Sri Lanka is not the only country that gives Buddhism the foremost place, former President Ranil Wickremesinghe said at Mihintale, arguing that other Theravada states do the same — and that the constitutional clause requiring it was not written by Sri Lankans.
He spoke on Sunday at a ceremony for the unveiling of the pinnacle of the Minindu Maha Seya in Mihintale, the Daily Mirror reported at 11.05 a.m. on Monday.
The constitutional claim
“Article 9 of our Constitution requires that Buddhism be given the foremost place. That is not something we created; it was agreed upon between the British and the Kandyan chiefs. We did not draft it,” Wickremesinghe said. He added that when the King of England and Queen Elizabeth II visited the Temple of the Tooth in 1954, “this was respectfully acknowledged.”
That is the substantive assertion in the speech, and it is the one the report does not examine. Article 9 is a provision of the 1978 Constitution; the agreement he refers to is evidently the 1815 convention under which the Kandyan chiefs ceded the kingdom to the British, which carried an undertaking on the protection of Buddhism. Whether a clause drafted in the 1970s is best described as inherited from 1815 rather than created is precisely the question at issue, and the Daily Mirror neither tests the claim nor reports him being asked about it.
The comparison with Thailand
Wickremesinghe said the two states treat Buddhism the same way while protecting every religion. “We must remember that every religion is protected in our countries and that everyone has the right to practise the religion of their choice, and that no one may be discriminated against on religious grounds.”
On Thailand he said sovereignty belongs to the people but is exercised on their behalf by the King — legislative power resting with the National Assembly, executive power with the Council of Ministers and judicial power with the courts — and that the Thai constitution requires the King to be a Buddhist, with Article 67 directing that Buddhism be protected. “So, all our countries are alike. The same is true of Cambodia,” he said.
The history he put behind it
Most of the speech was an account of Theravada Buddhism’s spread outward from Sri Lanka. He traced it from the Third Buddhist Council at Pataliputra and the arrival of Arahant Mahinda Thera under Emperor Ashoka, through King Devanampiya Tissa’s acceptance of the teaching and the founding of the Maha Vihara with the Ruwanweli Seya as its principal stupa — the first centre where Pali Buddhism was taught, and where the Tripitaka was later written on palm leaves.
He said the sects were unified with the Maha Vihara under King Parakramabahu I, when the capital was Polonnaruwa and the main port Trincomalee, and that monks from Thailand and Cambodia came to study at Dimbulagala. Buddhism spread first to Nakhon Si Thammarat and then to Sukhothai, he said, and Sri Lankan monks also reached Angkor Wat, then a Mahayana kingdom, converting its people to Theravada.
After the wars with the Portuguese cost Sri Lanka its ordained monks, he said, senior monks of the “Lankavamsa” lineage were brought back from Ayutthaya — the origin of the Siam Nikaya and the restoration of the Sasana, with the Amarapura and Ramanna Nikayas following. He closed on King Rama V, who funded Anagarika Dharmapala’s campaign for Buddhist control of Bodh Gaya: “We must remember to ask whether Bodh Gaya would be in Buddhist hands today had it not been for King Rama V.”
Why this lands now
The speech is a former head of government making a constitutional argument about Buddhism’s status in the same weekend that the sitting President used an NPP rally in Badulla to warn that groups were trying to reignite religious and racial tensions, and while the campaign for a presidential pardon for Ven. Galagodaatte Gnanasara Thera remains unresolved.
Wickremesinghe’s framing cuts against both poles of that dispute. It treats Buddhism’s foremost place as settled and externally inherited rather than as something the state confers or could withdraw, while insisting in the same breath on religious freedom and non-discrimination. Neither point is presented as a response to the current controversy, and the report does not say whether he was asked about it.
A separate statement, in the same filing
The Daily Mirror appends to this report a statement from the United National Party, introduced with “Meanwhile” and not attributed to Wickremesinghe. The party said the attack on Buddhist monks who protested demanding Gnanasara Thera’s release demonstrated the government’s objective of “transforming Sri Lanka into a non-Buddhist nation,” and questioned the failure to involve Ven. Ittapane Dhammalankara Thera, Nayaka Thera of the Sri Kalyana Samasiri Sangha Sabha — the chapter to which Gnanasara Thera belongs — in discussions on the removal of his robes.
This desk records the statement as the party’s, not the former president’s. The paragraph sits in the same article but is a distinct item, and nothing in the filing connects it to the Mihintale ceremony.
Not reported
The filing does not say who organised the Mihintale ceremony or who else attended, and gives no date for the pinnacle’s installation beyond “yesterday.” It does not say in what capacity Wickremesinghe spoke. The stupa’s name is rendered “Minindu Maha Seya” here; it is elsewhere recorded as Mihindu Maha Seya (මිහිඳු මහා සෑය), and no filing resolves the spelling.
This desk found no other verified newsroom carrying the speech. Ada Derana has been unreachable from this desk for 30 days, returning an HTTP 403 from its content delivery network.
Source: Daily Mirror.
