Misbehaving Clergy Must Face The Law
Shyamon Jayasinghe
“if you maltreat a penguin in the London Zoo you cannot escape the law on the grounds you are the Archbishop of Canterbury” ~ Lord Bingham.
Buddhist Monks are All Over
The Buddhist clergy are all over Sri Lanka these days! Name a TV channel, and a monk is there. Name a street protest, and a monk is there. Name a subject, and a monk articulates about it. Even if it be the constitution, a monk knows it-although we have only a subcommittee report before us at this stage. It doesn’t matter. Some monk or another will rise up in a stadium and analyse the constitution or what he thinks the constitution is going to be.
The fact is, after the landmark decision of monks to enter parliament under the banner of the Jathika Hela Urumaya it has never been good days for the Sanga. One wonders what is happening in their temples? Villagers who flock for a Pooja? To tie a Pirith Nool? To seek consolation under the Dhamma? To practice meditation? Where have the monks fled?
Sri Lanka had a short time like this soon after the victory of SWRD Bandaranaike and his MEP. in 1956. I remember those days vividly as a youth. However, that era ended with the assassination of SWRD himself by two monks -Somarama and Buddharakhita. Civil society spurned monks for a long time after that. But here, we are now in a repeat of that era. Hope this, too, would not need a tragedy of that sort. The fact that civil society had been able to curb the previous episode is a clue to the solution of Sanga omnipresence. Only organised civil society can curb all this.
Violence
Unlike in the old days, we have Facebook and social media catching images instantly and relaying them to the world. Fortunately, nobody can censure that. A good and effective social control device. The images being splashed daily over social media seem to dramatically question whether Buddhism is any longer the most peaceful religion in the world. What’s the difference from Islamic fundamentalism? Perhaps guns have not yet entered the scene.
Many images show monks lunging forward in hateful manner to shout protests or to assault. I have heaps of them sent to me by friends. If proof be needed I can furnish that.
Some months ago, we had Galagoda Atte Gnanasara once again in action going at Muslims. This man is so ingenious that he even imported Myanmar’s violent protest -monk called Wirathu to Sri Lanka. That was during the previous regime. Gnanasara is kept under some control now; yet government is scared to act against him. When questioned after the Kurunegala episode months ago as to why Gnanasara isn’t arrested despite court orders to do so, a cop exclaimed: “how can we arrest a Buddhist monk.?”
Recently, we had news stories about monks belonging to some Sinhala Jathika Balamandalaya gathering around a safe house where Rohingya Muslims are being kept. These monks lashed filth and assaulted some of the Muslims. These hapless Rohingya people and their trailing little families were rescued by our navy and brought to the safe house under UNHCR instructions. However, our knowing monks rushed to the scene and abused the poor folk who had their eyes looking for mercy.
One of the offending monks have been arrested while the other heroic one is in hiding. A nasty Facebook comment on the image of the arrested monk entering the police van remarks: “Go in the van and reach Nirvana quickly!” Public anger is there, but it is not organised and those against the government stand aloof or enjoy with vicarious pleasure.
This sector of monks seem to know everything accept the Dhamma. Where are the four Brahama Viharas of karuna, metta, Mudita and upekkha? Could any human treat vulnerable and helpless families so cruelly looking in their eyes that cry for mercy?
After Gnanasara and before these two anti-Rohingya monks performance we had the case of a high profile monk who was charged with the theft of elephants and also charged with the abuse of the public address system. This case is at large.
The trend seems exponential and we will see more of this unsavoury developments in the future.
Violating the Vinaya and Transgressing the Law
Violating the Vinaya rules pertaining to the conduct of monks and transgressing the laws of the land are two separate classifications off misbehaviour. As far as the Vinaya rules are concerned they are supposed to be enforced by clergy authority itself. On the other hand, the problem about the Buddhist Sanga is that there isn’t any hierarchical command line that can execute this task. It is sharply different with the Christians and Muslims. The Catholics have a strong hierarchy of parish heads, bishops, archbishops -all going up to the Pope in the Vatican. This isn’t the case with the Buddhist Sanga where Mahanayakes are mostly symbolic positions. The individual Buddhist monk thus possesses a free space to act. In the ancient history of the Sanga, Sri Lanka did have an abundance of individual monks who were thoroughly disciplined and deeply tied to their vocation. They spent their time in temple and in scholarship as our temples became the only formal institutions of learning for a longlong time. It is a different game nowadays. The social and religious scenario is changing radically. No longer are temples the sole institutions of education.
