by  Rohana R. Wasala

Continued from Wednesday, August 13, 2025 

Time the West backed off and allowed the unitary state of Sri Lanka to fulfill its own destiny based on ‘peace building’. It is also time to reflect that both Sinhalese Buddhists and Tamil Hindus value, respect and venerate the lotus flower with its symbolism of purity of body, speech and mind, is it really too much to ask the religious leadership of both faiths to come together in the cause of a lasting peace? That would do more than anything to create a real paradise.

• Lord Michael Naseby, former Conservative MP and pioneer of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Sri Lanka in the British parliament in his book ‘SRI LANKA: Paradise Lost Paradise Regained’, Unicorn, London, 2020

Israel isn’t a paragon of democracy. But Israel is a paragon of the struggle for democratic norms under near impossible circumstances. Israel is a laboratory for democracy under extremity, and that is its value for the world.

• Yossi Klein Halevi, American-Israeli Journalist and author, (as quoted in ‘The Genius of Israel’ by Dan Senor and Saul Singer, book issued in August 2023)

Part I of this article ended with the sentence:

‘For the SB’s message of solidarity to be of any potential value for global peacemaking efforts in this conflict zone, its unequivocal denunciation of Israel should have been balanced by a similarly unambiguous condemnation of the horrific Hamas terrorism that provoked the massive Israeli military operations in Gaza that continue to this day.’

Except for that candid observation, this piece of writing should not be mistaken for any adverse criticism of the Sarvajana Balaya political alliance. I have many positive things to say about it  and its leaders. I agree with its noncommunal nationalistic politics ( which is free from its externally attributed negative connotations such as exclusivity, supremacism, tribalism, etc.). The bare  Wikipedia description of Sarvajana Balaya’s political ideology as ‘Sinhalese nationalism’ (that is, a form of ethnonationalism centred on Sinhalese Buddhist  ethnic identity, viewed through the West’s naturally prejudiced perspective) implies, quite wrongly, negatives like the abovementioned evils of exclusivity, supremacism, tribalism, and so on. In my previous writings, I have explained why I assert that the nationalism that the majority Sinhalese Buddhist community advocates and champions is a uniquely benign form of ethnonationalism (if it must be called that) which supports the human rights of all citizens irrespective of differences of every type among them, including those based on their religious and political ideologies. To derogatorily misinterpret it as ultranationalism, narrow nationalism, tribalism, etc is like giving a precisely botanical description of the Sri Maha Bodhi in Anuradhapura in a cultural discourse, dissociating it from its historical and religious significance for Sri Lanka.

Our nationalism is ethnonationalism (if you like) free from ethnocentrism, fortified with the proviso that the principle of mutual accommodation and tolerance that it fosters among diverse ethnic groups within the country based on common humanity should not be abused to violate or to undermine the legitimate interests and human rights of any community, whether it be a majority or a minority, or to endanger its cultural (maybe, even physical) survival in the multifariously turbulent world of today, sadly, further aggravated by genocidal religious extremism of different brands. 

Readers, please bear with me for showing my contempt for popular labels. I distrust them because the powers that be keep changing the definitions of the concepts that they label to suit their global designs, something you may have yourselves realised by now. Let’s be mindful, when we use them both actively and receptively. 

SB’s condemnation of Israel with no mention of Hamas terrorism, which is really at the root of the trouble, sounds unjustly prejudicial to Israelis. Israelis themselves, as Jews, have never been terrorists, but abject victims  as well as courageous challengers of mindless terrorism against them in recent history. Jews have endured violent political oppression for over two millennia (like the Sinhalese have endured foreign invasions over the same period). Their successful struggle for survival as a nation through such a long period of persecution has enabled them to evolve as a race gifted with unbeatable, humanity enhancing, intellectual faculties. The civilised nations of the world that owe them much ought to protect them in order to help save human civilization itself. 

The heartbreaking video that went viral about two weeks ago of the emaciated Israeli hostage Evyatar David (24) snatched from the Nova music festival while he was singing with friends in praise of peace – David is a guitar player – on that fateful day of October 7, 2023, made to dig his own grave in a narrow tunnel by his Hamas captors must be meant to add to the emotional distress of his family and the general Israeli public, and to persuade them to put pressure on the Israeli government to bring home the remaining hostages (20 living ‘skeletons’ like David and 30 dead corpses)  by giving in to the Hamas’s impossible demands. 

I believe that the leaders of Sarvajana Balaya (Dilith Jayaweera, Arun Siddharth, Udaya Gammanpila, Wimal Weerawansa, Channe Jayasumana) are all decent young politicians with a potentially bright future before them. Channe Jayasumana (45) MBBS, PhD, FRCP Edin is a medical doctor and internationally recognised scientific researcher; he is a university professor in pharmacology. He served as cabinet Minister of Health in 2022.  Arun Siddharth (47) is a freelance journalist, social activist and a politician with trilingual proficiency (inTamil, English and Sinhala). He is the only politician I have ever written a feature article about (Arun Siddharth the troublemaker/The Island/November 8, 2024). Wimal Weerawansa and Udaya Gammanpila are both 55 years of age. They were two of the best performing cabinet ministers during Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s presidency. Wimal Weerawansa joined the JVP quite early in his life soon after secondary education, and devoted all his time to party work. He has acquired the general knowledge that a politician needs to function effectively through practical experience and personal education. He is an orator and author in Sinhala, and a thoroughly informed politician conversant in both Sinhala and English. Udaya Gammanpila qualified as a Computer Engineer at Monash University, Australia (where he lectured for some time) and later as a lawyer at the Sri Lanka Law College, Colombo. Dilith Jayaweera (57) is a qualified lawyer (educated at the Colombo University law faculty and the Sri Lanka Law College),  media mogul, and business entrepreneur. I am sure the Muslim community is also represented in the Sarvajana Balaya through its constituent parties. The name ‘Sarvajana Balaya’ harks back to the introduction of universal suffrage or franchise (sarvajana chandabalaya) to Ceylon/Sri Lanka in 1931 under the Donoughmore Constitution, which was the first step towards inclusive and representative democracy that still operates.

 The main reason why I think that the SB’s Gaza response is not a smart move is because it completely ignores the elephant in the room in Sri Lanka itself: the infiltration into Sri Lanka of the global menace of the extremist IS ideology that Wijedasa Rajapaksa, a former justice minister,  revealed in parliament based on intelligence reports in 2016 during the Ranil-Maithree Yahapalana regime, that cost him his powerful cabinet portfolio. None of the other politicians in power then and hardly any in the opposition had the courage or the self-respect to pressure the administration to investigate those claims seriously and to take necessary action, which would have prevented the hideous Easter Sunday suicide bombings on April 21, 2019. Informal but similarly evidence-based exposures about the activities of Zahran Hashim and other jihadists  by some concerned young Buddhist monks and social activists of the nationalist camp outside the mainstream parties were ignored or ridiculed as hate-motivated lies; those patriotic whistleblowers were branded as mere scaremongers,and were even threatened punishment for their pains. Whatever said and done, Sarvajana Balaya is pointing towards a way out of the present existential crisis that Sri Lanka is facing, even though the national leadership that will ultimately tread that path is yet to emerge. 

In this context, it is opportune to remember that there are two legacies of inestimable value that the British colonial rulers left us at independence. These are indispensable in negotiating the current tumultuous global scene rendered politically, economically and militarily unstable, and culturally challenging, because of overdone wokeism and unnatural LGBTQIA+ rights obsession, and last but not least, types of morbid religious extremism. One of these two legacies is the system of government through parliamentary democracy, and the other is the treasure trove of the English language. (I will reserve the second for a future writeup.) 

The first, the parliamentary representative system of government, was on the brink of being toppled by the conspiratorially staged Aragalaya of 2022 creating a national emergency, but was soon restored by differently configured elected representatives within the parliament on an ad hoc basis. Signs of an engineered unhealthy religious or cultural polarisation in the society were visible as a conspicuous element during the Aragalaya, represented by a brightly illuminated Easter celebration at Galle Face on Sunday April 17, 2022, followed a month later on May 15, 2022 by a bleak Vesak Full Moon Day marked with blackened Vesak lanterns and Buddha images painted in black (as I saw in social media posts then), probably the first time such an anti Buddhist demonstration was seen in the past twenty-three centuries. The protestors were sumptuously fed, according to YouTube posts, with biryani rice from nearby restaurants. In one YouTube comment someone joked: ‘bomba gahapu unui bomba kaapu unui atara budunta erehiwa maru sahayogaya’ ‘exemplary cooperation between bombers and victims engaged in Buddha bashing’!

That symbolizes the natural result of the chain of events that followed the 2009 neutralization of separatist terrorism. Those events have, at least temporarily, turned heroes into zeros. None with an iota of brains would have by now failed to identify the smart figures who were co-opted into the grand plot by the master/mistressminds. Be that as it may, a name springs to mind that shouldn’t be forgotten at this critical moment: the late, reputedly pro-American J.R.Jayawardane, the first executive president. He was a genuine nationalist (ala D.S. Senanayake who advocated and exemplified ‘Ceylonese’ national identity). Jayawardane, in spite of his myriad lapses, used his sharp intellect and political acumen to keep Sri Lanka whole as a unitary state through the institution of executive presidency. He, quite casually, in the meantime, used his ignorable young Marxist challenger, Rohana Wijeweera, the architect of the JVP, to contain his truly worthy opponent the late Mrs Sirimavo Ratwatte Bandaranaike. Honourable Mrs Bandaranaike, who rid the country of the last vestiges of British colonial rule in 1972 by promulgating the republican constitution, became the first female prime minister of Sri Lanka. She was a nationalist of the same brand, probably even more unapologetically so. Ranil Wickremasinghe, JR’s nephew, a staunch defender of the parliamentary system, is an unostentatious nationalist who is not likely to dishonour his principled uncle’s legacy by  contributing to a process that will ultimately put an end to the independent sovereign unitary status of our beloved historic Motherland. That is my gut feeling.  Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

Concluded