Beyond the Border, History Stakes its Claim Over Myth

In Sri Lanka, there is no mythological version of the Ramayana. Raavan's world was more than that.

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THE question arises: how did Indian mythology merge to turn an actual Sinhala hero-king into a villain? You don't have to go far to find the answer. It was the Tamil Nadu settlers who projected Raavan as a treacherous villain, but have suddenly changed their tune to now claim that he was Tamil in order to use that as a ploy to substantiate a separate Eelam homeland quest.

If the Ramayana is a myth, an epic created in India revolving around Sita, Ram and Raavan the king of "Lanka", promoting the Ramayana Trail in Sri Lanka purely for political and commercial purposes is a bogus tourist pilgrimage. How many Indian tourists are aware of this? Justin W. Henry who wrote Ravana's Kingdom: The Ramayana and Sri Lankan History from Below to ascertain a Sinhalese version of the Ramayana existed, declared that there was no such mythological version in Sri Lanka.

There are four aspects to consider in approaching this topic together with the need to set facts and fiction in their proper perspective: to what extent is Valmiki's Ramayana factual or a myth; the actual existence of King Raavan from which the Sinhalese race descends; two foreign-funded projects using Raavan as a "cult" to encourage worship of Raavan instead of the Buddha (the goal being to cunningly use Raavan to destroy people's reverence for the Buddha and stop them from visiting Buddhist temples); and lastly, another bogus attempt to link the Ramayana Trail to replace Buddhism with Hinduism across Sri Lanka as a long-term goal.

The last two projects aim to break the Sinhala Buddhist nationalism in Sri Lanka, which remains the strongest point of defence and the pillar of Sri Lanka's sovereignty. What the Ramayana Trail and the Raavan cult project aim to do is to take Sri Lanka to a pre-Sinhala preBuddhist era, deviously erasing the place of Sinhala Buddhists.