Unethical Conversions
By Brindley Jayatunga
The so called corrupt “Buddhist” politicians are mostly responsible. They are actually the traitors of this wonderful non violent religion in this Dharmadvipa.
The Temple of the sacred tooth in Kandy is a huge source of income from devotees and tourists. As a person who worked as a tourist guide for more than twenty years I have first hand information as to how much money the Dalada Maligawa (Temple of the sacred tooth) collects every day and if they are truly interested the guardian of this temple could spend without any difficulty a couple of millions every month for the benefit of the poor Buddhist families in rural areas.
But they are not doing it and nobody is interested. Tour groups from Buddhist countries like Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Thailand and Singapore donate millions of rupees in one single visit and the driver of the vehicle is also given a certain percentage if he was responsible for bringing the group to the temple.
The next Government coming into power should look into the activities, specially the financial manipulations of the temple.Poor Buddhists are converted by deceiving them because they are poor and uneducated, an ideal situation to brainwash. It is not only the poor Buddhists who are converted, but also the poor plantation worker, Tamil Hindus.
The numerous christian NGOs operating in Sri Lanka who subterfuge poor Buddhists and Hindus are approved by the Chandrika Government as an act of Parliament. For a President who has no religion and with a notorious moral background it does not matter to her.The situation is quite ominous. Now that her days are numbered we Buddhists can finally utter a sigh of relief.
The interesting part of these NGO activities is that they do not go to muslim families in Sri Lanka. There are millions of destitute children and families in South American countries for example in Guatemala. These NGOs are not interested since those countries are already christians. Why don’t they even go to countries like Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia or Indonesia where there are millions of poor children and families? They know if they try to proselytize Muslims they will get the death penalty under Islamic law. So we here in Sri Lanka or India are the easy targets.
According to a1998 international Social Survey Programme about 40 per cent of Irish catholics do not go to sunday mass. This is actually not a lot compared to England and Wales where 75 p.c Italy 71 p.c Poland 58 p.c and U.S 57 p.c do not go to Sunday mass.In Germany, where I lived for some years, most Germans do not go to church at all as they have lost faith in their religion and some have in fact turned to Buddhism in recent years.
In England churches are up for sale as they are bankrupt and one incident I know, such a church was bought by muslims and have converted it to a mosque. At least Indians have undetaken some action to curb their activities but we Sri Lankans simply keep quiet while our own heritage is being gradually wiped out.Those directly responsible in matters relating to our religion are the Mahanayakas, The Minister of Buddha Sasana, and the Diyawadana Nilame. They are surprisingly silent. We Buddhists are duty bound to galvanize ourselves to take meaningful action now before it is too late.