Throw out the Ramayana trail and promote the “Buddhist Trail”

For a few years, a so-called “Ramayana trail” to promote the well-known Sanskrit epic Ramayana as fact has been pushed by our uninformed tourist authorities. This is a contrast to Indian tourist authorities which promotes a “Buddhist Circuit” (that is a “Buddhist Trail”). But Indians do not have a “Ramayana Trail”. That the Ramayana is not history but myth has been known in Sri Lanka for nearly 500 years. Buddhaghosa labelled the Ramayana as a myth and as among the 32 unbelievable stories dismissed as tirachchina katha “animal talk”. A thousand years later, Vidagama Maitreya Thera threw scorn at the alleged miracles of Rama and Hanuman.

In Sri Lanka, there are very many historically authenticated Buddhist sites which should be a magnet for tourists, especially those from South-East Asia whose Theravada traditions known to them well. A committee appointed by the tourist authorities headed by a no-nacademic and who admits that the Indian government does not consider Ramayana as history has invented very many untenable tirachchina katha sites. A second member of this committee is a Pettah shopkeeper, a member of a Hindu fundamentalist sect which declares that he is “proud to be an Indian” and of “the Indian flag”. The third member has produced on a website completely fictional “evidence” of flying machines, airports etc allegedly associated with Ravana.
This committee has misinterpreted archaeological, epigraphic and geological facts to fit these myths. Wayside shrines in the Hill country built by estate labour originally from Tamil Nadu have been labelled as part of valid history as well as natural formations. These fictional details have been taken up by extremist Hindu fundamentalists in India, especially those with links to an Indian political party BJP that at the close of the recent war strongly supported the LTTE and worked strenuously against the integrity of Sri Lanka. BJP’ s attitudes on Sri Lanka sovereignty are amply indicated by the following headlines from Indian newspapers: “BJP for sanctions against Sri Lanka”; “Lift ban on the LTTE: BJP”; “LTTE prays for BJP victory in India”; “India should stop war, instruct Colombo to talk to Tigers – BJP “ and BJP associated “Hindu Conference condemns Sri Lankan forces”.Transforming the hero of the Ramayana from Rama to Ravana was an invention by DMK ideologists, especially Periar to support Tamil separatism and chauvinism in India.
But Indian authorities have rejected the Ramayana as history especially in the case of the demolition in the early 1990s by Hindu extremists of the Babri mosque in India claiming it to be the birthplace of Rama and in relation to the Sethu Samudra project. In the latter, the Hindu fundamentalist interpretation that there was a bridge between India and Sri Lanka was rejected.

This “Ramayana trail” is a future danger for the territorial integrity of Sri Lanka in that this could be a not-too-subtle attempt to plant another invented homelands just as LTTE supporters invented a “traditional homelands of the Tamils” prior to their war. These new myths could give rise to new demands for separatism. This fictional Ramayana trail had begun a few years ago with the guidance, we have been informed of a Tamil bureaucrat from the Hill country. One is reminded of the secret activities of a few Tamil bureaucrats in 1961 which created the group Pulip Padai (“Army of Tigers”) and prepared the way for the LTTE. This exercise in promoting non-existent Hindu fundamentalist sites at the expense of Buddhist sites creates a future danger for the integrity of Sri Lanka. The government which constitutionally has to safeguard Buddhism should promote, like India, factual Buddhist sites not invented “animal talk” Ramayana sites.

Source:http://www.buddhisttimes.net/2010/08/01/throw-out-the-ramayana-and-promote-a-%E2%80%9Cbuddhist-trail%E2%80%9D/