{"id":57557,"date":"2016-08-11T16:02:02","date_gmt":"2016-08-11T23:02:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=57557"},"modified":"2016-08-11T16:02:02","modified_gmt":"2016-08-11T23:02:02","slug":"another-idiotic-statement-by-ranil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/08\/11\/another-idiotic-statement-by-ranil\/","title":{"rendered":"Another Idiotic Statement by Ranil"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em> Dilrook Kannangara<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Local Trump has spoken; again. Yet another hilariously idiotic statement was made by the Prime Minister recently when he compared the advent of Buddhism to signing ETCA agreement. He argued that both are from India and we should not favour one and oppose the other. Obviously, his understanding of history and economics is flawed.<\/p>\n<p>If ETCA is about a few Buddhist monks and an Indian princess making their way to Sri Lanka no one has a problem with it. However, ETCA is not about that. It is about economically ruining Sri Lanka by flooding the island with unemployed Indians and dumping Indian goods in the Lankan market destroying local producers.<\/p>\n<p>Even before the arrival of Buddhism in the island (circa 265BC), locals had a favourable opinion about Buddha. The Enlightened One visited the island nation many times. The last Buddha visited Sri Lanka on three occasions (circa 580BC). Previous Buddhas also visited the island nation. They came to the island to preach Dharma and settle disputes, not to rob or burn down the island nation as Indians do. Having created a favourable impression among locals, Buddhism was immediately taken up by the people when it officially arrived.<\/p>\n<p>Unlike India today, no coercion was used by the then Indian Emperor to spread Buddhism. India uses extortion and pressure tactics to impose ETCA as it imposed the Indo-Lanka Peace Accord and 13A in 1987. India has long lost the Asoka era and Buddhism. Today India is a Hindu majority country with only minute presence of Buddhism. Comparing 265BC landmass now called India and modern India is ridiculous.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dilrook Kannangara Local Trump has spoken; again. Yet another hilariously idiotic statement was made by the Prime Minister recently when he compared the advent of Buddhism to signing ETCA agreement. He argued that both are from India and we should not favour one and oppose the other. Obviously, his understanding of history and economics is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dilrook-kannangara"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57557","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=57557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57557\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}