Shenali D Waduge

A country has every right to protect its history & heritage. A country has every right to react to the sinister plans taking place to create an artificial history by removing a history that is over 2600 years old. A country has every right to protect the many plots and plans now being put in place to create a pseudo national identity in keeping with those that fund initiatives whereby the main goal is to remove the sacred place held by Buddhism and the role Buddhism has placed in shaping the nation’s identity and the culture and values of people. How right is it and who has the right to decide what gets removed and doesn’t and what new identity and history everyone has to accept. Can Governments and their cronies through Ministries be given rights to experiment with history and plug in their notions and ideologies & do they expect everyone to accept these?

For people to realize what is taking place they need to be aware of the strategies and methodologies used in the past and compare them with what is taking place in the present. It only then that people will realize the dangers and what is at stake.

Presently a wave of actions is taking place which cannot be ignored. Sealing of temple tills, attempts to remove elephants from Buddhist cultural events like the perahera, while azan’s are allowed temple pirith is banned, only Buddhist monks are arrested while Church priests who had openly sided with LTTE terrorists get away, state funds to pirivenas are stopped, controversial Buddhist monks are tapped to bring disrepute to Buddhism/Buddhists, Govt is silent over attacks, destruction and theft of Buddhist artefacts, state funds to the preservation of Buddhist archaeological sites are being reduced, actions are not taken against officials who are being bought over to compromise Buddhist heritage sites, incursions on Buddhist heritage sites are ignored, history is being removed from school syllabus, Buddhist daham pasal teachers are being forced to teach merits of other religions during Buddhist classes, academics are being rewarded to re-write false history and projecting a step-motherly version to the place held by Buddhism, bizarre notion of shared values is being rolled out trying to confuse young minds and distance Buddhist children from their religion and cultural background….all these and more are taking place with a long term plan and are in keeping with a historical objective.

When European Christian colonial rulers arrived their objective was to take over countries by force, plunder their resources/wealth, declare these new territories as Christian and forcibly convert the natives and increase their flock. The missionaries became the brainwashers and intelligence gatherers just like the CIA & NGOs of present times.

Part and parcel of that methodology was to win over natives, give them honorary titles and place them above the rest and get them to do the dirty work on behalf of the European colonials. Notice how titles are continuing to be bestowed upon people who still work on behalf of Western agenda! The methods have changed and become more sophisticated but the objective remains the same. It is our duty to realize what these goals are and counter them.

The natives were clueless to handle the European Christian explorers. If natives had no inkling of the methods used for subjugating them are we to play ignorant and ignore the same strategies being applied packaged differently?

Formerly missionaries approached the chief humbly and asked a small piece of land to set up their station. The station soon became a ‘trader’ resulting in an ‘agreement’ on the guise of ‘friend and protector’ of the chief but it meant the ‘foreigner’ had rights to take land, interfere in the lives of the people and with time split them and generate animosity among them. This became the famous ‘divide & rule’. Soon the ‘friend & protector’ wants to become bigger than the Chief and decides to take lands, use natives, abuse natives and even murder natives that didn’t tow the line.  If explorers worked in conjunction with the Christian/Catholic missionaries – isn’t what the Western governments & their faith-based NGO agencies doing the same presently?

To understand the psyche of the Western European rulers and their mission which has not changed one has to study the speech delivered by King Leopold II to the Missionaries sent to Congo in 1883. The colonial and neocolonial agendas are the same in substance.

Some excerpts from this speech

The main goal of your mission in the Congo is not to teach the Negro the knowledge of God, ….. you will interpret the gospel in a way to protect and serve the interest of Belgium”

Your knowledge of the scriptures will help us to use special text that recommended the fidels to love poverty such as….Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the Kingdom…… You will do all that you can to cause the Negro to fear being rich in order that they may go to heaven.

From time to time…… keep them in fear that you will use violence”

You will take them away from anything or act that procures them with the courage to confront us.”

Your action will be essentially on the younger people that might not rebel….. the child should learn to obey what the missionary teaches him because he is the father of his soul. We must force them into submission and obedience.”

Teach the Gospel to the Negroes in an African style, in order that they are kept submissive to the White colonist. They would not rebel against the injustice done to them by the colonist.”

Avoid, by all means, the Blacks becoming rich.”

Make pay tithes each Sunday for church. Utilize this money, that is intended for the poor, for our own business investments.”

Institute a system of confession which will make you good detectives in order to denounce/put down every Black which has a spirit of rebellion against the system.”

Teach the Negroes that their statues, idols, are works of the devil, confiscate them and fill our museums with them. Teach the Negro to forget about their heroes in order to worship and give praise to ours.”

Don’t give a seat to a Negro when they come to see you, at the most just give him a cigarette.”

Don’t invite him to break bread with you, even if he gave you a chicken every time you went to see him.”

My dear compatriots; if you apply to the letter all this, the interest of Belgium in the Congo will be protected for many centuries. I thank you.

King Leopold II

(Translated from French by Prince Asiel Center for International Studies, USA)

http://www.afrikaglobalnetwork.com/htm/leopold.htm

The text is certainly shocking. But it is very much consistent with orders given by all other colonial rulers/administrators and post-colonial former colonies cannot forget these orders because they are continuing in the vision and mission of the neocolonial agencies now operating world over.

This is what Dr. Philip, Superintendent of the London Missionary Society wrote in The Preface to his Researches in South Africa” in 19^th century.

” ‘While our missionaries are everywhere scattering the seeds of civilization . . . they are extending British interests, British influences and the British Empire. . . . Wherever the missionary places his standard among a savage tribe, their prejudices against the colonial government give way; their dependence upon the colony is increased by the creation of artificial wants”.  

European explorers like Vasco da Gama, David Livingston, Cecil Rhodes and the many Christian missionaries were ONLY following the religious texts.

Bible New Testament St Mark 16 Verse 5 Go ye to the entire world, baptizing all men in the name of Jesus Christ”.

A chaplain attached to the British East India Company is quoted by Norman Hetherington as saying

We’ve annihilated the political importance of the natives, stripped them off their power, laid them prostrate without giving them anything in return”.

The envoys deployed in Third World nations follow the same objectives. The British High Commissioner to Sri Lanka is now projecting a ‘shared history’ – the gameplan is obviously to distort history and whitewash the blood soaked hands of colonial rulers from the history books wherein the younger generation would not be aware of the crimes committed by European rulers.

Histories of former colonies cannot be re-written by colonial rulers that have yet to account for their crimes & sins. Their acolytes who are rewarded by titles and tasked to re-write the history on behalf of these former colonial rulers cannot be allowed as well.

The pattern of how the Western rulers ruled directly and through their subservient local traitors is a replica of what is today taking place in front of our very eyes. To understand the gravity of this, people must know and comprehend the damage that Europeans & even Islamic invaders committed to the natives of Asia, Africa and other parts of the world where lands and territories were forcibly taken and people were subjugated.

No modern nomenclature or slogans like ‘let us forgive and forget’ can wipe out that horrendous and murderous past and the only way people can prepare and counter the same objectives under more sophisticated onslaughts is to be aware of the patterns & players involved.

Shenali D Waduge