By Punsara Amarasinghe –

Dr. Punsara Amarasinghe

The explicit support demonstrated by the Sinhalese Buddhist community in Sri Lanka for Israel during the war in Gaza stands in stark contrast to the anti-Israeli mass rallies organized by leftist, liberal, and Muslim groups within the country. This persistent support for Israel, even as the state faces widespread international criticism for its military actions in Gaza, suggests the presence of a significant ideological motivation. In the Indian context, pro-Israeli sentiment is often associated with the Hindutva ideology, which positions Israel as a strategic barrier against perceived Islamic expansionism. However, the Sinhalese Buddhist fascination with Israel and Jewish identity appears to be driven by more complex and nuanced factors that extend beyond concerns about Islamic expansionism. Therefore, it is essential to investigate the underlying factors that have influenced the Sinhalese Buddhist community’s affinity for the State of Israel.

While the recorded history of Sri Lanka offers only limited evidence regarding the historical presence of Jews, the Buddhist nationalist movement in Sri Lanka demonstrated an affinity for Zionism, viewing it as a model for national revival. Anagarika Dharmapala, the legendary figure of Sri Lankan Buddhist nationalism, was the first modern Sinhalese Buddhist leader who admired the Jews and the Zionist movement. Dharmapala frequently expressed pronounced animosity toward the Muslim community in Sri Lanka by comparing them to European Jews, reflecting a form of racialized discourse that was prevalent in Western societies at the time. Notwithstanding these overtly anti-Semitic remarks, Dharmapala also appeared to be intrigued by perceived historical similarities between the Sinhalese and the Jewish people. In an article published in Sinhala Buddhist, a nationalist newspaper in British Ceylon, Dharmapala asserted that both the Sinhalese and the Jews demonstrated comparable valor in preserving their respective identities.

A significant similarity between Zionist ideology and Sinhalese Buddhist ideology lies in their shared emphasis on distinguishing themselves from other civilizations, highlighting a perceived uniqueness rooted in longstanding traditions. Historically, the Sinhalese have consistently celebrated their distinct status as a race, untainted by external influences. This preoccupation closely mirrors the Jewish concept of being a chosen people. In his influential work Ceylon: A Divided Nation, British academic B. H. Farmer explores how historical narratives have shaped both Jewish and Sinhalese identities, fostering a unique sense of collective status. The detailed accounts in the Mahavamsa, the principal chronicle of Sinhalese Buddhism that documents the nobility of ancient Sinhalese monarchs and their support of Buddhism, are analogous to the Books of Kings in the Old Testament. According to Farmer, the Sinhalese Buddhist psyche, grounded in Mahavamsa narratives that claim a special role as the true guardians of Buddhism, demonstrates clear parallels with the Jewish belief in their status as God’s chosen people.

In the turbulent period following Sri Lanka’s independence, Sinhalese nationalists promoted mass hysteria by invoking unsubstantiated historical parallels between Sinhalese and Jewish communities, thereby shaping nationalist rhetoric that fostered hostility toward Tamils. When Sri Lanka’s nationalist-oriented Defence Secretary, N.Q. Dias advised Sirimavo Bandaranaike’s government to strengthen the armed forces in anticipation of Tamil separatism; his initial reports proposed the establishment of agricultural settlements as buffer zones to deter potential Tamil expansion in the island’s Northern Province. Many Sinhalese nationalists, including N.Q. Dias, were deeply invested in the belief that Sinhalese Buddhists were entitled to the land as guardians of Buddhism, and the idea of establishing settlements in the North—where Tamils held a demographic advantage—was partly inspired by Jewish settlement policies implemented by the State of Israel. By emulating Jewish nostalgia for a glorified past recorded in scripture, Sinhalese nationalists sought to colonize the North in order to revive the perceived bygone glory of Sinhalese civilization as portrayed in the Mahawamsa. Despite differences in historical context and mechanisms, both cases share a key commonality: the fervent assertion of a divinely or historically “chosen” status attributed to their respective communities.

In post-civil war Sri Lanka, the efforts forged by many Buddhist nationalists to construct a resemblance between Jewish and Sinhalese identities seemed to have taken a turn glorifying the speculated historical connectivity between the two groups without any provable historical evidence. This tendency was born when Sinhalese chauvinist writers like Dr. Mirando Obeyasekere advocated for propagating King Ravana’s legacy as an alternative history that challenged the conventional historiography of the island, dominated by the historical chronicles such as the Mahavamsa. The pseudo-scientific narrative begotten in the post-civil war context in Sri Lanka contained many stories that were intended to perpetuate the historical relations between Sinhalese and Jews. In one of his best-selling works, Dr. Obeyasekere brings a hypothesis claiming Sri Lanka’s mythical king Ravana sent one of his relatives called “Judah” to establish a land in the Middle East, which later became Israel. This claim has not been supported by any concrete historical evidence proving it to be an imagination of Obeyasekere. Yet the effect that emerged from this fabricated story made a profound impact upon the Sinhala nationalists in their irrational justification for making Sinhalese links to Israel.

The aforementioned story, based on myths, is a quintessential example that reveals the efforts of the Sinhalese to connect their identity with the Jewish community as a way of showing their distinctiveness. Although post-independent Sri Lanka’s relations with the State of Israel took many twisted turns, the general psyche of the Sinhalese Buddhist nationalists reflects a sharp emotional allegiance to Israel. It should be noted that this fascination is completely driven by myths, legends, and beliefs that harbor Sinhalese nationalists to portray them as a chosen nation to defend Buddhism, which is a sheer emulation of the Jewish faith in themselves as God’s chosen people.