Sri Lanka, against the backdrop of Shyam Selvadurai’s novel, The Hungry Ghosts. The book discusses love, compassion, emancipation, ethics and responsibility through the concepts of identity, deconstruction and decolonization to view religion as language or writing. With a blend of philosophical insights from Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida, Maurice Blanchot, and Mahatma Gandhi on ideas of being and the other, differences, nonviolence and forgiveness, it insists on the ethical exigency of reinventing Buddhism in Sri Lanka. Delving into some the central motifs of Selvadurai’s novel, suffering, desire, hate, and vengeance, it questions popular Sinhala Buddhist readings to argue for the promise of inclusive and diverse approaches towards various groups, linguistic communities, women, and homosexuality. This book will be useful for scholars and researchers of literature and languages, South Asian literature, literary criticism and theory, linguistics, cultural studies, philosophy, religion, Buddhist studies, diaspora studies, and Sri Lankan literature and sociology.

Buddhism Betrayed?

Author: Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 1992-07-15

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 0226789500

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This volume seeks to answer the question of how the Buddhist monks in today's Sri Lanka—given Buddhism's traditionally nonviolent philosophy—are able to participate in the fierce political violence of the Sinhalese against the Tamils.

Buddhism, Conflict and Violence in Modern Sri Lanka

Author: Mahinda Deegalle

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2006-09-27

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 1134241895

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Interdisciplinary in its approach, this book explores the dilemmas that Buddhism faces in relation to the continuing ethnic conflict and violence in modern Sri Lanka. Prominent scholars in the fields of anthropology, history, Buddhist studies and Pali examine multiple dimensions of the problem. Buddhist responses to the crisis are discussed in detail, along with how Buddhism can help to create peace in Sri Lanka. Evaluating the role of Buddhists and their institutions in bringing about an end to war and violence as well as possibly heightening the problem, this collection puts forward a critical analysis of the religious conditions contributing to continuing hostilities.

Buddhism and Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka

Author: Patrick Grant

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2009-01-05

Total Pages: 163

ISBN-13: 0791493679

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Patrick Grant explores the relationship between Buddhism and violent ethnic conflict in modern Sri Lanka using the concept of "regressive inversion." Regressive inversion occurs when universal teaching, such as that of the Buddha, is redeployed to supercharge passions associated with the kinds of group loyalty that the universal teaching itself intends to transcend. The book begins with an account of the main teachings of Theravada Buddhism and looks at how these inform, or fail to inform, modern interpreters. Grant considers the writings of three key figures—Anagarika Dharmapala, Walpola Rahula, and J. R. Jayewardene—who addressed Buddhism and politics in the years leading up to Sri Lanka's political independence from Britain, and subsequently, in postcolonial Sri Lanka. This book makes the Sri Lankan conflict accessible to readers interested in the modern global phenomenon of ethnic violence involving religion and also illuminates similar conflicts around the world.

In Defense of Dharma

Author: Tessa J. Bartholomeusz

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2005-07-26

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 113578857X

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This is the first book to examine war and violence in Sri Lanka through the lens of cross-cultural studies on just-war tradition and theory. An important contribution to the understanding of the power of religion to create both peace and war.

Popularizing Buddhism

Author: Mahinda Deegalle

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2007-06-01

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 0791481026

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Explores the ritual practice of Buddhist preaching.

Militant Buddhism

Author: Peter Lehr

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-12-30

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 3030035174

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Against the backdrop of the ongoing Rohingya crisis, this book takes a close and detailed look at the rise of militant Buddhism in Sri Lanka, Burma and Thailand, and especially at the issues of ‘why’ and ‘how’ around it. We are well aware of Christian fundamentalism, militant Judaism and Islamist Salafism-Jihadism. Extremist and violent Buddhism however features only rarely in book-length studies on religion and political violence. Somehow, the very idea of Buddhist monks as the archetypical ‘world renouncers’ exhorting frenzied mobs to commit acts of violence against perceived ‘enemies of the religion’ seems to be outright ludicrous. Recent events in Myanmar/Burma, but also in Thailand and Sri Lanka, however indicate that a militant strand of Theravada Buddhism is on the rise. How can this rise be explained, and what role do monks play in that regard? These are the two broad questions that this book explores.

Sri Lanka - The Elusive Miracle of Asia

Author: Sharmini Serasinghe

Publisher: Lulu.com

Published: 2019-10-13

Total Pages: 156

ISBN-13: 955713710X

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This is a book no publisher or printer in Sri Lanka wanted to be associated with, fearing for their lives. Their fears are justified. Under the despotic political regime headed by the megalomaniacal Mahinda Rajapaksa, journalists and writers in Sri Lanka who stood up for the truth were brutally murdered, tortured, kidnapped or made to disappear for good. Self-described Buddhists, Mahinda Rajapaksa and his cohorts embraced all that is ugly in his Sinhala-Buddhist toxic political ideology, using and abusing Buddhism to the maximum. With this book, the writer has placed her head on the block and in her words: "I may face the same fate as my late colleagues Lasantha Wickrematunge and Richard de Zoysa, but it's a sacrifice I am ready to make for the sake of future generations of Sri Lanka!"

Anil's Ghost

Author: Michael Ondaatje

Publisher: Vintage Canada

Published: 2010-10-08

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0307375897

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Winning a Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize and the Scotiabank Giller Prize, Anil’s Ghost is another award-winning novel from Michael Ondaatje. Steeped in centuries of cultural achievement and tradition, Sri Lanka has been ravaged in the late twentieth century by bloody civil war. Anil Tissera, born in Sri Lanka but educated in England and the U.S., is sent by an international human rights group to participate in an investigation into suspected mass political murders in her homeland. Working with an archaeologist, she discovers a skeleton whose identity takes Anil on a fascinating journey that involves a riveting mystery. What follows, in a novel rich with character, emotion, and incident, is a story about love and loss, about family, identity and the unknown enemy. And it is a quest to unlock the hidden past—like a handful of soil analyzed by an archaeologist, the story becomes more diffuse the farther we reach into history. A universal tale of the casualties of war, unfolding as a detective story, the book gradually gives way to a more intricate exploration of its characters, a symphony of loss and loneliness haunted by a cast of solitary strangers and ghosts. The atrocities of a seemingly futile, muddled war are juxtaposed against the ancient, complex and ultimately redemptive culture and landscape of Sri Lanka.

Buddhist Monks and the Politics of Lanka's Civil War

Author: Suren Raghavan

Publisher: Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies Monographs

Published: 2018-08-06

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 9781781795743

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The war in Sri Lanka was violent and costly in human and material terms. This was one of the longest wars in modern South Asia. Often referred to as an 'ethnic' conflict between the majority Sinhalas and the minority Tamils, the war had a profound religious dimension. The majority of Sinhala Buddhist monks (the Sangha) not only opposed any meaningful powersharing but latterly advocated an all-out military solution. Such a nexus between Buddhism and violence is paradoxical; nevertheless it has a historical continuity. In 2009 when the war ended amid serious questions of war crimes and crimes against humanity, monks defended the military and its Buddhist leadership. Taking the lives of three key Sangha activists as the modern framework of a Sinhala Buddhist worldview, this book examines the limitations of Western theories of peacebuilding and such solutions as federalism and multinationalism. It analyzes Sinhala Buddhist ethnoreligious nationalism and argues for the urgent need to engage Buddhist politics - in Lanka and elsewhere - with approaches and mechanisms that accommodate the Sangha as key actors in political reform. Sinhala Buddhism is often studied from a sociological or anthropological standpoint. This book fills a gap by examining the faith and practice of the Sinhala Sangha and their followers from a political science perspective.