By Rohana R. Wasala

Praise to Kumar David (Quo vadis?/Sunday Island/June 2, 2024) for writing such an entertaining and informative essay. It is hoped that the ex-professor will forgive me for being so presumptuous as to comment on his writing.  He was grumpy on Vesak Day, he says, due to the rainy weather that prevailed that day. In his eighty years of life he had never experienced such a rain soaked Vesak before. It was the kind of weather that inclined the likes of him to a couch, according to him.  Ensconced in his sofa, he wrote the essay in two parts mentioned above, instead of being a couch potato lazily watching a lot of television. No doubt, its hate filled humour made delightful reading for some readers who share his admirable mindset.

The first part of his essay is an indiscriminate stereotypical condemnation of ‘the 225’ (who certainly don’t deserve better) that the old woman speaking in ‘pristine Sinhala’  grumbles about having to feed. However, KD’s allusion to the biblical miracle of Jesus feeding 5000 with just five loaves of bread and two fish (Matthew 14: 13-21) has no relevance to the matter at hand. Actually, on that occasion, Jesus fed even more than 5000 (men, which KD is careful to leave out) for verse 21 actually says: ‘….. five thousand men, besides women and children’.  Isn’t KD’s biblical freference really blasphemous, I wonder, because, while sharing the old woman’s anger at the 225, he was filled with simmering hate at the ‘infamous’ 69 lakhs” (see below) who returned most of the 225 to parliament at the 2020 general election! 

Where Jesus is mentioned there should not be any hate; there must only be love, compassion even for your worst enemy according to his teaching. On the other hand, KD’s venomous criticism of a large group of fellow humans based on unwarranted racial prejudice is a violation of the spirit of Vesak which celebrates the three hallowed events of the life of the Buddha, who preached, and practiced on all sentient beings absolute compassion and loving-kindness five centuries before Jesus taught his followers to ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself’. Perhaps KD is too irreligious (not believing in a religion) to have such qualms.

KD has a habit of pretending to be a Sinhala speaker or a Sinhalese (though he is ethnically a Tamil) in negative contexts, as I have noticed, especially when he wants to denounce the Sinhalese for their alleged racism. It is more than obvious that he loves to hate the ethnic Sinhalese for a plethora of other baseless reasons that he imagines as a spent Marxist of a bygone era. A native speaker of Sinhala will tell you that the Sinhala that KD puts in the mouth of the old woman does not sound like pristine Sinhala at all; it sounds more like Sinhala spoken by a Tamil speaker, going by how he transliterates into English those Sinhala words allegedly spoken by the old woman. 

However, it didn’t take long for KD to understand what the old woman meant by talking about ‘having to feed the 225’: she was saying that rampant corruption among politicians was diverting the money away from the citizenry, the money that should be spent on them for allowing them to live a comfortable life free from want. The woman was not wrong in her criticism of corrupt politicians, but she was exaggerating the truth  unnecessarily. Meanwhile, KD exonerates fewer than a dozen among the 225 from the charge of corruption. No objection to that. Even ‘a dozen’ could be an exaggeration in that context.

KD predicts that at the coming presidential polls, the battle will be between Ranil and Anura, with ‘Sajith wailing in the wilderness’, while the utterly hopeless SLFP and SLPP will find refuge with Ranil Wickremasinghe. Probably, KD is trying wishfully to discern emerging signs of such a pre-poll division of political loyalties that will be advantageous to RW. The gist of what KD wants to say in this section, as I understand it, is that the Anura-led faction will identify with the (in his possible estimation, retrograde) nationalist forces as KD hopes it will, and be routed by the Western oriented camp supporting Ranil; so he (Ranil) will  eventually be elected as president, thereby reversing the nationalist victory achieved with the defeat of separatist terrorism in 2009, a victory that was not to KD’s liking. There are certain recent revelations that RW made before a group of legal professionals he addressed at the Presidential Secretariat on May 28, 2024 as reported in the press. RW’s claims sound almost similar to what NFF leader MP Wimal Weerawansa had earlier said in and out of parliament, and even wrote a book about, titled ‘Nine: the Hidden Story’ (April 2023). RW’s revelations were about certain alleged Western-led attempts to force him out of his premiership  immediately after the former elected president Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled his official residence in Colombo on July 9, 2022 amidst violent chaotic scenes created by the so-called Aragalaya (Struggle), but before he formally quit his post. As Wimal Weerawansa had revealed before, Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardane was coerced to take over as executive president, but only as a nominal head of state who could be led by the nose according to the whims of the powers that be. To his credit Mahinda Yapa refused to accommodate that unconstitutional demand of a particular foreign ambassador.

TNA MP Sumanthiran was seen among the Aragalists, advising them, apparently unchallenged, unlike a number of other MPs, including Opposition leader Sajith Premadasa of the SJB, who were actually physically attacked while trying to associate themselves with the evidently hijacked protest movement. This is something that suggested a link between the Aragalaya and the Tamil diaspora among other infiltrators. 

KD was the progenitor of the ‘single issue candidate’ idea that was discussed just before the presidential election at the end of 2014. The choice he originally suggested then as a ‘single issue candidate’ was the late Maduluwawe Sobitha Thero of Naga Viharaya, Kotte, with his revolutionary but nonviolent reputation. This was against the venerable monk’s own conviction and the accepted wisdom prevailing then as now among ordinary Sinhalese Buddhist voters that a Buddhist monk is not suitable for that post and that he won’t stand a chance of winning at an election. Later, then incumbent war winning president Mahinda Rajapaksa’s right-hand man Maithripala Sirisena who, apparently, had been disgruntled with his boss for denying him the premier’s post that he coveted, betrayed him and decamped in order to challenge him as the single issue candidate, and the rest is history. 

The JVP also contributed to the success of the foreign engineered regime change campaign that had co-opted Sirisena, and played an active role in the resultant  Yahapalana government, though from a nominal opposition position. KD, being an elderly ex-Marxist sympathetic to that party, was believed by critics to have misled the half-baked Marxist JVPers to support the pro-West alliance. The above suggested contest between Ranil and Anura has been made more likely, according to KD, by ‘Buffalo Lal Kantha’s pronouncements’. KD calls Lal Kantha a buffalo not for the now well known, notoriously stupid statements of K.D. LalKantha of the JVP-NPP, but for the latter’s claim in support of the JVP as alleged by KD ‘that ……. only the JVP and the Udaya Gammanpila party took a stand against the Tamils, opposed any form of devolution and supported the military in the war against the Tigers’. In fairness to K.D. Lal Kantha, it should be stated that he would not have uttered such a thing. The JVP and Gammanpila (leader of Pivituru Hela Urumaya, PHU) never took and will never take a stand against Tamils for being Tamils; they only opposed Tamil Tiger terrorists, for whom KD’s coethnic empathy is understandable, and excusable. But KD’s innocuous looking piece of casual misinformation is a subtle attempt to recirculate the malicious lie that the government fought against the Tamil community, not, as it was the real case, against violent Tamil separatist terrorists.  Members of the JVP and the PHU are not racists, unlike KD. Their attitude to devolution is not likely to be so inflexibly rigid either; they were against a form of devolution that could only be an easy step to separation.  

It is only KD’s ingrained anti-Sinhalese Buddhist prejudice that has instilled such ideas into his hate imbued mind. KD adds that the ‘import of his (Lal Kantha’s) words is that ‘the JVP-NPP is going to be identified at the polls as a Sinhala party and this will have consequences. Will it draw the already radicalised Sinhala-Buddhist youth in larger numbers into the JVP camp or will it damage the JVP’s image? Time will show.’ What balderdash is this? If the JVP cannot attract anti-extremist peaceful Sinhalese Buddhist youth (those that the prejudiced call ‘radicalised’) and their counterparts in other communities into its fold, will it survive in politics, let alone save its image?

Where are these ‘radicalised Sinhala-Buddhist youth’, KD? There are none, as you know in your heart of hearts. Why don’t you dare even hint at the confirmed existence of internationally known radicalised youth belonging to certain fundamentalist cults, who have actually caused unspeakable unprovoked terrorist violence within Sri Lanka? Why do you level false allegations of violent extremism against innocent Sinhalese Buddhist youth? Actually, the false ‘radicalised’ label was stuck on some young peaceful Sinhalese Buddhist activists who warned against early signs of the emergence of some extremist Islamist groups whose activities eventually led to the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings.     

The JVP-NPP is not a Sinhalese only party or alliance, but like any major pan-Sri Lankan national party, it has a majority of ethnic Sinhalese in its ranks as they form the majority of the total Sri Lankan population. But its leaders have already alienated the Sinhalese Buddhist voters by making inane utterances smacking of anti-nationalist prejudice in the hope of winning the approval of foreign interventionist forces and the minorities that they offer to look after as alleged victims of ‘Sinhalese Buddhist majoritarianism’ which is a malicious false fabrication against a hapless global minority. Only race- or religion-based parties have members who exclusively belong to a specific religious or racial group. It is not necessary to mention examples as these are well known to you KD and our readers. 

Then KD makes an interesting revelation: ‘The monks went on an expedition to Europe and the US, sought out Tamil links such as the Global Tamil Forum and others and initiated a dialogue. The initiative is now in motion and grass-roots activities are in full swing. Important figures like Karu Jayasuriya (former Speaker), Austin Fernando, Sarvodaya, Jehan Perera’s National Peace Council and Pakiasothy Saravanamuttu’s CPA are involved. Branches have been established in many localities and an active movement is in swing.’ So, is that why the present Canadian government leaders have declared an utterly baseless Tamil Genocide Week and have been issuing statements bullying Sri Lanka with egregious lies about human rights violations, communal attacks on innocent Tamils, etc., without any credible, transparent investigations. Is this ‘initiative’ also your brainchild, KD, like your ‘single issue candidate’ stratagem of late 2014, which has brought the country to this sorry pass today? The Sri Lankan foreign affairs minister Ali Sabry has correctly characterised such treacherous anti-Sri lanka gimmicks as being prompted by sought-after domestic vote bank benefits in that country.

Who are these monks who went on an expedition to Europe and the US, seeking to establish links with the GTF and other Tamil organisations? They could well be of the same fraternity of yellow-robed Buddhist monk impersonators to which sixty-four year old Saman Ratnayake (a wanted crime suspect according to social media reports) who has found asylum in Norway posing as Ariyamagga Thero or the eighty-two year old retired Dept of Agriculture statistical officer Sirisena Hapuarachchi with an embezzling history who has assumed robes in old age as Meewanapalane Siridhammalankara belong to? The first of these is propagating a fictitious history of Buddhism according to which Gautama Buddha was born, attained Buddhahood, preached and died in Sri Lanka; the second has declared himself to be a Buddha and misleads gullible Buddhists with a wrong interpretation of the Tripitaka which is in the Pali language, himself having no knowledge of that language. Their activities seem to be lavishly funded by foreign donors. Eighty-four year old Karu Jayasuriya (former Speaker mentioned above) seems to be his main backer, who protects him from protests and challenges by concerned Buddhists, though he knows that he has already been expelled from the nikaya he’d joined. The activities of these two imposters and several monks who became their followers have already caused divisions within the Sangha community and the Buddhist laity, which are very harmful to the Buddha Sasana.      

I have no comment to make on KD’s proposals about identifying and advancing national economic goals (as I know little about political economics), except that his ideas may be expected to give a boost to the president’s authoritarian national assets selling economic policies, which are meeting strong opposition from nationalist patriots of all communities. 

KD adds a maliciously false, hateful NOTE at the end, which needs a comment: 

‘The absolute core Sinhala vote in the country is the infamous 69 lakhs”; maybe 70 now by natural increase. I reckon that the minorities – Ceylon Tamils, Upcountry Tamils, Muslims and Catholics – are about one third of the core Sinhala vote. That is (1/3) x70 about 23 lakhs. This is why I reckon that RW is making a play for a clear majority of this 23-lakhs in the presidential poll’. This could be a deliberate ploy that KD slily suggests for the UNP and the non-Sinhalese communalist parties led by racists and religious opportunists to use, persuading them to form into a common alliance against the majority community at the polls (as it mostly happened even in 2019 and 2020 elections, despite the urgent and genuine appeals of the nationalist leaders to the contrary; their eventual betrayal of the victory achieved is a different story).

KD describes what he calls ‘the absolute Sinhala vote’ as ‘the infamous 69 lakhs”’, and that this figure may be 70 now by natural increase’! Hey, octogenarian KD! Can all the new voters of any specific ethnic community be expected to exactly follow their elders’ politics without any deviation? This is a shameless exhibition of your inexplicable visceral hatred of the Sinhalese in general. The hatred you inspire in the hearts of the young will poison the minds of generations to come. This is not worthy of a venerable old man like you, Kumar David!