> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.jaffnamonitor.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # The Easter Bombings Did Not Begin on Easter Sunday - URL: https://www.jaffnamonitor.com/the-easter-bombings-did-not-begin-on-easter-sunday/ - Published: 2026-09-24T03:36:34.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-24T03:37:27.000Z - Author: M.R. Narayan Swamy - Tags: Guest Column, September 2026 **By M.R. Narayan Swamy** In April 2012, seven years before the Easter Sunday bloodbath, a landmark statue of Mahatma Gandhi was disfigured in the heart of Batticaloa town in Sri Lanka. It was the first statue of Gandhi ever erected outside India. His was one of several statues vandalised in eastern Sri Lanka in 2012 and in later years. The others included statues of Swami Vivekananda, fellow monk Swami Vipulananda, Tamil poet Subramania Bharati, poet-saint Tiruvalluvar and two prominent Britons. In September 2018, a Hindu temple dedicated to Lord Narasimha was targeted. Devotees were shocked to see, early in the morning, broken idols of various gods and divine serpents besides the temple door leading to the sanctum sanctorum. Unfortunately, instead of getting to the bottom of the widespread malicious mischief, the police, as was their wont, blamed the defacement on “anti-social elements”. No one was arrested, no one got punished. Had there been a serious and systemic investigation, Sri Lankan authorities would have realised that the repeated acts of sabotage were the work of a bunch of Islamic zealots who desired to impose a harsh Wahhabi-inspired Islam on the Buddhist majority island nation. Some of the young men who took part in the vandalism – including attacks on Lord Buddha images elsewhere – were among the ones who turned into suicide bombers and unleashed a string of meticulously planned bombings which claimed over 260 lives and left hundreds injured during Easter celebrations in April 2019. The attacks on the statues – which Islamic fundamentalists consider un-Islamic – were accompanied by methodical and punishing attacks on fellow Muslims who were Sufis or Shias, their mosques and tombs for their saints. Some of the assaults were accompanied by violence which led to serious injuries and, in some cases, deaths. A Sri Lankan court on Tuesday (September 22) sentenced 15 Muslims convicted over the 2019 bloodbath – the worst terror attack in Sri Lanka after the Tamil separatist war ended a decade earlier – to prison terms ranging from 200 to 260 years. With the Easter attacks mastermind, Zahran Hashim of the National Thowheeth Jamaath, and the eight other suicide bombers dead, and with 15 accomplices now given long prison sentences, it would be a blunder to assume that Sri Lanka is safe from fundamentalism fuelled by Wahhabi and Salafi interpretations of Islam. It is not. The ideological foundations that shaped the 2019 massacre were laid after Sri Lankan workers began making their way to Gulf countries for employment in the wake of the economic liberalisation policies pursued by Colombo from the late 1970s. When many of the Muslim workers returned to Sri Lanka after long years in countries like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, they were influenced by the Islamic way of life practised by Arabs. As their numbers swelled in Sri Lanka, particularly in the eastern provinces of Trincomalee, Batticaloa and Amparai, preachers who embraced Wahabi/Salafi Islam began to be funded from the Gulf, mainly Saudi Arabia. This led to a steady proliferation of new and grand mosques in the region – and, over the years, gave birth to a landscape whereby key streets and architecture aped the Arab society. Indeed, there was a steady and wholesale transformation of the socio-cultural, religious and physical terrain, with palm trees planted in urban centres to give it a look of the Gulf. Saudi-funded scholarships to young men, the huge influx of petrodollars and the constantly returning army of Muslims from Gulf sheikhdoms combined in a lethal way to change the traditional Islamic way of life in eastern Sri Lanka in particular. Regular competitions were held for the young on Koran recitation. Prizes were awarded. Although Muslims in the region mainly spoke Tamil, Arabic signages took over the streets and places of Islamic learning. Muslim women slowly gave up the traditional saris to embrace Arabic-style garments including the all-enveloping black abaya, hijab and face-covering niqab. Men took to wearing long white thobes and growing beards. But for the skin colour, the streets took to resembling Pakistan’s Peshawar of the 1980s and 90s when the mujahideen (and later Taliban) ruled the roost. Overwhelmingly Muslim towns like Kattankudy (in Batticaloa) mirrored a Gulf state. It was no surprise that some of the worst zealots hailed from Kattankudy. It was but natural that such a changed landscape would produce a so-called puritan worldview that would look down on anyone who did not agree with the believers as *kafirs*. Left to them, fanatics like Zahran would have wanted Sri Lanka to become an Islamic society, by hook or by crook. One non-Muslim who witnessed from close quarters and at times engaged with some Zahran associates in prison was Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan alias Pillayan, a Tamil Tiger-turned-chief minister of eastern Sri Lanka. This was when Pillayan was in the Batticaloa Jail from 2015 to 2020, a period which covered the pre- and post-Easter bombings. In his Tamil book *Easter Padukolai* (*Easter Massacre*), the former child soldier recounts seeing a mentally ill Hindu Tamil inmate being coaxed into embracing Islam. He heard some of the jailed fundamentalists speak disparagingly about Muslim women, comparing them with servants. A former Tamil militant who often met Pillayan in judicial custody quoted him as saying: “Some of these fellows (Muslims) seem dangerous. While I cannot hear every bit of their whispered conversations, they seem to be up to no good.” Pillayan’s book, which came out in December 2023, can be called a virtual encyclopaedia on Islamic fundamentalism in Sri Lanka. As it always happens, wherever fanaticism reigns, bigots first target their own communities. It must be said to the credit of many Sufis and Shias and (even) Sunni Muslims that they fought back. Many suffered as a result. Unfortunately, neither the Sri Lankan state nor the bulk of mainstream politicians, Muslims included, called out the growing radicalization, more so in the country’s multi-racial east. After the arrest of some of his associates in 2017, Zahran went underground – until the Easter terror. By then, he was making videos calling for jehad and suicide bombings as well as denouncing parliamentary democracy and Sri Lanka’s judicial system. And he had placed on record his unwavering allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, among the most bloodthirsty figures the Middle East had produced. In other words, the Easter massacre was the culmination of a process (Wahabi/Salafi) which was carefully watered in eastern Sri Lanka. As long as this ideology is allowed to exist and grow, Sri Lanka will not be out of the woods as far as Islamist danger is concerned.