Talk:Persecution of Buddhists

I have moved the following paragraph here from the article because it strays off the topic of persecution:

The process of conversion in the region and northwest India was much slower than other regions conquered by Muslims. Bamiyan continued to function as a site of Buddhism into eleventh century. Some Buddhists of the region also fled and did not welcome the Muslim domination. It is visible from some copper-plate inscriptions that some Buddhists had moved to areas under Rashtrakuta and Pala rule.^[1] In Samarkand, the religion had already died out in pre-Islamic times, though it continued to exist along with other religions until the tenth century, whereas in Afghanistan it existed until the twelfth century under Ghurid dynasty.^[2] In addition to discrimination, emigration, conversion of the laity, Buddhism and its monastries in the region also declined with the Muslims taking over the trade along the Silk Road, leading to degradation in their socio-economic position as well as decreasing financial support.^[3][4][1]

The paragraph also does a poor job of summarizing the cited sources. Elverskog, for instance, starts his section on Buddhists and Muslim Rule by saying: "The common view of Muslim rule is one of violence and persecution ... While this certainly makes for a powerful story ... it is wrong." He spends the rest of the chapter explaining this. The nuggets chosen from Elverskog fail to convey his broader points about the persecution or lack of persecution of Buddhists. --Worldbruce (talk) 16:15, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

Theirs a lot of false persecution here as well. Adi Shankaracharya debated Buddhism and the Shaiva Acharyas as well from what I am seeing. If the author thinks religious competition and debates are persecution, then I don't think that's true. Also, many of these Buddhist sources seem biased towards Hindu and Jain faiths just because they weren't patronized. In this case, I could say all Hindus were persecuted under the rise of Srammana traditions for winning them over in popularity, this is absurd.

Please insert a section to capture the total number of Buddhists killed, captured and converted. Even Muslim conquests in the Indian subcontinent does not capture such profound multi-century successive ongoing multi-holocausts. 222.164.212.168 (talk) 08:42, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Persecution of Buddhists's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "Rene":

• From Tarim Basin: Grousset, Rene (1970). The Empire of the Steppes. Rutgers University Press. pp. 37, 41–42. ISBN 978-0-8135-1304-1.
• From Dzungaria: Grousset, Rene (1970). The Empire of the Steppes. Rutgers University Press. pp. 35, 37, 42. ISBN 0-8135-1304-9.
• From Silk Road: Grousset, Rene (1970). The Empire of the Steppes. Rutgers University Press. pp. 36–37, 48. ISBN 978-0-8135-1304-1.
• From Mihirakula: Grousset, Rene (1970), The Empire of the Steppes, Rutgers University Press, p. 71, ISBN 0-8135-1304-9
• From Gupta Empire: Grousset, Rene (1970). The Empire of the Steppes. Rutgers University Press. p. 69. ISBN 978-0-8135-1304-1.
• From Nomadic empire: Grousset, Rene (1970). The Empire of the Steppes. Rutgers University Press. pp. 67–72. ISBN 978-0-8135-1304-1.
• From Bactria: Grousset, Rene (1970). The Empire of the Steppes. Rutgers University Press. pp. 29–31. ISBN 0-8135-1304-9.
• From Gandhara: Grousset, Rene (1970). The Empire of the Steppes. Rutgers University Press. pp. 69–71. ISBN 0-8135-1304-9.

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 20:50, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 7 September 2022 and 9 December 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Jlharry12345 (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Jlharry12345 (talk) 14:38, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

@SinhalaLion The attacks you cited were against Sinhalese cultural sites, not Buddhism per se. The LTTE leader Prabhakaran once famously said, "If Jayawardene was a true Buddhist, I would not be carrying a gun." -- implying an approval of Buddhism. Buddhists being persecuted for their faith in Sri Lanka of all places in the modern times is something unusual and I'm not sure if these incidents of ethnic violence would suffice without further examination of them as religious persecution in reliable secondary sources (editors at Persecution of Hindus page are demanding such criteria). -- Petextrodon (talk) 04:51, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

@SinhalaLion You cite a Sri Lankan Army Lieutenant for Kilinochchi Buddhist temple attack but he wasn't a neutral source and seems to have whitewashed crimes against local Tamils by denying the destruction of their properties as per the same report. Even he doesn't mention the ethnicity nor the motive of the culprits, only that he handed 2 unidentified individuals to the police. He further mentions attacks on other Sinhalese properties, so this was part of larger ethnic violence and not one specifically targeting Buddhist sites.

It's a tenuous case to say the least. Unlike Sinhalese-Buddhist nationalism, Eelam Tamil nationalism has always been secular. --- Petextrodon (talk) 22:02, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

@Petextrodon It's nice to see that, wherever I go, I have a friend to tag along with me. Anyways, you've made a number of different points that I shall attempt to address below:

1. You cite a Sri Lankan Army Lieutenant for Kilinochchi Buddhist temple attack but he wasn't a neutral source — more specifically, I cited the Sansoni Commission Report. As you can see, including in your own example, Sansoni evaluates claims rather than simply accept them at face value. He has disputed the claims of certain Sinhalese witnesses. If you think that Sansoni should not have accepted the lieutenant's testimony, or if you think his report is not a WP:RS, that's a different story.
2. Even he doesn't mention the ethnicity nor the motive of the culprits, only that he handed 2 unidentified individuals to the police — this is sort of grasping at straws here; however, I can perhaps understand it in the context of your primary argument, which I will eventually address.
3. Eelam Tamil nationalism has always been secular — I'm going to digress a bit here, but I don't think this necessarily precludes it from persecution of religious groups. If a secular regime sees certain religious groups as posing a threat to its secular order (whether Tamil nationalist or otherwise), and then respond by attacking members of those groups and their (religious) property, they can religiously persecute. I can't think of a (non-Sri Lanka) example off the top of my head though. And to address Prabhakaran's quote, I don't want to get into a discussion about what constitutes "true" Buddhism, but I think it's safe to say that Sri Lankan Buddhism is a form of Buddhism.
4. So now, your biggest and most central point: persecuting Buddhists vs. persecuting Sinhalese. Now, I just read the definition of "persecution" at the top of this page and saw that what happened to Buddhist sites in Sri Lanka fits. However, even personally, I think that even if the logic of the Tamil perpetrators was "Buddhist temple = Sinhalese," it would still count as persecution of Buddhism because they've conflated the religion with an ethnic group (or more specifically, the crimes of members of that group). A non-Sinhalese Buddhist would be affected by a burning of a temple whereas a Sinhalese Christian would not.

I'll give an example from a different perspective to explain. I consider the burning of the Panadura kovil in 1958 to be a form of persecution of Hindus. The riots were ethnic, but the Sinhalese perpetrators who burnt that kovil conflated Hinduism with Tamils, even though non-Tamil Hindus exist (along with non-Hindu Tamils for that matter), hence the kovil was fair target to them.

On Talk: Persecution of Hindus, the reference to ethnic vs. religious motivation is for violence between Assamese and Bengali Hindus. I don't know much about this conflict (I thought the main targets of Assamese violence were Bengali Muslims), but if there were Hindu temples destroyed, I might consider it for persecution of Hindus, especially if Assamese and Bengali Hindus practiced different types of Hinduism (as Hinduism is a diverse religion). SinhalaLion (talk) 23:15, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Actually I had been watching both pages as I expected someone would eventually re-add the LTTE bits.

"Sansoni evaluates claims rather than simply accept them at face value"

Sansoni seems to be valid source. Maybe because of the typo I missed the part about him accepting the Lieutenant's evidence.

"this is sort of grasping at straws here"

Personally I do think it was a Tamil mob that likely carried out the said attack but it shouldn't be up to the readers to infer that, as the cited source should explicitly state that as per wiki guideline.

"I don't think this necessarily precludes it from persecution of religious groups. If a secular regime sees certain religious groups as posing a threat to its secular order (whether Tamil nationalist or otherwise), and then respond by attacking members of those groups and their (religious) property, they can religiously persecute."

We aren't discussing a hypothetical conflict but the Sri Lankan ethnic conflict. This is why in order to avoid original research and POV pushing, we should only go by what has been discussed in mainstream secondary sources, which in our case do describe Tamil violence on Sinhalese Buddhist sites as being primarily or entirely motivated by ethnic grievances.

"And to address Prabhakaran's quote, I don't want to get into a discussion about what constitutes "true" Buddhism, but I think it's safe to say that Sri Lankan Buddhism is a form of Buddhism."

The point is that the LTTE leadership wasn't motivated by anti-Buddhist sentiments. Sinhalese warmongers were seen as perverting a peaceful religion.

"Now, I just read the definition of "persecution" at the top of this page and saw that what happened to Buddhist sites in Sri Lanka fits."

But you missed the first crucial sentence: "Many adherents of Buddhism have experienced religious persecution because of their adherence to the Buddhist practice", which is about the intent. Religious persecution is "the systematic mistreatment of an individual or a group of individuals as a response to their religious beliefs or affiliations or their lack thereof." Being Buddhists and holding Buddhist beliefs weren't the motivating factors in our case.

"I think that even if the logic of the Tamil perpetrators was "Buddhist temple = Sinhalese," it would still count as persecution of Buddhism because they've conflated the religion with an ethnic group"

hmm does it really? That seems to be your own personal opinion (original research). To these Tamil attackers, these sites mainly represented an ethnic heritage than a form of spirituality. There's no general religious animosity against Buddhism in Tamil Hindu society. So to add these attacks here without any proviso implies they were targeted for their religious identity when the fact of the matter is that they were mainly or entirely targeted for their ethnic identity--and this wouldn't change had the targets been Sinhalese-owned businesses instead (it wouldn't magically become an issue of classism). To conflate the two seems to defeat the purpose of having separate articles for religious and ethnic violence.

"I consider the burning of the Panadura kovil in 1958 to be a form of persecution of Hindus. The riots were ethnic, but the Sinhalese perpetrators who burnt that kovil conflated Hinduism with Tamils"

And to be clear, if you don't agree with my reasoning, we may have to bring in a neutral third-party to mediate.SinhalaLion (talk) 23:16, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

I don't know about those rioters in specific but certain Sinhalese Buddhist revivalists also harboured hostility toward Hinduism in general (not just the Tamil variety) hence my point about Sinhalese-Buddhist nationalism being religious in contrast to Tamil nationalism.

Although I believe your case is tenuous, I'm not too bothered by it, as long as editors on the Hindu persecution page allow for the same. Let's see how that goes... --- Petextrodon (talk) 07:30, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

Ok, I'll add some wording saying that the attacks in 1958 and 1977 occurred during anti-Sinhalese riots. SinhalaLion (talk) 02:10, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

@SinhalaLion regarding your recent edits about the Bo trees:

I think you're stretching it too much. They were just trees with debatable history, not shrines legally erected by modern Buddhists. No further information is given on why the one at Koneswaram Temple was cut for us to infer religious persecution. not much communal conflicts in 1964 as far as I know. also wouldn't the tree have come under the temple management? As for the Kiliveddy tree, in 1976 the court ruled that the tree belonged to the Hindu Mariamman kovil. Not sure how that can be considered "persecution" of Buddhists. The rumour that Tamils were systematically destroying ancient Buddhist sites in Tamils areas was promoted by communalists such as Cyril Mathew and the monk Sumedhamkara who led the Sinhalization of Seruvila. It was the monk's chief student who argued before the Sansoni Commission that that alleged destruction of Buddhist sites was one of the causes of the riots. Looks like justice Sansoni validated the Sinhalese communalists by automatically treating trees as Buddhist sites. --- Petextrodon (talk) 22:32, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

@Petextrodon upon re-reading the point about Koneswaram, I agree with you, though the Sinhalese witnesses seem to see it as part of a pattern of destruction of Buddhist sites in the Trincomalee District. For what it's worth, it looks like there was a request to have Koneswaram made a sacred site for Hindus in November 1964. But I'll remove it.

Then regarding Kiliveddy, I'm not sure that I understand your argument. I'm relying on Sansoni's judgment here. You are correct that the court ruled that the Hindu temple (legally) owned the tree; however, (1) it looks like Tamil villagers rather than kovil authorities cut the tree and (2) "Tamil representatives admit the vandalism" — note the term "vandalism" to suggest that the cutting was seen as wrong. Even Sampanthan appears to have deemed it an important tree that would not be wantonly cut. So it does look like the cutting was an act to spite this potential evidence of Buddhist presence in the area.

Finally, regarding Cyril Mathew, I'm not claiming that the destruction was systematic, but the Sansoni commission report seems to note that there was a trend of such activity in the lead-up to the riots. SinhalaLion (talk) 15:10, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

At best the Kiliveddy incident can be considered as an act intended to prevent the takeover of a legally recognized Hindu land by the Archeological Department than one meant as a desecration against Buddhism. No Buddhists were persecuted here, unless every bo tree under the sun is to be automatically treated as a property of Buddhists.

As for Sansoni commission report, the justice wasn't without his own instituional bias. You should read Rajan Hoole's take on it published at Colombo Telegraph. He criticizes the justice for blaming the riots on Tamil calls for Eelam which was pretty much what Jayewardene also did. --- Petextrodon (talk) 18:07, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

I'm aware of Hoole's critiques of Sansoni's report. In fact, once upon a time, because of Hoole's criticisms, I thought that the report was little more than pro-government propaganda. It's only when I read it online for myself that I saw there were in fact several critiques of state actors like police and military. That said, I don't know if Hoole's criticism is applicable to Sansoni's remarks on this issue of Buddhist sites in the North/East. And coming back to Kiliveddy, did the villagers not validate the notion that the bo tree was a Buddhist site by cutting it? Did the Tamil politicians not do so when they said that it was wrongdoing and talked about damage to Hindu monuments? I'll have to look more into the history of this tree and how it was treated by Buddhists before the Seruvila monk claimed it was part of his temple. SinhalaLion (talk) 00:39, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

It was primarily about Hindus thwarting their own "persecution" by the state (in the form of land appropriation), not intended to persecute Buddhists because they never recognized it as a Buddhist site in the first place. To imply this amounted to persecution of Buddhists is to validate Sinhalese communalist claims on the site over its legal owners. --- Petextrodon (talk) 01:07, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

But the legal owners weren't the ones to cut it, a vigilante squad did, and did the Tamils actually deny that the tree was genuinely important to Buddhists irrespective of any land claims associated with it? And as for your point about Hindus thwarting their own persecution, well, an LTTE member said that massacring Sinhalese settlers indiscriminately was a way of thwarting persecution of Tamils.

Anyways, this conversation has gone for quite long and I'm not sure that it will go anywhere without either concession or mediation. Amazingly, despite our strong disagreements, we've managed to resolve all of them without resorting to third-party mediation, and I'd prefer to maintain this track record. Here's my first offer of negotiation: I'll remove this Kiliveddy incident and any other references to bo trees in the Trincomalee District unless someone can show direct evidence that a certain bo tree was recognized as a Buddhist site by both Tamils and Sinhalese before the cutting. However, the parts regarding damage to Buddhist sites more generally in the Northern and Eastern Province will be kept as "sites" is not limited to contested trees strictly. SinhalaLion (talk) 22:20, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

"But the legal owners weren't the ones to cut it, a vigilante squad did"

has this been established? i believe it's a supposition by the author that you've cited but i'm willing to take his word for it. and by the same token, the line about a kovil being erected in place of the former tree is unnecessary given it's unlikely it was erected by the same persons who had cut the tree.

"did the Tamils actually deny that the tree was genuinely important to Buddhists irrespective of any land claims associated with it?"

no point in speculating. what we know is that they primarily saw it as their own site, which was being encroached on by the archeological department due to the existence of the tree. also it's kind of silly to compare violent attacks on another community to cutting trees from land that you see as belonging to your own community.

To understand you correctly on negotiation, do you mean you would remove the parts about the trees as long as the parts regarding damage to Buddhist sites more generally are retained? If yes, then that's fine...but it's strange how Sansoni cites the trees as the primary examples of damage to ancient Buddhist sites. were there other notable examples of verified Tamil vandalism against ancient Buddhist sites that didn't involve trees? need to be more careful here since the allegations often came from communalist parties. even so, the line about Buddhists rioting in response to these alleged vandalisms makes them look like the persecutors: human lives for rocks and trees. --- Petextrodon (talk) 23:09, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

Though I have not studied this personally, I suspect the importance attached to rocks and trees may be a vestige of animism which existed among Sinhalese before Buddhism, which is why they're important. In the former case, rocks may have been part of ancient temples since the builders of then lacked modern construction materials. Not sure how Saivite Hindus feel about natural monuments, though I assume the arasa maram was of importance to Hindus too.

"To understand you correctly on negotiation, do you mean you would remove the parts about the trees as long as the parts regarding damage to Buddhist sites more generally are retained? If yes, then that's fine..." - yes, so I'll make the changes as agreed upon.

"were there other notable examples of verified Tamil vandalism against ancient Buddhist sites that didn't involve trees?" - this I'm not sure, and I don't have access to press reports of the hearing at the Sansoni commission to verify either way. I'll have to defer to Sansoni completely on this. SinhalaLion (talk) 23:43, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

Prior content in this article duplicated one or more previously published sources. The material was copied from: American Sutra, Williams, Duncan Ryūken. Copied or closely paraphrased material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.)

For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or published material; such additions will be deleted. Contributors may use copyrighted publications as a source of information, and, if allowed under fair use, may copy sentences and phrases, provided they are included in quotation marks and referenced properly. The material may also be rewritten, provided it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Therefore, such paraphrased portions must provide their source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with these policies. Thank you. Oona Wikiwalker (talk) 03:04, 7 August 2025 (UTC)

I have made some changes/deletions/additions in this section and reorganized it chronologically.

Prior to that I want to point out that there was no mention at all of Hindus in this article/page till June 2018 when a certain RameezRaja from Malayasia made many edits here with spurious claims interspersed with valid ones. This RameezRaja made xenophobic edits, added unreferenced material, was islamo-fascist, indulged in sockpuppetry, and kept at it till he and all his socks were permanently removed by Admins.

The Dharmarajika Stupa cannot possibly be an instance of "persecution by Hindus" cuz India was under English rule then and while some infra building work was going on the Stupas were discovered and the local laborers continued with their work and it was Alexander Cunningham who saved the Stupas. There was neither any archaeological work done nor likely any awareness of the same prior to 1794 in India. Let alone an institution like the ASI. ASI was founded by this same Cunningham. The islamist sock from Malaysia here too added specious claims with zero evidence to back them up.

The Bharhut claim was even more dubious, the archaeologyonline link is dead, and no conventional reputed scholar has said anything about Hindus in anyway being responsible for anything that occurred there. In fact, recent archaeology suggests that Buddhism was thriving there even in the 12th Century ACE, when islamic invasions ravaged North India.

I am also rearranging the section as per chronology.117.197.195.62 (talk) 12:58, 19 October 2025 (UTC)