Anagarika Dharmapala - A Kalu-Suddha.

Kalu-Suddha is a common term in Sri Lanka which has the same meaning of Twinkie or Banana in Chinese culture, yellow outside and white inside, or Oreo in the hood, black outside and white inside. And it has the contrary meaning to "Marmite Sandwich" in urban language - White outside and black inside. Direct translation of Kalu-Suddha would be "black-Caucasian". An insult to any none-Caucasian fan of Caucasian society or Caucasian ideology. And Anagarika Dharmapala used that word a lot.

Anagarika Dharmapala is a great hero; I learned when I was kid. Or rather they forced me to learn that just like everything else. He was born in a time Sri Lanka was one of the richest countries in Asia and there were rich elite group of locals, who own ships and even received knighthoods. Dharmapala belong to that privileged few. There is nothing wrong with that. It gave him chance to complete his grand tour in Europe and in the New World, and finally joined with a American NGO, goes by the name of Theosophical Society.

Theosophical Society is a racist organization that believed in root race call Aryans which originated from a place call Atlantis. They intentionally or unintentionally presented philosophical support to Nazi party and work toward to achieve supremacy of Aryan society.

King Asoka the great builds his empire using Buddhism. He didn’t control his empire with weapons or by law. Buddhism was his tool. He was so successful in what he did, his system control us Sri Lankans to this day and other so call "Buddhist countries" in Asia too. Buddhism never meant to have a leader or controlled by one. So no one had to take his place to continue what he started. That is the brilliance of it. But there were one weakness, just like everything else in the world. Regardless Buddhism never meant to have a controller, if someone take control of it, one way or another, that person can take control of the functioning empire Ashoka left. May be he knew it. Maybe that is why he makes sure his children will not take his place afterword him. It works, until Theosophical Society comes in, from America, and takes control of Buddhism.

It was a time white politicians rule our countries and white solders marched our roads. They did every thing possible to take control of every aspect our life. It was not that difficult for them to take control of Buddhism too. It never had a leader. All they had to do was, walk in, and take control. So they did. And they changed it as they wish. They injected all the western principles and values in to it, taught us what to do. And to this day, we call them Sinhalese Buddhist Values, and we are proud of it. Buddhism never had a flag or a logo, because it never meant to have that sort of things. But they created one anyway. I guess you have to have a flag if you rule something. While you at it, why wait, why not declares a new Buddha. Pope does it with his saints. So they did. They declared a Hindu lad as the new Buddha.

And that is how white man conquered king Ashoka’s empire. The same way he builds it in the first place. And Dharma-Pala (the Controller of Buddhism – which Buddhism never meant to have) did exactly his white master, who he worked as a translator, wanted him to do.

Sri Lankans were divided by castes, but we were never divided by racial grounds until British came up with their brilliant "divide and rule" policy, that creates problems every corner of the world to this day. Great people like Mahathma Gandhi understood the dangers of that and he did everything humanly possible to stop it. That old man walked on his barefoot, village to village preaching unity. Not just unity among deferent caste of Hindus, but unity among Hindus and Muslims and uncountable numbers of tribes in India. And he made been just an Indian a cool thing.

Dharmapala rode his automobile village to village playing his Phonograph, preaching Sinhalese to wake up and compete with other tribes. Until Phonograph, humans never heard of anything talks other than a living and breathing human. Talking machine was magic. In America, they charge a nickel to play this gimmick for a minute. And then there is this Anagarika Dharmapala playing the magic talking machine to villages for free. Doing exact thing what white rulers wanted him to do. Divide. And he was doing his part in a big plan. There were Tamil leaders doing exactly the samething as British wished them to do too. And Darmapala completed them. You need two sides to play ball.

This Sinhalese nationalist and Tamil nationalist (correctly, Sinhalese racist and Tamil racist) movement created by both elite Sinhalese and Tamil leaders, later on gave opportunity for Sinhalese nationalists to grab power. By people like Dharmapala creating race base movement, they silence deferent sort of uniting movement to grow in Sri Lanka. He made been a racist a cool thing. And he did that with American aid.

I don’t say Anagarika Dharmapala or his NGO no good at all. Indeed they did good things. Without them there won't be an YMBA, where we have annual shoe sales or strip malls. But he did so many things I wish he didn't. I wish if he was like Gandhi. But he was not a one.