Dear BBS

I see that your establishment has convinced itself of being a force for good; I also take it that you’ve assumed the task of being the sole copyright holders, and saviors of Buddhism. However, this is not the sort of Buddhism I admire and inspire to, nor it is of any sort of Buddhism Lord Buddha would’ve preached. This is but your own wretched flavor of what you might conceive as Buddhism, and it is contaminated with your rural tribal ideals, fear, illiteracy, delusion, and of course, racism. In any case, I admit that you have the right to preach what you believe, and it is not in my midget capacity to let you break free of your misery and knock some sense into the dormant organs you keep under your bald scalps. But, I fear that if your agenda runs its wretched course through this society, it will no doubt drag this small Island back into chaos.

And your movement seems to be supported by some of the lost, bewildered, tense, and often unemployed youth of Sri Lanka, cursed by a model of public education that takes away the ability to think, abandoned by the society with no direction or purpose in their lives, they rally around you to achieve a sense of purposefulness, some reason to drag along their futile years – so the jobless has gathered around the clergy – to protect what they think is their race and religion – birds of a feather, an ideal assembly of vain souls – paving the road to disaster. So don’t think that you’ve achieved something by getting these people to gather around you and bend to your words – they have but nothing else to cling to, it is yet another shoddy way of getting their daily dose of ‘Athal’.

To justify your fascist agenda, you often moan about how the Sinhalese are losing the “All Island breeding contest”, how they are outrun by Muslim owned businesses. Your idea of a multicultural country seems to be one where all the minorities must refrain from registering their own culture, and should live their lives as if they were a lower, insignificant class of people, and that the majority race should be able to domineer and manipulate at their will. If this isn’t medieval thinking, you might as well put Hitler on your lot.

If you harbor such affection towards the Sinhala-Buddhists of this country, why not start by encouraging them to vote sensibly? Why not encourage them to learn business and finance before venturing in complete ignorance? Why not encourage them to treat their women with respect, and thereby differ from Muslims? And most importantly why not persuade them to take responsibility of their own shortcomings rather than blaming it on an assumed conspiracy of some other race every time?

Your aim to wage a holy war in the verge of reconciliation is reflective of how dumbfounded and ignorant you people are, more than anyone, it is the sane, rational and peace-loving Buddhists that are offended the most since you’ve made such a mockery of the philosophy that they hold sacrosanct to them.

I have no idea as to what moves you to such violent conduct – poor grasp of history perhaps. Or is it the mere sexual frustration of having to contain your worldly selves in robes and not being able to domineer anyone’s mind, or an abusive head monk in an unforgettable childhood experience, being bullied or deserted ? Or is it just the genetic predisposition of being a sadist? There were many maggot minded tortured souls such as you inflicting violence upon the innocent in 1983, and the rest of us had to pay with our peace and lives.

In your attempt to loose all the minorities in Sri Lanka, you will also loose the reputation of the straight thinking Sinhalese people, not to mention you’ve hardly had any – and Sri Lanka will yet again lose her already tarnished reputation and its meager share of peace – and you can jolly well make this a country with all the fellow racists and fascists of your mould, and claw your way into your own sodden graves.

But get this! In such a ghastly attempt – if you come around trying to “cleanse” my part of the town, or trying to teach me your version of Military Buddhism, even at a suicidal risk, there would be people willing to shove a boot up your robe. Just the robe and the bald scalp does not make a monk, it takes the moral substance that you lot quite evidently lack.

Article by – Vajira Sooriyarachchi