S K W Fernando

The unwarranted furore in the last few weeks over the two elephant calves handed over to the Temple of Tooth is now expectedly dying down and to the credit of the government it did not flinch. This had become such a prominent issue mainly because some part of the media and number of INGOƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢s and their local lackeys, had optimistically foreshadowed for this matter to have the potential to develop to a public outburst against Buddhist institutions including the Temple of Tooth. The media was looking for new headline material since the terrorism related issues had suddenly dried with the end of war.

During the time of the war it was the human right issues that they were drumming on. This time it is around the animal rights that they are casting the net. Both are concepts which the Western societies are claiming credits for. Those who are familiar with scientific literature will know that they claim practically for every scientific discovery of the world. The truth is that every human group had contributed to the present development of the human kind, including the epoch breaking discovery of zero by the ancient Indian mathematicians.

Once the same kind of people, (ie part of the media and the INGOƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢s) tried to organise a public protest against, same animals being used in religious pageants in Sri Lanka. Ironically they have not noticed how the bulls are being used in various day to day heavy activities in Sri Lanka. Not only bulls many other animals were used various capacities to serve the mankind.

Why so much emphasis on this particular incident of elephant calves, which is very commonly occurring in every zoo of the world or any institution dealing with animal husbandry? The elephants have been integral part of the culture and Buddhist ceremonies for time immemorial, not only for Sri Lanka but for many parts of Asia. It is much more humane (or Godly) than using animals in races (beating them all the way to the end), in rodeo contests, circuses, or even caging them in zoos. These Western NGOƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢s are top ranked hypocrites when they preach us human rights or animal rights. There is nothing that they can teach us on these matters or on any other spiritual matter. What I hate most is when non-Buddhists preach us Buddhism. These people and their Western masters are very good at finding planks in others eyes.

The fact is that these human rights and even the more recent animal rights are recent discoveries of the West. For us they are ingrained in our culture from the Vedic period. It is still a part of their colonial mentality to believe that they are holier than us and it is their duty to civilise the rest of the heathens.

During the late twentieth century, when they were no longer able to carry out violation against the living beings in their own countries or in the countries they occupied, due to the widening and ever modernising media, they decided to teach us right and wrong. They themselves were declared immune from guilt. Nobody from the rest of the world could hold them responsible for any atrocities committed before mid twentieth century. So human rights are only valid from the late twentieth century.

The most horrendous genocide or massacres (whichever you may care to call them) in Hiroshima and Nagasaki are null and void as far as the Western media are concerned. Even the most recent and closer to home Mei Lai massacre in Vietnam is hardly mentioned by them. The unimaginable atrocities committed by the European in Zambia and South Africa up until late eighties were not even worth mentioning.

. When it comes to animal rights they are in a bigger muddle. They cannot understand running a poor horse beating it all the way to the end is cruelty. Again how can they consider pulling a fish out of water with an iron hook pierced through its jaw is not painful? The most ridiculous of them all is their belief that most animals exist in this world till they end in their plates.

It may seem a very surprising discovery to them to learn that we in the rest of the world have protected all our flora and fauna for eons where as theirs have been decimated long time ago. A semblance of what has happened to these poor creatures can be surmised from the remnant of their past still surviving in some parts of the Europe, such as fox hunting in England and bull fighting in Spain.

It is after they started coming to our part of the world robbing our lands, the depletion of our natural resources began. They exploited our wild life for commercial purposes and games. Once, the grand North American plains were dotted with millions of magnificent bison population. Today they are confined to few reserves, after just being recovered from near extinction. Every school boy may probably have read about how the baby seals are killed in most inhuman manner, in the land of human rights and animal rights champion ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢¢”š¬…” Canada – for oil and fur.

Such brutal violations of animal and plant life are epidemic wherever the European appeared on this planet. This habit of the West to find faults in others to cover their own guilt will not be going to end in the foreseeable future.