An army of monks?

The Sri Lankan Government is promoting a recruitment drive to increase the ranks of the Buddhist clergy. But this has come in for sharp criticism. Nirupama Subramanian on the controversy.

EIGHT-YEAR-OLD Suresh Saman Kumara is not old enough yet to attach the prefix Venerable to his name. But from now on, he will bear all the other trappings of a Buddhist monk - orange robes, shaven head, a begging bowl, an umbrella, and the new name of Kandegama Rajithawansa Lankara. He was one of 118 boys - the youngest of them just five years old - ordained earlier this month at the Dimbulagala temple in Polonnaruwa, north-central Sri Lanka.

The new recruits will learn everything they would have at a school, in addition to the Buddhist scriptures. From the very first day, they will also be taught to train their minds and bodies, including controlling hunger from noon to dawn.

The ordainment ceremony was part of a recruitment drive by Sri Lanka's Ministry of Buddhist Affairs, headed by the Prime Minister, Mr. Ratnasiri Wickramanayake, to increase the ranks of the clergy. Mr. Wickramanayke believes the clergy's present strength of about 37,000 is insufficient, and the main reason for the decline in Buddhism in Sri Lanka. The drive has attracted some 700 recruits so far, the Prime Minister's information secretary, Mr. Seelarathne Senarath, told TheHindu.

``These boys will grow up to guide the destiny of Sri Lanka. Bhikus are the main leaders of our people. We have undertaken the campaign for the benefit of the country, because the more bhikhus we have, the better the people will be served,'' says Mr. L. Sugunadasa, Secretary to the Ministry of Buddhasasana.

But the recruitment has come in for sharp criticism from others. ``Buddhism is in decline in Sri Lanka not because there are not enough monks. It is because the monks are becoming too worldly and are not interested in performing their parish roles any more,'' says Prof. Gananath Obeyesekere, who taught sociology at Princeton University and is the author of several books and articles on Sri Lankan Buddhism.

From holding shares in banks and accepting luxury cars as gifts to heading trade unions, Buddhist monks, especially the urbanised leaders of the clergy, are firmly plugged in to the real world. They consider themselves the key stake-holders in the political process of Sri Lanka and important members of its power elite. They are particularly vocal when they feel that the country's Sinhala identity is under threat, and have been at the forefront of protests against giving political concessions to the island's ethnic minorities.

``In such a situation, it is better to have a few good monks than a whole lot of potentially bad ones,'' says Prof. Obeyesekera.

Critics have questioned if mass recruitment drives can attract those truly committed to Buddhist principles, particularly as the boys are of an age at which they are not expected to know their minds. The writers of a feminist column in the daily Island, known by the pseudonym Cat's Eye, have demanded that the minimum age for ordination be raised to 18 to give a person the democratic right of choice of vocation. At present, there is no minimum age.

At the Dimbulagala ordination ceremony, many of the new recruits were from families struggling to eke out a living in the harsh and dry conditions of the region, which borders the conflict zone of the north-east and where the threat of LTTE attacks on civilians is ever present.

There were three brothers, aged between five and 10, from one family. Their parents appeared not to be present for the ordination ceremony. Suresh Kumara's mother, Dayawanthie, a daily wager, had sacrificed a day's work to witness her son's ordination but her husband, who is bed-ridden with a chest ailment, could not make it.

As many as 38 boys from Suresh Kumara's village were ordained that day. ``Their families are too poor to bring them up. They have sent them here so that they will at least get an education and proper food,'' said Mr. H. W. Ariyaratne, a school teacher from the village.

It is anyone's guess how many will continue to remain monks later in life. ``We have told our school pupils who are here that even if they wish to drop out, they should do so only after getting an education, so that they can make something of their lives when they come out,'' said Mr. Ariyaratne

While monkhood may offer upward mobility to the poor, critics believe that Buddhism cannot benefit from such recruitment drives and that the motives behind it are purely political. ``One possible result of this recruitment is that it will add to the number of `political monks', that is, lobbyists and pressure groups who act as stooges of politicians in perpetuating ideas of Sinhala glory, superiority and hegemony, and the so- called `ekiya' or unitary state, which historically never existed,'' says Prof. H. L. Seneviratne, who teaches anthropology at the University of Virginia and is the author of the acclaimed book on Buddhism in Sri Lanka, ``The Work of Kings''.

Prof. Seneviratne sees the recruitment of monks as the ``twin'' to the recruitment of soldiers, especially in the light of the Prime Minister's recent exhortation to the Sinhalese to produce more babies so that there would be more volunteers to the clergy and the army. ``This recalls the Mahavamsa idea of the monk as warrior, and it echoes the Sinhala paranoia that the numbers of Muslims, Tamils and Christians are increasing and the Sinhalas decreasing.'' He described Mr. Wickramanayake's call as ``an economically disastrous, and socially retrograde'' project, which would only create more divisions in society and obstruct nation- building.

As they struggled with their voluminous new orange attire and learnt to chant Buddham Sharanam Gachchammi, the young boys at the Dimbulagala temple could not have been more oblivious to the impact of their mass ordainment on Sri Lanka, Buddhism or Sinhala society, or even on themselves. It was only as they bid goodbye to their family at the end of the ceremony that the tears came rolling down.

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