Speaker’s New Year message

Speaker Karu Jayasuriya yesterday wished Sri Lankans a happy New Year and called on them to be dedicated to building peace. 

Speaker Karu Jayasuriya’s New Year message is given below. 

Extending gratitude to environment and the veneration of the Sun God are a unique feature of a civilisation fused with agriculture and religion.

Pre-historic human beings who discovered that the birth and the existence of the earth depend on the sun have since then practiced the veneration of the sun in a multitude of forms and manifestations.

It was also a pooja and a festival intertwining religion, livelihood and environment in the eastern civilisation.

Sri Lankans, who filled their barns with the harvest of the Maha season, getting ready both physically and spiritually to welcome the New Year has been an age-old tradition bequeathed over the generations.

The entire community flocking together with one aim of hoping for well-being and prosperity for everybody is a noble trait seen in the Sinhala Hindu New year.

New year rituals such as venerating elders and visiting relatives which are unique features of the Sri Lankan culture are reminiscent of the social hierarchy which reinforce reconciliation.

New Year resolves must build a platform for a fresh start not only by cleaning the home environment but also my eliminating enmity and hatred from the mind.

Sinhala Hindu New Year explains to the Sri Lankan society the art of living by respecting the other cultures by reminding to us that all of us as children of the sun are descendants of the same source.

This therefore gives us an invaluable opportunity to correct ourselves and think afresh. The Sinhala Hindu New Year of 2016 will undoubtedly be a year that will uphold the rituals and traditions of one’s culture as well as that of others.

I earnestly hope that all Sri Lankan will have the fortune of living in prosperity in a country that abounds in harvest.