Overseas Sinhala Extremist Brigade
By Shyamon Jayasinghe –July 25, 2015
Shyamon Jayasinghe
“There are no “white” or “coloured” signs on the graveyards of battle.” John F Kennedy
Can individuals see themselves through the prism of their common humanity? Looking at almost every society today this seems a far way off.Racism is a contemporary reality and it does no good but creates welts and deep wounds in the body politic.
The funny irony is that racism is a myth.
Living and thinking over two thousand five hundred years ago the Buddha (Vaseththa Sutta) emphatically undermined racism as a myth. “Both the Theravada as well as the Mahayana schools of Buddhism speak of man in the context of a larger concourse of sentient beings.” (KN Jayatilleka & GP Malalasekera). One would expect,therefore, the Sinhala Buddhist to shy away from this evil. Yet, irony follows irony and the answer is “no.”
Many of the more articulate Sinhalese living overseas appear to be fanning racism feverishly. When it comes to parting with their money for the cause,however, they are not as unstinting as their parallel racist Tamil brethren.These days, I have been at the receiving end of a stream of emails from such overseas Sinhala extremists. Strangely, some of them belong to the learned community.The mental focus of these individuals is still where we were in 1956-60. They raise tedious arguments about the ratios of the two communities and about how the government should “fairly” deal with the issue. By “fairly,” they mean fairly to the Sinhala community. Constitutional clause 13A has become a big noisy issue. Now, with the elections on, the spectre of the LTTE invading Lanka is being artificially conjured up by these persons. These guys are predominantly adorers of Mahinda Rajapaksa,who is hailed by them with the cliched slogan, “a leader with a backbone.”
Identity is the foremost issue to the Sinhala Diaspora because in their host countries they are bewildered and confused with a perceived loss of identity. They perceive themselves as deemed ‘inferior.’ I live in Australia but I do not experience anything near inferior treatment. It is perception and not realty; but the perception eats into their being, I suppose. Another proximate factor is the presence of Tamil racists in big numbers; many of them in the vanguard of the LTTE Diaspora. Read More
