Sri Lankans express angst over Pakistan's demolition of Buddhist heritage

Sri Lankans have lodged a strong protest, and expressed widespread angst on Sunday at the reports of destruction of the Buddhist heritage sites in Pakistan, sources told ANI. While the civil activists and human rights activists slammed Pakistan for such derogatory acts aimed at wiping out cultural and religious heritage, many Pakistanis on 19 September appeared to support the demolitions with one Rawalpindi resident Umer Usmani celebrating the Buddhist statues’ destruction associating it with “teachings of Islam.” "As a Muslim, it is very necessary to smash and ruin all the idols in order to keep the Muslim separate identity from other nations,” Usmani  said on Twitter. “Pakistan was made on the basis of Islam, so Islam requires to eradicate the idolatry as our grandfather Ibrahim and the holy Prophet did," he went on to add. 

For several months now, Islamabad has vandalised and defaced Buddhist heritage, including in the Pakistan-occupied Gilgit-Baltistan region and in the Swat Valley that has caused widespread outrage among the Sri Lankans that practice Theravada Buddhism as their official religion. Pakistan has also been building a Chinese-funded Diamer-Bhasha dam on the Indus River that the historians fear will submerge the entire historic Buddhist site, destroying more than 30,000 raw carvings and scriptures forever in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). 

Meanwhile, Pakistani President Dr. Arif Alvi, who had met a delegation of Sri Lankan Buddhist monks in Islamabad, hailed the religious tourism as “an excellent platform” despite that the Pakistan government has failed to protect heritage Buddhist sites from the bigots and religious fanatics across the country, reported ANI. Pakistanis over several months have destroyed Buddhist rock carvings, paintings, and sculptures, vandalising Buddhist artwork with black paint, and repainting some with Pakistan's national flag ignoring the widespread global calls to preserve Buddhist history and heritage. 

Pakistanis demolish 1,700-year-old Buddha statue

Last year, shocking visuals of the Pakistanis demolishing a 1,700-year-old Buddha statue in the Takht-i-Bahi area of Pashtun-dominated Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province’s Mardan district in the north-western region of Pakistan had triggered backlash as the act invoked distressing memories of the destruction of the world-famous and tallest Buddha statues in Bamiyan, Afghanistan in March 2001 by the hardline Islamist fundamentalists Taliban. The act, during the Taliban rule in Afghanistan, was widely condemned as it encouraged more such demolitions in Pakistan’s Swat region, a Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) terror faction’s stronghold. 

Pakistan’s destruction of the Buddhist national heritage and demolition of statues that the archaeologists have labelled culturally significant has drawn ire from all quarters, internationally. India had also earlier conveyed disregard towards such acts with Pakistan condemning reports of "vandalism, defacement, and destruction of invaluable Indian Buddhist heritage located in Gilgit-Baltistan area of the Indian territory under illegal and forcible occupation of Pakistan”. 

India's former External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Anurag Srivastava in New Delhi accused Pakistan of displaying contempt for the ancient civilisational and cultural heritage with its inaction towards the preservation of Buddhist cultural heritage. Pakistan’s Foreign Office had, meanwhile, dismissed India’s concern as “anti-Pakistan propaganda.” It said in an official statement that the “regurgitation of false and preposterous Indian claims does not change the disputed status of Jammu and Kashmir.” Not addressing the reports of destruction of Buddhist heritage, Pakistan instead accused India of "distorting" the report on UN Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team (MT) on terrorism, saying that India “slandered” Pakistan.

IMAGE: Unsplash/PTI