More Tamil exclusion in Sri Lanka

And the world mostly says nothing:

The first cabinet meeting convened by Sri Lanka president Mahinda Rajapaksa after returning from London decided to abolish the Tamil version of Sri Lanka’s national anthem, Sunday Times reports. The ”˜shortcoming’ of having two national anthems should be rectified and in no other country was the national anthem used in more than one language, Mahinda Rajapaksa told his cabinet Wednesday. The Tamil version of the national anthem of Ceylon and later Sri Lanka was adopted in 1948 at the time of the so-called independence. It was an exact translation of the Sinhala original, sung in the same tune. Supporting Rajapaksa, minister Wimal Weerawansa said that even in neighbouring India, where around 300 languages were used, the national anthem was only in Hindi. But the SL minister was ignorant of the fact that the national anthem of India is in Bengali.

Text and images ©2024 Antony Loewenstein. All rights reserved.

Site by Common