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The Destruction of the Bamiyan Buddha Statues spells infinite misery for Afghanistan

Senaka Weeraratna

The fires that are now burning in various parts of Afghanistan due to Anglo - American Bombardment appear as distinct proof of the working of the ancient adage that most children in Sri Lanka learn at their mother's knee ' Kala Kala de Pala Pala de '.

This saying which enshrines the hallowed principle of moral retribution ( you reap what you sow ) is now tormenting the Taliban leadership and the Afghan people for that heinous crime committed on Afghan soil in March this year i.e. the destruction of the two Bamiyan Buddha statues, which are widely regarded as masterpieces of Buddhist Afghan Art.

The video replays of the destruction showed fireballs erupting from the two statues after they were hit with singular aim by the Taliban's heavy artillery guns. It would seem now that the fires that the Taliban lit when they set upon destroying the Buddha statues were not extinguished with the collapse of the statues. Instead, metaphorically speaking, these fires have spread far and wide in Afghanistan, perhaps to punish the current generation of Afghans, for failing to protect a priceless heritage of mankind.

The Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar rejected the pleas of almost the entire civilized world including a direct personal appeal from the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to Mullah Omar couched in simple words ' Never harm religious icons that are sacred to others '. Having done the foul deed, Mullah Omar then proceeded in a brazen display of medieval custom and twisted justice, to order the slaughter of hundreds of innocent cows as part of his ' atonement ' to Allah for his fault in delaying having the Buddha statues destroyed. In his quest to install a purist Islamic State, Mullah Omar then commanded all Hindus in Afghanistan to wear a yellow badge in public to enable easy identification for his religious police who are required to enforce the strict Sharia laws. This discrimination is reminiscent of the yellow star that the German Nazi authorities forced upon all Jewish people to wear in Nazi occupied territories.

The horror that has now descended on Afghanistan and which is so vividly portrayed on Television, must be treated as the direct outcome of the suicidal conduct of that country's fanatical leaders who use their religion as a pretext to achieve extreme political ends. Further, they have shown themselves to be incapable of observing basic human decencies towards members of other religious faiths. In this context one remarkable Edict of the Indian Buddhist Emperor Asoka, inscribed over 2300 years ago, stands tall. This Edict calls for religious tolerance and appeals to the public ' to respect the faiths of others, and by doing so one would bring honour to one's own faith '.

The disaster in Afghanistan provides us with an additional lesson i.e. the criminal conduct of a fanatical leadership driven by a strange hallucination that it has the blessings of a Divine Power to carry out its atrocities, brings retributive justice not only on itself -it also degrades and brings untold misery on the masses that are forced to accept its authority. The ordinary Afghans are, willy nilly, the victims of the bigotry of the Taliban leadership, that the former are powerless to combat. Evil becomes doubly dangerous when it is paraded as religion by a pretending priesthood - the truth of this becomes patently clear when one reflects objectively on the unfolding tragedy in Afghanistan.

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