What The Majority Sinhalese Must Know
Dr. Brian Senewiratne
The majority Sinhalese (74% of the population) have been carefully and deliberately shielded from reality by manipulation of the media by Sinhalese politicians, and ethno-religious bigots, especially the Buddhist monks, playing to the chauvinist gallery.
The Sinhalese have been fed with myths and legends (masquerading as facts), and downright lies or not told what they should have been told. The realities have never been disclosed as to do so would lead to widespread misgivings about the wisdom of the Sri Lankan government’s policy.
This is something that has to be addressed since it is the Sinhalese who elect those to run (or ruin) the country. A separate publication is needed and this must be circulated in the Sinhalese area – something that is likely to be blocked by those in power – all of whom have the Mahavamsa mind-set” (see below).
There are at least four important factors that have to be addressed:
- The failure of the colonial British to see the difference between a nation and a community. Sri Lanka is a British colonial construct that has failed – as have so many colonial constructs.
- The Mahavamsa and the Mahavamsa mind-set that Sri Lanka is a Sinhala-Buddhist nation. If it is, then there is no alternative to setting up a separate Tamil State since the Tamils are neither Sinhalese nor Buddhist.
- The Dutugemunu-Elara war – between a Sinhalese prince from the South and the ageing (Tamil) king originally from the Chola dynasty in South India who was ruling Anuradhapura – the ancient capital of Ceylon.
- The claim that Sri Lanka is too small to be divided. That is arrant nonsense. After division, the Sinhalese State is larger than 63 UN nations and the Tamil State larger than 38 UN nations.
It is simply not possible to deal with these crucially important points here. A separate publication is needed. All that can be done here is to deal with them in the barest possible manner.
Sri Lanka has two nations (Sinhalese and Tamil) and five communities (Indian Tamils, Sri Lankan Muslims, Indian Muslims,, Burghers and Malays). A ‘nation’ is fundamentally different from a ‘community’.
A Nation
A nation is a historically evolved stable community of language, territory, economic life and psychological make-up manifested in a community of culture. It is generally accepted that a nation possess a common ethnic identity, a continuous linguistic and cultural tradition, a definite territory as a homeland and a shared historical experience. It is all these that together that generates in a nation a dominating sense of collective consciousness which gives it the capacity and will for organisation.
The colonial British Read More
