New Birth Certificate: A Betrayal of the Sinhala Buddhists

by Shenali Waduge · 23rd July 2020

The media has announced changes to Sri Lanka’s birth certificate. All births were to be registered as Sri Lankan sans mention of ethnicity or religion. Who took this decision? Have policy makers stopped to think of the outcome in decades to come when every citizen will just be known as Sri Lankan – a name coined in 1972 with a history of just 48years? How can a piece of paper wipe out 2600 written history? How can a nation stand proud of its history when the history has been erased? Is this not part of the secular & multicultural project to make everything ‘shared assets”? Isn’t this part of a well-funded quest that envies nations with ancient history & heritage and wish to plug modern methods to erase it or share it? This is not the mandate that the people gave to its elected leaders. Let us remind everyone that every time this nation was threatened or challenged it was the majority Sinhale Buddhist who rose to defend the nation and all of its people. They did so because they had been taught to be defenders of the nation’s identity that their ancestors helped build. Those that failed to value the glorious past ended up betraying the Nation and this new birth certificate removing the identity will end up creating a bunch of citizens no longer motivated to defend it. “Sri Lankan” can be used but not at the cost of removing the ethnic and religious identity of every new born child.

The Sinhale Nation was built by no one else but the Sinhala Buddhists. It is an achievement archaeologically, culturally & historically embedded across every contour of Sri Lanka & cannot be denied.

Ever since 1505 the colonial project was to incrementally usurp the place the SInhale Buddhist held at every level as this was a threat to them. Numerous methods & tactics were adopted for this purpose followed by all 3 colonial invaders and thereafter passed on to complete by local sepoys educated and brainwashed to worship all that was foreign & to demonize all that was indigenous & native.

We saw in the recent destruction of Buddhist statues in Pakistan & even in Sri Lanka the hatred & desire to wipe out history of another. We saw the 21/4 mass murders of people whom the murderers believed should not live. We saw how multiculturalism usurped Buddhist heritage sites like Sri Pada/Samanalakanda when a good 1000 year’s sets apart Buddhism from Abrahamic faiths. These scenarios cannot be ignored & the hidden efforts of every initiative cannot be ignored either. Created countries can roll out any type of modern systems as these countries were artificially formed and built by groups of migrants belonging to different cultures and ethnicities. Our island cannot be compared to created countries!

The Sinhala language has been targeted for systematic elimination as it binds the Sinhala identity & is the only language to have evolved in Sri Lanka & found nowhere else in the world. Sinhala is the only language distinct to Sinhalese. Thus efforts have been afoot to dilute the language by mixing with words from other languages and promoting ‘Singlish’ as a trend. The open economy, capitalism and emergence of elite classes have created a barrier and resulted in drawbacks to preserving the rich cultural heritage.

The philosophy Buddhism has been also under attack with continued attempts to remove foremost place given to it as well as the regular attempts to demonize Buddhists. History will bear witness to how Buddhism spread without a sword but was vanquished with the sword loosing entire countries like Maldives whose Buddhist past has been expunged from history books. The oldest library in the world ended up in cinders in Nalanda. Daily Buddhist temples and ancient artefacts are under attack. Media plays a key role in denigrating Buddhists and Buddhism. We can recall in 2002 again under PM Ranil when a state newspaper published an article challenging the authenticity of the sacred tooth relic at Dalada Maligawa. The said article had to be recalled and an apology issued after much outcry. The same PM changed the NIC card too by removing the letters V & X at the end of the NIC. The V denoted a person as a citizen by birth while the X denoted citizenship by registration (applicable to the Tamils accepted under citizenship act) Under this there still remains many who are required to return to India. This new NIC erases identity relating to lineage whether one is born by Sri Lankan descendants or not!

The colonial project is nothing that the Vatican or Pope can deny or feel offended about. The objectives are clearly stated in their own records. Similarly, Islamic texts also carry verses of how non-Muslims are to be treated. Quoting from their own texts is not hate speech! That the institutional objective remains on track is something we cannot forget or ignore. The attempts to weaken the majority that defends Sri Lanka is very much an in vogue program. The calls to turn Buddhist schools into multicultural, tweaking Buddhist text books and curriculum are subtly taking place but the same vigor is not applied to minorities & what they exclusively enjoy. While much funding goes to turn countries with civilizational history & heritage into secular – why is there no efforts to change anything in majority-Muslim nations where only their religion rules!

All this is part of a globalist plan & Sri Lanka’s politicians & advisors if they learnt to read a bit, they would understand the larger picture

The country must certainly have an identity but that identity cannot omit the history of who built this nation and an identity cannot be created at the expense of erasing the Sinhala Buddhist identity or pushing a bogus multicultural slogan enforce a SHARED HERITAGE & HERITAGE SITES. Why is it that only Sinhala Buddhists are called upon to compromise & give up all that they traditionally held? Would the minorities agree to removing the 2 stripes that denote them on the National Flag? Would they remove the exclusive ethno-religious food labels, banking, schools indoctrinating children to kill, ethno-religious exclusive enclaves, demands for ethno-religious based devolution-separatism – would any government even take these to a gazette gavel for prohibition! It has been easier to attack the majority and clip their wings. Policy of appeasement or personal benefit showered to politicians by minorities & external parties by way of funding and global initiatives cannot undermine the place held by the majority that not only built this nation but continues to defend it without having to be asked to defend it. A common identity cannot be carved artificially ignoring all that we have held dear to us. All of the created countries with their artificial identities are today falling apart as can be seen statistically in the West.

The Birth Certificate must hold key information of parent’s ethnicity and religion & history of lineage. Identifying as a Sri Lankan poses no problem but it cannot result in shared cultural heritage & history.

Let it not be forgotten that the Kandyan Convention was signed with the SINHALE NATION – wherein the island was known as SINHALE and all citizens were SINHALESE / SINHALE TAMILS and SINHALE MUSLIMS. The British changed Sinhale to Ceylon, but the question remains how could British give independence to ‘Ceylon’ when the Convention was signed with Sinhale nation. Thereafter, the republican constitution in 1972 without returning to use of Sinhale used Sri Lanka as it denoted its political party (SLFP).

Unfortunately it took public out roar to assure that the new birth certificate remains stillborn but it continues to highlight that the plot to plug these insidious designs will continue until legally framework is enforced to prevent any government from changing the country’s historical ethos and heritage in the name of modern ideologies.

Politicians should not play politics with people or the country’s history or heritage. Allow people to live in peace and harmony as they do sharing & caring on their terms and not because some gazette forces them to.