BY EDWARD THEOPHILUS

Although Sri Lanka is a small country with a limited land area and resources it needs radical reforms to achieve stability and expected development. It is needed to understand that stability in this dynamic world is like a dream. The country has a long history of seditions (Aragala) and the result of conflicts created instability and frustration for many citizens with qualifications, skills and experience, many have left the country and many are in the country without opportunities to overseas.

In Sri Lanka, there is a religious madness that is related to all religions in the country.  Religions should not associate with active politics and seditions. Religious clergy should not go to parliament and need to understand the role they should be performed with laities.  

When looking at the country from the outside seems that it needs massive reforms relating to the Economy, Politics, Socialization and Structure, Culture, International Relations and many other areas. It is possible to write a big book on these points. Since its independence from British rule, Sri Lanka lacked a vision and people in power have promoted corrupt practices (rooted in certain families) than working for creating a just society that allows self-development with value practising. Citizens have no understanding of values. On many occasions, I published articles, that schools in Sri Lanka should educate values than Sara dharma” which is concerned with attracting worship to religious and other leaders and the application of Sara dharma concerns a limited area of human needs.  Values are broader aspects of behaviour and controls (Please read my articles www.lankaweb.com file Edward Theophilus) and they can apply to any society without differences in religions, social, and cultural backgrounds.

Religions in Sri Lanka do not play a required role and many times seem that worked against the objectives of religions and supported making a self-centred society. Therefore, religions have pressed to make a disdained society than being accepted by the public to reform the country. In this situation, religions have been attempting to promote self-centred attitudes against religious values. 

The mentality of people seems quite negative, they are promoting a selfish society and they are ready to betray values if activities don’t generate personal advantages. The current seditions of the country are viewed by many from a selfish point of view and it is not the right way of analysis. I watched on social media that Christian clergy (priests and nuns) participated without knowing the role educated by Jesus Christ.  If Sri Lanka’s population has a good understanding of values this type of violence would have not been incurred in the weak economic background. The major economic problem is the size of the economy is not sufficient to maintain the population, which is higher than the forecasted level in population plans.

Many analysts believe that leaders of the current seditions on all sides have gained hidden advantages, the investigation by police has revealed that leaders of sedition have gained millions. People have no ideas about these secret gains, and they might reveal financial and non-financial gains secretly obtained in the future. Formal leaders (Political and administrative) and leaders of the seditions worked more than they were supposed to do and few analysts believe that undisclosed gains were received by leaders more than they have in their pockets and later, all information would reveal. 

Strugglers were abandoned by motivators as they cannot spend so much money as bribery to leaders of the sedition and provide food and drinks for them. Many analysts have a feeling that the struggle was an outcome of bribes given to leaders by unknown sources. They were motivated by certain people who were using the suffering of the poor. The role of social media was negative and promoted indirect violence such as firing on houses.  

The people of Sri Lanka have a dirty heritage that is based on destruction despite religious values. Since the 1971 crisis, I observed that many people affiliate with the struggle without knowing the true leaders of the struggle and their intention. The leaders of seditions have not openly expressed how they will solve problems after taking over the administration. I saw a Buddhist monk who was associated with sedition, he was in the 1971 uprising, but he was rejected by JVP as a traitor. In current Sri Lanka, people cannot see a single ancient building in an original format, one reason that could assume buildings were destroyed by people in fights or destroyed by dishonest motives looking for valuables.  In the story of Ramayana, setting fire to properties was a way of expressing anger and taking revenge. That was the ancient culture. Now there are political Hanumans using fire for personal advantages. If Sri Lankan knew the danger of annihilation, they should have stopped Hanuma and not gone behind Hanuma in the Ramayana.

The fire-based destruction was experienced on many occasions after independence too. People who respect values do not engage in destruction whether those properties belonged to self or others. It is the best example that religions are not working in Sri Lanka’s society and religions have become a way of a showoff. Regions are not educating people to secure them when the wrong thing is going on in society.

The first step of the country at present should be to provide basic needs for people to survive and while this process is going on many policies and procedures need to develop for the future. Religions must get away from this process and they should work to achieve the ultimate reality after the death of the human. There shouldn’t be a conflict between religious motives and the government’s role. 

People must be educated on new policies and procedures, and active policies must be to discipline people because the nature in Sri Lanka was to get around when an incident happened and then steal the valuables in the place. As I observed many people have achieved enrichment by way of gambling and they used that money to acquire properties and maintain comfort life with political power. The government and opposition knew this situation, but not acted to change this uncivilized culture.  Although it is called an island of religions, it is not true, it has been promoting corruption everywhere and after the civil war in 2009, the corrupt practices have gone to the highest level and the war also used to make money through war-related materials by politicians and associates despite the role of making controls. The civil war was a way of undue enrichment.  

After independence in 1948, I observed more than ten instances of setting fire to common properties. I have never seen or heard any religious leader who was educating people that setting fire to express anger is a sin that put them into hell after death and that communicating with each other is the way of settling problems or grudges.    It is difficult to observe in many primitive societies anger expression using fire. Fuel shortage during the past several months was a blessing and if fuel was available the result would have been converting the country to ash.   

The nature of the society of Sri Lanka is not listening to people without power, which means political, social, religious, caste and many other groups have a feeling that supporting a leader he or she must be an acceptable person if he /she has no power with money the recognition of the society is quite remote. Various criteria are used by different groups of people to recognize a person when there are people with the ability to communicate in English. The knowledge of English used as the criterion to accept a person’s adeptness might be regarded as some form of stupidity. English is a colonial heritage and a language that is used by many leaders but in history, limited people had English knowledge but it was not caused to end of the world.