Racist Budget 2018: Taxing Sinhalese to Pay Tamils
Posted on November 12th, 2017

Dilrook Kannangara

Racism has a new abode in Sri Lanka – the budget. Mangala’s 2018 budget is all about taxing Sinhalese to pay Tamils. Budget proposes to ease the burden on war affected people” but it only proposes benefits for Tamils! Sinhalese and Muslims were also affected by the war but they get nothing. Tamils in Jaffna continue to occupy land of evicted Sinhalese since 1977 and evicted Muslims since 1990. This is new apartheid. Sinhala villagers in the North and the East are living under trying conditions.  They have been totally neglected. In addition tens of thousands of disabled Sinhala soldiers and their families continue to suffer the effects of war. They get no houses unlike Tamil war affected people including Tamil terrorists.

Considering the fact that almost all beer manufacturers in the island are Tamil owned businesses, the budget proposes to reduce the price of beer while increasing the price of soft drinks!

Further the government hopes to change the Paddy Lands Act and the Rent Act to drive out Sinhala people from towns and strengthen Tamil colonization of townships and cities outside the north and east. Tamils have already turned the north Tamil-only. No one else is allowed to live or do business in the entire northern province. Parts of Colombo is at risk of following this apartheid structure.

Car import tax changes are also done with a view to benefit Tamils at the expense of Sinhalese. Sri Lanka as a developing nation can ill-afford electric and hybrid vehicles. Eventual beneficiaries are Indian motor manufacturers and their local dealers.

This is the opposite of reconciliation. This is racism with dire consequences in time to come.

People outside the north and east must stop paying tax as it is a fraud on them. Instead they should keep that money with them to face the impending 2018 recession.

23 Responses to “Racist Budget 2018: Taxing Sinhalese to Pay Tamils”

  1. Charles Says:

    Sambanthan Maithripala’s Opposition leader has dermanded today that while Tamil and Sinhala language should be official languages the Official Language of the North and East should be Tamil only:

    දැනට රටේ ක්‍රියාත්මක ආණ්‌ඩුක්‍රම ව්‍යවස්‌ථාව තුළින් සිංහල හා දෙමළ භාෂාව රාජ්‍ය භාෂාව වන හෙයින් උතුරු නැගෙනහිර පළාත් දෙකේ රාජ්‍ය භාෂාව දෙමළ භාෂාව විය යුතු යෑයි දෙමළ ජාතික සංධානයේ නායක හා විපක්‌ෂ නායක ආර්. සම්බන්ධන් මහතා පැවැසීය

    විපක්‌ෂ නායකවරයා එසේ කියා සිටියේ ත්‍රිකුණාමලය දිස්‌ත්‍රික්‌ ලේකම් කාර්යාලීය ශ්‍රවණාගාරයේ පැවැති දිස්‌ත්‍රික්‌ සම්බන්ධීකරණ කමිටු රැස්‌වීම අමතමිනි.

  2. Senerath Says:

    Where is the end to this ridiculus game by Sinhala politicians.
    Until 2009 Sinhalase have been paying Tamils with their lives.
    Since 2009 Sinhalese have been serving Tamils with slavary AND lives whilst politicians induldging in luxary and full protection. Today Sinhalese are getting killed more than before 2009.

  3. Vaisrawana Says:

    Exactly, Dilrook. You are spot-on! If the new constitution is adopted, the central government will be there only to meet international obligations like meeting the requirements of treaties signed with foreign countries and organizations on behalf of the nine independent and feuding provincial governments. The apology for a central government that will result will be shouldering the massive debt burden (development loans) accumulated over the decades. The provincial governments dominated by the minorities will contribute as little as possible to the public coffers of the so-called akeeya/orumitta nadu Sri Lanka. This will mean that the Sinhalese dominated provinces will be squeezed dry through taxation to find funds. In the meantime, the new found (or about to be extracted) mineral wealth including oil and gas deposits found almost exclusively in the northern and eastern areas will be beyond the reach of the rest of the country (whatever the new constitution will verbally assure to the contrary). On top of this, the central government (rather, exchange) will be legally obligated to pay war reparations to the surviving generations of the separatist terrorists who did so much to destroy our motherland. It must have been with them in his mind that Mangala so gaily presented this budget.

  4. Dilrook Says:

    @Senerath

    That is an interesting comment.

    War (1976 – 2009) killed 1,100 Sinhalese on average. Thankfully no such killings take place after 2009. However, the enormous debt burden and economic neglect of the Sinhalese affect their population growth which is far more than 1,100 a year. To rephrase your comment, the adverse impact on the Sinhala population since 2009 is far worse than before 2009.

  5. Dilrook Says:

    @Vaisrawana

    The audacity of Tamil politicians is such that they openly claimed the Sinhala majority Western Province must finance the new proposed provincial councils which is done solely for the benefit of Tamils.

    As with most things after 1972, this is yet another replay of the “Gamarala-Panikkiya” drama.

  6. Senerath Says:

    @Dilrook,
    Today we have 1000 addtional deaths due to Indian Bajjaajs, Idian Ashoks Leylands & Tatas than before 2009. To please Indians (because of Tamils) we are loosing extra number of lives in similar numbers to to that occured during war. Unless Inidan juncks are stopped now it is similar to continuing war. Those who leave homes for work have the same risk of not returning home, approximately. What I worte, “slavary AND lives” is the truth because SLAVARY means Sinhalese don’t get paid for pleasing Tamils.
    Add the number of deaths due to other causes ( such as pleasing Muslims by allowing drugs and pleasing Indians by allowing Kerala Ganja and deaths due to 13 A induces political thuggery) it is even worse.

  7. Jayantha Says:

    Here’s another reason why we should be searching for unity and not divisiveness. UNITE Sri Lanka!!
    Sinhala and Tamil
    Emeritus Professor H. L. Seneviratne, Department of Anthropology University of Virginia
    In his laudable and forward looking article “Leave the past where it belongs” Bhikkhu Walpola Piyananda reports the story of a Sinhalese boy who in a previous birth was a Tamil girl. Bhikkhu Piyananda is, quite rightly, trying to show how meaningless, and perhaps, in Buddhist sense, how ephemeral, labels like Sinhala and Tamil are.
    While in no way detracting from the nobility of Bhikkhu Piyananda’s intentions, we can say the same thing more empirically, without venturing to invoke the ultra-mundane dimension of Samsaric rebirth. For example, a significant proportion of the inhabitants of the south western seaboard are descendents of Tamil Hindus who arrived in the island during the Dutch era. Within a generation they became Sinhala Buddhists, and as new settlers in an alien territory commonly do, over-identified with the host ethnic group, becoming some of the most virulent bearers of Sinhala Buddhist extremism.
    We can see this in varied expressions, some broad and general and others more circumscribed. In the broad perspective, one look at the ethno-demographic spread of peoples in the subcontinent makes it quite obvious that the Sinhalese are a variety of Tamils, as are other ethnic and linguistic groups of South India. It is because of the twentieth century Sinhala-Tamil rivalries that this fact is forgotten or explicitly denied. In particular, it is striking that the Sinhala Buddhists have forgotten the fact that it is in South India that Buddhism survived centuries after its disappearance from the north. It is very likely that the great Buddhist commentator Buddhaghosa was a Tamil monk, although Sinhala monastic tradition is keen to place him in North India.
    In his autobiography, the great mid twentieth century scholar monk and social worker Hendiyagala Silaratana mentions a village, Kohombana, in the Vavgam Pattuva of the Eastern Province, in which the inhabitants speak Tamil, but their names, like Ratnayaka Mudiyanselage and Disanayaka Mudiyanselage reveal that they are Sinhalese, representing a creative mixture, and perhaps a journey towards Tamilisation. There is a fishing community in the Negambo area which speaks Tamil at night and Sinhalese in broad daylight. Many of us have personal experiences of people who have changed their identity from Sinhala to Tamil or vice versa, that is, in this birth itself.
    Dr. Sarath Amunugama once mentioned to me of two villages in what might be called the border between the areas occupied by the Sinhalese and Tamils respectively where the one village was formerly Tamil and now Sinhalese, and the other exactly the opposite. During riots each fought the other tragic-comically, imagining itself to be the other.
    Most of what goes as Buddhist ritual is actually derived from the Hindu rituals particularly of Tamil South India. This is true of the rituals both of the “Great” and “Little” traditions. And the Sinhala language, considered “Aryan”, is Tamil in its grammatical and syntactic structure, with a vocabulary of about twenty or more percent Tamil.
    It is common knowledge that about half the Sinhala aristocracy signed the Kandyan Convention in Tamil. Not so well known is the fact that some signatures combine Sinhala and Tamil characters about fifty-fifty, a remarkably creative synthesis to which both the Sinhala demagogue murderers and Tamil liberator murderers are blind.
    Names we now consider Sinhala, like Kodippili, Samarappili, Samarakkodi, Kuruppu, Samaradivakara, Samarasinghe, and many more are Malayalam, a language close to Tamil, and Ileperuma, Mannapperuma, Pullaperuma, Ponnamperuma, Alahakone, Ilangakone, Ilangasinghe and many more are Tamil. A particularly interesting example is Kumaranatunga, where the “na” after “ra” reveals its Tamil origin, with the Tamil “n” Sinhalaised as “na”, and the name as a whole Sinhalised by dropping that “na” altogether. Names like Kumara(na)tunga and Kulatunga, though of Sanskrtic origin have come to us via Tamil. “Fernandopulle” presents an even more interesting and creative blend, combining as it does Portuguese and Tamil.
    The so called “national dress” of the Sinhalese was unknown to them until about the 1930s when they borrowed it from the Tamils. The true national dress invented by the people at the time and popularly used was the sarong, more formally the cloth, combined with an upper garment borrowed from the west. In pre-colonial times, covering the upper body was uncommon if not unknown, as Kandyan temple paintings, Sigiriya frescoes and stone sculptures amply testify. The intricately embroidered jacket of the Kandyan chief, which often evokes images of medieval Sinhala glory in our self-proclaimed patriots, is borrowed from the Portuguese.
    The absence of an upper garment was as true of women as of men, despite imaginations to the contrary based on which some Buddhist establishments, like the Dambulla temple and the Temple of the Tooth in Kandy, now impose dress codes on women. The authorities who impose these on hapless and unsuspecting worshippers are little aware that these codes, oppressive of women and imagined to be indigenous, have nothing to do with Buddhist or Hindu ideas, but are borrowed from the puritanical ethos of Christianity and Islam.
    The epoch making play Maname that enabled the forging of a Sinhala national theatre is rooted in the folk theatre traditions of the Tamils.
    The Island 14 & 21 January 2014

  8. aloy Says:

    We have been living beyond our means. While our exports have been dwindling due to labour shortages and high costs of productions our imports of luxury goods such as expensive cars, for politicians and non productive civil servants without tax, have been on the increase. Infrastructure such as roads power plants have been very expensive. The politicos have made these infrastructure projects avenues for making money for political campaigns as well as for amassing personal wealth. Any such project in our country is more than three to four times the actual costs when carried out in other countries.
    In the country where I am working they completed a four lane suspension bridge last month which is one KM long and the cost was just about US$ 100million. The previous government wanted to construct Kelaniya suspension bridge even less than that length for over US$ 600 million. If the present government does it, it may be well over a billion. Our expressways are way too expensive. The consultancy fees alone for a 30km section of Hambanthota expressway was awarded at US$ 90 million.This is daylight robbery. I am very much familiar with these costs as I was also contemplating of arranging a bid for that consultancy work. These are avenues for politicians to make money and it is the citizens who have to pay the taxes to repay loans. The finance minister of the day cannot wave a magic wand and create money. He will have to tax the people and call it various names. One day our president or the prime minister will have to announce in public media that ” I am begging for help from anyone to prevent our people dying from starvation”. The very same words were spoken by a governor of a US territory (Puerto Rico) recently as they too lived beyond their means to the tune of $ 70 billion, mainly on consumables and fattening themselves. When a disaster struck they are already indebted to that amount and did not have money to buy anything. BBC world service played that announcement many time already. This can happen to us also as RDA is planning for many more expressways on borrowed money.

  9. Senerath Says:

    “Any such project in our country is more than three to four times the actual costs when carried out in other countries.”– Aloy
    This is very true. I can prove it easily. We have better soil conditions than, for example Singapore. We have cheaper labour than Singapore. We have better and cheaper material (aggregates for concrete) than Singapore where they have to import from Indonesia. Yet our Southern expresway if 60% higher cost than Singapore’s expresways. WHY ? This is the cheapest one actually.
    Kelaniya brige is not suspension type but hybrid cable stay structural system proposed by Japanese. There is no need for hybrid type there when we can have piers aliging with existing piers and have an incrmentally launched one like Friendship bridge.
    Sinhalese are being ripped off with four times the cost what it should be.
    To rebuild the railway line to Jaffana destroyed by Tamils, they paid an astornomical sum of money ( PAGA is huge here). Actually it should have been built using some kind of TAMIL TAX charged to diaspora visiting Jaffna.
    ManGALA is talking about Medamulana Tax but he should actually be talking about a TAMIL TAX.

  10. Senerath Says:

    .There should be a HUGE DUTY on 3-wheelers until they become few laks more expensive than medium cars. INDIAN TAX
    . TAMIL TAX
    . Rebuilding of North shall be from the money taken form Tamils only ( becuase it was Tamil who sabotaged the country. It was their children, tehir fathers, their mothers. They have to pay back.)
    . There should be a NEW CONSTITUTION TAX – charged to all Tamils, becuase they are asking for it. There is lot of money and cost involved in it.
    . There eshould be a tax of rehabilitating LTTE cardres , charged to Tamils only
    . There should be de-mining tax to remove bombs planted by Tamils – to be paid by Tamils.

  11. Christie Says:

    Boycott Indian goods and Indian Colonial Parasites and their businesses.

  12. Nimal Says:

    Aloy
    You must be learning a thing or two about the goodness in the country are now living and working and noticed the utter corruption in our country where someone is making money from the bridge they are making for $600.These roughs should be made accountable and there should be a day of reckoning. What good you are experiencing should be inculcated in our humble country.
    These roughs pretending to be pious just to hoodwink us the taxpayers.
    I disagree with Dilrook about taxpaying Sinhalese, but as far I know in Kandy the most business houses, shops are run by Tamils and Muslims who pay taxes and they have all the reasons to blame the politicians for ignoring their just concerns,where the politicians in power seems to disrupt their business and at the same time demand their hard earned taxes that is wasted in bogus corrupt ventures and I as a honest investor feel angry too.
    Countries mainly in Africa is urging change and good governance from their leaders and demand changes. I am glad that there were two or three Black African nations were represented by the colonial types at the remembrance day at the Cenotaph.
    I must say that the enforcement people here and in the other countries are working together to go after crooks from the third world countries, where they are clever enough to go even after the proxies living in their countries. My wealth too have been scrutinized, which I gladly revealed to their satisfaction.
    One could see even in US people closed to the top man is on the spot light.
    Tamils and Muslims too pay taxes and that should be respected, if we are a just nation.

  13. Nimal Says:

    Sorry for my spelling where I meant rouges not roughs as I am always in a hurry.

  14. Dilrook Says:

    @Nimal

    You have missed the point.

    Read the new taxes and proposed law changes imposed by the regime specifically on the Sinhalese majority and the proposed Tamil-only benefits under “reconciliation”. I’m sure you haven’t read the budget proposals.

  15. Dilrook Says:

    @Jayantha

    The economic burden of the country must be equitably shared and benefits must also go equitably to all. That is not the case in Sri Lanka today. Tamils are economically and politically favoured at the expense of the Sinhalese.

  16. Senerath Says:

    I am not sure why people cannot get the point made by Dilrook

    It is LTTE with their terrorists supplied by Tamil moms and dads who destroyed the North, eleaving aside the Sinhala deaths by bombs. Not only that, Tamils people fully supported LTTE willingly helping them in terrorist activities. TRUE, they cannot resist too much but THEY DID NOT WANT TO REMOVE IT EITHER.

    If so, why should poor Sinhalas pay to rehabilitate the railway line which only benifts Tamils (in addition to paying huge amount of in excess to normal cost to INDIA)?

  17. Nimal Says:

    Dilrook
    I am no supporter of the racist Tamils who made me leave the country but I will respect those who are with us and contributing to our economy and pay taxes.
    I will never support a separate state in the island.Must follow what the example of Spain and those people who talk about a separate state and decides to break away should be charged with treachery and other offences and be locked up.
    To get the support of the international community we must run the country in the correct way where the politicians are law abiding and we have a honest justice and police system and no one should be above the law etc.
    Unless we put our country to the levels of international standards,important nations that matter will ignore us and give their sympathies to the minorities that are crying ‘foul’.

  18. Dilrook Says:

    If you havn’t read the detailed contents of the budget, then you simply don’t have a case to argue.

  19. Vaisrawana Says:

    Sorry for having to barge in, Nimal and Dilrook. Any person who has read the budget proposals in any of the many available sources (for example, http://www.dailynews.lk/2017/11/09/budget-2018/133984/2018-budget) can see that Dilrook’s observations are reasonable. So, it is obvious that Nimal hasn’t done his homework to take on Dilrook on this subject. I was one of the earliest to comment on Dilrook’s short piece. I support his characterization of the 2018 budget as ‘racist’. My intervention here is because of our fellow netizen Nimal. I have read your comments on articles published here in Lankaweb several times before. The language of your comments suggests to me that you are most probably a Tamil who is nursing a personal grudge against Sinhalese Buddhists. In your latest reply to Dilrook, you write: “I am no supporter of the racist Tamils who made me leave the country but I will respect those who are with us and contributing to our economy and pay taxes”. Please don’t forget that you left the country because of the doings of some racist Tamils. Tamil separatist terrorism provided a convenient false pretext for thousands upon thousands of Tamils, both from Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu, to migrate to greener pastures in the West as bogus asylum seekers; they were actually economic refugees. Now their leaders are calling themselves the Tamil Diaspora and having, in their cunning but obsequious way, cozied up to their host nations, are parasitizing them domestically and geopolitically. (Of course, I am not saying that you are one of those slimy creatures, because I don’t know enough about you to make such an allegation.)These ingrates are taking revenge on the innocent Sinhalese Buddhists off whom they lived under the patronage of the occupying British, for having rescued their historical homeland from mindless Tamil separatist terrorism.

  20. Nimal Says:

    Vaisrawana
    The moment you say that I am a Tamil shows your inaccuracy of your statements and I wouldn’t waste my time with likes of you.My opposition is against people who exploit the noble religion which I practice, if you know me well.

  21. Fran Diaz Says:

    Tamil folk are fighting their CASTE wars in Lanka.
    They cannot do so in Tamil Nadu.

    Earlier Breakaway Tamil Nadu may encourage breakaway Eelam in Lanka. INDIA will not want this. If any Eelam forms in Lanka, it will be TN culture, complete with CASTE. Do Tamils of Lanka want that ?

    Cold War type players are also involved plus some foreigners & their Agents.

    These are the huge problems facing Sri Lanka.
    Yes, the majority community, mainly the Sinhala Buddhists, and also others others too, pay dearly in terms of lives, funds, reputation abroad, etc.

  22. Dilrook Says:

    @Vaisrawana

    My above article has been proven right by now with TNA (may be for the first time in history) voting for the budget! Now it is an open secret that this is a racist budget.

    What is most shocking (these details come out little by little) is the budget tries to impose a South Indian cartel on shipping as well! This is extremely dangerous to local exporters and the economy. This has been one industry that served the national economy until now. Tamil racists are trying to take over that too and hold the economy to ransom even further.

    Sudu Nelum Mangala did what is paid to do. Even Ravi K didn’t stoop to such low and racist levels in making the budget. This will be beginning of the end of the Lankan economy. 2018 will most likely be a year of recession in Sri Lanka.

  23. Senerath Says:

    Sri Lanka is the only racist country where majority is being discriminated for more than 50 years

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