SLTDA drags ‘Ramayana’ Trojan horse

A public symposium held on July 17 on the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA) promoting the so-called Ramayana Trail exposed a shocking attempt to distort Sri Lanka’s recorded history merely to attract Indian tourists, ignoring its serious political implications.

The symposium was organized by the Royal Asiatic Society of Sri Lanka (RASSL) which earlier had an internal workshop where it was concluded that the sites being marketed by the tourist authorities were not genuine and had severe potential security concerns for the country.

Speakers at last week’s symposium noted that Sri Lanka is the only nation that is promoting another country’s legend which the latter’s tourism authorities, intelligentsia, judiciary, scientific community and archaeologists have rejected as fiction. What is worse is that the SLTDA is promoting the North Indian Hindu version of it where Indian Prince Rama personifies ‘Dharma’ (good) which triumphs over ‘Adharma’ (evil) represented by Sri Lankan King Ravana). Even today at Hindu festivals in India Ravana’s effigy is burnt publicly.

A near replay of ‘Ramayana’ was seen in the 1980s when India spearheaded a campaign to show ‘Adharma’ prevailed in Sri Lanka in its treatment of Tamils before intervening militarily to restore ‘Dharma’ but failed miserably.

An organized group of mischief-makers continuously attempted to disturb the proceedings at the symposium by raising irrelevant questions in an aggressive manner at question time, showing little respect to the speakers. And before last speaker, former senior Diplomat Bandu de Silva rose to speak all the troublemakers walked out murmuring protests. Suspicions were raised whether they were in the pay of a foreign- organization.

Bandu de Silva stressed, “Ramayana Trail Projects a 100 percent confrontational situation to the Sri Lanka’s established history, religion and norms of the country and replaces all of it and related proto-historic evidence with a mythical age of an imagined Ravana Kingdom and Rama invasion.”

Recalling that the inaugural ‘Bhajan’ of the ‘Ramayana Trail’ was held at Cinnamon Grand, Colombo last month with the participation of 14 Indian law makers, two Sri Lankan Cabinet Ministers and one Deputy Minister, the former diplomat demanded to know who these Indian lawmakers were.

“How is it that they have become interested now when not one of them ever thought of visiting the island when it was in turmoil for over three decades?”

The reason for introducing the Ramayana epic through a tourist programme, Bandu Silva observed, is to dilute Buddhism and remove its potency and hold on the majority of Sri Lankans. Hence attacks on the Mahawansa and the Sangha and various groups making allegations of “Sinhala Buddhist Chauvinism.”

The timing is most important, he noted.

“It is a weak moment for Sri Lanka. Many are the external pressures on the island even the though the war against the LTTE has been won. It is time for our enemies to strike - to open a new front. There is pressure from the U.S. to open the country to Christian evangelism, faith healing and what-not. I see the Ramayana Trail as something complimentary to break up the Buddhist hold. Once it is broken the country becomes an open field serving political agendas of foreign forces.”

Bandu Silva said that it is necessary to see behind the agenda of those promoting Ramayana Trail both in Sri Lanka and India. Although Delhi’s support for this project may not appear explicit, the all pervading scenario lends support to the idea of an emerging Indian Power concept. He focused on B. Raman, former Additional Secretary to the Indian Cabinet – now heading a Chennai-based Think Tank - suggesting the use of Indian tourism as a pressure point against growing Chinese influence in Sri Lanka and paving the way for a potentially volatile situation in bilateral relations.

“Combined with Hindutva extremism the Ramayana Trail’s destabilizing potential of spreading Hindu fanaticism is mind boggling. The Bharathiya Janatha Party claims it wants to make the Tamil issue a Hindu issue and mobilize the whole of India. They speak of Tamils in terms of Hindus. BJP is the alternate Government of India. Its representatives shared Tirumalavan’s platform when he fasted over the Tamil issue. BJP and Rajya Sabha MP S. Tirunavukkuran said BJP supported the ‘Eelam’ struggle at State and National levels. He wanted India to send warships to Sri Lanka and called for anti-Sri Lanka sanctions. Early this month the BJP welcomed the closure of the UNDP Regional Office in Colombo in the wake of the protests against the UN advisory panel on alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka.”

Bandu Silva drew attention to the Indian Express and Times of India reports of June 29, on BJP’s Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivaji Singh Chauhan offering one crore of Indian Rupees for the construction of a Sita Maha Temple in Sri Lanka to strengthen ‘bi-lateral ties’. The ‘Bhoomi Pooja’ for this proposed temple was carried out under disguise, according to Bandu de Silva.

“Temples attract many unwanted people. Way back in the 1960s the Ramakrishna Madam at Kataragama was a centre promoting illicit immigration and the madam had to be demolished.”

He said it is debatable whether SLTDA Director-General, S. Kalaiselvam saw the hidden hand of Tamil separatism behind the ‘Ramayana Trail’ when he went all out to support it. It is also worth probing whether those who believe Ravana is a Sinhalese are aware of his metamorphosis in Tamil separatist propaganda. There, Ravana is introduced as a Tamil King – a Shiva worshipper who worshipped at Trincomalee and Mantota – both claimed to be pre-Sinhala and pre-Buddhist ‘Isvaram’ cities. This is turn is meant to perpetuate the myth and make the ‘Tamil Homeland’ claim more ancient-based, according to Bandu Silva. In this context he drew attention to the Eelam/Tamil Homeland literature – among many others - of former EROS member Arul Arudpragasam, now a leading Tamil Eelam propagandist based in Geneva.

“Already there is objection to Sinhala Buddhists visiting the North after the war. Tamil Net and others are raising issues over the Archaeological Department, the Army and Buddhists probing destroyed Buddhist archaeological sites in the North and East.”

Inaugurating the symposium RASSL President Dr. Susantha Goonatilake said:

“India’s tourism authorities do not promote any alleged Ramayana sites, but sponsors a Buddhist Circuit to attract Asian tourists whereas the SLTDA is trying to get Thais interested in the Ramayana trail ignoring that for Thailand and the whole of South-East Asia Sri Lanka is the home of their Theravada Buddhism and they are familiar with many of Sri Lanka’s Atamasthana sacred Buddhist sites.”

Dr. Goonatilake regretted that although the Archaeology Department has strict rules and laws against the destruction of archaeological sites it has no laws for the opposite – creation of bogus sites and artifacts to promote fictions such as the Ramayana Trail.

To market Sri Lanka as the abode of Ravana, the Tourism Ministry has invented a series of mythical sites which have no historical basis, according to him, and has also established a committee titled the ‘Ramayana Trail Executive.’ The ‘evidence’ it has found includes the Seetha Amman Kovil built by Tamil plantation workers who settled in the country only in the 19th Century. Altogether over 50 sites in Sri Lanka are supposedly associated with the Ramayana epic. One committee member had even claimed that the Americans tested a prototype of Pushpaka, Ravana’s alleged flying machine! The RASSL President noted that all this earthshaking ‘evidence’ is on the SLTDA websites.

“The RASSL tried to trace the committee’s expertise from the tourist authorities but failed. We asked their ‘experts’ to address a closed seminar of the RASSL, but they never came”

Dr. Goonatilake said that RASSL could not find any prior formal academic background for the head of the Committee in Sanskrit, archaeology, history, Sinhalese, Pali studies and related subjects. Another committee member turned out to be a Pettah shopkeeper and chairman of a Hindu fundamentalist Krishna Consciousness sect.; These ‘experts’ who have been reluctant to present their ‘evidence’ to the RASSL, had given a presentation to the Indian Cultural Centre in Colombo.

RASSL member and Author Gaston Perera said that this presentation at the Cultural Centre was titled ‘The Historical Evidence of Ramayana and Ravana in Sri Lanka’ in which the substantive argument was the irrelevance of archaeology, history and epigraphy in evaluating the evidence the committee relies on. Perera revealed that the SLTDA’s formulation of the ‘Ramayana initiative’ was a response to declining tourist arrivals during the war and the surge in fuel costs.

Archaeologist Dr. Nimal Perera said that no archaeological data is available on Ramayana but only Balangoda Man between 125000 B.C. to B.C. 1800.

Archaeologist Dr. Malini Dias alleged that the promoters of the Ramayana Trail had totally misapplied an early Brahmi cave inscription at Molagoda Vihara in the Kandy District to achieve their goal. By misinterpreting the word Brahmana as bimana in the inscription, they had translated the word Brahmana to mean a pilot of an aeroplane!

“The cave inscription from Alulena (Rahagala) in Aranayaka in the Kegalle District has been changed by applying white ink on the letters and photographed and the phrase Maha Rakdhaha Ravana puta had been surreptitiously added to the inscription and translated as Emperor Ravana’s son. This part is added at the beginning of the distorted inscription.”

Dr. Dias also said that the Buddhist Vihara of Isurumuniya in Anuradhapura has been desecrated by making it a temple for king Ravana’s parents Visravasmuni and Kaikali.

Buddhist scholar Dr. Hema Goonatilake told the audience that the Thais, Burmese, Cambodians, Laotians, Southern Vietnamese and the Chinese in the South Kunmin Province, consider Sri Lanka’s sacred Buddhist sites such as Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa, Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic, Samanthakuta (Sri Pada) as also belonging to their religious heritage.

“In fact the Mahawansa is so entrenched in their consciousness that they believe Sinhala King Dutugemunu is their hero too. If we are to market Sri Lankan cultural sites, it should be Buddhist sites and not a fictional Ramayana.”

At this point a member of the audience welcomed Dr. Goonatilake’s proposal and said that Sri Lankans are the only nation that does not appreciate its own history.

The others who addressed the symposium were Professor Oliver Abeynaike (Indian Tourist Authorities ‘Buddhist Circuit but no Indian ‘Ramayana Circuit’), Venerable Hegoda Vipassi (My travails in refuting the Ramayana Trail), Professor Tissa Kariyawasam (Ramayana in Sinhala literature) and Dhanesh Wisumperuma (Misinterpretation of natural sciences)

- Asian Tribune -