An Accounting Of The Allegedly “Bought-And-Paid-For Enemies Of The Sri Lankan State”
By Emil van der Poorten -September 29, 2013 |
Emil van der Poorten
Every time any individual or group, foreign or local, sounds in any way critical of the Rajapaksa Regime, their local lackeys come storming out of their trenches, bayonets fixed, ready to do battle against “those in the pay of the neo-imperialists, “the “rump of the LTTE,” the “Tamil Diaspora” and/or some other anti-Sri Lankan entity that they either invoke or create for the occasion.
The reason that these folk incessantly advance for the allegedly evil conduct of these enemies of our heaven on earth is that they are simply “jealous of a country being run by and for Sri Lankan Buddhists as a virtual Valhalla.” These enemies of the (Sri Lankan) people are allegedly driven by simple JEALOUSY, no less and no more. I have been generous in my use of italics and bolded capitals in the preceding sentence because the obsessive behaviour I describe is deserving of such hyperbole. What makes matters even worse is that a significant number of people in this country buy into this belief! It has reached a point where a friend, writing recently to Colombo Telegraph, appears to have thrown up his hands in despair, saying the only sane response for anyone of decency was to leave Sri Lanka post haste!
Let me, however, try to advance a few facts that I hope will stop those now in mid-stride to the passport office, have them pause and consider the context of the current lunacy and return to hearth and home to give the land of their birth “another chance,” if you will.
Since these allegedly subversive organizations are identified as the root of Sri Lanka’s problems and ultimately responsible for a potential mass exodus of Sri Lankans of civility, it might be instructive to examine the credentials of those evil organizations.
The consistent claim –made over and over again, without a shred of evidence in support of it – is that those organizations critical of affaires Sri Lankan are in the pay of “the Tamil diaspora” in one guise or another. They seek to destabilize Sri Lanka and hand it over, presumably, to those same evil paymasters, the Big Bad Wolves of this particular tale. That scenario has the evil émigrés returning in triumph, killing all the Sinhala Buddhists and living happily ever after! Read More
His name was Knox. Robert Knox. English. He was a prisoner in Lanka from 1660 to 1680. Finally he escaped from Kandy or more specifically from Rajasinha II, who claimed to be the sovereign overlord of the whole of Lanka and its people. The world-view Rajasinha II inherited as a ruler of Sinhalē (a perception of pan island Chakravartihood) comes across in his correspondence with the Dutch. He told them that “the black people of this island of Ceilao, wheresoever they might be, [are] my vassals by right”- (Roberts: 2004[i]:78). In the royal view, the Dutch were the “faithful Hollanders, the guardians of his coast” and earlier during his enterprise to oust the Portuguese, they were “his hired guns”. In Rajasinha II’s early letters to the Hollanders (written in Portuguese) he was “The most potent Emperor of Ceilao” while they were “My Hollanders” and the fortresses held by them were “my fortresses” as in “my fortress at Gale”. What with “my black folk”, “my vidanas,” “these lowland territories of mine” and “my said island”, Rajasinha II was asserting that he “did not recognize Dutch claims to sovereignty over the coastal areas”- (ibid and Dewaraja 1995:189). The Dutch kept up the appearance of concurring with this assertion in their diplomatic relations. “The governor, Pijil, referred to himself as the “king’s most faithful governor and humble servant”, called the king “His Majesty” and spoke of “the king’s castle at Colombo.” He even “declared that all the island belonged to the Sinhalese King.”- (Roberts: 2004:79). Read More
Into The Vanni And Jaffna Of The 17th Century
Darshanie Ratnawalli
His name was Knox. Robert Knox. English. He was a prisoner in Lanka from 1660 to 1680. Finally he escaped from Kandy or more specifically from Rajasinha II, who claimed to be the sovereign overlord of the whole of Lanka and its people. The world-view Rajasinha II inherited as a ruler of Sinhalē (a perception of pan island Chakravartihood) comes across in his correspondence with the Dutch. He told them that “the black people of this island of Ceilao, wheresoever they might be, [are] my vassals by right”- (Roberts: 2004[i]:78). In the royal view, the Dutch were the “faithful Hollanders, the guardians of his coast” and earlier during his enterprise to oust the Portuguese, they were “his hired guns”. In Rajasinha II’s early letters to the Hollanders (written in Portuguese) he was “The most potent Emperor of Ceilao” while they were “My Hollanders” and the fortresses held by them were “my fortresses” as in “my fortress at Gale”. What with “my black folk”, “my vidanas,” “these lowland territories of mine” and “my said island”, Rajasinha II was asserting that he “did not recognize Dutch claims to sovereignty over the coastal areas”- (ibid and Dewaraja 1995:189). The Dutch kept up the appearance of concurring with this assertion in their diplomatic relations. “The governor, Pijil, referred to himself as the “king’s most faithful governor and humble servant”, called the king “His Majesty” and spoke of “the king’s castle at Colombo.” He even “declared that all the island belonged to the Sinhalese King.”- (Roberts: 2004:79). Read More