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The Buddhists did not identify the Christians as the enemy as such but the discrimination was by the British who were Christians by culture as well and who favoured those who had adopted Christianity and Catholicism. Anagarika Dharmapala led this struggle ant it was only a continuation of the major freedom struggles of the Sinhalas against the British in 1817-18 and 1848. If the latter were in the arena of politics mainly, the Buddhist revival of the nineteenth century was a struggle mainly in the field of culture. The western colonialism has three components mainly the political, cultural and economical and the Buddhist revival was nothing but the continuation of the former struggles however concentrating on the cultural component. It was mainly the culture that mattered though on occasions it took a more religious flavour. |
