Chuls Rajapakse MNZM

The outstanding violence that Sri Lanka experienced in the last fifty years are:

1. The thirty-year terrorism of LTTE of a Tamil group supported by a national and international diaspora consisting of Tamil people supported by significant contributions from Christian & Catholic clergy.

2 The Easter Sunday carnage caused by a militant Muslim group supported by National and International diaspora.

Buddhist organizations had no hand in any of this carnage

As Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith has repeatedly acknowledged it is the Magnanimity and Tolerance of Sri Lanka’s 2500 yer old Buddhist culture, that permitted other religions like Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam to thrive as it has been doing for several hundreds of years in SL.

As he stated Buddhism is like the trunk of the tree of Sri Lanka and these other religions are like some of its branches. The trunk has to them for the rest to do so.

Don’t pick on a leaf that may be drying and. try to make out that this represents the tree.

The much-maligned Gnanasara Thero of the BBS informed the authorities in great detail about impending dangers from Zaharan and his comrades well over twelve months before the bombings happened with amazing accuracy particularly in relation to who the attackers would be.

When asked after the event of how he came by such accurate information he said that it was the peaceful Sufi Muslims of Eastern province from places like Kattankudya where Zaharan did his indoctrination from, frustrated by the lack of response (possibly stifled by influential Muslim politicians,), from the police when they reported the ongoing subversive activities of Zaharan and his group, they reported it in 2017/18 to Gnanasara of BBS hoping that he could stop pZaharan on his tracts. As it turned out when he reported it to the police, Zaharan’s strong Muslim allies warded of any action against Zaharan even then, painting BBS and Gnanasara as Anti Muslim extremists.

It took 300 innocent catholic lives to expose Zaharan and co but the stigma they cleverly attached to BBS and Gnanasara still lives on, possibly till the next ISIS or Tiger instigated carnage.

There has never been any carnage of the Tiger or Zhaharan instigated magnitude, attributable to any Buddhist organization.

Concepts war of Crusades or War of Jihad to spread their respective religions is totally contrary to Buddhist Teachings and ethos and never occurred anywhere in history.

This loving-kindness inherent in Buddhism has been systematically exploited in Originally entirely Buddhist countries like Afghanistan, South Korea, Bangladesh where Buddhism has been completely wiped out in these regions.

This process still continues currently especially in SL and Mynamar and any opposition to these movements is cleverly misrepresented to the world as intolerance and violence of Buddhists.

Perhaps, if not for resistance from groups like BBS, the percentage of Buddhists who was 80% in 1900 now reduced to 70%, but for the a percentage of Buddhists in SL would have been reduced to 50% by now.

Shame, Shame Shame

Chuls Rajapakse MNZM

The violent side of Sri Lankan Buddhism