From Anagarika to the revivalism of today
Some of the most fervent worshippers of Anagarika Dharmapala's memory whom I have seen in this country, use fork and spoon to eat their rice and curry. The Anagarika is supposed to have said in one of his speeches (I'm afraid I cannot quote verbatim here, but this is only the recollection of the gist of what he said) that the Suddha when he leaves will leave a whole horde of kalu-suddha's who will tell us Sinhalas that we have to be one with the "Hambayas, the Jhas the Tamils and the chettiars….etc.,''

A Christian friend, a very charming and mild mannered man whom I met recently said he was shocked by this kind of statement that was supposed to have been made by Sri Lanka's most well known Buddhist revivalist.

All Dharmapala was trying to say, in the language that was currency in his time, was that Sinhalese as a race should preserve their own identity and not melt into a vast and nondescript kalu-suddha (brown man aping white) identity. The Anagarika did not say that the Jhas or the Hambayas (Muslims) or the Tamils should be persecuted and put to the torch, or that Christian churches should be burnt or razed to the ground.

All this is becoming relevant and pertinent to us today as our rice and curry is -- particularly in a context in which there is a political Alliance in this country which has a very good chance of forming a government claiming that it is planning to restore the national culture and ethos that was prevalent before 1505 when Westerners first invaded this land.

What would have been the suitable response to such a claim? In te rms of political sloganeering, the parties opposed to the Alliance could say "allright, if you are thinking of going back to 1505 be our guest -- but as for us we plan to take our country forward with an eye on the year 2505 at least'' I suppose the only inducement that could offset a person who promises to take you 500 years backward, is to offer to take him five centuries forward.

We are not a vast melting pot however as Canada is or America is, and perhaps there is a terrible joylessness about being a melting pot anyway. What Dharmapala said is that the Sinhala identity should be preserved within the Sri Lankan identity.

That's implicit in what he says because being the Buddhist that he is, he never advocated the persecution or the marginalisation of any other community in this country.

But, the melting pot concept is different. It says that all should melt into one homogenous entity, and that one day there should emerge a Sri Lankan from this process of strange cultural alchemy.

The funny thing is that, these days, those who advocate the melting pot concept want Sri Lankans to emerge as absolute cosmopolitans. Meaning that they want them to be raceless, creedless and preferably colorless (in every sense of the word) and odourless too. In other words there is a throwback to what Dharmapala talked about which is that there is a class that wants people to congeal into one entity, which is preferably pro-Western, liberal, and fully in support of neo-liberal globalization as far as economy is concerned.

There is a rear-guard action against this ersatz concept of a "Sri Lankan identity'' which basically means that people are expected to forego their cultural identities in favour of this oneness and homogeneity. People are expected for instance to forget that they are Sinhala or Buddhist in what's always voiced in a profoundly guilt inducing manner as the "larger interests of the country.''

The rear-guard says there is absolutely no way that it can be done, hence the revivalist movement of today. But, the problem with the revivalist movement is that it forgets that Dharmapala not only said we cannot all be one, but that he also (implicitly) said "as much as we preserve our own identities the others have a right to preserve theirs.''

Forgetting that credo, today's revivalist movement is converting themselves furiously into the moral police. To a great extent, the government of the day played into the hands of the extremist element by not having the courage to condemn the Tiger excesses such as the blatant murder of army informants during the ceasefire. This kind of week-kneed and pathetic appeasement left the door open for extremists.

As a result now, the revivalists are interchangeable with the extremists, and they want to be the moral police deciding what we do, how we eat and whom we vote for. The rice and curry by fork and spoon wallahs who idolize the Anagarika haven't had too much to say about these things. Maybe the day the moral police decide to take over their fork and spoon, they might just wake up a little less indifferent…

Those who were appeasing the Tigers meanwhile are now appeasing the extremists. The UNF government has such a massive glaring lacuna in leadership, that it is persistently unable to define the agenda. Either the Tigers define the agenda for them, or some extremist Ayatollah monks and their handmaidens define the agenda for them.

So, having insulted the entire moral base of the Sinhalese by saying that army informants are "expendable' and can be killed by the LTTE -- now the UNF's ineffectual leadership is suddenly seeing the agenda shift towards the Sinhala majority. They are scrambling to appease the Anunayakas and Mahanayakes of one temple after another, and when a Buddhist monk coughs these days (while on a death fast maybe..) the UNF leadership tends to catch some dangerous form of bird flu.

It is time to tell the moral police to get lost. They owe an unqualified apology to the people of the country for implying very clearly and unequivocally at the late Ven Soma's funeral that he was murdered, when there was a coroner's report staring in his face saying he died of natural causes. But nobody has the guts to ask for such an apology.

There is no antidote to the moral police now, and though we are happy -- more than happy that the Moragoda doctrine of selling this country's interests to the Americans via the Tigers has been thoroughly defeated, nobody is happy about a moral police either. Even Anagarika Dharmapala's acolytes who use fork and spoon to eat their rice and curry should have the right to do it - -and I will defend to the death that right, even though I will myself use my fingers to wolf down my own buth curry.

The fact that those who follow the Anagharika are sometimes anglicized is a positive sign in some ways - it goes to show the extent of the Anagarika's appeal.

From Tiger appeasement to Buddhist fundamentalism is a long route but the UNF has traversed its whole length, and as a result of it we are now faced with a moral police, and yet another cabal that wants to take us 500 years backward without any apologies for it. I yearn for a country in which each race can do its own thing without melting into each other gormlessly - but also do its own thing without killing each other in the process.

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