Dr S.b. Asoka Dissanayake

Elephant Talks: the Challenge (I) Dr S.b. Asoka Dissanayake 1.º edición

This is the most outrageous statement I wish to make. I have many reasons for this and it was a bit of a dilemma for me. I have the gut feeling people will be discussing this issue come next millennium since it is close to everybody?s heart and the dilemma is that the focus will be on a political issue and the elephant in context will be forgotten totally and will continue to be neglected. All the same I have made up my mind. It is going to be in the open now. I am sure every elephant living or dead will be happy with my statement. This poor elephant is the political symbol of the Grand Old Party of ours. Yesteryear politicians were landlords and they had massive reaches of land and the poor peasants did not have any. What remained was taken over by the British as "Waste Land" and left to go into the wild except where coffee or tea was grown. In these forest land the elephants had a happy time except when Kraal were organized by the landlords as a pleasure trip for visiting British. One time speaker of the parliament who died on the speakers chair had organized one of these pleasure parties (not for the poor elephants) and he shot dead the giant of the herd. He was the Panamure (King) Elephant who was defending his herd. There are many stories abound but most of them must be concocted lies. What I remember well was the song sung by a popular Sri-Lankan singer, Sunil Santha depicting the tragedy and despising the act and cursing the perpetrators and the British had to bring in regulatory laws to stop this tragic melodrama. So when we got independence the most popular party then adopted Elephant as the symbol and won parliament majority. The reason for using this symbol could have been many which included hoodwinking the illiterate masses who had never gone to a polling booth before. Attraction would have been infectious since everybody in Sri-Lanka loves this gentle giant. Probably not the political giants who represented the symbol. This party at present is no more of a grand old party but a party of bickering fractions. So whenever a bickering come into the surface unfortunately our cartoonists draw an elephant with plasters all over. Some of these cartoons are obnoxious to this gentle giant. On that ground alone, I want the election commissioner to ban using this animal as a party symbol. After all, he does not allow the symbol of dogs and pigs as political symbols and why not elephants? This is why I said, the elephants are treated worse than dogs. I am pretty sure Buddhists will be overwhelmed by my gesture since their venerated animal is liberated from political bondage so that they can abuse them to their heart's content, come religious festival or not. This was my dilemma.