{"id":76083,"date":"2018-03-31T09:44:07","date_gmt":"2018-03-31T16:44:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=76083"},"modified":"2018-03-31T09:44:07","modified_gmt":"2018-03-31T16:44:07","slug":"endangered-nations-and-endangered-cultures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/03\/31\/endangered-nations-and-endangered-cultures\/","title":{"rendered":"Endangered Nations and Endangered Cultures"},"content":{"rendered":"

R Chandrasoma<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

Few countries in the world are now in peril because of the marauding spirit of powerful neighbours. This is a recent turn in history \u2013across the centuries powerful nations were imbued with an expansionist spirit that spelt doom for those fated to be close to the ‘hegemonic power’. Protracted wars resulted when neighbours were well matched as fighting machines. Britain’s history \u2013 until recently \u2013 was dominated by that of warding off the intrusions and threats of the Continental Powers. We in Sri Lanka have been threatened for long centuries by our powerful neighbor India and it is a miracle that we have survived as a civilization for over two thousand years. Times have changed and the use of brute strength to overawe a weak neighbouring state is no longer militarily or politically feasible. But the threat to nationhood exists and we in this country must be vigilant\u00a0\u00a0– because our historical weakness as a small island remains while big-power expansionism is now taking the guise of subtle forms of cultural subversion. There is a new ‘imperialism’ that gets its strength through the cunning manipulation of racial power-bases in politically weak nations.<\/p>\n

How does all this apply to Sri Lanka and its polity? It is the weakening of our cultural cohesiveness that is the first victim. This is achieved by a brainwashed and Westernized elite that equates modernism with the erosion of the historic and the indigenous traditions that have long shaped our socio-politcal evolution. It is this ethnicity and sense of belonging to a uniquely endangered culture that is currently being assailed by lackeys of Western Imperialism posing as ‘modernist reformers’. A prime instrument used in this sordid adventure is the ‘foisting’ of a new constitution inspired by an alien elite bent on destroying our historic standing as an independent and culturally distinctive species of humankind. Our greatest enemies are the falsifiers of history – those ‘uprooted’ kinds that promote a bogus modernism – one that sees culture and history as outmoded in the modern world and and that ‘jobs are prior to roots’. Sinhala-Buddhist culture has survived for over twenty centuries \u2013 a record that few nations and races in the world can match. It would be historic tragedy if this ancient heritage falls victim to the machinations of power-hungry politicians and their lackadaisical followers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

R Chandrasoma Few countries in the world are now in peril because of the marauding spirit of powerful neighbours. This is a recent turn in history \u2013across the centuries powerful nations were imbued with an expansionist spirit that spelt doom for those fated to be close to the ‘hegemonic power’. Protracted wars resulted when neighbours […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-r-chandrasoma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76083","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=76083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76083\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}