ICC Note:

As Sri Lanka continues to prepare a new constitution, religious minorities in the country expressed fear over the special place being accorded to Buddhism in the draft. Radical Buddhist nationalism is the primary driver of Christian persecution in Sri Lanka with radical Buddhist monks leading the charge to drive out what they consider to be “foreign religions”. Religious minorities fear that by giving Buddhism a special place in the new constitution, Buddhist radicals will use the constitution to institute a religious hierarchy and justify the persecution of religious minority communities. 

11/07/2016 Sri Lanka (Scroll.in) – Last month, Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said in Colombo that the country’s new constitution, currently being framed by a steering committee of parliamentarians, will protect the special place accorded to Buddhism in the existing document.

The remarks were met with shock from minority groups, who were hoping that the new constitution would protect the communal, linguistic and ethnic diversity of the island nation and set right decades of discrimination against them. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on minority issues Rita Izsák-Ndiaye, in a statement after her visit to the country, said that minority groups she had met with had expressed fears that continuing to give primacy to Buddhism “could lead to further suppression of and discrimination against minority religions and communities.”

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Article 9 of Sri Lanka’s constitution states that Buddhism shall be accorded “foremost place” in the country and it is the duty of government to protect it.

However, Sri Lanka is a complex web of overlapping identities, with multiple religious and language groups.

The Sinhalese majority, which constitutes 70% of the population, is predominantly Buddhist. Tamils, who are the most populous minority, and who largely stay in the northern and eastern provinces, are overwhelmingly Hindu. Christians constitute about 8% of the population of Sri Lanka and include both Sinhalese and Tamils. Though most Muslims, who populate the eastern province, are also Tamil-speaking, they identify as a unique ethnic group because of their religion.

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Why is it crucial for Sri Lanka to unambiguously adopt secularism as a fundamental constitutional value? The answer lies in the manner in which Buddhism has evolved in the country.

While Buddhism is seen the world over as a religion of peace and one inherently opposed to violence, the case has been different in Sri Lanka. Entangled as it is in Sinhala political chauvinism, a few Buddhist organizations led by monks, such as the Bodo Bala Sena, have been at the forefront of violent rhetoric against religious minorities ever since the conclusion of the civil war in 2009. This has frequently translated into physical violence and desecration of places of worship of other faiths.

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