WHY MOST VEN. TJ IS AGAINST
V-DAY
He has necessarily to be called the Venerable Tissa
Jayatilleke, without disrespect of course to the other many
Venerable Sirs of the saffron habit, and the hard life of
asceticism and renunciation of worldly pleasures.
Venerable? It’s because ‘Tissa, Tissa’ … not of the Migadaya,
but the modern day Tissa of the American Fulbright Commission
has deigned to teach Buddhism to the monks themselves, with his
sermon from his lectern/pulpit at the Fulbright office, the
ensuing screed which was incidentally transcribed last week and
dispatched to the nearest newspaper publisher, who published it.
Ven. Jayatilleke states that the Victory Day celebration of
the end of the war is not being done with ‘decorum and dignity.’
More to the point, he does not want a victory celebration at
all. He states that the V-day celebrations are a case of a
government bamboozling the people by celebrating a political
victory, and thereby detracting from its ‘record.’ He quotes
from the Mahawamsa (Geiger, he says) to assert that Elara was
slain by King Dutugemunu who then forbade anyone to go within
yards of the monument built for the King as a mark of respect.
The devil himself could not have done a better job quoting
scriptures, but let that pass. Having made the ludicrous but
odious comparison of Prabhakaran the most ghoulish terrorist of
all time, to Elara, an aggressive and intrepid invader who
however played by the rules of war, the Ven. Jayatilleke says it
is not a comparison at all, but a reminder of the triumphalism
of the elected regime, in contrast to what transpired in
history.
If the Venerable Jayatilleke had his way, with his all too
well known frequently advocated appeasement of the Tamil Tigers
in those days, the people of Colombo would have not had much
time to laugh themselves hoarse at the hilariously self serving
references to the Mahawamsa and the Buddhist canon by his
good-self in a bid to ‘out Buddhist the Buddhists.’ The people
would have been too occupied dodging bombs, frittering away
their time at checkpoints, and generally leading a life of
anxiety worrying about when the next bomb would go off and
whether it would take the lives of children, husbands, wives,
near and dear – while Tissa presumably would have been lighting
his daily sticks of incense to Prabhakaran … well, at least in a
manner of speaking …
The Ven. unashamedly proceeds to elevate himself saying he is
making an intelligent analysis, but considering that he can only
manage an ad hominem argument and cannot respond to any of the
points made earlier in favour of the V-day parade, one can see
that his usual superciliousness with a swagger has advanced to a
point where he is no longer the slight bit reasoned in his
arguments, or has the tiniest regard for facts or cogent debate.
In sum what he has to say to readers is “I am Tissa, I’m
working for the Fulbright Commission, therefore I am.’’
Perhaps his followers, the two or three of them may have said
an Amen to that, but Ven. Tissa’s superciliousness is reaching
levels of megalomania, it appears, even as he calls his
detractors -- without taking on their arguments – ‘Napoleonic in
their in their complexes’, and worse!
Now take a look at the deracinated, hubristic self-important
Colombo ‘intellectual’ hick! Ven. Tissa is that specimen’s
personification these days. He cannot take on an argument,
period, or rebut a contention point by trenchant point. He
therefore resorts to the inane ad hominem.
It’s sad, but pathetic wouldn’t so much as begin to describe
either the moral indefensibility of his arguments, or the lack
of his intellectual rigour in making them.
The imagery about his lighting incense to Prabhakaran was not
inserted out of a whim. Anybody who argues that a one day
military parade by soldiers -- thousands of whom died or were
maimed -- in celebration of THEIR war victory, is indecent or
lacking in decorum, or somehow detracts from the other post war
issues of reconciliation, so called, and nation building, must
necessarily have one reason and one alone for decrying the
celebration – a nostalgia for the havoc wreaked by the worst
terrorist of all time, Velupillai Prabhakaran.
Prahakaran’s hangers on honchos and those in the pay of
Prabhakran’s then handmaidens-in-waiting, both foreign and
domestic, can continue to be the henchmen of The Prabhakaran
pantheon of deities which they can light their daily incense to
– but the rest of us in this country have to get to work, build
a future and pursue happiness while Ven. Tissa tries hard, as
his American bosses would say (when not in their preening
Fulbright mode), to get a life … |