Sunday Times 2
Pandering to western imperialists
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For the past few days I have been musing about the great Anagarika Dharmapala, whose 152nd birth anniversary falls on the 17th of next month. Quite apart from the invaluable service Anagarika did with regard to reviving the place of Buddhism in this country during British colonial times and setting up the Maha Bodhi Society, one of his great qualities was that he worked hard to help develop self-respect in our people, ruthlessly attacking their aping of unnecessary British habits and paying pooja to western imperialists.
US Ambassador Atul Keshap
What he would have thought and had to say about the behaviour of our current leaders, as they pay pooja to the new western imperialists, I can only imagine. Just take the recent newspaper headline ‘US commends SL on passage of OMP bill’, and the prominent quotes on the front page of that paper from such ‘important’ persons like the US ambassador Atul Keshap, US Assistant Secretary of the State Department Nisha Biswal and US Assistant Secretary of the State Department Tom Malinowski who “tweeted” their approval of the legislature of our country passing a bill to set up the Office of Missing Persons.
I do not want to comment on the propriety of a foreign diplomat like Keshap who is serving as his country’s representative in this country having the gall to comment on such internal matters. Would the Sri Lankan ambassador comment in the Washington papers on American internal matters – even on the ludicrous farce of the current American presidential campaign? Decent diplomats should diplomatically steer clear of discussing in public the internal matters that do not concern them. I recall in 1991 when a British high commissioner to Sri Lanka, David Gladstone, was expelled from this country because he started poking his fingers into our local elections.
US Assistant Secretary of State Tom Malinowski
Of course at that time we had a President who had a bit more of a spine and was a stronger personality than our current President, who does not have the guts to even expel members of his own party who defy him!
I also find it particularly galling to our see the pronouncements of minor functionaries of the US government (Assistant Secretaries of State, for heaven’s state) given such prominence in our daily newspapers. Would even a small town newspaper in America give such prominence to the tweets of an assistant secretaryof a Sri Lankan government department?
And let it be known that this Tom Malinowski is a man who is well known to have contributed US $500 to the 2004 presidential campaign of John Kerry. When Kerry was appointed Secretary of State, we find Malinowski appointed as his Assistant Secretary! Rewarding political supporters with the plums of office is not a practice confined to Sri Lanka!
Sadly we in this country are now governed by a set of leaders who appear to be so subservient to the dictates of the US that we keep bending over backwards to obtain the approval of these low level functionaries of a government that functions in the world today with absolute no regard for the human rights of the Afghans, the Syrians, the Iraqis…
US Assistant Secretary of State Nisha Biswal
Are we, an independent sovereign nation, so subservient to American imperialism that we need to seek the approval of that nation for everything we do? Now that the cabinet has approved the purchase of new fighter planes for our Air Force, will we subserviently have to purchase them from the US, the country which is the world’s largest exporter of armaments?
Anagarika Dharmapala would have had much to say about our leaders’ lack of self-respect.