Looking for redemption for the Lankan nation?
The JVP issuing a wordy tract signed in blood after Vijaya Kumaratunga, President Kumaratunga's husband, was assassinated, said Vijaya was sent/despatched, ("Vijaya yewwe") not because he should have got a reprieve due to the creamy colour of his skin ("hampotthe pata") or because he was tall and wore a wig of curls, but because he was about to leave his house to consort with an ugly American official at the Residency.

Apart from sending Professor Carlo Fonseka into a tear jerking apoplectic performance about the jealousy that was welling in the short and ugly man who was said to have wielded the T 56 that killed Vijaya, that Keerthi Vijayabahu signed tract was at that time taken with a measure of fear and loathing, as if it was the gospel truth coming at us with the courtesy of an armed-to-the-teeth crusader.

So, when Somawansa Amarasinghe met Christina Rocca this week, we perhaps would not want to ask who-dunnit, but why-dunnit? Was it because Rocca's 'hampotthe pata' was more important than the fact that she was also a beautiful American official? Did Sowansa come back and aim ten sharp T56 bursts at himself for this act of treachery?

Things had come so much a full circle that not only was Somawansa doing the beautiful American thing by meeting Rocca at the behest of none other but the assassinated Vijaya Kumaratunga's wife, he was also on bended-knee before the sweet American lady asking her, of all things, to take the LTTE leader by the forelock, and goad him into giving up his T 56 to join the democratic process like the good scout's that the JVP boys are now.

So there -- be prepared!
Somawansa is coming soon to claim his second arhathood, this time by proxy. First he gave up arms himself, or rather his organisation did, after the grisliest and goriest bout of bloodletting ever witnessed in this land south of Anuradhapura. He wants to repeat that sublime canonisation with a second laying down of arms, by proxy this time, by getting Prabhakran, a misguided missile, to lay down his arms like a kin-cat, at the feet of the goddess of the long (or is it short?) blonde tresses -- Ms Christina Rocca.

All this had made the JVP forget the most tendentious issue of the time - - the anti-conversion bill on which the Sri Lankan legislature will vote very soon. The first unethical conversion took place during the reign of Emperor Augustus, when the Romans persecuted and converted Gnostic Christians into chaste and literal Catholicism. This was the beginning of the Catholic church, and a very good book by Tim Freke a Professor of Bristol University says the Gnostics were compelled to eat meat every Sunday because the Emperor wanted to hound out this tribe of Christians who swore by vegetarianism.

All copies of the book which were ordered by a local Colombo-based bookshop were one day bought up by a mysterious man who disappeared with the full complement ordered, not bothering so much as to check if he got back his correct change. No surprise this.

The book (Jesus Mysteries) claims that Jesus Christ never existed in the flesh, that he was the Jewish answer to the Pagan God - - and that the story of the annunciation, the divine conception, the magi and even the star of Bethlehem were all borrowed from the Pagan motifs that existed during that time.

But what's implicit in the assertion made in the book, the fact that Roman emperors found Christianity the ideal candidate as a religion for the Roman empire, will make the anti-conversion lobby want to chortle. Apparently Emperor Augustus had tried so many 'candidates' before, but it was only the new religion of the Jews, Christianity, which mimicked the pagan religions, that inspired the Roman peasants. But, by this time the Gnostics who practised the same religion based on an interpretation of its text as allegory, had all been dispersed or burnt, or otherwise attacked and banished. The Gnostics for instance believed that paradise can be found here on earth, and that the Bible, by allegory and allusion, tells us that everybody can be a Christ in this life.

The literalists, says Freke's book, frowned on the Gnostics - - and according to the quoted authorities - - - part of the Bible, which constitute the letters of Paul etc., was fabricated to pursue their literal interpretation of the religion. But the Roman emperor found the literal turn in the teachings and the discipline inspired thereby ideal, and found the new religion an ideal vehicle by which to aid the spread of empire.

Anti conversion faddists or any others are not required to believe any of this - - but if they are in a mood to take these authorities as gospel, they can say that the trend is the same today in Sri Lanka, and only the methods have changed. Romans converted to Christianity by attacking Gnostic churches and compelling the friars to eat meat before burning them at the stake - - yet, in these days conversion is by way of inducement. Conversion also may be interpreted, as a good way of spreading empire - -- except now it's a different empire. Then, it was Roman empire; now it is the empire of Mammon, under the charge of God's representative on earth, George W. Bush.

But who can say that a religion which thrived on conversions which gave rise to the Catholic church, is to be stopped on its tracks by a puny conversions-law hatched by a rump group of concerned insecure Buddhists in our parliament?? If the literalist Christian religion which was laughed at by the Gnostics ("is there anything as absurd as dead bodies risen from their graves on judgment day"' they asked) now elects a Pope whose inauguration coverage beats that of the induction of the President of the most powerful country on earth, is there any better testimony to the fact that the ability of any trend to catch on is not necessarily proportional to the value of what's on offer?

The Catholic trend that gathered momentum and congealed two thousand years ago stays, whether the anti-literalists interpreters of the religion like it or not. With the Gnostics who were called the 'knowers' because their interpretation of the religion was by ''gnosis'' (or knowing) almost extinct today, doesn't it point to the fact that inevitabilities are inevitabilities, however absurd they may seem to some others who perceive them?

If that takes us to where this short sharp exercise in gnosis of the contemporary situation began, if Somawansa's fundamentalists killed Vijaya Kuamratunga 20 years ago for supping with an American official like Somawansa does now, and if they despatched him to the other world ("yewwa") like a piece of leaden weight transported by DHL, doesn't it make sense to assume that some trends cannot be bucked -- and certainly they cannot be bucked by sentient beings of the JVP variety who sing different tunes depending on what time of day it is?? Vijitha Herath the JVP Culture Minister now says that all the press articles which say the JVP will walk out of the coalition if the tsunami joint mechanism materialises are absolutely false. Erik Solheim's press conference in Colombo is meanwhile organised by an NGO which once did the famous Manirasakulam apology for the Tigers with a stage-managed presser. Are Sri Lankans to stop the American-sponsored Norwegian sponsored legitimisation of the LTTE with the help of this lot?

They might as well acquiesce, form the tsunami mechanism, cut their losses - - and watch who pays pooja to the American lady the next time around. Will it or will it not be the rump group of Buddhist monks who opposed unethical conversions?

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