Different Shades of Political Buddhism
Oh, pity, Buddhists are unsavory bigots, too.
Seated in a wicker-chair, in view of the Indian Ocean, Mr Rathana also wears monk's cloth—in russet, where the Dalai Lama wears red. But he is cut from different stuff. A former communist, Mr Rathana entered parliament in 2004 as a member of the new and all-monk National Heritage Party (NHP). It now has nine MPs and provides majority-making support to the government of President Maninda Rajapakse.
One NHP monk, Chanapika Ranawaka, is Sri Lanka's environment minister. But Mr Rathana is the best known, on account of his noisy pronouncements on the dangers of global warming, alcohol and tobacco, and on the importance of waging war.
Purveyors of an extreme brand of Sinhalese nationalism, the NHP considers Sri Lanka Sinhalese and Buddhist; they believe that those of other faiths and ethnicities, while welcome, must behave like guests. In effect, this means a policy of zero tolerance towards the complaints of the country's Tamil minority and their self-proclaimed champions, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), known as the Tamil Tigers.
(…)
«Always the LTTE start discussions when they are weak, they use peace talks to gain strength, and then they return to bloodshed. It will not happen again,» he says. «If they give up their weapons, then they can talk. If they do not, we will control them by whatever means.»
I'm not passing judgment on the LTTE (a previous attempt to post on the Sri Lankan civil war got lost in a previous WP upgrade), but it's refreshing to know hardline sentiments are not limited to southern Christian preachers.
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