22 months after his arrest on charges of defamation against Buddhism, award-winning Sri Lankan writer Shakthika Sathkumara is finally a free man.
Sathkumara — author of seven short story collections, four poetry anthologies, one novel, and several works of non-fiction — faced up to a decade in prison because of a short story he wrote.
Monks at the Buddhist Information Center, led Ven. Angulugalle Siri Jinananda Thero, filed a complaint with local police in 2019, alleging that the short story “Ardha” (“Half&rdquo was “derogatory and defamatory” towards the Buddha and Buddhism as a whole.
The story, which has since been translated and published the Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka, described the experiences of a former Buddhist monk who chose to renounce his monastic position. Less than a thousand words long, it contained subtle references to homosexual relationships between monks. One of the characters also revealed the beginnings of a short story that suggests Siddhartha (the Buddha) “was unable to please a woman.”
(This is a demonstration that there are fanatics in every religion)