Nalin de Silva

If there are people who think that the Tamil problem is an internal problem caused by the intolerance or whatever of the chauvinist Sinhala Buddhists of the country then they must be suffering from Sinhalaphobia with a hatred towards the Sinhala Buddhists. When some Muslims claim that the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) is after the minorities and when the anti Sinhala Buddhists are of the opinion that in Sri Lanka the religious and ethnic minorities are not safe they are only expressing their anti Sinhala Buddhist prejudices planted in them by the English and other Western colonialists.

There are some ungrateful Muslims, not those of the calibre of whom I may call Sinhala Islamists, who forget the protection given by the Sinhalas and their kings to the Muslims from the fifteenth century onwards and speak of Aluthgama incidents as if the Sinhala Buddhists and the BBS are responsible for everything that happened there few months ago. They conveniently forget the behaviour of some Muslim youths who obstructed a Bhikku who was going for a Dharma deshana on a Poya day and the assault of the Bhikku by one of the thugs. They claim that the Buddhists all over the world are the same referring to Myanmar.

We shall come back to this topic later and the so called Buddhist fundamentalism when it is only the Buddhists who do not have an ideology as such. Without an ideology or a science or whatever one wants to use, there cannot be a fundamentalism and when Nibbana has no existence in either space or time or space-time or whatever, one cannot speak of an ideology.

We live in a world where intense fighting is going on between Muslim culture and the Judaic Christian culture. We in Sri Lanka should not take a stand against any one of them in general but support the cause of one or the other on a case by case approach. In Palestine we may support the Palestinians but in Australia we cannot condone the Muslims who want Sharia Law to be implemented in that country.

It is up to the Muslims living in the Christian countries to respect the culture of the country they have adopted and live as Muslims in Christian countries. Living in a Christian (or Buddhist for that matter) country as a Muslim is different from living in a Muslim country as a Muslim, and no Buddhist would ever ask for freedom to live in a Christian country as he/she lives in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, or any Mahayana country, as Bududahama has no ideology as such.

The clash is between civilizations (cultures) that have ideologies, and when Huntington said Theravada is no civilization as such it reflected the fact that Theravada has no ideology as such, though the authour may not have realized that.

Theoretically neither the Muslim countries nor the Christian countries should take up arms in any form against a Theravada country. However, in Theravada countries one finds not only the Christians and Christian countries but Muslims agitating against the Buddhists. It may be that as far as believers are concerned no ideology is worse than having an antagonistic ideology. It is in this context we should try to understand the attitude of the Western Christian countries against the Sinhalas and the Sri Lankan state. It has to be mentioned that in general no Muslim country has acted against the Sinhala people unlike the Western Christian countries.

European Union

How does one understand the recent decision by the European Union to allow the LTTE to raise funds in the Western countries against the Sinhala people and the Sri Lankan state? The resolution adopted by the Christian EU does not spell it out in so many words but it amounts to that in the final analysis. It is also a resolution against Mahinda Rajapaksa as the West is hell bent on defeating him at the coming presidential elections and then sending him to the gallows. The UNP may claim that there are no electric chairs but this is not different from their claim of the Armed Forces going to Pamankada instead of Alimankada. Whether there are electric chairs or not there are so called international juries and they are waiting for Mahinda Rajapaksa to be relieved from presidential activities so that they could try him before one of those juries.

Mahinda Rajapaksa is the most hated leader of a nation by the Western countries and Sinhalas are the most hated nation of the world by the same gentlemen who preach peace and tolerance from the Altar. One could ask why the West should hate Mahinda Rajapaksa so much and what evidence I have to say so. Of course the Westerners are crafty people who do not speak their minds unlike the Sinhala villager and one would not find in their careful worded statements, resolutions etc., any hatred towards Mahinda Rajapaksa or the Sinhalas especially the Sinhala Buddhists. However, the Sinhala people who are being used by the West are not that skilful and the latter cannot hide their anti Sinhala venom in their writings, weekly columns, resolutions adopted by various freedom people, and other such documents and speeches.

I am not claiming that all these henchmen and henchwomen are paid for their work but once a person is indoctrinated with an ideology especially in the name of a science that is Western that dominates the world it is possible to get anything done by him/her. The ideology is sometimes far more important than money and the henchmen and henchwomen who are after various missions are working according to a plan set up by the Western intellectuals. I would not call it a conspiracy but that is the way ideological states behave in a clash of cultures (civilizations).

 Presidential election

The EU by their decision has given the LTTE and its front organisations a free hand to collect funds, organize terrorists and do whatever possible to oust Mahinda Rajapaksa from Presidency. In spite of the development that is taking place in the Northern Province, the people still depend on the money sent by the dispersed Tamils in the Christian West, and the EU has given the Tamil terrorists and racists living in the West (in fact harboured in the West) the freedom to manipulate the vote of the Jaffna people at the forthcoming presidential elections. Naturally money will be poured on the candidate(s) other than Mahinda Rajapaksa with the sole intention of defeating the latter.

Ideologies clash not only in the cyber space or electronic and print media, and ideological states sponsor terrorism against other countries with different ideologies or no ideology. The West may preach from the Altar that they are against terrorism but in effect they support and encourage terrorism against “enemy” countries. Sri Lanka though not believed so by the Anglophiles trained by Western schools here as well as abroad and Western universities of Oxbridge Peradeniya types, is an enemy of the Christian West and those countries with Christian ideologies do whatever possible to demolish other ideologies (or no ideology) in the enemy countries.

In Sri Lanka and the rest of the world clashes of civilizations (cultures) have been going before Huntington and these clashes are at least five hundred years old. Huntington himself wanted to cover up things and he pushed the clash of civilizations to the future. It is the West that supports terrorism in the world and one should not be surprised if Muslim terrorism takes the upper hand in the near future against the wish of the Christian West.

The so called ethnic problem in Sri Lanka was created by the clash of cultures and would continue for some time, with the West always blaming the Sinhala Buddhist chauvinists for the crimes committed by the Westerners themselves.