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# Gnanasara Thera Says Only His Nikaya Can Put Him Back in Robes
- URL: https://www.jaffnamonitor.com/gnanasara-thera-says-only-his-nikaya-can-put-him-back-in-robes/
- Published: 2026-10-17T16:42:18.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-17T16:42:18.000Z
- Author: Our Reporter
- Tags: October  2026

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, Oct. 17 — Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara Thera, a hard-line Buddhist nationalist monk serving a prison sentence in Colombo, resisted prison officials for more than two hours before giving up his saffron robes, and someone watched the removal remotely through a telephone connection, according to an account he gave his lawyer.

The lawyer, Chula Adhikari, said the monk described the incident during a visit at Magazine Prison, where he is serving a sentence for contempt of court after the Supreme Court overturned the presidential pardon that had freed him. The monk said he eventually took off the robes and threw them aside, leaving them hanging from a ceiling fan.

Gnanasara Thera did not say who had watched, and Mr. Adhikari's account did not identify the person or say whether government officials had ordered the removal of the robes. The allegations could not be independently verified.

The monk said he had been jailed for contempt of court before but had never been required to remove his robes, either inside prison or when taken outside. He accused the government, which he described as hostile to Buddhism, of being determined to take his robes, and said those responsible wanted to humiliate him out of hostility toward Buddhists and the monastic order.

Gnanasara Thera, general secretary of the Bodu Bala Sena, a Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist organization, was sentenced in 2018 to six years of rigorous imprisonment for contempt of court over his conduct at the Homagama Magistrate's Court. President Maithripala Sirisena pardoned him in May 2019, after he had served about nine months.

The Supreme Court overturned that pardon on Sept. 10, and the monk was returned to prison earlier this month to serve the rest of his sentence.

His imprisonment, and the removal of his robes in particular, has drawn protests from sections of the Buddhist clergy. Monks marched from Kandy to Colombo this month to demand his release and gathered outside the Presidential Secretariat. On Friday, a Colombo magistrate ordered 55 protesters, including senior monks, to leave the secretariat premises. They moved to the pavement across the road and continued the protest.

Also on Friday, a Prisons Department spokesman, Senaka Palletenna, told the chief prelates of the Malwatta and Asgiriya chapters in Kandy that monastic authorities would be given 10 days to decide the religious status of a monk convicted of a criminal offense, and that prison officials would act on that decision. He said monks would be allowed to wear their robes when taken outside prison.

Gnanasara Thera told his lawyer that, as a fully ordained monk, he could resume wearing the robes only through the religious procedures of his own Nikaya, or monastic order. He said he would not put them on again because an individual told him to.