Published on May 9, 2019.
Through Masayuki Takayama’s serialized column in Shukan Shincho, this essay depicts the deep scars left by Britain’s divide-and-rule policy in India and Sri Lanka, the structure of religious conflict, and the cold response of the state to terrorism.
By examining the dark underside of Sri Lankan society, it sharply exposes the ugliness of religion and power.

2019-05-09
At just such a moment, information arrived from Indian intelligence about an Islamist extremist terrorist attack. The information was detailed, conveying who the ringleader was and which Christian church would be targeted. But the authorities did not move. The attack was carried out exactly as the information had indicated, and 250 people died.
The following is from Masayuki Takayama’s serialized column published in this week’s issue of Shukan Shincho.
It is a splendid essay proving that he is the one and only journalist in the postwar world.
The Darkness of Sri Lanka.
The British ruled 400 million Indians with just 2,000 men.
But those 2,000 were not ordinary Britons.
They were formidable men who had passed the Indian Civil Service examination, which tested cunning and cold-bloodedness.
The British adopted a divide-and-rule policy that split Indians along the lines of their own culture.
Setting Hindus and Muslims against each other was one example, and in the end it developed into a struggle that divided the country itself.
Meanwhile, they placed special weight on a third religion, the Sikhs.
Whenever Muslims or Hindus rioted, Sikh rifle units were sent out to put them down.
Even so, the Hindus were a large body.
So the British again employed cunning and stirred up their caste system.
The Hindus lost their unity.
I once drove along a broad avenue in New Delhi.
When the light turned red, the drivers stopped and looked at one another, and when it turned green, they set off in order of caste rank.
The Indians had been conditioned even to that extent.
Race is also entangled in caste.
Against the mainstream Aryan line, the southern Dravidian Tamils are defined as the lowest stratum, the Sudras.
The British also deliberately encouraged regional languages such as Urdu, seeking to prevent Indians from having a common language.
Japan gave the Indonesians a common language and education that removed discrimination.
Its exact opposite was divide-and-rule.
Sri Lanka, too, which had been under British rule, was likewise governed by division.
It is said to be a country of the Sinhalese, who are of mixed Aryan and Dravidian blood, and they developed their own Buddhist faith.
A country of a single ethnicity and a single religion like that is, all in all, rather difficult to divide and rule.
So, when the British created Ceylon tea plantations, they deliberately brought in large numbers of Tamils, that is, Dravidians, from India.
The Sinhalese, too, have half the same blood.
That was the problem.
Take Haiti, for example.
The former French colonies into which African black slaves were brought all look the same, but there are also quite a few mixed-race children with whites among them.
A small difference gives rise to a great hatred.
The history of Haiti is woven out of bloody conflict between these two factions.
Britain used this hatred among near kin to rule Sri Lanka.
The Sinhalese and the Tamils hated one another, and after the last war they became independent just as they were.
The first prime minister was called Bandaranaike.
At the San Francisco Peace Conference, that country’s representative said, “We do not forget that the peoples of Asia who longed for independence sympathized with the ideals Japan had raised,” and he also renounced claims for reparations against Japan.
But however admirable that may sound, domestic politics were dreadful.
He made Sinhala the official language, made Buddhism almost a state religion, and even forbade Tamils from taking public office.
This angered the Tamils, who made up 20 percent of the population, and a civil war lasting half a century began.
During this time, the Sinhalese government employed Muslims in the practical administration of the country.
It was the same way of thinking that Britain had used in employing Sikhs in India.
There are also some Christians in this country, and many of them are Tamils who were formerly Hindus.
They had believed in Hinduism, and under it had been bound by the caste called Sudra.
They were people who thought they might as well convert and gain freedom.
Of the roughly 28 million Christians in India, most too are converts either from the lower castes or from the untouchables.
There are 1.4 million such Christians in Sri Lanka, but Muslims, including inflows from overseas, have now reached roughly 2 million and have become a force surpassing them.
The Sinhalese government, having won the civil war against the Tamils, now regards this self-proliferating Islam as a sworn enemy.
At just such a moment, information arrived from Indian intelligence about an Islamist extremist terrorist attack.
The information was detailed, conveying who the ringleader was and which Christian church would be targeted.
But the authorities did not move.
The attack was carried out exactly as the information had indicated, and 250 people died.
As a result, Muslim residents are being exposed to fierce public condemnation and violence, and feeling that their lives are in danger, they are fleeing abroad.
The regime puts on a show of mourning the deaths of minor Christians, but its face seems to be smiling.
Religion is this ugly.