A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Back to 500BC.
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Monday, June 12, 2017
Gnanasara and the Muslim community
Even though police teams are supposedly scouring the country for him,
the monk Galagodaatte Gnanasara has not been arrested as this goes to
press. He is supposed to appear in courts tomorrow but it seems unlikely
that he will. He has evaded two court appearances already and if he was
going to make an appearance tomorrow, he may not have evaded courts on
the previous two occasions. Rumours are rife that Gnanasara is being
protected by a prominent minister, and the name mentioned in this regard
is that of Justice Minister Wijedasa Rajapakshe. The reason why
speculation swirls around Rajapakshe is probably because he had
facilitated meetings between the President and some radical monks
including Gnanasara to sort out some issues. However, hiding fugitives
and that kind of thing would be out of character for Minister Rajapakshe
and it is unlikely that he would get involved in any such thing as the
Minister of Justice.
The surprising thing is that nobody has yet suggested the possibility
that Gnanasara could be hiding in Gotabhaya Rajapaksa’s house. During
the previous government, everything that Gnanasara did was ascribed to
Gotabhaya Rajapaksa and that was one of the reasons why the Muslims
voted en masse against the Rajapaksa government. Given the propensity of
the present powers that be to blame everything on the Rajapaksas, it is
surprising indeed that nobody has tried to lay the blame for
Gnanasara’s latest antics on the Rajapaksas. Even though the Rajapaksas
are not in power, you can always blame the supposed pro-Rajapaksa ‘deep
state’ for protecting Gnanasara. Instead they seem to have fixated on a
different Rajapakshe. Be that as it may, to have a proper understanding
of who is actually behind the Bodu Bala Sena, you have to trace its
history.
The BBS first made its appearance on the scene in 2012 with the
anti-halal campaign. This a few months after several monks including
Gnanasara returned from a trip to Norway where he met Erik Solheim among
others. From that time onwards, every step of the way, the Jathika Hela
Urumaya made common cause with everything that was done by the BBS. The
street action was taken by the monks of the BBS led by Galagodaatte
Gnanasara while the JHU held press conferences, defending or encouraging
the action taken by the BBS. Whether it was the anti-halal campaign,
the anti-cattle slaughter campaign, and even the Aluthgama riots, the
JHU was behind the BBS fully. In the wake of the Aluthgama riots,
Champika Ranawaka distributed aid to the Sinhala victims of the riots.
What ignited the Aluthgama riots was the accusation that a Buddhist monk
had been assaulted by Muslims. When President Mahinda Rajapaksa wanted
to take action against the BBS, it was Ranawaka who had opposed any such
move in cabinet and said that the monks should not be touched and if
any monk is arrested he would bring the entire monkhood onto the
streets.
The missing link
The previous government allowed themselves to be blackmailed into
inaction by such threats. Gnanasara was an activist of the JHU for many
years. He contested in Colombo at the 2004 parliamentary elections on
the JHU ticket and lost. After 2005, he is supposed to have ‘left’ the
JHU and joined the UNP and he was active for a while in the UNP bhikku
front. The JHU has always held that the majority of their vote base were
disillusioned UNPers and it stood to reason that they would want to
have their moles in the UNP. The fact is that Gnanasara never severed
his link with the JHU. For irrefutable proof of the continuing link
between the JHU and the BBS, one has to read the book ‘Yuga Peraliya’
written by JHU activist Asoka Abeygunasekera. This book explains how the
BBS was formed and how the JHU ‘tactically’ got Ven. Hedigalle
Wimalasara to sever his links with the JHU and join the BBS just as the
earlier anti-Muslim campaign kicked off. Ven Wimalasara was thus sent
into the BBS as Gnanasara’s immediate handler. That was Gnanasara’s
debut as a public figure and he needed to have someone guiding him.
After the Rajapaksa government was toppled, Having achieved the
immediate objective, Ven Wimalasara reverted to the JHU and is now its
President. When the JHU was weighing its options at the tail end of the
Rajapksa government as to what course of action it should take at the
presidential elections in 2014, one of the options considered was for
Champika Ranawaka to contest as the Buddhist candidate. In such an
eventuality, Asoka Abeygunasekera stated that Champika would have got
the support of the BBS as well. This mind you was to contest against
Mahinda Rajapaksa who the Muslims still think was behind the BBS. Having
sent the Muslims en masse onto the other side, the BBS then contested
against Mahinda Rajapaksa at the 2015 August Parliamentary elections to
split the remaining Sinhala Buddhist vote. What people are seeing now is
another attempt to split the Sinhala vote.
If the BBS appeared to have patronage from within the Rajapakasa
government till the very end, it was because they did. It was only a few
weeks before the Presidential elections that the JHU defected to the
opposition. The Muslims were thrashed by the BBS to make them turn
against the Rajapaksa government. Having sent the Muslim community to
the other side, the main perpetrator also followed them! When the
yahapalana government was formed, both the victims as well as the
perpetrators were on the same side. Muslims may be asking themselves how
it is that even after the defeat of the Rajapaksas who they thought was
behind the BBS, that Gnansara has become active with the same impunity?
The answer to that question is that the same elements that provided
protection for the BBS under the Rajapaksa government, are providing
protection for them under the yahapalana government as well.
The yahapalana project is unravelling and Gnanasara’s patrons have to
carve out a political future for themselves. The JHU may not get
anywhere next time by contesting from within the UNP. Since the JHU
cannot rely on Muslims and Tamils to vote for them, they have to claw
back a part of the Sinhala vote since they may have to contest
separately or in alliance with the SLFP (Sirisena faction) at the next
elections. Even when contesting under the UNP banner, the JHU managed to
get only Champika Ranawaka elected to parliament. Athureliye Rathana
thera was appointed on the UNP national list only due to the kind
consideration of the UNP and not because the JHU brought a significant
number of votes into the UNP. At the next parliamentary election, the
JHU’s only objective would be to get Champika elected to parliament. If
he contests on the UNP list next time, the chances are that he will lose
because the UNP voters of the Colombo district have little or no reason
to vote for him again.
Last time, Champika may have been able to get a preference vote from UNP
voters because he played a leading role in the ‘game’ that ousted the
Rajapaksas but the UNP voter will have no such reason to vote for him
next time. On the contrary, the UNP voter in the Colombo district may
have every reason to vote against Champika for the role he played in the
‘game’ to prevent President Sirisena from fulfilling his pledge to
abolish the executive presidency. Furthermore, if the electoral system
is changed he will have no chance at all of getting elected through the
UNP. So this is a time when the JHU is looking for other options. The
reactivation of the BBS to claw back a part of the Sinhala Buddhist vote
is a part of this survival strategy. Quite apart from the local
environment, the international situation is also propitious for an
anti-Muslim campaign. Not a day goes by without some outrage being
committed by Muslim extremists somewhere in the world. At times such
outrages feature as the lead news story even in the local TV news
bulletins. The action taken against Qatar by other Arab states has
bolstered the allegation that Muslim extremists in Sri Lanka were being
funded from overseas - Qatar in particular. Thus there is fertile ground
for a Sinhala extremist force to carve out a niche entirely on the
anti-Muslim card.
Akila’s admission of
extremist activity
Minister of Education Akila Viraj Kariyawasam making a special statement
in Parliament last Wednesday, regarding his decision to remove the
former Director General of Archeology from his position, made some
admissions that were quite startling coming as it does from a Minister
in the present government. Kariyawasam admitted that while Archeological
conservation especially in the north and east had not been possible
because of the war, in the years after the war, the destruction of
archeological sites had worsened. He said that the main reason for the
removal of the DG Archeology had been his inaction when illegal
structures were put up on land coming under the purview of the
Archeological authorities especially in the north and east. Kariyawasam
pointedly stated that the activities a handful of ‘extremists’ had
contributed to the destruction of archeological sites and he said that
this was acting as an impediment to reconciliation as well.
He has thus admitted that there were extremists in the north and east
who were either acquiring or putting up illegal structures on
archeological sites. Since no one has heard of Hindu extremists in the
north and east, these references are obviously to Muslim extremists. The
last time we saw Gnanasara in action was in the east, trying to reclaim
what was said to be an archaelogical site from its purported Muslim
‘owners’. So what Gnanarasa was shown saying during his most recent
visit to the east has more or less been confirmed by the Minister in
charge of the subject as well. There is thus fertile ground for a
Sinhala force opposing Muslim extremism. The spiel of this new force
will be that nobody - not Sirisena, or Ranil Wickremesinghe or Mahinda
Rajapaksa or even Gotabhaya Rajapaksa will raise their voices against
Muslim extremism and that it is only THEY who will take up the issue on
behalf of the Sinhalese.
The BBS and indeed Gnanasara himself has been saying that if he is to be
arrested for making extremist statements, Chief Minister C.V.
Wigneswaran and Sivajilingam have to be arrested before he is taken in.
He has also said that Rishard Baithiudeen who has been creating new
settlements in the Wilpattu forest reserve should also be arrested. This
line has resonance among the public. It is not only Gnanasara who has
been heard making extremist statements. The whole nation heard
Sivajilingam telling the President not to visit the North. In Tamil
Nadu, the Tamil Nadu police arrests Tamil politicians for trying to
commemorate Prabhakaran. But nobody gets arrested in Sri Lanka for doing
so. None of this is lost on the public.
This latest round of anti-Muslim violence is destabilizing this
government as it did the previous one. But the government is unstable
even without Muslim-Sinhala tensions and things are now at a stage where
no one is bothered about what happens to the government. It is now
every conspirator for himself and may the devil take the hindmost. The
government has been saying that they will bring the BBS to book. The
President has said that they will deploy army intelligence to arrest
Gnanasara if the police are unable to do the job. But nothing has
happened up to the time of writing. After the yahapalana government came
into power, Gnanasara had to lie low for a while but he is not the type
who can remain out of the limelight for long. He made a scene at the
Homagama courts and had to spend time in remand which he did not relish.
This sojourn in remand appears to have been outside the script and his
patrons in the government were placed in an embarrassing position. They
could not get Gnanasara released and apparently he had been cursing his
patrons while in jail. Gnanasara obviously likes his creature comforts
and jail time is not to his liking.
Now once again he is being looked for by the law and is in hiding. He
started a fast at the Malwatte Viharaya but then gave it up and vanished
because he thought it might be easier for the police to arrest him if
he remained in the Malwatte premises. Now he is hiding obviously with
the help of his patrons in the government. The Muslims who voted en bloc
for Sirisena and are a significant presence in this government, will
have to get Gnanasara arrested and incarcerated under the ICCPR Act if
they are to have any peace. Under the ICCPR Act, creating religious and
ethnic disharmony is a non-bailable offence and those arrested are kept
in remand until the conclusion of the court proceedings. If they fail in
that, they would have voted in their own nemesis. Whether arresting
Gnanarasa will stop the present trend is another question. The poison is
spreading with a momentum of its own. Even as Gnanasara remains in
hiding, attacks continue to take place on Muslim owned business
establishments in a far more widespread manner than anything took place
under the Rajapaksa government.
Muslim leadership at the
crossroads
The arrest of one suspect in Maharagama has not stopped the spate of
attacks. In 2014, the Muslim leaders knew only too well what the BBS
was. All of them knew its relationship to Norway. In fact it was Azath
Salley who made the most comprehensive public expose of the Western
connections of BBS. Knowing only too well that the BBS was a creation of
the Western powers to weaken the Rajapaksa government, they chose to
put all the blame for it on the Rajapaksas saying that Gota was
sponsoring the BBS. That is what they told the Muslim voting public and
made them vote en mass for Sirisena. Instead of telling the Muslims that
this was a classic divide and conquer tactic, the Muslim leaders chose
to portray this as a creation of the Rajapaksas. They are now at a loss
to explain how these attacks are taking place under a government that
they had a major role in creating.
As things started going wrong and the economy deteriorated under the
yahapalana regime, ordinary Muslims were heard to say that even if they
don’t have food to eat, their physical security and the security of
their businesses, homes and lives were assured by the yahapalana
authorities, so the change of government was worth it. Today however
they have neither economic prosperity nor security. While it is true
that the Rajapaksa government did not take adequate action against the
BBS, neither is the present government. What the Muslim community does
not realize is that the very patrons who protected the BBS during the
Rajapaksa government is also protecting it under the present government
as well. The Colombo Telegraph posed the question "A strategy to drive
the Muslims away from this Government is in full swing. Who is the
architect of this strategy?" It does not take much to understand that
whoever is giving succor to the BBS is within the government, not
outside it.
Islamist terrorists may have caused mayhem in many countries, but there
have been no instances of Islamic terrorism in this country. Islamic
terrorism is just not feasible in Sri Lanka. Given what happened to the
Sinhala terrorists and Tamil terrorists, any attempt at jihadi terrorism
in this country would be a joke. Some Sri Lankan Muslims may have
joined ISIS, but this is a negligible minority and all that needs to be
done is to prevent them from coming back into this country. Some Muslims
in Sri Lanka may be preaching extremist views, but this is meant simply
to please themselves. What is mainly causing tensions between the
Muslims and other communities in Sri Lanka are mainly expressions of
radicalism such as wearing of skull caps and burquas and beards and
especially the apparent bargaining power that Muslim leaders have with
the two main political parties in the country.
Muslim leaders are believed to be able to get away with anything because
of this bargaining power. The prime example of this is the Wilpattu
settlements being made by Rishard Baithudeen. Unlike during the
Rajapaksa era, the BBS is now tapping into a pool of resentment that is
much wider than it ever was, and it is being fuelled by developments in
the international arena as well. So the Muslim leadership should handle
this situation carefully. In a way, this is the nemesis of ethnic and
religion based politics. Gnanasara is doing on behalf of his patrons in
the government only what the Muslim leaders did earlier. The difference
however was that the Muslim leaders did not have to resort to violence
or street action to promote tribalism among Muslims. Muslim leaders
starting with Ashraff have been promoting exclusivism, talking about
communal interests and teaching people to look upon other communities
with mistrust. Gnanasara and his patrons are ethno-religious political
entrepreneurs just like Rauff Hakeem, Rishard Baithiudeen, Azath Salley,
C.V.Wigneswaran, R. Sampanthan and everyone else. Where these
tendencies are going to take the country in the next few years is
anybody’s guess.