By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the long history of Kandyan resistance had come to an end. It was now the turn of the maritime regions, in particular the Western Province, where the resistance of the indigenous society to the impact of British rule took the form of religious revival, formation of political associations and incipient trade union activity. Together, these constituted a process of holding off the intrusive pressures of British rule and of accommodating change and absorbing it in forms seldom anticipated by those who initiated it in the first place. Above all, it was a complex and sophisticated response to Western rule which formed a half-way house between the traditionalist nationalism of the Kandyans and the ideologically coherent nationalism of the twentieth century. These ‘secondary’ resistance movements developed into a force of no little political significance. But they had no support from the Kandyans who, between the 1880s and the attainment of independence, mostly took satisfaction in a new role, that of associates of the British and a counterweight to the reform and nationalist movements dominated by elite groups from the maritime provinces. The leaders of Kandyan opinion seldom showed much sympathy for the political aspirations of these movements. They stood aloof and suspicious when not positively hostile. Nevertheless, the memory of Kandyan resistance and of the Kandyan kingdom, as the last independent Sinhalese kingdom, persisted in providing some inspiration for the more forward-looking ‘reformers’ and for those among the latter who came to form the nucleus of a genuine ‘nationalist’ movement.
It was in the form of a revival of Buddhism and a rejection of the efforts of missionary organizations to convert people to Christianity that the secondary resistance movement manifested itself as its first and, in retrospect, most profoundly effective expression. Initially, the response of the people to evangelization had been one of polite indifference. By the late 1840s, there were signs that a more marked resistance to it was emerging—sporadic and localized, but resistance nevertheless. This resistance was originally more pronounced in the Kandyan region, where the missionaries had, in fact, made little headway. There the people demonstrated a more positive commitment to the traditional faith and the ‘rebellion’ of 1848 had its religious overtones to the extent that some of the rebel leaders articulated the resentment of the Kandyans at attempts by the British to abrogate their undertaking to maintain the traditional link between Buddhism and the state. More important, resistance to the spread of Christianity was discernible in the south-west, from the vicinity of Colombo to Kalutara and beyond, in regions that had not been affected by the ‘rebellion’. The leadership in opposition to evangelization came largely from bhikkhus. Whether this resistance was systematically organized and how widespread it was are matters on which there is no firm evidence, but there was a perceptible change in the people’s attitude to missionary enterprise from courteous indifference to positive though still somewhat muted opposition. There was now a more explicit commitment to their traditional faith.1 Certainly, the indigenous religions, particularly Buddhism, had not declined to the point of becoming moribund, as some of the more sanguine prognostications of the missionaries and effusively hopeful Sinhalese Christians of the 1850s and 1860s would have had us believe; the more intelligent and realistic of the missionaries neither shared this belief nor underestimated the very real strength of the resistance to the missions.
By the 1860s, the Buddhists’ opposition to Christianity was much more self-confident and vocal than it had been before and nothing illustrated the change in mood and tempo better than their response to challenges from missionaries to public debates—verbal confrontations, in which the tenets of Buddhism and Christianity were critically examined with a view to demonstrating the superiority of Christianity to the audience gathered for the occasion. Such disputations had been staged from the mid-1840s and in general the missionaries had used their debating skills to the obvious discomfiture of some diffident and not very erudite representatives of the traditional religions. In the 1860s, the technique of public debate, which the missionaries had used so effectively in the past, only succeeded in providing Buddhist spokesmen with a platform for a vigorous reassertion of the virtues of their own faith. Between 1865 and 1873, there were five debates between Christians and Buddhists and on every occasion the Buddhists faced up to their opponents with a verve and assurance that had seldom been evident before.2 The Panadura debate of 1873 was the most notable of them all; there the Revd Migettuvatte Gunananda proved himself a debater of a very high order, mettlesome, witty and eloquent if not especially erudite. The emotions generated by this debate and the impact of Migettuvatte Gunananda’s personality deeply affected the next generation of Buddhist activists. A contemporary described him as ‘the terror of the missionaries...more wrangler than ascetic... the boldest, most brilliant and most powerful champion of Sinhalese Buddhism...the leader of the present revival’.3
Migettuvatte Gunananda’s triumph at Panadura set the seal on a decade of quiet recovery of Buddhist confidence. In retrospect, the establishment of the ‘Society for the Propagation of Buddhism’ at Kotahena and of the Lankopakara Press at Galle (both in 1862) would seem to mark the first phase in this recovery. There was at the same time a parallel development, which, while independent of the theme of Buddhist-Christian confrontation, nevertheless contributed greatly to sustaining the self-assurance of Buddhists. This was the establishment in 1865 of the Ramanna Nik•ya, an offshoot of the Amarapura Nik•ya, and the foundation of the two centres of Oriental learning: the Vidyodaya Pirivena in 1872 and the Vidyalankara Pirivena in 1876. The Ramanna Nik•ya laid even greater stress than the Amarapura on vows of poverty and humility; its establishment was, in fact, a conscious attempt to cleanse the sangha and to return to a purer form of Buddhism free from the influence of Hinduism.
Newspaper reports of the Panadura debate reached the United States of America, where they attracted the attention of Colonel H.S. Olcott, the founder (in 1875) of the Theosophical Society. Olcott began a regular correspondence with Migettuvatte Gunananda and sent him a mass of pamphlets and tracts, all deeply critical of Christianity. Gunananda in turn translated these letters, as well as extracts from books, pamphlets and tracts into Sinhalese and distributed them throughout the island. Through these translations the names of Olcott and his Russian associate Madame Blavatsky became familiar to Buddhists. Their arrival on the island in 1880 caused great excitement and they were received amid extraordinary scenes of religious fervour. By this time the Buddhist revival was well under way. Because of their familiarity with the rationalist and scientific critique of Christianity, the Theosophists gave a more positive intellectual content to the movement against the Christian forces in Sri Lanka. Above all, they gave the Buddhists what they lacked most—a lesson in the techniques of modern organization to match the expertise of the missionaries in this sphere. In doing so they contributed enormously to the self-confidence and morale of the Buddhists. With the help of leading bhikkhus and laymen, Olcott started the Buddhist education movement. An education fund and Buddhist national fund (which were later, and significantly, merged into one) were established; the celebration of the Vesak festival (commemorating the birth, attainment of enlightenment and death of the Buddha) was revived and an agitation was begun (from 1881) to have Vesak Day declared an official holiday. He was also instrumental in the design and adoption (in 1885) of a distinctive Buddhist flag.4
The presence in Sri Lanka of a group of westerners openly championing Buddhism had a deeply significant psychological effect on the Buddhist movement. It was not force alone but the acceptance of the total superiority of European culture that held the non-European in awe and psychological subjection to western rule—and the prestigious position of Christianity was an aspect of this. For the Buddhist movement of this period, reliance on the ‘charisma’ of a westerner counterbalanced the limited vision and diffidence of the indigenous leadership of the day.
The missionary campaign of the 1840s for the dissociation of the state from Buddhism had attracted support from quarters which would normally have been repelled by the bigotry and intolerance demonstrated in it because it could be viewed as an aspect of a wider struggle for the principle of separation of church and state. Those who cherished this principle as an integral part of the liberal ideology gave the missionaries a degree of guarded support in their campaign.5
However, the liberal insistence on the separation of church and state was a double-edged weapon. If it could be used against the association of the state with Buddhism, it could also be directed against a similar connection with other religious organizations. Among the first to feel its keen edge was the Anglican establishment. In the eyes of the colonial government, the Christian missions on the island were equal and the Anglicans possessed no special privileges. The Colonial Office also let it be understood without actually making an explicit statement of policy, that it would not defend Anglican privileges in the colony and that the position of the Anglican establishment in Sri Lanka was in no way analogous to that of the parent body in England. By the 1850s, the one privilege which the Anglicans continued to possess, despite occasional but increasingly vociferous protests, was their connection with the state. However, neither the Colonial Office nor the Ceylon government would attempt the disestablishment of the local Anglican Church, although it was clearly the logical consequence of their own policies and even though influential voices urged that this next step be taken.
Over the next two decades, the defence of Anglican privileges became steadily more difficult and resentment of an established church grew increasingly vocal, especially because Anglicans, although powerful and influential, were nevertheless a tiny minority of the population. The expenditure of state funds on the Anglican establishment could not be justified either on the basis of the size of its flock (they were too few in number) or equity (they were generally among the richest and most powerful in the land). Besides, by the 1870s, the Anglican Church had been disestablished in many of the West Indian colonies. Gregory lent his gubernatorial support to the campaign for disestablishment in the years 1876–77. But his impetuosity and tactlessness nullified his efforts and it was left to Sir James Longden to effect the disestablishment in 1881, by which time even the Anglicans seemed to have realized the futility of resisting it. Bishop R. S. Copleston on their behalf did not ‘on principle’ oppose the withdrawal of subsidies, but only urged that it be done gradually. This dignified acceptance of a painful decision was in strong contrast to the truculence with which Anglicans, particularly high churchmen, were inclined to defend the Anglican position in the 1840s.
With the withdrawal of ecclesiastical subsidies in 1881, the separation of church and state was very nearly complete. But it soon became clear that a total separation could not be made, if for no more pressing reason than the fact that the revival of Buddhism in the late nineteenth century brought with it a persistent demand for state assistance in the maintenance and supervision of Buddhist temporalities.
The Buddhist revival of the second half of the nineteenth century was the first phase in the recovery of national pride on the island, the first step in the long process which culminated in the growth of nationalism in the twentieth century. Its massive and historic achievement becomes all the more astounding in the context of the limitations, most of them in a sense self-inflicted, within which it operated. The first of these was that the Buddhist revival of the late nineteenth century was basically a low-country (Western Province and Southern Province) movement. It had little influence and made little impression on the Buddhism of the Kandyan areas, which were under the tutelage of the Malvatta and Asgiriya chapters of the Siyam Nik•ya. At issue was the wealth of the prestigious Kandyan viharas and dēv•lēs, with the low country activists urging that some of these revenues be used for the establishment of schools.6 Second, the leadership of the movement was largely in the hands of laymen—wealthy entrepreneurs and traders and men of property of average means generally, many if not most of whom were members of the Kar•va, Sal•gama and Dur•va castes. Indeed the Buddhist movement was, in part at least, the religious expression of the improved economic and social status of the major non-Goyigama castes of the maritime districts.7 Third, as regards participation by the sangha, support came from the Amarapura Nik•ya rather than the Siyam Nik•ya. Even in the low-country areas, the powerful Siyam Nik•ya was inclined to stay aloof from this religious revival partly because of its mistrust of the enthusiasm of the Amarapura Nik•ya. This brings us to the fourth limitation, the sectarianism of the sangha: all attempts to bring the rival Nik•yas together proved futile.
Two factors worked to the advantage of the Buddhist movement. The first of these was a change in the attitude of the government towards Buddhism which began with Gregory displaying an active interest in Buddhism and Oriental learning. This new conciliatory attitude also had a political motive: because the Buddhist movement did not formulate any precise demands on constitutional or administrative reform—the two main points of interest in the incipient formal political activity of the day—men like Gregory and Gordon felt they could accommodate its objectives insofar as those involved the government and its attitude to religious issues. They believed they could guide the movement into serving as a buttress for the traditional society in the transformation that was taking place, that in the Sri Lanka context religious—Buddhist—revival could be the precursor of a national resurgence.
Whatever the motive there was no mistaking the advantage to the Buddhist movement. The first breakthrough came over establishing the crucial principle of the state’s neutrality in religion. It came, seemingly, with studied deliberation, and moved from one precedent to another. First, there was a symbolic gesture: a contribution from the state for the repair of the Ruvanveli D•gäba at Anuradhapura; this was followed by the gift of two lamps to the Dalad• Malig•va. These appeared to demonstrate more than a courteous regard for Buddhism, for Gregory was, at the same time, actively engaged in the attempt to disestablish the Anglican Church, which gave credibility to the principle he was seeking to establish—the state’s neutrality in religion. This principle Gordon underscored even though he balked at the idea of a formal declaration making explicit the state’s neutrality in religious affairs, a declaration which, he felt, carried the insidious implication that the government had been partisan in the past. More important, it would stultify the other related principle in which Gordon believed, namely, that the state had a special obligation towards Buddhism. With this the breakthrough was consolidated. Gordon warmly concurred in Olcott’s opinion that the British government had too hastily severed the state’s association with Buddhism. He eagerly accepted Olcott’s proposal that Vesak Day should be made a public holiday. It was on the basis of this principle of a special obligation towards Buddhism that Gordon endorsed the view that the state should interest itself in taking in hand the problem of Buddhist temporalities.
The second factor which worked to the advantage of the Buddhist movement was what happened on Easter Day 1883, although it is doubtful if Buddhist activists of the period would have regarded it as such. But its effect—as a review of the events of that day will show—was to give a powerful boost to the Buddhist revival. If these events helped to concentrate the minds of officials powerfully on the Buddhist revival, their aftermath was even more important—they led to a revitalization of the organizational structure of the Buddhist movement and a clearer definition of its objectives. Above all, they formed the background against which Gordon’s reappraisal of government policy on Buddhism was effected.
On Easter Sunday 18838 came the first outbreak of physical violence directed against the Buddhist movement—the Kotahena riots. Kotahena, a suburb of Colombo, had for long been a Roman Catholic stronghold, but it had also become the scene of considerable Buddhist activity after Migettuvatte Gunananda took charge of the vihara there. The riots were precipitated by a pinkama (religious ceremony) organized by Migettuvatte Gunananda on a scale of unusual significance in honour of the completion of a large reclining figure of the Buddha, as well as of other important additions and embellishments. Because of the proximity of the vihara to the Roman Catholic cathedral, ‘the anger and jealousy of the Roman Catholics was gradually aroused by the long continuance of the festival, extending as it did to Easter week’.
The government’s response to these events exasperated the Buddhist activists. A number of Roman Catholics were arrested on charges of complicity in the riots, but when it was realized that the evidence available was too unreliable to sustain a conviction in the courts they were released. Governor Longden appointed a commission of enquiry into the incident but its report was unsatisfactory to the Buddhists, for although it held that the Roman Catholics had indeed attacked the Buddhists, Gunananda’s fiery speeches and ‘the fervour with which the Buddhists were conducting their activities’ were described as factors that had contributed to provoking the riots. Worse still, one result of these events was that government sought to place restrictions on all religious processions. This was especially hard on the Buddhists for whom peraheras and pinkamas accompanied by music were an essential feature of religious practice.
The Buddhists now set their sights on an official inquiry, to be conducted under the aegis of the Colonial Office. Olcott and Madame Blavatsky returned to the island on a second visit at the special invitation of the Buddhists to help organize the presentation of their case before Whitehall. Olcott arrived on 27 January 1884 and the following day a Buddhist Defence Committee was formed. It was decided that Olcott should make representations on behalf of the Ceylon Buddhists at the Colonial Office. But Olcott’s visit to the Colonial Office accomplished very little in the way of redressing Buddhist grievances over the riots, although it was fruitful in other ways.
When Olcott returned to the island in 1886 (accompanied on this occasion by G.W. Leadbeater), he came to organize support for the cause of Buddhist education and to augment the financial resources of the Buddhist educational fund. The energies of the Buddhist movement were now diverted to a sustained effort to build up a network of schools. Education at this time was a minefield of administrative regulations devised to protect vested interests—mainly those of the Protestant missions—and the Buddhists could expect no consistent support from government officials in overcoming these obstacles (the neutrality of the state did not guarantee the neutrality of its officials). The first and most efficacious challenge to the superiority of the Protestant missions in the field of education came from the Roman Catholics under the leadership of Monsignor C.A. Bonjean. If the Roman Catholics found the administrative regulations governing the registration of schools irksome but not insuperable obstacles, Buddhists could justifiably complain that they were a positive hindrance to the progress of their educational activities. The result was that education, without quite ceasing to be the battleground of rival Christian groups, became one of the focal points of the growing ‘nationalist’ opposition to the missions. Indeed, the revival of the indigenous religions—and of Roman Catholicism—was inextricably bound up with the expansion of their own educational programmes. Apart from obstruction from officials and missionaries, the most formidable obstacles that Buddhist activists in the field of education had to contend with were the paucity of financial resources, skilled administrators and teachers and, above all, the apathy of the vast mass of Buddhists. By organizing a series of lecture tours throughout the country Olcott aroused genuine enthusiasm among the people for the establishment of a network of schools, but it was difficult to sustain this enthusiasm for long or to channel it to some constructive purpose without a more permanent administrative structure. This was provided largely by the Theosophical Society. By 1890, the society had established forty Buddhist schools, the efficient running of which, if not their continued existence, was due to the administrative skills and leadership of men like Leadbeater, A.R. Buultjens and Bowles Daly, the manager of Buddhist schools, and the financial support of a group of Sinhalese philanthropists.
The work of the pioneer Buddhist educationists proved to be more comprehensively performed than had previously seemed possible. The schools they left to their successors in the early twentieth century fulfilled an important historic function by breaking the monopoly of the Christian missions in the sphere of education. This by itself was no mean achievement, but, more important, the schools built up an enviable tradition and record of service. Their alumni made their influence felt in the twentieth century in politics and education, helping to quicken the pace of political agitation, generating more enlightened attitudes in social and economic issues and engendering a pride in Buddhism, the Sinhala language and the cultural heritage associated with these.
Of the issues which agitated the Buddhists at this time none was more complex than the vexed one of temple lands—Buddhist temporalities. In the aftermath of the Kotahena riots, the government’s attention was drawn to this issue and once more Gordon, reviving an initiative attempted by Gregory, broke through a barrier of bureaucratic inertia and missionary opposition to give the Buddhists some satisfaction with regard to a long-standing grievance. But first the background needs to be briefly sketched.9 The crux of the problem lay in the government’s failure to live up to the promise held out in 1852—as the price of the severance of the state’s link with Buddhism—that some administrative machinery would be devised for the protection of Buddhist temporalities. In 1856, Ward had made a start by introducing legislation for the registration of temple lands. A commission was appointed to examine claims to land made by temples and to register those regarded as well founded. But registration of temple lands was only one feature (though an essential one) of the intricate problem of the administration of Buddhist temporalities. Although Ward had intended to legislate on other aspects of the question, nothing was done during his administration and its consideration was laid aside for twenty years until it was taken up again in the time of Gregory.
Buddhist activists were appalled by the steady deterioration in the condition of these temporalities brought about by a mixture of inefficiency in administration and corrupt diversion of revenue to the pockets of those entrusted with the control of these properties. There were insistent demands for state intervention as the only possible remedy for this relentlessly worsening situation, but missionary organizations made clever use of the prevailing sentiment in favour of cutting all links between the state and religious establishments to stop the government from considering any such move. The difficulties were compounded by the fact that charges of maladministration and peculation came largely from Buddhist activists of the low-country regions, where temples seldom had any extensive estates or wealth to administer. Those who controlled the wealthy Kandyan viharas and dēv•lēs had a vested interest in the maintenance of the status quo and there were no complaints from them. On the contrary, they were perturbed by the proposals made by Buddhist activists that some of the revenues of these temples should be used to establish Buddhist schools. (This demand had a parallel in the 1840s, when missionaries and some influential officials had urged that part of the revenues of the viharas and dēv•lēs should be used to support schools run by the missionaries.)
Not surprisingly, Ward’s successors were reluctant to intervene in this question. There was, above all, a fear of rousing the opposition of the missionaries. However, Gregory was willing to grasp the nettle. He prepared an ordinance for the purpose of establishing an administrative machinery for the control of Buddhist temporalities, but the Colonial Office objected to some of its features, especially the provision allowing the use of any surplus revenues, left over after the costs of maintaining the temples had been met, for purposes related to Buddhist educational programmes. This the Colonial Office termed an ‘arbitrary transfer’ of temple endowment income for educational purposes and refused to approve the ordinance. Gregory’s successor, Longden, shared this outlook. Indeed he was convinced that the government should confine itself to the establishment of an organization for the control of Buddhist temporalities and merely frame such laws and regulations as would enable the Buddhists themselves to check the evils that existed in the administration of those temporalities. Again, while he acknowledged the obligation to legislate for the maintenance of Buddhist endowments in the Kandyan region, he was opposed to extending the same principle to cover the lowlands where there was no such treaty obligation. Above all else, Longden was inhibited by the fear that intervention in these matters would be tantamount to official recognition of a continued connection with Buddhism. For the man who carried through the ‘disestablishment’ of the Anglican Church on the island, this was an overwhelmingly important consideration. Nevertheless, he did prepare legislation for the better administration of Buddhist temporalities, but it was not introduced in the Legislative Council.
Gordon, as Longden’s successor, preferred to make a fresh start. For Longden, legislation on Buddhist temporalities was a somewhat disagreeable concession to agitation, whereas Gordon viewed it as a matter of conscience and as the fulfilment of an obligation which the British government owed to the Buddhists of the island, who constituted over two-thirds of the population. He took care, however, not to be diverted, as Gregory had been, to legislating for the use of revenues from temple endowments for education. The solution he outlined in 1888 was an ordinance of considerable complexity: the control of Buddhist temporalities in each district was transferred to a committee of Buddhist laymen, elected by the bhikkhus and by their own number in a particular area; the committee was in turn to elect the trustees of viharas and dēv•lēs within its own area of authority. These district committees came under the supervision of larger provincial committees, with the further check of a strict audit of accounts under the direction of the courts. There was considerable opposition to this bill both within and outside the Legislative Council, but Gordon steered it through to Colonial Office approval in 1889, though not without some concessions to his critics.
The ordinance of 1889 was important because of the principles it embodied rather than for any impact it had on the problems it was devised to remedy. It proved too complicated and cumbersome in its working and it did not eliminate or for that matter even significantly reduce corruption and peculation among the trustees of these temporalities, especially in the Kandyan provinces. The Buddhist movement regarded this state of affairs as an intolerable scandal, a blot on the reputation of Buddhists in general and continued the agitation for stronger measures to eradicate it. In response to this pressure and in recognition of the validity of the charges levelled by Buddhist activists, the colonial government in the early years of the twentieth century took a careful look at Gordon’s legislative enactment and decided that it should be replaced by a fresh bill, ‘to prevent more effectively than in the past misappropriation of trust property’. Ordinance 8 of 1905 was introduced to consolidate and amend the law relating to Buddhist temporalities and was brought into operation in February 1907. The ineffectual provincial committees were abolished and the powers of the district committees were enlarged and strengthened. They were entrusted with the appointment and disciplinary control of trustees of viharas and basnayaka nilamēs of dēv•lēs. These district committees too were elected bodies like those established under Gordon’s ordinance.
By this time, however, the Buddhist movement was pitching its demands higher. What it wanted was that the state should assume direct responsibility for the administration of Buddhist temporalities. But the British government was reluctant to go so far.
By the turn of the century the Buddhist movement had gained great self-confidence. Its leaders turned their attention to what was regarded as one of the great social evils of the day, and one associated with the process of westernization—intemperance. To the Buddhists the drawing, distilling and sale of arrack and toddy—in short, the use of spirituous liquors—was contrary to the precepts of their religion and the traditional usages of Sinhalese society. Nevertheless, the manufacture and distribution of arrack and toddy were controlled by Sinhalese capitalists, many if not most of whom were Kar•va Christians, although there were also Buddhists of the same and other castes who had large investments in the liquor industry. To the British government excise duties were a legitimate source of state revenue, and while there was an increasing awareness of the evils attendant on excessive alcohol consumption, there was a reluctance to endanger a valuable source of revenue by the wholehearted pursuit of temperance objectives. The Buddhist movement, on the other hand, had no such inhibitions, and by the turn of the century temperance activity was a vitally important facet of the religious revival. Some of the money that went into the support of temperance agitation came from wealth amassed in the liquor trade, conscience money from Buddhists who thus repudiated a lucrative source of income—there were many prominent Buddhists in this category—or, as was more often the case, from those who had inherited fortunes wholly or partly based on the arrack trade.
By the first decade of the twentieth century, temperance agitation had spread far and wide especially in the Sinhalese areas of the Western Province and the Southern Province, and the response it evoked had sufficient passionate zeal in it to sustain the hope that it had potential for development into a political movement.10 On occasions, temperance agitators indulged in criticism of the government by associating it with the evils of intemperance and diatribes against foreign vices and Christian values were cleverly scaled down into more restrained and subtle criticisms of a ‘Christian’ government. But while the temperance agitation gave added momentum to the Buddhist movement it afforded only a tentative and astutely restrained introduction to formal political activity. It is significant that no attempt was made to channel the mass emotion it generated into a sustained and organized political movement. The politicization of the movement, once its appeal to the people became evident, seemed the logical and inevitable next step, but this was never taken. Equally significant was the fact that the mass grass-roots support which the temperance agitation generated was achieved without the assistance, much less the association, of such political organizations as existed.
The colonial authorities on the island instinctively got their priorities right. They either ignored these political organizations, or where their aspirations were regarded as an affront or a mild threat to the British position on the island, they were treated with studied contempt. But many British administrators in Sri Lanka were perturbed from the beginning by temperance agitation and they viewed the proliferation of temperance societies with the utmost suspicion, in recognition of the fact that the Buddhist revival and the temperance movement had generated a feeling of hostility to the colonial regime which could, potentially, disturb the hitherto placid political life of the island. Christian missionaries had come to much the same conclusion. ‘The political consciousness’, they declared in 1919, ‘is almost inevitably anti-British and pro-Hindu [in India], and in Ceylon pro-Buddhist.... The anti-British feeling becomes anti-Christian feeling: the pro-Hindu or pro-Buddhist feeling develops into a determination to uphold all that passes under the name of Hinduism or Buddhism...’.11 With specific reference to the situation on the island the missionaries noted that ‘one of the most serious aspects of the Buddhist revival is the attempt to identify Buddhism with patriotism, and to urge upon people that loyalty to the country implies loyalty to the religion... [The Buddhist revival] is hostile to Christianity, representing it as alien, and Buddhism as national and patriotic...’.12
The recovery of Hinduism in nineteenth-century Sri Lanka predated that of Buddhism by a whole generation. The Hindus were in a more advantageous position in relation to resistance to the intrusion of the Christian missions: it was possible to draw on the tremendous resources of Hinduism in India. And the Tamil elite, despite their eager acceptance of English education, eschewed the anglicized lifestyle which their Sinhalese counterparts of similar educational attainments adopted so enthusiastically. Hindu customs and culture permeated Tamil society and were kept alive in the face of the encroachments of Christianity and anglicization. Nevertheless, in the first half-century of British rule on the island—and for that matter even later—the missionary societies were much stronger in Jaffna and its environs than in most other parts of the island and their network of schools was run far more efficiently.
The Hindu recovery of the nineteenth century was dominated by a single personality, the remarkable ArumugaNavalar, a man of enormous erudition and massive energy who left an indelible mark on the Hinduism of the indigenous Tamils of Sri Lanka.13 Its strength as well as its flaws flow from his pioneering work, especially from his greatest contribution—the systematic compilation of an authoritative restatement of Saivite doctrine. The basis of his success as a religious reformer was his profound knowledge of the classical Tamil texts. The publication of his critical editions of these texts enabled Hinduism in northern and eastern Sri Lanka to meet and repel the pressures of Protestant Christianity. Through these texts his influence spread across the Palk Straits to south India as well. He had worked for well over a decade with Christian missionaries and although never a convert to Christianity, he had helped to translate the Bible into Tamil. From his association with the missionaries he absorbed much of their skill in organization and in the propagation of their faith. He used these to great effect in the resistance to Christian encroachment. For the first and by no means the last time in the Sri Lankan context the missionaries found that the techniques of proselytization which they had developed could be used with equal facility by their critics and opponents.
Navalar demonstrated the value of schools and education as instruments of religious recovery. In 1849–50, long before the first Buddhist schools were started, he founded the Vannarponnai Saiva Pragasa Vidyasalai. He was intent on establishing Saivite schools in every village in which education would be imparted in a Hindu environment with the aid of school textbooks specially prepared for the purpose. At the same time he was not unmindful of the value of an English education and the Saivangala Vidyasalai, which he launched in 1872, was later to become the Jaffna Hindu College, the premier Hindu English school on the island.
This emphasis on education, for all its importance, would have been no more than the stock response of a conservative mind to the challenge of a dynamic alien religion had Navalar’s activities not gone well beyond this. He was a protean figure, a man of amazing versatility whose achievement in any one of the fields in which he performed so creatively would have placed him in the first rank among the unusual talents of his time. But he excelled in a number of fields. In 1849, he established a printing press at Vannarponnai and from this there poured forth a succession of tracts and pamphlets expounding Hindu doctrines and defending them against the strictures of the missionaries in lucid Tamil prose designed to be understood by the common people. This was a remarkable departure from convention for a man as steeped in the Tamil classics as he was, yet Navalar the pamphleteer and propagandist was also a great figure in modern Tamil literature both in Sri Lanka and in south India. At the same time, he was equally gifted in the art of platform speaking; here he modelled himself on the missionaries with their open-air lectures delivered in simple language. His lectures on Hinduism delivered on Fridays at the assembly hall of the Siva Temple at Vannarponnai attracted huge crowds. One other facet of Navalar’s achievement deserves mention: his initiative in the formation of secular organizations devoted to the propagation of Hindu ideals—most notably the Saiva Pragasa Sabhai, which he established in 1853. He was instrumental also in the formation in 1888 of the Saiva Paripala Sabhai which, along with the Hindu College Board of Management, eventually came to control more than 150 schools, both primary and secondary.
If the positive achievements of the Hindu revival of the nineteenth century owed so much to Navalar’s influence, so unfortunately did its shortcomings. Navalar was no social reformer; the Hindu revivalist movement strengthened orthodoxy and did little to soften the rigours of the caste system among the Tamils. The latter had much less flexibility than the Sinhalese counterpart, because caste distinctions among the Tamils had as their basis the religious sanction of the Hindu religion, which made them all the more rigid as a result. The consequence was that the hierarchical dominance of the Vel•las (the Tamil counterpart of the Goyigama), who also held a commanding numerical superiority over other Tamil castes, was never effectively challenged by those other castes. As it turned out, the Vell•la proved to be the main beneficiary of the new opportunities opened up by the British. The Vel•las used the sanctions of Saivite orthodoxy to maintain their caste privileges at the expense of those in the lower rungs of the caste hierarchy. Untouchability, which was almost non-existent among the Sinhalese, was and still is very much a problem in Hindu society in Jaffna. Temple entry was forbidden to some castes, the most conspicuous act of religious discrimination in Hindu society.
The recovery of Islam forms an interesting parallel development to that of Hinduism, which it followed a generation later.14 The Muslims of Sri Lanka had been notable for their refusal to succumb to the blandishments of Christianity. The resistance to conversion had persisted throughout the nineteenth century, but the survival of Islam in Sri Lanka had, in a sense, been secured at the expense of the social and economic advancement of the Muslims. Since the education provided in the schools was primarily English, there was among the Muslims an attitude (natural to a conservative and cohesive community) tending to reject it because of the presumed danger of the impact on Islam of a foreign culture. Besides, education was not only in English but was also largely Christian in content, and for that reason many Muslims were prepared to sacrifice the material benefits of an English education because it supposedly endangered the faith of their children. This manifestation of zeal for their ancestral faith had some regrettable consequences, and by the third quarter of the nineteenth century the more enlightened Muslim leaders were profoundly disturbed to find their community sunk in ignorance and apathy, parochial in outlook and grossly materialistic.
The arresting of the decline in vitality of the Muslim community has long been associated with the ‘charisma’ of Arabi Pasha (Ahmed Arabi),15 who is believed to have jolted it out of its conservative seclusion. Much more important, however, were the foresight and tactical skill of a local Muslim leader, M.C. Siddi Lebbe, a lawyer by profession and a social worker by inclination, who helped to bring his community to accept the need for a change of outlook. Like Arumuga Navalar, Siddi Lebbe saw the supreme importance of education as a means for the regeneration of his community. The revitalizing process initiated during this phase continued during the first half of the twentieth century. Despite the apathy of his co-religionists, he persisted in his campaigns for educational progress and prevailed upon Arabi Pasha to use his influence and prestige in the cause of Muslim education. The latter spent the rest of his days in Sri Lanka (even after Siddi Lebbe’s death in 1898) in the cause of English education for the Muslims and in the advocacy and initiation of reforms in religious practice. Siddi Lebbe for his part established and organized the Muslim Educational Society, which endeavoured to create an elite, educated on modern lines, that would provide the leadership which the Muslims so badly needed.
Men like Siddi Lebbe faced tasks which were in every way more formidable than those which confronted Arumuga Navalar, but they adopted methods remarkably similar to those of Navalar—the establishment of schools and the improvisation of techniques of popular education for the community as a whole. One method adopted was the establishment of a Tamil language16 newspaper Muslim Naisen, which appeared from 1882 to 1887. Through this newspaper he campaigned for the abandonment of customs which, though not inherently connected with Islam, were yet intimately associated in the minds of the people with their faith; and against the parochial outlook of his co-religionists. One of the most noteworthy aspects of his popular teaching was his emphasis on the worldwide interests of the Muslims and every development in the Muslim world found its way to the pages of this newspaper.
Although the stirrings in these indigenous religions had much in common with the processes of Buddhist resurgence, there were features in them which set them apart from the Buddhist experience. While the Islamic revival benefited greatly from the presence on the island of the charismatic figure of Arabi Pasha, the Hindu recovery was much more self-reliant and self-sufficient than the recovery of either Buddhism or Islam. Much more important was the fact that neither the Hindu nor the Islamic revival in Sri Lanka developed any political overtones in the sense of a potential anti-British or anti-imperialist attitude. There was an obvious contrast to the Buddhist recovery, which was never wholly without political overtones. Before the end of the century there were men who saw the possibilities of exploiting (Buddhist) religious sentiment for political purposes.