Why the Maligawa road should not be reopened

Why the Maligawa Road Should Not Be Reopened
(First published in The Island/23rd July 2010 with some parts deleted to shorten the article)

The current proposal to reopen the road stretch adjacent to the Sri Dalada Maligawa in Kandy is being met with a show of approval as well as opposition, though on the whole the response on the part of the local Buddhist laity as well as the clergy has been rather lukewarm either way for some inexplicable reason (may be a case of the silence of the silent majority!). In any case, it appears that a final decision is yet to be taken in this regard. The delay affords the authorities an opportunity to reconsider the wisdom of restoring an anomaly on the sacred Maligawa premises that should have been permanently removed long ago.
Surprisingly, however, the Malwatte Prelate has no objection to the reopening, while the Central Province Governor is opposed to the move as reported in The Island newspaper on July 6 and 8 respectively. We hope that the wiser counsel of the Governor will prevail.
In the opinion of many people, an alternative route to and from downtown Kandy (i.e. an alternative to the one now traversing the Maligawa compound as it were) can be provided at little cost to the country by constructing a bridge across the Kandy lake at its narrowest point. An argument against such a project is that it will spoil the beauty of the place, but this can be easily countered by saying that a highway that is too close to the stately Maligawa edifice more seriously detracts from its beauty and majesty; besides, there is nothing to prevent the bridge from being designed appropriately incorporating compatible Kandyan architectural features that will enhance the beauty of the whole landscape.
A bridge across the lake is not a new idea. More than ten years ago, appalled by the thoroughly polluted state of the Kandy lake, I wrote an article entitled “The Kandy Lake and Its Future” to The Island. It was published on Friday 26th November 1999. The article included the following paragraph:

To reduce air pollution through motor traffic a bridge may be constructed across the Lake in an aesthetically pleasing manner where it is narrowest. (Such a bridge will not only lessen problems of pollution, it will also benefit all those who travel this way and the state by reducing fuel cost and vehicular wear and tear.) The motor-boat service now being operated on the Lake should be replaced with a non-fuel-consuming device such as a canoe, because the area that the Lake covers is quite small and even a small motor-boat can cause a relatively significant amount of pollution. Wooden boats will have the additional advantage of providing employment to a number of people and of adding some rural charm to the boat-riding experience that tourists, both local and foreign, love so much.

The idea about a bridge over the Kandy lake was something that had been already mooted at that time as I remember, though there was no sign of its being practically pursued. However, about six months later, The Island (Tuesday 13th June 2000) carried a news item to the effect that the then Ministry of Transport and Highways was considering a proposal to construct a bridge across the lake. The proposal was never implemented. (No reference is ever made, as far as I know, to the environmental pollution caused by the motor-boat service in the lake. This is perhaps because many people would think that the pollution caused by the boat is nothing compared to that caused by motor-car exhaust fumes around the lake.)

There is no question about the necessity of solving Kandy’s traffic congestion and air pollution problems. But the reopening of the Maligawa road will not significantly ease the situation caused by these problems. Even if it does (unlikely though that is), the reopening should not be allowed. Instead alternative ways of eliminating those hazards must be found. The stretch of road skirting the Maligawa too close to it must be permanently closed. This should have been done long before the terrorist attack on the Maligawa on January 25, 1998 which led to its closure by the authorities.

The preservation and protection of the Dalada Maligawa is a national obligation of the highest priority because of its unparalleled importance for us, which is twofold. First, it is the most venerated Buddhist shrine for the Buddhists within the country and for those in the wider world outside. Second, the Tooth Relic’s special connection with the temporal overlordship of the island, and the importance of the city of Kandy as the last royal capital invest the place with great historical significance for the nation; the general Kandy area which sits astride the focal point (at Katugastota) from where radiate the three ancient divisions of the state of Sri Lanka known as the ‘thrisinhalay’ (Ruhunu, Maya, and Pihiti) is sanctified by the blood of our patriotic forefathers who heroically fought against rapacious foreign intruders for safeguarding the independence of our beloved motherland.

A digression into history is necessary for me to make these points clear. Those timeservers who act as if they are ignorant of this must be reminded of what any ordinary Sri Lankan with some education knows about the Dalada Maligawa and Kandy the last capital of the kingdom of Sinhalay where it stands.

A Kalinga princess by the name of Hemamali travelled to Sri Lanka with her husband Prince Dantha disguised as ascetics about the year 310 BCE. She brought the Tooth Relic concealed in her hair. King Kirti Sri Meghavarna (301-328 CE) who was the ruler of Lanka at that time received them with great honour, and conducted them to Anuradhapura, the royal capital. He housed the relic within the precincts of the royal palace, and ordered an annual perahera to be held in its honour. Over the centuries it became a well established tradition to enshrine the Tooth Relic within the royal palace premises, and to hold an annual Dalada perahera. By the 12th century, a convention had developed whereby the custodianship of the Tooth Relic was accepted as conferring on the person the sovereignty over Sri Lanka. For this reason the protection of the Tooth Relic was of great religious and secular concern for the Sinhalese kings.

With the shifting of the capital city from Anuradhapura to Polonnaruwa, Vijayabahu I (1056-1111) built a Dalada Maligawa immediately to the north of the royal palace. Later, Parakramabahu I (1156-1183) and Nissanka Malla (1187-1196) also made imposing Maligawas to house the Tooth Relic. For the Sinhalese the link between the possession of the Tooth Relic and sovereignty over the island became indissoluble. Whenever the security situation deteriorated, the royal capital was shifted from one city to another: from Polonnaruwa to Dambadeniya under Vijayabahu III (1232-1236) who had saved the country from twenty-one years of cruel tyranny under the wicked invader Magha of Kalinga; again the capital was changed from Dambadeniya to Yapahuwa to Kurunegala, to Kotte, and finally to Kandy. The Tooth Relic was hidden in various locations, the Buddhist monks playing a major role in its protection. The connection between the custodianship of the Tooth Relic and royal power over the island was even internationally known, which attracted the hostile attention of certain foreign soldiers of fortune. Chandrabhanu was one of these. He made two unsuccessful attempts to seize the Relic and ascend the throne. He landed at Mahatittha with his Javaka army on his second attempt during the reign of King Vijayabahu IV (1271-1273). To the king he “sent forth messengers with the message: I shall take Tisihala; I shall not leave it to thee. Yield up to me therefore together with the Tooth Relic of the Sage, the Bowl Relic and the royal dominion. If thou wilt not, then fight.” Vijayabahu accepted the challenge, defeated the invader, and “united Lanka under the umbrella of his dominion” (Culavamsa , Part II, Geiger translation. Asian Educational Services, New Delhi and Chennai. 2003, p.187-88.) “Tisihala” refers, as Geiger explains on p.139, to the threefold division of the island into Patittharattha, Mayarattha, and Rohana, which correspond respectively to modern Pihitirata, Mayarata, and Ruhuna.

When Kotte was captured by the Portuguese, the monks fled the city surreptitiously carrying the Sacred Relic with them. They hid it in a safe place until it was again housed in the two-storeyed Dalada Maligawa built in Kandy by King Wimaladharmasuriya I (1592-1604) who ascended the throne there. (The present Dalada Maligawa is the same one built by King Wimaladharmasuriya, but it has undergone a number of periodic renovations since its inception.) The Kandyan Kingdom under Wimaladharmasuriya’s successors, for half of the nearly 450 years of predatory European aggression in various forms against our motherland between 1505 and 1948, had to bear the brunt of the relentless onslaughts of three European powers.

Writing about Vijayabahu III (mentioned above), who as a young warrior collected an army of combatants from the mountainous areas and attacked Magha to put an end to his depredations, the great D.C.Vijayawardane in his “The Revolt in the Temple” (1953) composed to “commemorate 2500 years of Buddhism, of civilization in Lanka, and of the Sinhalese nation…” praises the ‘mountaineers’ (as he calls them) as “always the last to be subdued and the first to revolt”.

The great rebellion of 1818 led by Keppetipola the Maha Dissawe of Uva , a heroic reaction to British perfidy, provides a piece of evidence for Vijayawardane’s assertion. In this connection, a reference to Professor Tennekoon Vimalananda’s “The Great Rebellion of 1818” (1970) is appropriate. Professor Vimalananda’s work of scholarship mainly draws on the 10,000 page report of the Select Committee of the British Parliament on Ceylon presided over by Mr Hume, which sat at Westminster from 1849-1850 to inquire into the grievances of people and the maladministration of the officials of the British Government in Ceylon. (The report contains records of official correspondence between Governor Robert Brownrigg and the Secretary of State, records of statements by British and native functionaries, etc who directly participated in the events connected with the rebellion, and numerous other records of evidence). The authoritative findings of the select committee categorically denounces the Governor’s deliberate attempt to evade commitments made under the Kandyan Convention. Professor Vimalananda gives an authentic account of the “heroic bravery and courage displayed by the Kandyan Peasantry against the might of the British Empire in a war in which the Sinhalese nearly inflicted defeat upon the invaders” which made the British Governor General Robert Brownrigg communicate his anxiety to the Home Government about the (British) Indian Government’s delay in sending British troops from India to Ceylon to deal with the situation.

The ferocity of the suppression of the uprising can be gauged from the following passage from M.A. Durand Appuhamy’s THE REBELS OUTLAWS AND ENEMIES TO THE BRITISH (M.D. Gunasena & Co. Ltd, 1990.):

The colour sergeant Calladine wrote in his diary, “at this time there was seldom a day passed but we had parties out scouring the country for a distance round, burning all they came across and shooting those they could not take prisoners”. He waxed lyrical in praise of the atrocities committed by him and his fellow British officers:

“But British courage still prevailing
Soon we made our foes to fly,
And their villages assailing,
Caused some hundreds for to die.
See their villages a-burning,
And their temples soon laid low.
This the wretches get for joining
With the jungle rebel foe.”


During the 1818 Kandyan rebellion Keppetipola temporarily secured the possession of the Dalada by having a monk remove it secretly from the Maligawa as mentioned in the above source; the rebel leader used the Relic to rally the peasants around him in support of his cause. But the leaders and their followers gave up the struggle when the Tooth Relic fell into the hands of the British because they thought that with the Relic in their possession the British were now the legitimate rulers of the country. That was the power the Tooth Relic had upon our people.


Thus, the Dalada Maligawa is a sacred living monument to that august history; it stands on ground hallowed by the blood of our patriotic forefathers who breathed their last defending the proud independence of our land; it enshrines the Sacred Tooth Relic of the Buddha the Enlightened One who taught his followers to extend loving kindness to every being irrespective of their colour, size, beliefs, qualities, age, importance, or whatever other attribute one could think of.

The rapacious Europeans did their damnedest to obliterate our Buddhist heritage. The Portuguese burnt down the historic Kelaniya Temple built, as the Sinhalese Buddhists have always believed, on a spot sanctified by the touch of the Buddha’s feet. The alien occupiers hemmed in the Dalada Maligawa with non-Buddhist structures to eclipse its majesty, and to reduce it into insignificance with a view to weakening the religious hold it had on our people. A statue erected in colonial times in memory of a British governor which had no religious significance was removed after Sri Lanka became a republic.

The Sri Dalada Maligawa is the holiest Buddhist shrine in the country and in the whole world. It enshrines the Tooth Relic of the Buddha which is venerated as if it were the living Buddha. For most of the period of its existence in Sri Lanka the Relic has been accorded the highest honour as a palladium, the possession of which was held to legitimize a ruler’s royal authority. A busy road in close proximity to it is not proper. That is why I believe that the Maligawa road should not be reopened, but that an appropriate alternative solution to the traffic and pollution problem must be found.

(Before mailing this write-up to the editor, I went and looked at the part of the Dalada Vidiya that still remains blockaded. I was encouraged by what I saw: the portion of the road parallel to the esplanade opposite the Maligawa was being paved with cement blocks, which I read as a sign that this road will not be reopened after all.)