International Conference on Sri Lanka Studies (ICSLS)
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Item The Separatist Problem of Sri Lanka as a Creation of the Westerners and their “Discourses”(University of Kelaniya, 2005) de Silva, N.There are many explanations of, and interpretations given to the separatist problem faced by Sri Lanka. Some are of the opinion that the problem is due to the hegemony of the majority Sinhala people who have not given any solutions to the grievances faced by the Tamils. Some others view it as a terrorist problem created by a group(s) of armed youth. In this paper it is argued that the problem of Sri Lanka is essentially a problem created by the western powers the Dutch, the British and now the Scandinavian countries, aided by the western social sciences that dictate the ‘theories’ and the ‘concepts’ which have to be used in any ‘discourse’. The ‘discourse’ has been defined in the west, and it can be shown that we are forced to believe that Sri Lanka is in the process of building a nation that should accommodate Sinhalas, Tamils, Muslims, Burghers and others. The ‘discourse’ further states that there is a Sinhala Buddhist supremacy that discriminates the Tamils and the other ethnic groups. In the present paper, on the contrary, we argue that the Sinhala nation has been in existence for more than two thousand years and that the ‘minorities’ were a creation of the Dutch and the British. It is not a difficult task to show that the western Christian powers that ruled the Maritime Provinces for more than three hundred years, and then the entire country for a further one hundred and fifty years directly discriminated mainly against the Sinhala Buddhists. The colonialists favoured the Tamils and the other ‘minorities’ in legislature, employment, etc., and when the Sinhala Buddhists began to fight for their due place in the country, beginning in the latter part of the nineteenth century, they were ridiculed, branded as racists and their leaders were ill-treated. It is shown that the struggle of the Sinhala Buddhists was presented as an imposition of discrimination against the Tamils, Christians, etc. Thus, the British were able to cover up their discrimination against the Sinhala Buddhists who were fighting to gain proper recognition for them and their culture. The Tamils were encouraged to fight against the Sinhala people by the British governors who took extra pains to deprive the Sinhala people and the Sinhala Buddhist culture their due place in the country. It is recorded history that the British did not give adequate representation to the Sinhala people in the legislature beginning with the appointment of one member each to represent the Sinhala people, the Tamils and the Burghers, in the legislative assembly though the demography and the history called for more representations to the Sinhala people. It is finally argued that the present is only a continuation of the past with the Scandinavians also coming into the picture, and that the westerners are only making use of the Tamils, and that the so-called peace advocated by the Scandinavians is nothing but a humiliating defeat for the Sinhala Buddhists, and a strengthening of the bogus claims by some Tamils that the so-called Tamil homeland should finally end up as a separate state.Item Constructive Relativism(University of Kelaniya, 2005) de Silva, N.In this paper a new philosophical approach is presented, that could be termed Paticcasamuppadin that is different from the conventional materialistic and idealistic approaches. The materialists starting with the Greeks in the west, and the Dravyavadins in Bharat, in general attempted to reduce all phenomena to a materialist base. The Buddhist idealists in the form of Vinnanavadins and the Greek idealists on the other hand wanted to show that the mind is supreme, and that the so-called material world was the creation of the mind. We present a different approach, where the world as an observer ‘sees’ is created by the observer due to avidya of anicca, dukka and anatta which could be ‘roughly translated’ as ignorance of impermanence and soullessness. The ‘world’ is anicca, dukka, anatma and sunya. However, anicca and anatta are not concepts, and as such it is futile to attempt to translate them into English or any other language. Even in Pali they should be considered as non-concepts that defy explanation using concepts or other words. Also, unlike in Madhyamikavada sunya is not elevated to a concept with sunyata coming into the picture as a noun. We argue that the world is nothing but the creation of the observer, and the world is same as the knowledge of the world. In the present approach it is not assumed that a world exits independent of the observer who attempts to know or gather ‘information’ of an already existing world. The observer creates knowledge of the world, and hence the world exists relative to the sense organs, mind and the culture of the observer. The knowledge is thus created by the mind with the aid of the other sense organs. There is no knowledge or world, before such knowledge of the world is created, and the knowledge is created as concepts, theories, etc., by the observer. Thus, the so-called world is the conceptual and theoretical world of the observer that has been created in the mind. It should be noted that the concepts need not be in the form of words, as images formed in the mind are also considered as concepts. However, according to the approach presented in the paper the mind is not an absolute that has an independent existence. A ‘model’ is created in which the mind of an observer is also created by the mind itself! The mind is presented as a stream of ‘cittas’ which themselves are the concepts that could be supposed to exist in the smallest duration that can be created (grasped) by the mind. The logic of the present approach is cyclic and fourfold, and not Aristotelian.