The Hon. Dilith Jayaweera
Hon. Dilith Jayaweera criticized the Government for, in his view, undermining Sri Lanka’s religious and cultural traditions, particularly in relation to the treatment of monks and remarks about practices such as statue and snake veneration. He argued that such practices form part of Buddhist, Hindu and wider cultural heritage and warned that the public would oppose perceived attacks on them. He also accused the Government and leftist parties of abandoning past anti-imperialist and pro-poor positions, citing alleged agreements with the United States and the imposition of VAT on small traders.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Even if you laugh, Hon. Ministers, every moment you challenge and undermine this country’s civilization, people of all ethnicities and religions will stand up against you. Very soon they will. Remember that. Do not think you can arrest and assault monks and get away with it. If you think statue veneration is tribal, whom are you insulting? Then you insult Hindu devotees as well. Hindus also venerate statues. Catholics also do so. Then—
¶ 02 What about snake veneration?
¶ 03 Snake veneration too is similar. Even if you laugh, that is a cultural inheritance that arose from our supreme Buddhist view. It is even in Hinduism. You are laughing at the Hindu devotees; you are laughing at the Buddhists of this country. Hon. Minister, remember that you are laughing at our culture. Even if you do not value this culture, the people of this country need it. They are stakeholders of the culture; they live upon it. Remember that. Continue in your way. See what happens when you collide with this culture. Remember I said this today.
¶ 04 Madam Deputy Chairperson, I am saddened. Where did these ideas come from? The boys who studied up to Grade 5 with us, who came from our villages, now say you can secretly sign an agreement with America. Where did such people come from? Those who led us with anti-American, anti-Indian slogans – our friends – now where is your “Grade 5 economic class”? Today you are the party that slaps VAT on the petty trader’s shop and lectures the poor. Is that what you celebrated Ilma as heroes for? Did those people die for that? You communists and LSSPers once killed in the name of the poor classes. They murdered George Ratnayake, our villager, saying he was a poor-class communist. Now what are you doing? You are puppets moving on instructions from imperialists. This is a puppet Government, entirely a puppet Government lacking manliness, unable to represent its own country. The villager who voted for you—
Provenance
- Source
- Hansard, Monday, 17 November 2025 ·No. 22912 ·English daily/uncorrected Hansard
- Page · column
- not yet extracted — page/column anchors are not in the current dataset; the source PDF is the citable location.
- Permalink
/lk/speeches/2623
Cite as: The Hon. Dilith Jayaweera. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 17 November 2025. No. 22912. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/2623