By Tisaranee Gunasekara -
“In the middle was Fear….glaring backwards with eyes like fire….upon it burned upon it burned Tumult and Murder and Slaughter…” - Hesiod (Shield of Heracles)
Why should there be a Buddhist temple in Kenya?
Neither Sinhalese nor Buddhists have a historical-footprint in East Africa. Yet there is a Buddhist temple in Nairobi, a Theravada one, with a Sinhala monk in charge of it. The temple was built by Sinhala-Buddhist expatriate workers and President Rajapaksa visited it, on his recent visit to Kenya.
President Rajapaksa at the Nairobi Buddhist Temple
Kenyans do not seem to feel threatened by this creation of an alien place of worship in their country by non-Kenyans; there are no reports of Kenyan patriots expressing their outrage with fire or stones.
The presence of a Buddhist temple in Kenya illustrates the reality of the modern world. Apart from Saudi Arabia and perhaps Afghanistan, there are no religiously monolithic countries in today’s world. The advancement of knowledge and science has opened-up the globe, enabling the religious to propagate their faiths in lands unknown to (and unimagined by) their ‘all-seeing’ founders. When people travel and relocate, they take their faiths with them. Most countries do not feel threatened when expatriates observe and propagate their own religions. In every country there are a minority of ethno-religious fundamentalists who see in such very human conduct alien invasions of inestimable danger, but, fortunately for Sinhala-Buddhists living voluntarily away from their thrice-blessed motherland, sane governments and societies keep these lunatic fringes firmly on the fringe.
Hypocrisy is a defect congenital to extremism; Sinhala-Buddhist extremists are no exception to this general rule. They see absolutely nothing wrong in propagating Buddhism, building temples or converting foreigners everywhere in the world while clamouring to deny the same basic rights to non-Buddhists in Sri Lanka.
Sinhala-Buddhists generally believe that they are a tolerant breed with an unblemished live-and-let-live historical record. The extremists see this as a weakness while the ordinary decent majority are proud of it. The historical truth is not so unequivocal, as indicated by the fate of non-Theravada Buddhism in Lanka.
