| by Gajalakshmi Paramasivam
( May 3, 2014, Melbourne, Sri Lanka Guardian) Yesterday, I felt for Indians to whom I am culturally connected. The more experiences I have through our common culture – the more natural our links. As a Tamil, it was natural that I would feel upset by the reports of bomb blast in Chennai – a place where my grandmother lived for a long time and a place where I have close relatives. India is also the sacred land of my Spiritual Guru – Swami Sathya Sai Baba and the Independence leader I respect most - Gandhi. Due to all these connections, I felt sad but did not know how I could expressly help. This morning I read the article published in The Economist, forwarded by Mr. Rajasingham Jayadevan. The subject matter of the article was ‘For minorities fleeing Pakistan, Sri Lanka is at best a temporary refuge’. As per this article :
‘Twice a week the pews of the Holy Rosary church in Negombo, just north of Colombo on Sri Lanka’s west coast, are filled with Pakistanis attending the country’s only Urdu mass, conducted by a Sri Lankan priest.’
Negombo is known for its illegal boat departures. In an interview with the Sunday Observer on 29 July 2012 , Dr. Shanaka Jayasekara, Lecturer, Centre for Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism (PICT), Macquarie University of Australia is reported to have said:
[In the absence of LTTE terrorists, who restricted the exodus of youth out of the Vanni as they required human resources, now the Vanni people were risking their lives to 'earn more dollars'. He said the pro-LTTE lobby groups use the Sri Lankan asylum seeker issue to discredit the Sri Lankan government.
If you look at the Sri Lankans in Italy as a case in points, there is a flood of Sinhalese from Negombo who have taken boats and other illegal routes to reach Italy seeking economic opportunity. There is no persecution of Sinhalese in Negombo they are attracted by the foreign currency earnings in Italy. This is the same motivation that is driving all the boat refugees to greener pastures irrespective of their ethnicity, be they Tamil or Sinhalese.]
To my mind, any action against illegal departures needs to be on common basis. It would be in a country that respects the value of racial diversity and therefore racial equality. If powered by the desire to use the war for personal credit – and racial discrimination happens – consciously or subconsciously – then the effects at the deeper level happen to the person/group that motivated the action. The return karma is as deep as the cause. If even one genuine asylum seeker is punished by Sri Lankan authorities whilst the illegal departures for economic purposes are ignored – the return comes back at the level of suffering by the punished asylum seeker. There are false asylum claimants who are the parallels of the Negombo folks. But our systems that are not able to manage race related problems effectively through relevant laws, need to be such as to not seriously punish any asylum seeker above the level of the illegal departures for economic purposes – such as the Negombo folks who may have earned the punishment but did not get it due to Government’s preoccupation with Tamil militancy.
This possibility of return karma to Negombo - through Pakistani refugees seemed more and more credible when I read the report by Colonel Hariharan – published by the Sri Lanka Guardian under the heading ‘Who planted the bombs in Chennai train?’ Colonel Hariharan concludes by stating:
[So it would be reasonable to conclude that there could be a Pakistan intelligence link based in Colombo to the Chennai train blasts.]
Mine is intuition based to help myself and those who have faith in me prevent ourselves from deteriorating to unregulated behavior which carries high risk of injustice and anxiety associated with it. Colonel Hariharan’s conclusion confirms my intuition that Sri Lanka is reaping its returning karma. When we pray for anti-terrorism credits beyond our actual earnings and/or beyond the actual level of terrorism present – we pray also for terrorism. That is the way God’s system balances itself. That is the lesson from Krishna to us – that when we pray for the sweets beyond our earnings – we get the stomach ache also with it. Without ‘terrorism stomach-ache’ one cannot have ‘anti-terrorism sweet’ beyond one’s earnings. To the extent the sweet was taken from the global pool beyond the contribution to the global pool - the stomach-ache would happen – be it for Sri Lanka, Australia or the United States of America.
Laws help us regulate our thinking so that we would live in harmony and those of us who go beyond - discover how Natural Justice works. Often we discover the connection between cause and effect even though we may not carry it consciously in our minds. Firm structures through common principles and laws help us carry these lessons / memories. The most reliable structure is the form given to our own True Experience. If we seek to operate beyond our Experience – we need to consciously follow someone who has found the Truth in that wider world. These are often the bases on which laws are crafted. Laws that are not practiced carry high risk of abuse.
Sri Lanka through its Constitution is regulated by Buddhist laws in terms of religion. The basis of humanity is that we are all children of One God. True practice of Buddhism would confirm this. Where higher status had been taken by Buddhists over other religions in Sri Lanka due to this Constitutional provision – and so taken without the responsibility to protect other religions maintain their sovereignty, then Buddhists of Sri Lanka would have earned reduction of the majority that entitled the Buddhists to officially take up that higher position through the Constitution. It need not be a legal vote. All one requires is to reside in that country and behave naturally - to vote and be counted in the system of Nature
In the above example Muslims of Sri Lanka went to Pakistan and Christians of Pakistan came to Sri Lanka in return – to increase the majority power of Christians in Negombo. Colonel Hariharan writes in this regard:
[These would indicate that Colombo continues to be the cockpit of Pakistan intelligence operations targeted against India. …………Pakistan intelligence’s Colombo connections are nothing new. As early as 2003, terrorism expert the late B Raman had written that since 2001 Jihadi terrorist groups of the Al Qaeda-kind had been “paying more attention to other areas such as the Eastern province of Sri Lanka, which has a pocket of Muslim concentration”]
I conclude that the anti-terrorism sweet and its twin anti war-crimes sweet by Sri Lankans have been unearned and therefore excessive and hence the return of Terrorism at civilian level – all the way from Pakistan – effectively the parallel of Tamil Eelam that the LTTE was fighting for.
 Yesterday, I felt for Indians to whom I am culturally...){kind=link}