A NAME FOR EVERY CHAPTER:

Anagarika Dharmapala and Ceylonese Buddhist Revivalism

By BHADRAJEE S. HEWAGE

Reviewed by Nandi Jasentuliyana. Former Deputy Director-General, United Nations.

‘The unexamined life is not worth living.’ – Socrates.

Rarely has so much been written both in the West and in the East about the work of a ‘revivalist,’ one would conclude that there is nothing left to be revealed of the man or his work. That is until you read Bhadrajee Hewage’s “Anagarika Dharmapala and Ceylonese Buddhist Revivalism.”

In her extensively researched and carefully crafted biography of the man whose mission was to make Buddhism a world religion, the author has presented the salient arguments of a plethora of writers who have dissected the vision and the mission of the complex man who was a nationalist but functioned in the international milieu. Dharmapala’s dual role in establishing a cosmopolitan Buddhism abroad and nationalist Buddhism in Sri Lanka is apparent in the presentation of Hewage’s publication.

The author, however, tells us in her introduction that “I will take a different approach to understand who Dharmapala was and to explain the trajectory of his pursuits. Rather than throw him back into the global-versus-local debate, I believe that viewing the historical period from Dharmapala’s own vantage point and his shifting self-identifications grants us a clearer picture of what motivated him and further explains how his legacy has arrived at its current interpretation.”

Hewage

chronicles the main events leading to Dharmapala’s enduring influence on the socio-political scene in Sri Lanka and his global mission to unite the Buddhist world primarily through the eyes of many who have written about this historical figure. It is replete with portraits of Dharmapala in action, invoking the spirit of patriotism among the Sinhala community from all levels of society and social groups across the country to the resulting exclusion of the minority communities of other faiths.

His work as an architect of the Buddhist revival movement in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), in the eyes of some of the writers, had become a Sinhala Buddhist chauvinistic movement though considered as a nationalist movement. While others sighted by the author “paint a picture, not of a nationalist zealot but a spiritual seeker earnest in his pursuit of salvation.” They saw his social work as the vehicle for his spiritual attainment as Bodhisattvas would do. The author notes how eventually “Dharmapala’s spiritual mission comes to the fore and his activist, nationalist, and universalist potential moves to the side” and makes that the “manageable” framework of her publication.

The book presents a vivid portrait of an exceptional man, the life, and times of Dharmapala. It chronicles Dharmapala’s journey chronologically in four chapters covering the four phases of his life, during which he used a different version of his name. The four versions title the four chapters, and hence the title of the book A Name for Every Chapter.

He tells us that it was into an anglicized, Christianized Ceylon of the British colonists, who encouraged the Christian missionaries to open schools throughout the Island to convert Ceylon’s people from Buddhism that Dharmapala was born in 1864. Named Don David Hewavitharane, he was the son of one of the wealthiest families in Colombo. He was educated in the best British Christian academies in Ceylon. Still, he enjoyed spending time among Buddhist monks, with whom his parents had strong links.

It is his Buddhist upbringing that while he was still a teenager made him come under the influence of Theosophists Col Henry Olcott and Madame Blavatsky, who were visiting the Island and began a movement to help the revival of the Buddhist education and culture. During this time, he renounced his English name and began to call himself Dharmapala Hewavitharane.

Several years after, once he realized that the Theosophists were advocating a universal religion based on Transcendentalist ideals of Hinduism rather than Dharma that he believed in and propagated, he broke away from them. He tereafter became a leader in his own right and carried out an anti-colonial anti-missionary campaign and worked to restore Buddhism to its central place in Sri Lanka. A campaign he led to wrest Buddha Gaya from the Hindus took him to India. There he began the next stage of his life as an internationalist traveling to the West and the East to campaign to link the Buddhist world and identified himself as Anagarika (the name given to an ordained layperson) Dharmapala.

In due course, following five years of house arrest in British India due to his possible agitation during the 1915 Sinhala Muslim riots that resulted in the massacre of the Sinhalese people, Anagarika returned to Ceylon, disheartened by his loss in the long, drawn-out battle to seize control of Gaya. On return, he took the mantle of Olcott, who had died by then. In the aftermath of the 1915 riots, he began a crusade against their British benefactors and missionaries, gaining the support of the Buddhists, which some regarded as a Sinhala Buddhist chauvinistic movement.

In the meantime, the political scene in Ceylon had evolved, and the political movement of nationalist leaders of the time, Senanayake brothers (F.R. & D.S.), James Peiris, D B Jayatileka, Ponnambalam Ramanathan and others in the National Congress had gained strength. Dharmapala’s moral crusade began fading, and he became bitter against the minorities and those he saw as indifferent Buddhists who took the helm in the new political movement. Hence, he decided to become a monk as Sri Devamittha (the name of his teacher) Dhammapala and returned to India, where he spent his last years in a temple, he had spearheaded building in Saranath.

In Sri Lanka, Dharmapala is revered as a national hero. His face still adorns currency notes, postage stamps and statues and streets continue to be named after him, but has he been reduced to a mere symbol? Do his values, message, and sacrifice have any meaning for us in the twenty-first century? Why Dharmapala Still Matters is the focus of her final section where he explores Dharmapala’s life in retrospect and the implications of his legacy in contemporary politics of Sri Lanka. He examines some of his most famous (and often most controversial) ideas, beliefs, actions, successes, and failures and analyses Dharmapala’s commitment to Buddhism, spirituality, nationalism, and pluralism. The author’s insights present a view of Dharmapala’s legacy that has endured to influence the dynamics of national socio-political evolution.

Indeed, the author contends that his influence remains relevant in our body politic even today and draws a thread from Dharmapala’s revival work that pervaded the populous revival movement to today’s communal politics. He closes with an explanation of how “Dharmapala’s legacy can today be seen through the emergence of the political monk, and the current implications of this emergence for both Sri Lanka’s ongoing Buddhist narrative and the lives of the island’s minority communities.”

By resorting to articulation in colloquial vernacular his preoccupation with the British Raj’s cruelty and indifference towards the majority Sinhalese Buddhists in Ceylon at the time, Dharmapala managed to attract the Sinhalese-Buddhists. He even went to the extent of naming and shaming the so-called middle and upper-middle-class tiers of contemporary Ceylonese society, which may have sowed the original seeds of disenchantment towards the so-called middle-class values of contemporary Ceylonese society. Thus, his appeal attracted the rural Ceylon more than those who dwelled in the big cities and towns.

It is not an exaggeration to state that almost half a century later, Bandaranaike and his political trek towards a cultural revolution cantered on the wrongs done unto the significant majority of rural Sinhalese-Buddhist bore fruits in 1956, as a direct consequence of the Dharmapala doctrine. The residues of that revolution are still present in the current political sphere. The electoral success of the present government as articulated by the President himself at the feet of the Ruwanvalisaya may very well be evidence of the prowess of that Dharmapala doctrine.

It is too early to judge that doctrine’s ultimate value in a historical context, as the author has rightly indicated. Dharmapala singlehandedly influenced the early development of Buddhism in the West and parts of Asia and played a leading role in the revival of Buddhism in Ceylon and worked to restore Buddhism to its rightful place in the culture of his native country. Opening of doors to Sinhalese Buddhists of all shades of caste and class is, of course, a magnificent achievement of that journey, but the enormous anger and hatred created between communities henceforth have propelled our body politic towards polarization with no harmonious end on the horizon. His appeal was one of populist in content, delivery, and messaging. As the author has pointed out, time and again, the majority of Sinhalese Buddhists have displayed the inclination to respond to the echoes of Dharmapala doctrine. Parliamentary Elections in 1956 and 2020 are ample testimony to that appeal.

His message was fundamentalist in mass appeal and generated a substantial synergy among those who think alike. Only time will tell the true value or non-value of the Dharmapala doctrine.

In many ways, Dharmapala is a biographer’s dream. Dharmapala made the smallest details of his life and actions available for public scrutiny by keeping extensive diaries that are now in Mahabodhi Society libraries in Sri Lanka and India. Hewage has carefully combed Dharmapala’s original diaries and meticulously researched and presented with great care the views of his biographers from Steven Kemper (who made him an internationalist), Sarath Amunugama (who recounted his nationalist work as a revivalist), and Ananda Guruge (who published the collected works of Dharmapala), as well as the likes of Gananath Obysekere among a host of others who have written about him and his work from different perspectives. Writing not as an anthropologist but as an avid reader of biographies, I believe that he has presented us a perspective of a historical legend that is both educational and thought provoking.