{"id":51742,"date":"2016-02-04T15:06:30","date_gmt":"2016-02-04T22:06:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=51742"},"modified":"2016-02-04T15:06:30","modified_gmt":"2016-02-04T22:06:30","slug":"sl-national-anthem-sung-in-tamilthat-tamils-could-understand-could-inspire-loyalty-towards-sri-lanka-as-the-song-does","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/02\/04\/sl-national-anthem-sung-in-tamilthat-tamils-could-understand-could-inspire-loyalty-towards-sri-lanka-as-the-song-does\/","title":{"rendered":"SL National Anthem sung In Tamil,that Tamils could understand could Inspire loyalty towards Sri Lanka as the song does"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dr. Chula Rajapakse MNZM\u00a0Spokesperson,\u00a0United Sri Lanka Association,\u00a0Wellington , NZ<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

I was quite moved when I \u00a0listened and watched \u00a0 the Sri Lanka national anthem being sung in Tamil during the 68th independence day celebrations in Colombo, earlier today. I have heard recordings of this earlier and of another version of the national anthem where Tamil was incorporated into the mainly Sinhalese anthem. In all of these versions , the music remained the same as in the traditional Namo Namo Matha . Both of these renderings \u00a0were really endearing like the Sinhala national anthem.<\/p>\n

Since I first heard these several years ago, and being told that ex minister Douglas Devanayagam , often used these versions for functions in the north during the previous regime, I felt strongly that one of these versions should be included as a \u00a0part of official Sri Lankan functions as way of demonstrating to the Tamil community and the world that our strong stand against Tamil Tiger Terrorism did not make us anti Tamil and \u00a0was not detracting us from our resolve to achieve racial harmony. I also believe that Tamil speakers forming a significant minority have a right to have the national anthem in their language, that they can understand and so be inspired by . In addition, if they sing a song that they understand , it would help to create a sense of love & loyalty to the country as the song inspires one to do.<\/p>\n

Besides , in New Zealand where I now live , it\u2019s national anthem is sung in Maori & English \u00a0every time and I believe achieves just that. In fact, I have asked at least the past two Sri Lankan High Commissioners to NZ whether we could not use it at our functions here and the response was that the national anthem is a part of the constitution and no changes could be made without changing the constitution. Now we see that , this is not the case.Perhaps, with the Tamil High Commissioner we have now, things may change.<\/p>\n

I do hope that the practice ,now started of having the national anthem sung in both languages becomes common place from now on including at the daily close of the radio and TV broadcasts ,where the anthem is sung in Sinhalese only now. I believe this would win \u00a0Sri Lanka a lot of good will nationally and internationally and help to detract from the unfair & ill founded brickbats Sri Lanka has had to face in past few years. More importantly it would help to foster national unity and a love and loyalty to \u00a0Sri Lankan, in every one who understands it.<\/p>\n

Dr. Chula Rajapakse MNZM<\/p>\n

Spokesperson,<\/p>\n

United Sri Lanka Association,<\/p>\n

Wellington , NZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr. Chula Rajapakse MNZM\u00a0Spokesperson,\u00a0United Sri Lanka Association,\u00a0Wellington , NZ I was quite moved when I \u00a0listened and watched \u00a0 the Sri Lanka national anthem being sung in Tamil during the 68th independence day celebrations in Colombo, earlier today. I have heard recordings of this earlier and of another version of the national anthem where Tamil […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51742","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=51742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51742\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}