The paucity of conscience and the lack of wisdom

by A.J.N. Selvadurai

(September 17, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) A conscience is a moral sense of right and wrong. Even intelligent quadrupeds like apes, elephants, cats and dogs have it, but to a lesser degree. Throughout history mankind has acted against his conscience and built vast empires, as they find it difficult to overcome greed for wealth and power. This can lead to a lot of cruelty in the course of building empires and subjugating other people.

In Sri Lanka, the military has been very cruel even to their own people, like during the JVP Marxist revolution of the ’70s. They say they acted on the orders of their superiors, but that defence was not accepted in the Nuremburg trials of the Nazis and the court ruled that "those who follow such orders are as guilty as those who gave them."

The fact that there are hardly any conscientious objections among the Sinhalese only confirms the paucity in conscience in the island paradise of Sri Lanka where only ‘man is vile.’

The educated Sinhala elite who belong to the ruling class doesn’t seem to possess anyone who objects to the killing of Tamils in the 25 year old ethnic war. They blame the LTTE for everything after having created the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, due to the racist policies of the Bandaranaikes and J.R. Jayewardene.

They seem to have completely forgotten the communal holocast of July ’83 that forced the Tamil minority to take up arms and demand a separate state due to desperation. Except for a few Sinhalese gentlemen, no Sinhalese of the elite class have spoken up for justice for the Tamils.

The muzzling of the press and the media and fighting a war behind closed doors — unknown to the rest of the world is further evidence of this lack of conscience in Sri Lanka.

After 25 years of fighting surely "the people of the lion" must wake up to realities! They should seek the wisdom of the Buddha Dhamma and put past animosities behind them and look forward to a peaceful and prosperous future.

A poll by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation uncovered a widespread belief that faith — not just its extreme form — was intolerant, irrational and used to justify persecution. Researchers found that the "dominant opinion," was that religion was a "social evil." Religion classifies people and can start religious wars like the Crusades.

The war in the Middle East is caused by the two religions of Islam and Judaism. Had Buddhism not been introduced to Sri Lanka the people would have continued to be as they were before Buddhism and we would not be having this war today.

The politicisation of the sangha is one of the reasons for our ethnic strife. A change of attitude is essential to promote negotiation — with a view to ending this war which has only brought misery and instability and has caused a mass eviction and migration of Tamils. For this to happen the Sangha must be de-politicised and returned to the temples where they rightfully belong.

One of the biggest blunders of the Sinhala leadership is to have created a situation where the hitherto docile Tamils were forced to take up arms and demand a separate state as they found it impossible to carry on. This shows that there has been a serious lack of wisdom because; important decisions have been made purely on emotional grounds.

As Dr. E.F. Schumacher said in his book Small Is Beautiful, a man driven by greed or envy loses his power of seeing things as they really are, of seeing things in their roundness and wholeness and the very success becomes failures. If whole societies became infected by these vices, they become increasingly incapable of solving the most elementary problems of everyday existence.

I think this is the cause of our ethnic war which started with the strong envy of the better educated successful Tamils — who were forced to take to education for survival as their arid land did not sustain them, and the government refused to develop it.

Now that this imbalance has been rectified in the most disastrous manner, it is time to stop the war and start thinking of peace. - Sri Lanka Guardian