Sri Lanka It's Happening

May 18, 2006

The reason that we have monks in parliament is because they were able to whip up religous fever about supposed unethical conversion of buddhists to other religions. Enough people swallowed the hook and the line about a proposed 'anti conversion bill' for about a half a dozen of them to become parliamentarians.

Amongst these parliamentarians there were certain monks who genuinely believed that that buddhism was under threat, they also believed that they could clean up the mess that in Sri Lankan politics by entering parliament. Act as a claming influence. They were soon disillusioned, mostly with their fellow monks and resigned in disgust.

What of the anti conversion bill? it died a natural death. That's too bad. Over the past week the government was trying to unethically convert hindus, christians and muslims to into buddhists. They even tried to convert foreign tourists.

Various tactics were tried. Sale of liquor during the wesak period was prohibited (but it was ok to drink previously paid for liquor or to server alcohol to guest at casinos as long as there were no payments). Selling fish and meat were banned. Sale of bacon, eggs and sausages were not.

TV stations (which are said to be controlled by anti buddhist elments) dished out nothing but programs with a religious flavour. Every temple in the country tried to out do each other by chanting sermons louder than the next. Loudspeakers tied to lamp posts close to the temple gave a taste of what hell must be like throughout the day and night.

Wesak thoran as usuall were the worst. Thousands of areca nut trees are cut down to make them and thousands of killowatts of electricity are burnt to illuminate them, millions of liters of (subsidized) petrol and diesel are wasted because of the massive traffic jams they cause.

The traffic jams caused by the thoran are actually a blessing in disguise. Without the jams thousands of 'dan sal' hosts would be run down by motorists.

Posted by raditha at May 18, 2006 6:07 AM