Social Movements, Power Politics and Politicization of Buddhist Priestsin Sri Lanka

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is to explore how politics was crucially influenced on change of the spiritual behavior of the Maha Sanga (Bhikku) towards political practices in the pre and post- independence society in Sri Lanka. The trend of the politics in Sri Lankan society is becoming more complicity because Buddhism which is the main religion of the majority people of the Sri Lankan society have crucially impact on practice of the politics . Buddhism, it is very strongly called as a spiritual religion which has appeared for the people to emancipation from the bad secular social practices and beliefs. Further, since Buddha’s Parinibbana (attain to spiritual world) it has been maintained and sustained by the Maha Sanga (Bhikku) which are Buddha’s Dharma school. Therefore, Sanga community, they have strong ethical and spiritual objectives than secularized desires which base on Buddha’s teaching. Sri Lanka is one of the countries which have been practicing Theravada Buddhism as a spiritual religion by their Sanga Community. Therefore, Maha Sanga has strong spiritual objectives than secularizing their day to day social practices. There are nothing some evidence in Buddha’s teaching on Maha Sanga regarding political involvement on statehood or politics, yet there’re rapid trends and evidence have been shown in contemporary politics in Sri Lanka that is political involvement of the Sanga community regarding regimes change so far, Why? There are many scholars have done manyresearch’s on Buddhism and politics in Sri Lanka but the difference between of those researches and this research, this research will try to find out the basic socio, economic and cultural factors which caused to motivated Sanga community regarding interfering practical politics in pre and Post-Independence politics. Discourse analysis which is one of the post structural methods of scientific inquiry in social science research will be applied as a major research method in this research. Therefore, previous discourses and argumentswhich have created by scholars will be critically re-interpreted and re-produced in this research. Further, final output of this research can be shown that during the period of pre and post-independence that state sponsorship and behavior of the rules has been impact on maha Sanga and their behavior regarding practical; politics in Sri Lanka. Emphasized facts and ideas of this research will be opened new room and will empower to researchers who are interest to doing similar research in same research area,