Congress, BJP, religiously sanctify genocide
[TamilNet, Friday, 07 September 2012, 05:16 GMT]By inviting Mahinda Rajapaksa to inaugurate a Buddhist institution at Sanchi in Madhya Pradesh in India, both New Delhi’s Congress regime and the BJP-run Madhya Pradesh state government endorse religious sanction to the kind of genocide committed and being committed by the Rajapaksa regime of Colombo. In the process they undermine the prospects of Buddhism re-emerging as an expression of the downtrodden masses, accused Dalit Buddhist circles in Tamil Nadu. Sinhala Buddhism is an Orientalist rediscovery in the libraries of the colonial West. India’s Hinduism is no exception. Both have agreed upon the deployment of genocide in the annihilation of nations in the region and it is tested on Eezham Tamils. It is a warning to peoples all over South Asia and elsewhere, commented an academic in Jaffna.
Immediately after the New Delhi-Colombo partnered genocidal war against the nation of Eezham Tamils in the island, New Delhi’s Mauryan specialist Romila Thapar went to Colombo to preach Buddhism. This week, Hindutva BJP’s parliamentary leader in New Delhi’s Lok Sabha, Sushma Swaraj, unveiled a portrait of the Mauryan emperor Asoka at Colombo’s High Commission in New Delhi.
Last week, while New Delhi was desecrating the Kapila Vastu relics by their display in the land of genocide, Indian intelligence cum corporate run Observer Research Foundation’s spokesperson Sathiyamoorthy was eulogising the ‘cultural relations’ between the two countries. And a few months before that, Romila Thapar’s student Sudharshan Seneviratne chose to talk about regional unification at the same foundation.
Exploiting all avenues –trade, Bollywood, foundations, media, sports etc – it now comes to Buddhism sanctifying the genocidal partnership of New Delhi and Colombo.
In the last three years after the genocidal war, ample exposure has been made on Rajapaksa regime openly using Buddhism as a weapon for the structural genocide of the nation of Eezham Tamils in the island.
Sinhala-Buddhist stupas mushroom in the country of Eezham Tamils where there are no Sinhala-Buddhists except the occupying genocidal military. They appear at landmark localities even in the Jaffna city and the peninsula.
While the war-torn people live in camps and shelters, the Sinhala state’s money as a priority goes to the Buddhist structures of massive dimensions.
While showcasing patronage to a few such as the Nalloor Kanthasaamy temple, several hundreds of Saiva temples in the remote areas as well as sensitive localities in the north and east are systematically destroyed and Buddhist images and structures are planted there with the help of the occupying military, in the model of European colonialism of the Portuguese and the Dutch.
The whole exercise is clearly targeted to deny territoriality to the nation of Eezham Tamils, to psychologically deal a blow to them that their country doesn’t belong to them but to the Sinhala-Buddhists, to pave way for demographic changes through military-Sinhala-Buddhist enclaves and finally to the annihilation of the nation of Eezham Tamils.
The same is done to the Tamil-speaking Muslims too.
The reality is very obvious that the genocidal process could never be checked without recognising the nation and territoriality of Eezham Tamils and restoring their sovereignty.
Not that this reality is unknown to the establishment in New Delhi.
But it becomes increasingly clear nowadays that the roadmap for the genocide of the nation of Eezham Tamils in this way has been agreed upon between the establishments in New Delhi and Colombo. In this respect there seems to be no difference between the Congress and the BJP, as in the case with the SLFP and UNP.
Eezham Tamils compromising with them, thinking that it would at least help ‘survival’, is not going to save them from structural genocide that is a foregone conclusion as far as the outlook of New Delhi and Colombo is concerned.
Therefore, the option given to Eezham Tamils and the Tamils of Tamil Nadu is nothing but struggle – essentially against New Delhi, inside India as well as in the international arena.
The most dangerous precedence conceived by both the Congress and the BJP, which intellectuals and media in India should counter outright is bestowment of state recognition to genocidal religion. In future the precedence would sanctify religious genocide inside India too.
Inviting Mahinda Rajapaksa to inaugurate a Buddhist institution in India is worse than his coming as ‘Guest of Honour’ in 2010 to Commonwealth Games in New Delhi.
Unfortunately sections of mainstream media in India such as The Hindu is yet to acknowledge what has happened and what is happening in the island is genocide, fearing that it would automatically justify the independence of Eezham Tamils.
But media of other nations in the neighbourhood, facing the brunt of the Sri Lanka model patronized by New Delhi, have noted the point and its impact.
Sri Lankan Buddhism inspires religion-oriented animosities in Myanmar, revealed a feature appeared in New Mandala in June.
Junior monks of Myanmar, studying Buddhism in Sri Lanka and elsewhere spread made-up stories against Muslims in Myanmar, stirring public anger that the ‘Kalar’ [a derogatory term used for dark-skinned Muslims of Bengali origin] are trying to take over the Buddhist nation, the feature by Sai Latt said.
Meanwhile, Dalit circles in Tamil Nadu were commenting on genocidal Rajapaksa banning an annual animal sacrifice at a folk temple in the Northwest Province a few days ago, citing the arrival of New Delhi’s ‘Kapila Vastu’ relics to the island. In India they could fight for the folk religion, but people are gagged in Sri Lanka, they commented.
The Dalit Buddhists are worried about the genocidal image Buddhism gets by New Delhi promoting Rajapaksa as a symbol of Buddhism.
The British allowed the Sinhala-Buddhist Anagarika Dharmapala who once called the Tamils of the island as Para-demalas (foreigners, the word also means untouchables), to operate at Sanchi. Even now some important Buddhist relics of the site are in the custody of the Mahabodhi Society started by Dharmabala.
The Orientalism-rediscovered Sinhala Buddhism had a death of disgrace with the genocide it committed in Vanni, and Rajapaksa and New Delhi now parade the credibility-lost ghost.
If the Hindutva Hindus of India don’t see the Rajapaksa peril, Dalits and Muslims should remind them of it, commented a political activist in Chennai.
Chronology:
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