{"id":77379,"date":"2018-05-14T16:05:37","date_gmt":"2018-05-14T23:05:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=77379"},"modified":"2018-05-14T16:05:50","modified_gmt":"2018-05-14T23:05:50","slug":"time-to-revive-cultural-nationalism-in-sri-lanka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/05\/14\/time-to-revive-cultural-nationalism-in-sri-lanka\/","title":{"rendered":"Time to revive Cultural Nationalism in Sri Lanka"},"content":{"rendered":"

Senaka Weeraratna<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

Each nation in the Asian milieu had from its earliest times developed a distinctive culture of its own, with features as unique as its language, religion, food, attire and attitudes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Asia, in the pre-colonial era, projected an image of a bouquet of different flowers but bunched together in harmony.\u00a0<\/span>
\nThough language and religion had near relatives over the border or across seas yet this did not disturb the unique distinctiveness of the national culture. It gave pride to the people.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Cultural atrophy began with the arrival of the foreign invader. In Sri Lanka, the Portuguese, Dutch and the British did enormous damage to the indigenous values of our people which were basically shaped by Metta ( loving \u2013 kindness) and Karuna (compassion) to all living beings.<\/span><\/p>\n

Buddhism played a pivotal role in the development of an unique civilization running for over 2000 years in this country.<\/span><\/p>\n

Much of the blame for the rising decadence in Sri Lanka must be laid at the unbridled borrowing from cultures that were steeped in violence and plunder, and making merry for the day without an iota of thought for the future well being of the individual, family, race, country and the planet.<\/span><\/p>\n

Imitation has become the fashion in Sri Lanka today. It has made inroads into every aspect of our living so much so that Sinhalese today are scared to say that they are Sinhalese, Buddhists are scared to say they are Buddhists, the dress code has changed dramatically so much so that we appear to be in a race to beat even \u2018Uncle Tom\u2019 \u2013 epitome of slave mentality.<\/span><\/p>\n

News papers and mass media are constantly bombarding us with messages of how we must be grateful to western colonialism for what we are today. While all the time suppressing the crimes against humanity, genocide and humiliation visited on our people for being loyal to our faith, language and culture.<\/span><\/p>\n

The time has come to regain our true independence, national spirit and pride in our achievements, confidence in our history, love and admiration for our Kings and Queens, who built the great Dagobas, mighty Tanks and irrigation schemes that stunned the then world and continue to do so even to date.<\/span><\/p>\n

A country that has lost its national pride and is incapable of innovative thinking except borrowing from others even in respect to basic dress, will not last long. It will be swept away by the storm of history never to rise again.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Senaka Weeraratna Each nation in the Asian milieu had from its earliest times developed a distinctive culture of its own, with features as unique as its language, religion, food, attire and attitudes. Asia, in the pre-colonial era, projected an image of a bouquet of different flowers but bunched together in harmony.\u00a0 Though language and religion […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77379","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=77379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77379\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}