Is racism dead, dying or alive and kicking? A response

Buddhism is a sacred morality, and because it is based on reason and experience, it is a powerful force that can eliminate inequality. My ideal would be a society based on Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity - Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, the chief architect of the Indian Constitution

- By Prof. Asoka S. Seneviratne

INDEED, public debate on racism in Sri Lanka is both necessary and healthy, as no nation can truly progress while prejudice festers beneath its social fabric.

However, in confronting these issues, we must guard against conceptual overreach and analytical imprecision, especially when constitutional provisions, religious identity, and political misuse are conflated, causing the debate to lose both clarity and credibility. At the heart of this discussion is whether Article 9 of the Constitution, which grants Buddhism the “foremost place,” effectively institutionalises racism. My answer is clear: racism and constitutional religious recognition are fundamentally different categories, and equating them blurs the critical distinctions necessary for mature constitutional discourse.

Racism is defined by discrimination grounded in race or ethnicity—the belief in the inherent superiority of one ethnic group over another. It is significant that Article 9 makes no mention of Sinhalese, Tamils, Muslims, or any specific racial group; rather, it speaks exclusively of Buddhism as a religion. Theoretically, a Tamil Buddhist is protected under this mandate while a Sinhalese Christian is not, a fact that dismantles the claim that the article is racially constructed. While the clause may be debated on secular grounds, it cannot be accurately labeled as racist without stripping the word “racism” of its analytical force. Precision in terminology matters because when everything is labeled racism, the word loses its power to identify actual ethnic oppression.