{"id":40933,"date":"2015-01-19T02:02:53","date_gmt":"2015-01-19T08:02:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=40933"},"modified":"2015-01-18T18:50:57","modified_gmt":"2015-01-19T01:50:57","slug":"let-us-build-national-unity-without-betraying-the-unitary-character-of-the-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/01\/19\/let-us-build-national-unity-without-betraying-the-unitary-character-of-the-country\/","title":{"rendered":"LET US BUILD NATIONAL UNITY WITHOUT BETRAYING THE UNITARY CHARACTER OF THE COUNTRY"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chandrasiri Atukorale<\/em><\/h2>\n

Under the Rajapaksha Regime the war we fought was not against Tamil race, but Tamil separatism appeared in the guise of Nationalism.<\/p>\n

It is this fact that many of our Sinhala politicians have lost sight of despite those heavy casualties.<\/p>\n

Today many of our elected representatives are using such terms like Nation, Race in a manner prejudicial to the rights of the native Sinhala majority.<\/p>\n

Hardly a day passes without something being said about finding a solution to the Tamil problem in the North & East. Very often they refer to it as a Tamil national problem.<\/p>\n

What is this National problem?<\/p>\n

In the country we see races like Tamils, Muslims, Malay & Burghers. Nobody ever has said that these racial issues should not be fully tackled by Sinhala Governments.<\/p>\n

These Tamil racial problems should not be confused with national problems so as to affect the rights of the native Sinhalese people. This is what is happening at the moment. This is a very pathetic situation.<\/p>\n

In the context the distinction between nation and race must be made carefully.<\/p>\n

In all these past years our politicians have been indiscriminate in their choice of these words.<\/p>\n

Under the Rajapaksha rule we were able to defeat the LTTE terrorism which sought to divide this country in to two states. Mr. Maithreepala Sirisena the present President must always pay his attention to that victory of the Sinhala nation<\/p>\n

The term nation is obviously aligned to nationality, both being from the same Latin rule Natus meaning birth.Thus Burgess defined nation as a population with ethnic unity inhabiting territory with Geographic unity. Leecock similarly says that it indicates a body of people united by common decent and a common language.<\/p>\n

In recent times however, especially since the First World War the term nation has had a more distinctively political connotation; it has stood for a people who feel united and have more desire for Independent Government. There has been a more pronounced tendency to create states on the principles of self-determination nationality & one State (See Substance of Politics Dr.Uppadoreiy)<\/em><\/p>\n

In the dim distant past Sri Lanka was known to the outside world as the land of Sinhalese. As a case in point we can cite the famous Allahabad inscription of King Samudragupta<\/strong> of India. In that stone inscription Sri Lanka is referred to as the Sinhaladweepa\u201d, though some our elected representatives are hesitant to call this land a Sinhala Land.<\/p>\n

When the Portuguese captured the Jaffna province the Tamil chieftains surrendered to the Portuguese by signing the famous Nallur Convention which was written in Sinhala language.<\/p>\n

In the present context we have to tell those politicians to think twice the above facts before they plan to bring amendments to the constitution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chandrasiri Atukorale Under the Rajapaksha Regime the war we fought was not against Tamil race, but Tamil separatism appeared in the guise of Nationalism. It is this fact that many of our Sinhala politicians have lost sight of despite those heavy casualties. Today many of our elected representatives are using such terms like Nation, Race […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40933","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=40933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40933\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}