The use of religious values as a basis for an alternative development paradigm: The case of the Sarvodaya Movement in Sri Lanka

Religion has long played an important role in the political, economic, and social lives of Asia. It is in this complex context that this dissertation assesses the impact of religion and religious values on the process of development. This research is placed in the context of the Sarvodaya Movement in Sri Lanka which has its philosophical roots in the works of Mahatma Gandhi but has been modified and adapted to reflect Buddhist culture. The significance of this research is that it breaks out of the conventional paradigms of development thought by going beyond a single-discipline analysis, narrow quantification, and a priori theorizing. It also goes beyond the traditional neoclassical and Marxist thinking but seeks to understand Asian reality by studying the effects of cultural values in the implementation of development activities. The unique contribution of such research is to understand development, based not on customary Judeo-Christian (now mainly Western) values, but inspired by Eastern (especially Buddhist) philosophy. In most of today's development approaches, religious and moral issues are not considered as being part of a development strategy. The reluctance to include these non-economic value systems in the current development thinking has led to a partial and incomplete structure of knowledge. The research centers on the following three questions: (1) What is the historical context in which present government policies of development have evolved, and what impact have they had on the environmental condition in Sri Lanka? (2) What are the familiar, traditional (Buddhist and indigenous) values of the Sri Lankan village society in regard to development, and how well have they been incorporated into the development ideology of Sarvodaya? (3) How well has the Sarvodaya Movement been able to preserve its own identity and integrity (based on the premise of being a grassroots organization based on traditional and religious values) in the context of government development policies?