Prisoners of imagined histories

"The future is in the Past." - An epigram on the official Mahawamsa website

- BY TISARANEE GUNASEKARA

Mahawamsa was the go-to text for those who justified the politicisation of Buddhism.

FOR King Dutugemunu there is no rest. With distressing regularity, he is summoned in the service of an ambitious politician, a divisive policy or a violent act. The latest instance of necromancy occurred when monk Galagoda-Atte Gnanasara visited Mahinda Rajapaksa in Medamulana, the 'homeless' ex-president.

The NPP promised to scrap the Presidential Entitlements Act in its manifesto, and forgot it until the party's setback at the May 2025 Local Government election. In June, the legal draughtsman was told to prepare the necessary documents. The SLPP's administrative secretary and Mahinda Rajapaksa's media secretary led the legal challenge to the resultant Bill. The Supreme Court rejected the petitions and the Bill was enacted in September.

Maithripala Sirisena left his official residence quietly; Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga asked for a three-month-grace-period (due to an ailment) and is now in the process of leaving. Both acted with commendable dignity. (Neither Gotabaya Rajapaksa nor Ranil Wickremesinghe were occupying their official residences).

Mahinda Rajapaksa, his family, and his party turned the issue into a melodrama. It was as if this aged leader was illegally and violently thrown out from the house of his ancestors, the home of a lifetime, his sole shelter. The same way his Government treated the residents of Mews Street Colombo 2, who were informed on 4 May 2010 that they will have to leave their ancestral homes within four days. On 8 May, 107 residents (24 of them children) living in 17 houses were violently evicted in a military operation which pitted 2,500 armed servicemen in full riot gear against unarmed men, women and children.