23/11/2025
The Rise of Religious Masculinity: Why Young Buddhist Monks Are Becoming Sri Lanka’s New Pop Icons
Preamble
In Sri Lanka today, young Buddhist monks have become more than spiritual guides; they are embodied symbols of charisma, authority, and masculine appeal. Their youthful physiques, resonant voices, and disciplined comportment captivate lay audiences, drawing attention not only to their teachings but also to the spectacle of their presence. This article explores how such religious masculinity—intersecting with media, politics, and postcolonial legacies—shapes contemporary devotion, blurring the lines between ethical engagement with the Buddha’s teachings and attraction to performative, hyper-masculine displays. By examining historical continuities, theoretical frameworks, and contemporary media spectacles, the study illuminates the complex interplay of embodiment, power, and popular religiosity in modern Sri Lankan Buddhism.
Introduction: Masculinity and Monastic Appeal
In contemporary Sri Lankan Buddhist society, the public presence of young novice monks increasingly manifests as a distinctive form of masculine authority. Their bodies—marked by youthfulness, physical discipline, vocal power, and gestures of valor—project an immediately recognizable masculine presence. This performance often reflects traits of hegemonic or “toxic” masculinity, intersecting intriguingly with the delivery of Buddhist Dhamma teachings. Lay audiences are drawn not only to doctrinal content but also to the embodied performance of masculinity, which functions as a potent mechanism of attraction and influence.
This raises a critical question: to what extent does lay devotion represent engagement with the authentic teachings of the Buddha as preserved in the Pāli canon, and to what extent is it mediated by aestheticized and performative masculinity? This article examines these questions by situating the phenomenon within historical, socio-political, and theoretical contexts, drawing on postcolonial studies, anthropology, gender theory, and media studies.
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Historical Continuity: From Revivalism to Nationalist Monks
The fascination with youthful male monks has historical roots but has intensified in recent decades, reflecting broader social, political, and media transformations. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, anti-colonial Buddhist revivalists such as Migettuwatte Gunananda Thera, Hikkaduwe Sri Sumangala Thera, and lay activists including Upāsaka Anagarika Dharmapala and Walisinghe Harischandra mobilized Sinhala-Buddhist consciousness through a combination of doctrinal authority, rhetorical skill, and symbolic masculinity. These figures exemplified early intersections of religious authority and masculine performativity, blending moral teaching with charismatic appeal to galvanize communities under colonial rule.
Following independence, particularly after the 1980s, a new cohort of nationalist monks emerged. Youthful, charismatic, and aesthetically appealing, these monks were strategically positioned within political movements. Their masculine presence, rhetorical skill, and bodily aesthetics were deployed to engage Sinhala-Buddhist audiences, intertwining religious authority with political mobilization. Over time, lay fascination with the physicality, voice, and charm of young monks became a recurring feature of Sri Lankan popular Buddhism.
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Embodied Masculinity and Lay Attraction
Among Sinhala-Buddhist communities, young monks have long been admired for their vitality, discipline, and rhetorical skill. Today, this admiration often borders on affective obsession. Monks with resonant voices, tall and aesthetically appealing bodies, and disciplined comportment rapidly attract thousands of followers. Their charisma transcends age and gender, producing cult-like communities where embodied qualities overshadow doctrinal expertise.
Talal Asad’s Genealogies of Religion (1993) provides a critical lens for understanding this dynamic. Asad emphasizes that religious authority is historically constituted rather than inherent, operating through “authorising structures” and disciplined social practices (p. 27). The young monk’s body—its posture, vocal tone, and stylistic delivery—is produced within socio-historical conditions that legitimize it as a medium of spiritual persuasion. Lay attraction is thus not merely aesthetic; it is socially coded as an indicator of authenticity and moral authority.
Homi K. Bhabha’s concept of hybridity, articulated in The Location of Culture (1994), further illuminates the phenomenon. Contemporary Sri Lankan monks embody a hybrid formation: disciplined and ascetic, yet aestheticized and visually appealing; modern in style, yet framed as custodians of traditional Sinhala-Buddhist culture. This hybridity signals continuity with nationalist Buddhist ideals while reflecting internalized colonial-era values of refinement, public oratory, and disciplined comportment.
Webb Keane’s Christian Moderns (2007) introduces the notion of “semiotic ideologies,” showing that communities develop culturally specific expectations linking bodily performance to moral truth. In Sri Lanka, a handsome, tall, articulate monk becomes a semiotic sign of purity, virtue, and national pride. Voice, gestures, and saffron robes function as sensory cues that index spiritual authority, even when these qualities may not align precisely with early Pāli canonical ethics.
Saba Mahmood’s Politics of Piety (2005) complements this perspective by emphasizing that ethical and religious subjectivities are cultivated through disciplined bodily practice. Physical discipline, vocal resonance, and aesthetic self-presentation operate as technologies of moral formation. Lay attraction to these bodies is not merely erotic or aesthetic; it forms part of a moral pedagogy shaping perceptions of the ideal Buddhist subject. Masculine embodiment thus becomes intertwined with spiritual and ethical competence.
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Politics, Hierarchies, and Nationalism
The embodied religious masculinity of young monks also functions within the broader socio-political landscape of postcolonial Sri Lanka. Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah’s Buddhism Betrayed? (1992) demonstrates that Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism historically instrumentalized monastic authority to serve political ends. Contemporary young monks leverage bodily aesthetics, vocal charisma, and performative prowess to participate in affective politics, reinforcing class hierarchies and nationalist sentiment. They delineate social divisions reminiscent of colonial-era hierarchies, marking the “good” versus the “bad,” the “high” versus the “low,” and the “able” versus the “unable.” This corporeal politics legitimizes social stratifications and embeds monks within broader socio-political power structures.
The rise of digital media has intensified the spectacle of monastic masculinity. David L. McMahan’s The Making of Buddhist Modernism (2008) emphasizes how modern media reshape Buddhist practice into consumable cultural forms, while Michael Taussig’s Mimesis and Alterity (1993) explains how mimetic performances generate enchantment. Images of youthful, handsome monks, viral sermons, and social media aesthetics produce affective publics who experience devotion through visual and emotional intoxication. In this context, charisma becomes digitized, masculinity performative, and religious authority visualized and emotionally mediated.
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Celebrity Monks and Popular Devotion
Contemporary lay fascination is exemplified in the rise of celebrity monks with nicknames such as “Apple Wije,” “Samma Construction,” “Kannaruwe Hamuduruwo,” and “Easy Nirvana Trip.” These figures attract large followings not necessarily for doctrinal expertise but for the charisma of their voices, the grace of their movements, and the attractiveness of their bodies. In both digital and offline spaces, they cultivate affective devotion that merges aesthetic pleasure, ethical aspiration, and nationalist sentiment.
Such popularity underscores how religious authority is inseparable from embodied masculinity, digital spectacle, and socio-political resonance. The combination of physical discipline, vocal power, and aesthetic presence produces a form of hyper-masculinized religiosity, influencing lay perceptions of moral and spiritual authority. Devotees often conflate spiritual virtue with alignment to masculine charisma rather than engagement with the ethical and liberating teachings of the Buddha.
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Ethical Implications and Cultural Consequences
The phenomenon of contemporary religious masculinity functions simultaneously as a cultural weapon and a social virus. The potent combination of aestheticized male bodies, vocal charisma, and digital visibility permeates everyday life, shaping popular Buddhist culture. Laypeople, emotionally saturated and cognitively entranced by these performances, may equate religious virtue with hyper-masculinized authority and nationalist identity.
Parallel to historical trajectories, these embodied performances blend colonial residues of hierarchy with postcolonial inequalities. Ethical teachings of the Dhamma risk being overshadowed by performative display, and spiritual cultivation becomes secondary to aesthetic and emotional gratification. In this way, the ideals of Buddhist practice—mindfulness, compassion, and liberation—are often subordinated to the spectacle of charisma, physicality, and political symbolism.
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Conclusion: Convergence of Embodiment, Media, and Power
The contemporary fascination with young Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka represents a complex convergence of embodied masculinity, media-mediated charisma, and nationalist ideology. Drawing on Asad (1993), Bhabha (1994), Keane (2007), Mahmood (2005), Tambiah (1992), McMahan (2008), and Taussig (1993), it becomes evident that religious authority is performed, mediated, and interpreted through bodies, voices, and affective engagement.
Far from a neutral spiritual process, this phenomenon reflects a postcolonial, aesthetic, and emotionally mediated formation that shapes lay cognition, devotion, and social imagination. The charismatic young monk becomes a nexus of moral, political, and cultural power, where the ideals of Buddhist practice intersect with desires for aesthetic pleasure, social prestige, and national belonging. Contemporary Sinhala-Buddhist society thus witnesses a devotional life where embodiment, masculinity, and affective media converge, creating both ethical challenges and critical opportunities for understanding the interplay of religion, culture, and power in postcolonial Sri Lanka.
Image from; https://www.tiktok.com//video/7543674853987978503
Manoj Jinadasa Manoj Jinadasa
