Back to the Christian Enemy?

By Tisaranee Gunasekara

“For the enemy to be recognized and feared, he has to be in your home or on your doorstep.” Umberto Eco (The Prague Cemetery)

The Tamil enemy and the Muslim enemy are passé, for now. It’s the turn of the Christian enemy, again.

Parliamentarian Chamara Sampath Dassanayake heralded the change at the July 12 convention of the Joint Opposition in Kurunegala. “Venerable monks, (we) should stop being patient. I’m telling prelates and chief prelates, listen to this. The army commander’s tenure was over on 2 July… (It) was extended before. Now (it is) extended again. Who appoints the army commander? On the night of 2 (July), the current army commander took a huge basket of fruits to the cardinal’s house… Now his tenure will be extended till January or February 2028. Once this is extended…Major General Nilantha Premaratne is finished. He will go home in July… Major General Udugama will go home. Nalin Bandaranayake (will) go home. Shantha Hewage (will) go home… None of them will be able to become army commander even for a day. Venerable monks, listen, the next to come will be a Fernando… The army has many resort bungalows. Recently, a lot of fathers have gone to Batticaloa. Now they spend the night in these bungalows. The army provides food and all comforts. That is the way this government is going. The army commander (is) appointed by the cardinal. The CID is cardinal. Everything is done by the cardinal…As I said once, it was fortunate the cardinal didn’t become the pope. If not, this too would have been over. This would have become a Vatican.”

As a loyal Rajapaksa acolyte, Dassanayake would have had a ringside seat when his masters started their 2009 search for a suitable enemy to replace the dead Tiger. Initially, they flirted with the Christian enemy. Conversion phobia was ignited, and churches were attacked again. “Today religious terrorism has replaced LTTE terrorism… Christian organizations were responsible for spreading disharmony among Sinhalas and Tamils,” Medagama Dhammananda Thera said, with a straight face (Asian Tribune 14.2.2010). Two years later, the Christian enemy was abandoned, and the Muslim enemy enthroned.

Today, sections of the opposition are searching again for a suitable enemy. The Tamil enemy is hard to resurrect. The Muslim enemy is exhausted. Who else but the Christian enemy?

As the July 2026 Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) survey demonstrates, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has an approval rating of 76% (this rises to 82% among the 18-29 age cohort). 63% are satisfied with the NPP administration’s capacity to deliver efficient governance (only 23% are dissatisfied; the satisfaction level is much higher among the 18-29 age cohort at 71%, while only 17% of this group is dissatisfied).

This places the government in a politically unassailable position – for now. The survey also demonstrates that socio-economics could become the Achilles’ Heel of the administration. Fifty-one per cent of respondents say that their household economic situation has worsened compared to a year ago; only 18% say it has improved, while 30% say it remains unchanged. Only 45% are satisfied with the government’s handling of the cost of living, while 44% are dissatisfied.

Sri Lanka’s recent return to upper-middle-income status (we were first there in 2019 and were downgraded in 2020) was caused by a real recovery in growth, “supported by broad-based industrial rebound and steady growth in the services sector.” But this does not mean any significant improvements in overall development or general living standards. As the World Bank Sri Lanka Development Update 2026 points out, while economic recovery remains strong, socio-economic indicators continue to be weak. Poverty in 2025 is estimated to be around 22.1%. “The economic recovery has been unable to reverse crisis-induced welfare losses”.

Today Sri Lanka’s per capita income is around 1.6 million rupees. At the same time, over 22% of its people earn less than 205,000 rupees per year. This is classic ruthless growth. The economic recovery is real, but it is built on the shifting sands of widening socio-economic disparities. If the extremely unequal nature of our current recovery is not corrected speedily, the government’s popularity can take a nosedive.

An opposition that cares about the Himalayan costs of inciting ethnic/religious passions, an opposition that possesses a grain of sense or a patriotic bone in its collective body, would focus its anti-government campaign on the solid ground of socio-economics. With such an excellent weapon waiting to be claimed and wielded, why are sections of the opposition trying to ignite religious fires?

The plague bacillus of 1956

The success of the 1953 hartal increased the prestige and the popularity of the left parties which led it. Had the 1956 election been fought on the socio-economic battlefield (as were the 1947 and 1952 elections), the left parties would have fared extremely well. That calculus changed when S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike embraced the Sinhala Only agenda a couple of months before the election. His opportunistic move transformed the terrain of battle from socio-economic to ethno-religious-linguistic.

The disastrous outcome of the Sinhala Only language policy is well known. Less talked about is how the new government’s Buddhist bias played out in governance. As the inimitable D.B.S. Jeyaraj wrote, when Prime Minister Bandaranaike wanted the police to break up the port strike by arresting trade union leaders, IGP Osmond de Silva refused. An angry prime minister sacked this honourable policeman. He wanted the new IGP to be not only pliant but also Buddhist. Since the officers next in line in terms of seniority were all Christians, “he brought in an outsider – his friend and civil servant Walter Abeykoon”

This appointment, based on nepotism and religion, would have disastrous consequences, including for the prime minister. As retired DIG Gamini Gunawardane revealed, “He ultimately paid with his life for his folly. Not only he, but his wife too, nearly paid the price in 1962 when the civilian IGP was found playing bridge at the Orient Club on that fateful night, blissfully ignorant of the coup d’état to overthrow the government that was about to be launched! Their daughter, too, paid a similar price under an IGP of her choice over the heads of five seniors, all competent men. She survived losing only an eye”.

In 1999, the senior-most judge on the bench and eminent jurist Mark Fernando was passed over, and the supremely unsuitable Sarath N. Silva was made Chief Justice by Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga. Justice Fernando had two disqualifications. One was his incorruptibility and fierce independence. The other was his religion. He was a Catholic, unlike  Silva, who was a Buddhist of the exhibitionist variety.

Unfortunately, none of this history matter to politicians who have no hesitation in driving the electorate through hell and high water in order to return to power. Parliamentarian Chamara Sampath Dassanayake is not the sole igniter of religious fires. His might be the most openly virulent voice, but a veritable chorus is in the making, singing about an anti-Buddhist and pro-Christian conspiracy, especially behind the Easter Sunday massacre investigation.

On July 1, 2026, the Patriotic National Movement filed an intervening petition seeking to support the writ application by Major General (Rtd) Suresh Salley against his detention. One of the petitioners was Angunugalle Sri Jinananda Thera, who, with his complaint against writer Shakthika Sathkumara, pioneered the using of the ICCRP as a blasphemy law (he is also a key promoter of Israeli interests in Sri Lanka). According to him, “There is an attempt by this government to make Major General Suresh Salley, the army, and the Sinhala-Buddhist people culpable for the Easter Sunday attack. This conspiracy is operated by the masterminds… the cardinal, Ravi Seneviratne and Shani Abeysekara”

Dapane Sri Mahinda Thera, president of the Pasyodunrata Buddhist Congress and principal of Kande Vihare Maha Pirivena, also sought permission to be added as an intervening petitioner in General Salley’s writ application. The senior prelate’s petition “expresses concern that unproven allegations created a public narrative suggesting a wider conspiracy involving Sinhala Buddhist military and intelligence officers, contrary to the findings of the Supreme Court and the Presidential Commission”.

Shantha Jayathialake, a retired air force official, lodged a complaint with the Attorney General’s Department against Additional Solicitor General Dileepa Peiris. Addressing the media afterwards, he implied that the concern about victims of the Easter Sunday Massacre was an unnecessary fuss. “20-30,000 people of this country died from terrorism. Zahran killed and injured around 500… The Buddhist majority in this country follow Lord Buddha’s middle path. They are familiar with the Eight Worldly Conditions (Ata Lo Dahama). Catholic or Muslim people might feel hurt (because) they cannot face the Eight Worldly Conditions, blame-praise, profit-loss…”

Seventy years after 1956, the plague bacillus remains undead. For a range of opposition politicians from Namal Rajapaksa to Champaka Ranawaka and Dilith Jayaweera, infecting polity and society with ethno-religious hate remains the only path to power.

Old history, new reality?

One of the most fascinating findings of the CPA survey is how Sri Lankans view the idea of a secular constitution. Only 43% think that the majority religion should be given the foremost place in the constitution. Fifty-two per cent believe that no religion should be so privileged constitutionally. The support for a secular constitution is much higher among the 18-29 age cohort at 61%; only 32% of this age cohort support a Buddhism-first constitution. Even more significantly, a plurality of Sinhalese (49%) support a secular constitution while 47% support a constitution which accords primacy to Buddhism.

The enshrining of Buddhism in the constitution, first in 1972 and then in 1978, led not to a spiritual flourishing of the Sasana but to its debasement. While temples became materially rich, monks became spiritually poor. The sordid saga of Pallegama Hemaratana Thera is the latest example of how far the monkhood has fallen. There is clearly an inverse relationship between over-the-top state patronage of Buddhism and the state of health of the Sasana.

In response to the 1818 uprising, British rulers unilaterally amended the Kandyan Convention, removing the special status granted to Buddhism. This severing of the umbilical cord connecting Sri Lankan Buddhism and the Sri Lankan state led not to the decimation of Buddhism but to its flowering. Over the next several decades, Buddhism experienced a remarkable resurgence. This resurgence was led by a cohort of new monks who ordained not to escape poverty or to benefit from generous state patronage but out of a deep conviction of the rightness of Buddhism. Their work reached its zenith with the famous Panadura Debate (which was a series of debates commencing in Baddegama in 1864 and ending in Panadura in 1873). The debates were peaceful and mannered, erudite and accessible, exhibitions of doctrinal knowledge and rhetorical skills. Once the final debate ended, the British editor of the Ceylon Times, John Cooper, published an account of it highly complementary to the Buddhist side, introducing Buddhism to many Westerners.

So, contrary to popular belief, the Buddhist resurgence was not the work of Anagarika Dharmapala. The first Buddhist printing press was set up in Galle in 1862, two years before his birth. The long Panadura Debate began the year he was born and ended when he was a child of nine. He was nine when the Vidyodaya Pirivena was founded and 11 when the Vidyalankara Pirivena was founded. What Anagarika Dharmapala did was to change the course of Buddhist resurgence, placing it on a path of conflict with ethnic and religious minorities.

For example, the first Buddhist printing press and the first Buddhist printed journal were called Lankalokaya (Lanka’s Light and not The Light of the Sinhalese) while Dharmapala’s first publication was called Sinhala-Bauddaya (Sinhala-Buddhist). The older leaders of the Buddhist resurgence might have been concerned by the new path it was taking. Some of them explicitly warned their followers against hate. For instance, the chief incumbent of Sri Pada concluded a two-hour sermon by telling his audience to exercise patience and “to follow Buddha’s command of not even so much as thinking evil of those who cruelly used and persecuted them” (Buddhism and Christianity Face to Face, J.M. Peebles).

Anagarika Dharmapala was not politically ambitious, but the path he forged has been exploited again and again by ambitious politicians looking for a shortcut. The ongoing attempts at resurrecting the Christian enemy by a segment of the opposition is the latest such instance. The findings of the CPA survey indicate that this time the old tactics of pitting Sinhalese against Tamils/Muslims or Sinhala-Buddhists against Sinhala-Christians just might not work.

-This article was originally featured on groundviews.org