Terrorism has many facets

Sunil Vijayapala Oxley Australia.

Some years ago I read the book ‘Revolt in the Temple’ by Lake House group, compiled by one of the famous Wijewardenes and one of the chapters was titled, 'Under the British Yoke'. Any Sinhalese who read this chapter would be enlightened on the manner in which Anglos terrorized Sri Lanka. From ancient times Sri Lanka experienced waves of terror first with Pandyans and Cholas which went up right up to recent times and heading the list were Paranthaka and Veera Pandya, who simply plundered and torched our ancient cities, including Buddhist sites. May be Prabhakan is a reincarnation of Paranthaka.

Most Sri Lankans wouldn’t be aware of how a Chinese king invaded Sri Lanka as a consequence of a Chinese Buddhist pilgrim being murdered(or imprisoned) by the then ruling king of Sri Lanka. We were fortunate to avoid an occupation by the Chinese, as the only move this poweful Chinese king made, was to install a Sinhala man of his choice as king, and leave the island.

The Portuguese terror was next, with the forcible conversion of Buddhists to Catholism followed by Dutch who massacred Portuguese and Sinhala Catholics, and forced Christianity down the throats of Sri Lankans. The greatest terrorist, British arrived in the island in the 18th century and did the greatest damage, ecologically, politically, socially, religiously and above all economically.
China, hitherto famous for Tea was taken off the map and Tea was introduced to Sri Lanka, with the plunder of half a million acres of ever green rain forest cover in the hill country of Sri Lanka, the greatest ecological disaster in the history of the world.

Although we had brave Sinhala leaders who stood up to the British, the Anglo found either the Sinhalese weak or stupid and anchored well in Sri Lanka with the English Myth which still continue to this day, the conditioning the fickle Sinhala minds. The English language and Protestant denomination of Christianity were their weapons, with a subtle gentlemanly approach to dominate Sri Lanka.

Now amidst all this chaos with the proverbial ‘divide and rule’, arose our friend Prabahkaran who poses as the saviour of Tamil people with a militancy no other character had shown in our history. Tamils look up to India and Tamil Nadu, while the Muslims look up to Pakistan and where do we Sinhalese look up to?absolutely no where. For the simple reason Sri Lanka is the only country on this planet where the Sinhala race live and had survived for millenniums, going through all these terrorism. Logically we can come to a conclusion that only we Sinhalese ( with a few exceptions of Tamils, Muslims and other minorities) love our country and we have this possessiveness of mother Lanka, which no other race has. We are proud to own a unique culture based on Buddhism and the Sinhala language as primitive as any ancient language on this planet. A language threatened by fickle English educated Brown Anglo Pukha Sahibs! and Christians and Catholics (again with few exceptions). I hope our politicians would be wise enough not to make English the Medium of instruction in Sri Lanka, caving into these propagandists, disrupting the whole education infra structure in Sri Lanka. English must be taught as a SUBJECT in all schools and universities.
Imagine a country where Mother Superiors instruct the Sinhala student not to speak in SINHALA! in girl schools.

Two funny characters live in Australia and both are in the medical profession. One is a Sinhala hating pro Tiger person and the other hypocritical enough to boast of a Sinhala culture, but advocating English push in Lanka and the latter has once commented that Sinhala language is the ‘labourer’s language! Terrorism has many facets and forms and identifying each and dealing with each effectively is the greatest challenge Mahinda has.

At last we have found a friend (Sri Lanka never had a genuine friend) and to everyone’s surprise it’s the cowboy, USA, headed by a mad Anglo white dog and a black mad cow, taking day to day decisions, detrimental not only to current situation in the world but which will affect the world political scene for a number of years to come. Yet we both have joined hands to fight terrorism and hopefully US will back us all the way to wipe out Tiger menace from the shores of our blessed island of Sri Lanka and bring peace to all Sri Lankans.

Lastly, can anyone define this Honourable Solution GOSL is seeking? Honourable to whom, the majority or to the minority or for both? Can there be dishonourable elements in this honourable solution and how should that be tackled? The word honour has many meanings and hopefully this solution will be palatable for majority Sri Lankans, irrespective of ethnicity. A referandum giving various options of Unitary, Federal or some other unique form of Administration could be a wise move to gauge the pulse of the people. I wonder whether anyone wants to be in Mahinda’s shoes.