{"id":106921,"date":"2020-09-23T15:18:00","date_gmt":"2020-09-23T22:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=106921"},"modified":"2020-09-23T15:18:00","modified_gmt":"2020-09-23T22:18:00","slug":"true-test-of-a-sri-lankan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/09\/23\/true-test-of-a-sri-lankan\/","title":{"rendered":"True Test of a Sri Lankan"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Senaka Weeraratna<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>The true test\nof a Sri Lankan is neither the waving of a Sri Lankan National flag nor the\nsinging of the National Anthem nor the composing of Music for the YouTube such\nas \u2018We are Sri Lanka\u2019, but it is much more than that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is the\nwillingness to ensure that any manifestation of your religion or belief in\nworship, observance, practice and teaching, should be carried out in peace and\nharmony with Buddhism, and such conduct should not cause hurt to the moral\nsensitivities of the Sinhala Buddhists, who constitute the overwhelming majority\nof people (70%) of Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These two historical identities \u2013\nSinhala and Buddhism &#8211; are rooted in the national identity of the people whose\nancestors, being Sinhala Buddhists, built an unique Buddhist civilization over\na period in excess of 2000 years in the country that is now called Sri Lanka.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is an\nextraordinary civilization that has always won the admiration of the world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The proposition \u2018when in Rome&nbsp;you must&nbsp;do as\nRome does\u2019 has a certain reasonableness attached to it. It is the adaptation to\na foundational culture and acceptance of religious practices that are deeply\nembedded in a country that would make inter &#8211; racial and inter &#8211; religious\npeaceful co \u2013 existence possible, and not by trying to replace them at the\nbehest of third parties, which would generate both conflict and violence as we\nhave seen in the recent past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Senaka\nWeeraratna<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>September 23,\n2020<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Senaka Weeraratna The true test of a Sri Lankan is neither the waving of a Sri Lankan National flag nor the singing of the National Anthem nor the composing of Music for the YouTube such as \u2018We are Sri Lanka\u2019, but it is much more than that. It is the willingness to ensure that any [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[165],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-senaka-weeraratna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106921\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}