by
C.A.Chandraprema
Blessed Joseph Vaz-(21 April 1651, Benaulim-16 January 1711, Kandy)
Last week, the Bodu Bala Sena said that when the Pope visits this country, he should apologize for the crimes committed against Buddhists by the Christian colonial powers. When the government of Sri Lanka invited the Pope to visit this country, it was obviously not to extract an apology from his holiness, but for him to minister to the Roman Catholics in this country. As the head of the Roman Catholic church, the Pope cannot apologize for anything done by either the Dutch or the British in this country as they did not belong to his church. The Portuguese however were Roman Catholics. In the 15th century, the Portuguese started off on an era of global exploration and conquest armed with a fearful Papal Bull titled ‘Dum Diversas’ issued by Pope Nicholas V in 1452 and reaffirmed by several subsequent Popes. The English translation of the operational part of this document would go as follows:
“…we grant to you (King Alfonso of Portugal) full and free power, through the Apostolic authority by this edict, to invade, conquer, fight, subjugate the Saracens (Muslims) and pagans, and other infidels and other enemies of Christ, and wherever established their Kingdoms, Duchies, Royal Palaces, Principalities and other dominions, lands, places, estates, camps and any other possessions, mobile and immobile goods found in all these places and held in whatever name, and held and possessed by the same Saracens, Pagans, infidels, and the enemies of Christ, also realms, duchies, royal palaces, principalities and other dominions, lands, places, estates, camps, possessions of the king or prince or of the kings or princes, and to lead their persons in perpetual servitude, and to apply and appropriate realms, duchies, royal palaces, principalities and other dominions, possessions and goods of this kind to you and your use and your successors the Kings of Portugal.”
Needless to say, the Portuguese conducted themselves in the most ignoble manner in conquering Ceylon. Most Buddhist temples within their area of control were destroyed and the monks either killed or chased out. The Catholic church itself is acutely aware of the crimes committed by the church in the name of god and thinking churchmen are profoundly embarrassed by their own history. In the year 2000, Pope John Paul II broke the silence on this shameful past and issued from the altar of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome, what the British newspaper The Guardian called “a sweeping apology for 2,000 years of violence, persecution and blunders” The words of Pope John Paul II were as follows – “We forgive and we ask forgiveness.
We are asking pardon for the divisions among Christians, for the use of violence that some have committed in the service of truth, and for attitudes of mistrust and hostility assumed towards followers of other religions….We are deeply saddened by the behaviour of those who in the course of history have caused these children of yours to suffer, and asking your forgiveness we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood.” The Pope freely admitted that ethnic groups had endured “contempt for their cultures and religious traditions”.
What is significant about the year 2000 apology of the Catholic church was that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was to succeed Pope John Paul II as Pope Benedict XVI also admitted that “Even men of the church, in the name of faith and morals, have sometimes used methods not in keeping with the Gospel”. So the required apologies have already been made by the Catholic church. John Paul II was the Pope who cleared the air about the unenviable past of the Catholic church. This is also partly why he is being fast tracked to sainthood amidst much public acclaim.
He apologized for many other outrages committed by the Catholic church as well, such as the Spanish inquisition and the persecution of Galileo Galilei and not just the outrages committed against us colonials. We will deal later with the question as to why the Bodu Bala Sena is asking the Pope to apologize for the crimes committed against Buddhists. But just to place matters in the proper perspective, the Catholic church should perhaps give wide publicity in Sri Lanka to Pope John Paul II’s words of contrition.
Catholicism and Buddhist tolerance
In the meantime, it would be relevant for both the Sri Lankan public and the visiting Pontiff to dwell on some relevant facts about the Sri Lankan Catholic church. The Portuguese conquerors did destroy Buddhist temples within their area of control in Ceylon and kill or chase out the monks. But the Portuguese had to suffer what can only be described as classic Dittadammavedaniyakamma when the Dutch took over their territories in Ceylon in the mid-17th Century.
The Dutch were not religious bigots like the Portuguese but as a matter of state policy they took to suppressing Roman Catholicism and promoting their Protestant faith among the locals instead. The Dutch destroyed or appropriated for other uses every single Roman Catholic church in their area of control and either killed or chased out every single Catholic priest from their territory – exactly what the Portuguese had done earlier to the Buddhists!
The Dutch were if at all more efficient in their repression of Roman Catholicism than the Portuguese were in the suppression of Buddhism. The Dutch declared the death penalty for any Catholic priest found in their territories in Ceylon and sealed their maritime borders so effectively that not a single Catholic priest was able to sneak into Ceylon from the Portuguese outpost in Goa. In fact modern day naval officers would do well to study the Dutch maritime security arrangements because they were so effective in preventing unwanted types from coming into Sri Lanka from India, even in that low-tech era.
During this period of Dutch persecution of Roman Catholicism, the latter were able to enjoy the freedom of worship only in the territory of the Sinhala kings. During the early part of Dutch rule, the Kandyan King was Rajasinha II the warrior king, who was an implacable foe of the Portuguese.
Though this King did his best to expel the Portuguese from Ceylon and even formed an alliance with the Dutch for the purpose, he did not join the Dutch in trying to wipe out the Roman Catholic faith and they were free to worship in his territory. But the Dutch had been so efficient in killing off and expelling the Catholic clergy that there were no Catholic priests who had managed to flee even into the Kandyan Kingdom and the Catholic religion was facing extinction in this country. Without churches and priests, only the former Catholic converts remained but they were fast losing their faith. It was at this stage that Joseph Vaz, a missionary from Goa, managed to sneak into Ceylon disguised as a labourer to revive the Catholic church.
He would never have been able to do that if not for the enlightened religious tolerance of King Vimaladharmasuriya II who succeeded his father Rajasingha II. The latter was a belligerent king who personally led his troops in battle, but his mild mannered son Vimaladharmasuriya II had been brought up mostly in a temple and was a Buddhist activist but he gave Joseph Vaz the freedom to reorganize the Catholic church in Ceylon. His son Vira Parakrama Narendrasingha, the last Sinhala King, followed much the same policy.
Thus did three Sinhala Buddhist Kings (all heathens to the core) teach the warring Christian colonial powers, the true meaning of Christian charity! They practiced religious tolerance in an era when that concept was unknown in Europe. It should also be noted that these three Kings did not give refuge to the Roman Catholics in expectation of any strategic or military advantage. The Portuguese were by that time a spent force and had nothing to offer anybody. The Roman Catholic powers were in decline and the Protestants were ruling the roost. So it was nothing but innate tolerance that motivated these Kings to give refuge to the persecuted Catholics.
When the Pope visits Sri Lanka the one billion Roman Catholics around the world who will be watching the event should get to know that there wouldn’t be a single Roman Catholic in Sri Lanka if not for three Sinhala Buddhist heathen kings who were willing to give Catholics the freedom of worship denied to them by the Christian Dutch. All three Kings Rajasinha II, Vimaladharmasuriya II and Vira Parakrama Narendrasinha were only too well aware of the atrocities committed by the Portuguese Roman Catholics against the Buddhists within their area of control. Yet they did not try to exact revenge from the Roman Catholics when they were down. That is what we should showcase to the world, when the Pope arrives in Sri Lanka.
It should be noted that the Catholic church that exists today is not the Portuguese Roman Catholic church that was established here by the Portuguese using state power and with blood and iron, but a revived church established by Joseph Vaz not on the basis of imperial state power but as a missionary religion with the tolerance and patronage of the Kandyan Sinhala Buddhist kings. Joseph Vaz who rebuilt the Catholic church from scratch had nothing that he could offer king Vimaladharmasuriya II in return for allowing him to revive the Catholic church. Indeed Vaz was a religious mendicant. One thing that would have impressed the Sinhala King about Joseph Vaz would have been how different Vaz was to the Portuguese Catholic priests the Sinhalese had seen up to that time. The Portuguese Catholic priests with the imperial power behind them, would have been arrogant and overbearing whereas Joseph Vaz was the very epitome of humility.
He approached King Vimaladharmasuriya II as a Roman Catholic religious ascetic from India and he was obviously accepted as such. The fact that he was Indian and not Portuguese may also have helped. Because Vaz rebuilt the Catholic church without the backing of an imperial political power the Catholic church has put down firmer roots in this country than the Dutch Reformed Church or the Anglican Church which both went into decline the moment their empires collapsed. Given the fact that Pope John Paul II has already apologized for the depredations committed in the colonies by the Catholic church, another apology by Pope Francis would probably be a case of overkill. Besides the Portuguse church was amply punished for their sins by the Dutch very early on, as we outlined earlier! What the Sinhala Buddhists in this country would certainly appreciate however is a Papal acknowledgement of the policy of enlightened religious tolerance towards Roman Catholics followed by the three Sinhala Buddhist kings mentioned above.
Live in the present,not the past
Besides, there comes a time when you just cannot be delving into the past and asking people to apologize for something that happened centuries ago. If this is taken to its logical conclusion, the BBS should also ask the Chinese President to apologize for the destruction of the Mahavihara in Anuradhapura by the Mahayana influenced Sinhala King Mahasen on the argument that China is the leading Mahayana country! We can’t be living in the past especially when the past that we are talking of is several centuries ago. Indeed it would sometimes be counterproductive to talk of the past even if it is just a few decades or years ago. For example, no good will accrue to anybody if the Tamils keep on harping about what happened in July 1983, or if the Buddhists keep harping on the bombing of the Dalada Maligawa. There are some things that we have to just leave behind and move on. Moreover, Portuguese colonial rule was not all bad it certainly had its upside as well.
The main advantage was that the Portuguese incursion into Asia broke the monopoly that the Arabs had on Asian trade and if not for the timely Portuguese invasion, Sri Lanka too may have become a Muslim country like the Maldives or Indonesia not through conquest but through trade connections, intermarriage, natural increase in the population and through conversion. The only proselytizing religion that this country knew before the Portuguese brought Roman Catholicism was Islam. The fact that Buddhism and the Sinhalese identity still exists in this country is an unintended consequence of the Portuguese entry into Asia. Another thing that the Portuguese conquest did was to open the Sinhalese mind to the wider world. When the Portuguese first appeared on our shores, the isolated Sinhalese had never seen a white man whereas the Muslim traders in Sri Lanka knew exactly who the Portuguese were. In fact Muslim historians in this country have claimed that it was Muslim traders who took the first Portuguese who arrived in this country by a circuitous route to Kotte to see the Sinhala king.
The Muslims knew that their rivals on the high seas had found their way to Ceylon and they wanted to discourage the intruders from thinking of remaining on the island. By the time the Portuguese arrived in Ceylon, this was a weak country without a strong political authority and our foreign trade and indeed foreign affairs as well was completely in the hands of the Muslims. The Buddhist dispensation was in a chaotic state and in decline. If the Portuguese did not displace the Arabs from Asian trade, we would all have ended up as Muslims within a couple of centuries. Today, we have only one Gnanasara and we are unable to tolerate his extremism. But had Sri Lanka been a Muslim country, there would have been a wild eyed religious fanatic with a bushy beard virtually on every street corner – the Muslim countries for various reasons, tend to produce a greater number of religious fanatics per capita than all other nations put together. The Portuguese unintentionally saved us from that.
We now come to the question as to why the BBS called for an apology from the Pope for injustices done to Buddhists during colonial rule. This request for an apology is obviously not with the intention of effecting a rapprochement between Catholics and Buddhists. To the Bodu Bala Sena, this is another opportunity to create mayhem. There was the incident in Aluthgama which the BBS used to further their agenda. Now there is the Pope’s visit which they will also try to use to further their agenda in the same way.
This is nothing but the second leg of the regime change agenda – to turn the inter-ethnic conflict that they have been fanning into an intra-ethnic conflict by setting the Sinhala Catholics against the Sinhala Buddhists. The Sinhala Catholic vote has been solidly behind this government. By taking chunks of ethnic or religious votes away from the government the Rajapaksa government can be brought down despite its popularity. They first set the Muslims against the government and deprived the government of even the minority of Muslim votes they would get. Now they will create a split between the Catholics and the Buddhists and deprive the government of the Catholic vote as well. This is a well planned conspiracy which the government should act fast to counter.
During the Pope’s visit, the Catholic church in this country for their part, should ensure that Bishop Rayappu Joseph and other such individuals in the North are kept on a leash to ensure that they don’t make use of the pontiff’s visit to further the cause of Tamil revenge or Tamil separatism. The Catholics too have their own extremists though of a different kind. The Vatican has long years of experience in dealing with touchy situations and we presume that it is unlikely that the Pontiff will make any controversial or partial statements while he is in Sri Lanka. Some people feel that the Pope may at the behest of the Tamil lobby make some statement that will turn the Sinhala Catholics against the Rajapaksa government.
If Pope Francis does any such thing, that may be the last time a Pope is ever invited to any country with a Catholic minority – so it’s very unlikely that such a thing will happen.
Courtesy: Sunday Island