Rise of cultural nationalism: Boon or bane?

The veteran artiste and free thinker Asoka Handagama in delivering the Independence Day Commemoration Oration at the Central Bank on 4 February, as reported by the Sinhala Weekly Ravaya, had left his audience with a message: As long as people of a nation fail to recognise, tolerate and appreciate varying behavioural patterns of different groups of people in a society, it leads to conflict, violence and bloodshed which any progress-loving individual would have no hesitation in abhorring and condemning.