It is interesting to read our respected diplomat Izeth Hussain, even if one does not agree with him, for his remarkable writing skill. Nevertheless, one feels reluctant to enter into a discussion on a subject he feels has a right to defend. However, he had been carried away with his intellectual analysis to conclude that JHU and Champika Ranawaka are neo-fascists showing their antagonism towards the Muslims Community.
Therefore, without trying to enter into a debate with his pet ideas, I write down some matters which will clear the picture he has painted of them as neo-fascists, and place them as the defenders of the majority community, who is now the target of those taking pen to defend the minorities, attempting to push the Sinhala majority to the oblivion.
It has become a habit for some journalists and feature writers to many websites to attack, call names, insult and vilify any one writing or speaking in defence of the Sinhala people, their culture or language. They immediately become Sinhala Buddhist supremacists, racist, or neo-fascists. Under these circumstances, the Sinhala being the majority, cannot simply put their hands down and accept encroachment into what they hold as theirs for fear of being assailed by every one as the majority discriminating against the minority. The Sinhala, as much as the Tamils and the Muslims have a right to protect their culture, their religion, and what belongs to them.
Since Independence, it is the minority communities that had been blaming the Sinhala majority for not protecting their rights. The governments, after governments despite their Sinhala majority, had allowed the erosion of the rights of the Sinhala people in favour of the other Communities, without making any effort to protect them for fear of being accused as Sinhala Buddhist Supremacist governments.
It was the silent acceptance of every demand of the minority communities, at the cost of the rights and privileges of the Sinhala Buddhist, that resulted in the formation of the JHU. As it was unthinkable that the Buddhist priests would take to active politics, leaving aside their religious vocation, the JHU was attacked in various ways for its political engagement, first as reactionaries, then as racists, even as terrorist, and now as extremists and neo-fascists.
Our scholarly diplomat is attempting to create a non existent deep antagonism of the JHU towards the Muslims, because of “minor scale irritant behaviour” of the Muslims. Of course the behaviour of the Muslims towards the Sinhala had been exemplary, because the Sinhala majority is by nature tolerant, and accepted to put up with any and most of things, even if the behaviour of the minority community had been “more” irritant and demanding.
It was a Muslim Minister under a SLFP government that established the Girls Schools for Muslims. The Sinhala Community did not show any antagonism . The Muslim community dominated in the commercial sector, and often in provincial towns, to the extent of putting the Sinhala traders out of business. The people did not complain. The Muslims some times desecrated Buddhist Sacred areas by opening meat stalls displaying the carcases in public places .
Until recently the Sinhala, and the Muslims had no significant divergent political views, Muslims being adherents of the two main Political Parties the UNP or the SLFP. The separate Muslim Political Parties were a later addition. The Sinhala and Muslims had their own “riots “ , but they were settled and the animosity was not allowed to continue, as there were no extremist Muslim groups in Sri Lanka. The Muslims were not politically over ambitious, and lived in harmony with the Sinhala and Tamil populations. It was that adoptability of the Muslims that created the “exemplary” behaviour and non confrontational existence.
As it was, subsequent to the Sri Lanka Tamil Congress, that there were divisive politics of the Tamil Community, which eventually resulted in ruthless terrorism, it is the Muslim Congress that is responsible for the tension between the Sinhala and Muslim Communities. These are not intellectual rhetoric but mere reflexions going on facts. They could be argued in different ways to suit either the majority or the minority. What is rational from one person’s point of view, may be irrational from another person’s point of view. But what would be wrong is to assert ones own ideas as the “only truth.”
JHU had not denied the Muslim Community being part and parcel of the people of Sri Lanka, as much as the Tamil Community, but the minorities keep forgetting the part the Sinhala Community plays in it to the extent that the Tamil diaspora even goes to the extent of insisting that the Tamils occupied Sri Lanka before the Sinhala.
The assertion that LTTE had been fighting a separatist war with strong Tamil support is not an evident fact. The Tamil diaspora has without doubt supported the LTTE terrorism, with perhaps a number of exceptions as evidenced from some articles appearing in some Websites, (Thomas Johnpulle, Noel Nadeson), but Tamil people of Sri Lanka themselves have not supported the LTTE terrorism.
The Caste System holds no more significance in the present Sinhala Society. And the Sinhala people have learnt after many years of living together, that even the Communal difference is a passing phenomena, and if the minorities accept to live in harmony with Sinhala respecting their cultural and religious values , the ethnic difference will only be a scar of a healed wound, left on the skin of the Nation.
Today the Sinhala Buddhist Youth die in hundreds with the sole aim of keeping the motherland together without ceding any part of it to terrorists for their Eelam State. This sacrifice in large numbers of the majority Sinhala Buddhist youth is not for the sake of the Sinhala Community of which they are a part, but it is for all communities living in Sri Lanka to live in harmony in a unitary country. They do not hesitate to face the terrorist, asking why youths from other communities are not fighting alongside them to end terrorism from their motherland.
It had always been the Sinhala Buddhists, who fought against the invaders from the very beginning to make what Sri Lanka is today. In this respect the contribution of Mayadunna, Ehelepola Nilame, and Puranappu is not insignificant. It was none other than a Buddhist Priest Venerable Wariyapola Sri Sumangala, Anunayake Thero, of the Asgiriya Maha Viharaya, that pulled down the British flag that was hoisted on the 2 Marchn1815 making Sri Lanka a British Colony.
The Buddhist Priests have come forward through out the history of Sri Lanka to protest against the invaders or foreign occupants when matters affecting the Country, the People or Buddhism were in danger. They were not for that matter neo-fascists.
Muslim fundamentalism has caused many a rift in the western society by their insistence to apply religious customs into a lay society. In Sri Lanka too the recent Muslim manifestation, against a Buddhist Girl’s School for not accepting their religious symbols, was a disrespectful effort to introduce the symbolism of another culture into areas of Sinhala Culture, the Sinhala Community would like to preserve, in its pristine glory as one would say. And the other communities should respect it, as much as they expect the Sinhala people to respect their culture.
It is an undeniable fact that people have come and settled down in various countries, as invaders, as traders, as invitees or even as travellers. After some time they become part and parcel of the country’s population. They having acquired their rights, keep their cultural ties and religions, but do not deny the rights and privileges of the people who had been originally living their. That is in a way “ the gratitude” for the ancient inhabitant, for having adopted them as part of their population.
The people of Sri Lanka should learn lessons from terrorism that had taken away the lives of large numbers of their people from all communities, for an ambition of one terrorist to divide the country and establish self rule. In this situation the Muslim Community should not accede to the establishment of separate areas for Muslims. It is time that we say “never again for terrorism”, and get closer to build a united nation of the three communities.
JHU is not against that vision of a United Nation. It can be set up only by a communal understanding. There had been instances of bulldozing temple lands in dighavapi to build settlements for the Muslims. There were also attempts to colonize areas by settling down Muslim families. These activities tend to divide the nation rather than unite it. Therefore, we should learn to preserve our ancient heritage, be it that of the Sinhala Buddhists, Tamils, Muslims, or Christians for our future generations. That should be the common link that binds us together.
We have to face the future not with our differences, but with our similarities, with an understanding of unity and respect for each other after thirty years of suffering under terrorism. Every body is conscious of the fact that the Tamil and Muslim Communities that make up the Sri Lanka Nation have to be given a status of equality with the majority, but at the same time without taking away the rights and privileges of the Sinhala Community. The JHU is today the political party that speaks for the preservation of the ancient Sinhala Buddhist culture in a Sri Lanka which is more concerned with minority rights and devolution of political power, to the exclusion of the rights and privileges of the Sinhala Community.
While the Tamil and the Muslim communities have local and foreign defenders as the communities victimised by a Sinhala Majority, the Sinhala people are made out to be the monster which is destroying the minority Communities. The Sinhala in this propaganda, with Narapalasingham attempting to rewrite the history of Sri Lanka with the Tamil as its original inhabitants, and reducing the Mahavamsa to a sort of a Grimm’s Fairy Tale, is defenceless. The few who makes an attempt to stand in defence of the Sinhala Community its culture and religion are immediately “ shouted down”, as neo-fascists or even comparing them to the Nazis.
In this situation the Sinhala people should be grateful to the JHU for taking the challenge to defend the Sinhala Community, before it will be pushed down the precipice of existence by the terrorists, intellectuals, journalists, and scholars who take up the cause of the minorities to the exclusion of the majority.
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