|
|
|
  |
| Sunday, 24 April 2005 |
 |
|
 |
Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
|
The blast that never was Sunday Essay by Ajith Samaranayake Here is an instructive tale for a country, which was drugged into a week-long Aluth Avurudu stupor by a conspiracy of the electronic media. It is also a tale which illustrates the insidious relationship between the newly-emerged political bhikkhus and a pliable mass media to shape public opinion in a country where a supine public have come more and more to accept as gospel truth whatever emanates from a highly-manipulated media. Some weeks ago a section of the media reported that a Buddha statue had been blasted at a Government farm in Nikaweratiya as part of a tele drama using dynamite and following complaints made by a local bhikkhu the Police had sealed off the area when the organisers sought to remove the damaged statue. There were also reports of an indignant telegram sent by Ven Omalpe Sobhitha, the Vice President of the Jathika Hela Urumaya to Buddhist Affairs Minister Ratnasiri Wickremanayake. Now emanating as this story has done from two Buddhist priests and played up by the media the people of Sri Lanka the majority of whom are Buddhists can be expected to take this story as true. But the facts are otherwise. No Buddha statue was blown up using dynamite or any other explosive. The tele drama in question is one based on Gunadasa Amarasekera's 'Galpilimaya saha Bolpilimaya' and although there is reference to a Buddha statue being blasted in the short story in the tele drama itself this is done off screen. What actually did take place was that a Buddha statue fabricated for the purposes of the drama was brought to the location of the shooting and removed in two segments. It was when the statue was thus being removed that the local bhikkhu alerted the Police and the media. In fact a photograph in a Sinhala daily newspaper clearly shows the statue lying on its side in two parts. Several questions are raised by this incident. Didn't the local bhikkhu who raised the furore ascertain for himself the true facts of the matter? Didn't the media, which participated in the babel, think it a matter of basic ethics to find out the truth of the matter? Is it possible that both sections could have gone to town making such wild statements as that a Buddha statue had been dynamited while being in a state of blissful ignorance? Or is there a deeper and more insidious conspiracy here to create consternation among Buddhists? Whatever the answers (and they should be self-evident except to those who have wilfully deluded themselves) it is quite clear that the incident throws a very poor light on the new caste of political bhikkhus who have sadly overstretched themselves and now seem to be in a predicament of their own creation and sections of the pliable mass media who think it fit to rush into print with any sensational story on the mere say-so of somebody in authority. The people might get a Government they deserve but we do not think the people of Sri Lanka should be so unfortunate as to get the media, which they have today. More instructive for the political priesthood and the ignoramuses of the mass media would be to study the history of Amarasekera's short story. One fine day Amarasekera on a visit to Polonnaruwa was aghast to see a replica of the famous reclining Buddha statue placed side-by-side the original statue at the Gal Viharaya. What had happened was that this replica had been fabricated for the exhibition held in London to commemorate the Golden Jubilee of Sri Lanka's universal adult franchise, which took place at that time with much tom-tom beating. On being shipped back to Sri Lanka some bright spark of the cultural bureaucracy had had the idea of juxtaposing the two statues. There could have been no better illustration of the moral idiocy of that time than this blatant insult to the Gal Vihara Buddha venerated by generations of Buddhists and Amarasekera took this as the central theme of his work which sought to show that in the age of the counterfeit (bolpilimaya) the original (galpilimaya) would suffer eclipse. He extended the metaphor to apply it to that whole time. It will also be very revealing to find out what happened subsequently to the replica. After Amarasekera's story the replica was removed and efforts made by the producers of the tele drama to trace it have failed. Was this embarrassing replica disposed of in some way with or without the use of dynamite? There is also some curiously twisted irony at work here. As any student of contemporary culture knows Gunadasa Amarasekera has for long been the chief proponent of Jathika Chinthanaya which seeks to see the Sinhala Buddhist identity as the driving force of Sri Lankan society in which the identities of the other communities in the country should be subsumed. While he places this argument on a rational and sophisticated ideological level in other hands it can easily degenerate into jingoism as demonstrated by the present antics over the Buddha statue. Amarasekera has been at pains to draw a distinction between his thinking and the JHU, which he has dubbed a 'Vasala Velenda Kulaya' (or degenerate mercantile class) but the danger is that Amarasekera's ideology can provide a convenient handle to a kind of intolerant majoritarian Sinhala Buddhism of a political character. Earlier too in this column I have referred to a temple at Allen Avenue, Dehiwela which blares forth 'pirith' for a hour both in the morning and evening beginning at 5.30 oblivious to the peace of this multi-ethnic and multi-religious neighbourhood. This kind of action apart from contributing to sound pollution smacks of an arrogant majoritarianism, an insensitivity to the sensibilities of others including Buddhists who might like to listen to the chanting but not at high decibel and forcibly thrust on them. It is also worth considering what contribution such forcible pietism has made to the spiritual health of Sri Lanka, which seems to be on an irreversibly downward spiral. These then are some of the issues raised by the strange incident of the statue, which was not blasted. They relate to the stranglehold of the new political Buddhism on all branches of society and particularly the mass media, the mass media's insidious role in shaping public opinion in its own image the totality pointing towards a kind of mindless moral idiocy which can hold out dangerous consequences for our society. |
|
| News | Business | Features
| Editorial | Security
| Produced by Lake House |
