https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/uknews\/immigration\/9075849\/Multiculturalism-has-left-Britain-with-a-toxic-legacy.html<\/a> (please read this article to understand better)<\/p>\nThere were no Islamic lands or Christian lands. The expansion came with conquest, colonialism, conversion & the sword. As a result of conquest, colonialism & conversion identities of countries were hijacked, destroyed & replaced.\u00a0 Buddhism, in contrast though starting in Nepal ended up as far as Persia on one end & Malaysia on the other without a single forced conversion, sword or conquest.<\/p>\n
However, every country has an unique history prior to invader rule, an identity that a country is entitled to protect while also guaranteeing the individual rights of people who live in that country. The confusion has come when freedoms & rights are being used to force later day cultures & identities to overrule & dictate to the older culture. This is where education, political leaders & civil society must not overstep their mark to barter for various agendas. A citizen of a country therefore is bound to put his country first and in so doing respect the parent culture and history that built the civilization.<\/p>\n
An issue regarding identity of heritage cultures is the effect & impact of colonial rule where the invader policy was to eliminate or dilute the culture of the invaded country & force a colonial foreign culture upon the citizens. This is what happened to the indigenous natives of present day Canada, America, Australia, New Zealand. Their cultures & identities were stolen & replaced and today it is all but forgotten.<\/p>\n
Part of the education system introduced by the colonial occupiers were designed specifically for this exercise which is why at time of independence the colonial masters were happy to depart because they knew they had successively nurtured and cloned a set of brown sahibs who would think like the white man, act like the white man & follow the orders of the white man even in the future. These brown sahibs were to be the white man\u2019s local servants \u2013 a commodity that still exists & thrives. This is one reason why we insist that history must be taught & made aware to all in particular the history prior to colonial rule. We can understand why there are efforts & ploys to ensure that the history is kept hidden from the people by foreign forces & their local agents simply because they do not want to have people proud of their history to want to protect & defend it. The ploy to remove the history from education syllabus is to nurture a future generation that is clueless about their country & do not mind becoming the dumping yard for every corrupt culture the West has tried, tested & failed and there are locals proud to import these headache.<\/p>\n
There are a lot of things that we can be grateful for the West in particular the manner that globalization has helped people connect electronically. The world is certainly full of good & bad and everything certainly does have its pros & cons. However, we have to identify that there are imbalances \u2013 We have a world where 8 people own what 50% of the world combined own. Some countries may be rich but there are enough of poor in them, similarly some countries are poor but these countries have more than a fair share of billionaires. USA has 2.2m prisoners, close to 600,000 are homeless & over 43million live on food stamps.<\/p>\n
Countries that first implemented multiculturalism are finding that it has created more division than unity or integration. What it has also done is to uproot the heritage identity that existed in a country. In all probability this is the game plan. This is also why we are cautious & are openly presenting the arguments & apprehensions. When a more aggressive & dominant faith with demands for their own food, own laws, own dress, own banks etc take prominence by virtue of the power they wield using their bloc nations & petro dollars the meeker more compassionate faiths are pushed to the background and end up appeasing and be subjugated.<\/p>\n
Maldives was formerly a Buddhist nation, the Buddhist civilians & Buddhist monks all faced virtual extinction. How? what happened to them? See how Samanala Kanda today has become joint-custodians of other faiths when it was only Buddhists that worshipped it even before other religions were first formed. Similarly, every Buddhist heritage site is being encircled & these are not unfounded fears. Kuragala, Muhudumaha vihara, Dambulla are all sites that have numerous challenges facing their future.<\/p>\n
In Sri Lanka, no one can claim that Sri Lanka is not a Buddhist country. For 2600 years this nation was built on a Buddhist heritage where the rule of kings followed the \u2018Ten Royal Virtues\u2019 Dasa Raja Dhamma. Buddhism is ahead of Christianity & Islam by more than a 1000 years. When the Christian colonials arrived their aim was to destroy Buddhism as was the objective of the South Indian invaders. However, Buddhism has stood the test of time though it has been an effort to preserve, protect & foster it. Non-Buddhist faiths use billions through their institutionalized religions to expand & promote their faith while also converting. These challenges cannot be ignored or left without attention especially when they are linked politically too with backing of bloc countries like the EU & OIC.<\/p>\n
When there are Christian\/Catholic schools whose policy is to take only students of these faiths (except instances where policy is sacrificed for large & handsome donations), it is the same for Islamic schools too, why should Buddhist schools be turned into multicultural \u2013 once Buddhism is removed invariably the demands of other faiths take prominence & Buddhism gets pushed to the background.<\/p>\n
When Article 9 of the Sri Lankan Constitution demands that the government in power must protect & foster Buddhism it necessarily means that the handful of state schools that are Buddhist must remain to promote, foster that Buddhist identity. However, inspite of this the Buddhist schools do respect other faiths & hold various events of other faiths but do the Islamic schools hold a Buddhist Day, we think not. When Sinhalese are accommodative of Muslim dislike for pork is that reciprocated by not serving beef (please note there are Buddhists who eat beef\/pork & drink as well as Muslims who eat pork & drink) Prayers rooms are arranged for Muslims but in Muslim majority nations or even towns where Muslims are the majority are non-Muslim prayer rooms accommodated? Where there is no reciprocity there cannot be demands for equality especially to remove the heritage culture & heritage ethos of a country.<\/p>\n
As in all cases money takes over logic & rational thinking & action. Even in the West the ordinary citizens are angered because their politicians are bartering their heritage space for money & other perks. It is the same scenario in Sri Lanka where the headless Parliament do not have the brains to understand the ramifications of the cabinet papers they are signing without reading or understanding a word on the paper. In all probability these are drafted by some NGOs & pushed for approvals in exchange for some remuneration.<\/p>\n
No community will object if leaders learn to clearly spell out that there exists a heritage culture & identity & that has to be respected by all citizens while statistically presenting how others individually enjoy freedom to practice their cultures & faiths. The problem is that the politicians are playing people against each other & in so doing they are damaging cordial relations among communities. Every minority is aware of what they enjoy in Sri Lanka, many know that they enjoy far more rights than they would as a minority in any other country. But, everyone has learnt to play politics & it has become fashionable to claim one is discriminated as there are plenty of people prepared to be referees. This falsely promoted discrimination, racism, hate etc has become a major business venture & everyone wants to get a piece of the pie.<\/p>\n
In Sri Lanka, anyone claiming that their faiths are discriminated must explain how churches, kovils, mosques are increasing islandwide and show where & what discriminations they suffer!<\/p>\n
Multiculturalism cannot be applicable to some but completely omitted for others!<\/p>\n
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\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nShenali D Waduge<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If there are international laws, international standards & application of international laws & standards equally to all, then one ethnic group cannot claim to be exclusive from its application where they are a majority but demand & enjoy these standards where they are a minority. Multiculturalism became a liberal fad that is fast losing its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1498,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-shenali-waduge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76008","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\/1498"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76008\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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