Mindset prejudices harm multicultural communities

"Under what circumstances are we marking the 61st anniversary of Sri Lanka’s independence? Can we call this a legitimate freedom when the Tamil-speaking people of the country feel their basic fundamental rights to be at par with the majority Sinhala have been denied and thousands have fled the country in the wake of communal riots from time to time and the ethnic question still remains unresolved? Thousands more have perished in the raging civil war that has virtually devastated the country, a war that has also affected the majority community in no small measure. When we play opportunist political games with fundamental rights, we are all losers even those who seek quick gains employing corrupt means. And the nation suffers."
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By Victor Karunairajan

(February 04, Toronto, Sri Lanka Guardian) Hardly any country in the world is a mono-cultural entity except perhaps some tiny island states in the waters of the Pacific Ocean. Even in such small states as Reunion, Mauritius, Madagascar and Seychelles in the western Indian Ocean, there is an Afro-European-Indian racial mix. In Seychelles with hardly 80,000 in population, the system of government is highly decentralized even though technically it is a unitary state. It appears only in Sri Lanka, the word “federal” has racist meanings and connotations.

Judging from a February 2 feature in the Sri Lankan Guardian by Sebastian Rasalingam of Toronto titled, “Critical choice facing Sri Lanka: Throwing out the failed medicine of Vaddukoddai,” obviously a Sri Lankan expatriate in Canada, one gathers the impression that any reference to a federal solution is seen as racist. This feature is proof that our politicians have done a lot of damage to multicultural Sri Lanka ever since the country became independent in 1948.

This has been further compounded by propagating the idea through ill-intentioned textbooks in particular that the country belongs exclusively to the Buddhist and Sinhala-speaking people and all others are unwelcome immigrants especially from India. What is often overlooked or conveniently ignored is that both Buddhism and the forefathers of the Sinhalese also came from India almost at the same time as the others.

Sinhala textbooks dwell on this kind of misinformation based on the Mahawansa Creed, the legitimacy of which is suspect. It was unfortunate that the writer from Canada reacting to a feature by Renuka Sharma and Satchi Sithananthan conveys his own “mindset prejudice” that the mere mention of a federal solution by these two Sri Lankan Guardian regulars as being racist; in their case pro-Tamil racism. The writer should have known that Canada is a federal state but not on the basis of French-English identity but various other factors that make a decentralized system key to its stability and development. The question of Quebec does arise now and then but it has no racial emotions about it.

Every Canadian student from sea to sea to sea learns two languages, English and French and some even a third, Spanish being the more popular option. In Sri Lanka for 51 years now, a student only learnt one of the national languages and a bit of English. This denied to two generations of students their right to good all round education and an exposure to the wider world. Even in elite urban schools in Colombo and Kandy where Sinhalese and Tamil children attended classes together, they were isolated into separate Sinhala and Tamil streams, an inexcusable bureaucratic insensitiveness and sheer wickedness that poisoned relationships among the young.

Sri Lankan Tamils have no love for the Indian Tamils. They never even liked the Sri Lankan plantation Tamils identifying them more with India and as socially inferior to them. Sri Lankan Tamil Members of Parliament joined hands with the Government of D S Senanayake at the dawn of independence and supported the disfranchisement of the plantation Tamils. It is said, the Sri Lankan Tamils will not let their children marry among the plantation Tamils. This is a hard and unfortunate realism that speaks in testimony of the prejudice Sri Lankan Tamils have against those of recent Indian origin. Caste and class of course are major factors too.

Tamilnadu’s tangential and peripheral politicians may shout as they often do but hold no danger to Sri Lanka. Political adventurers they are, they hardly have any clout in India, even seen as traitors to the country. They do not have the conscience they are hobnobbing with negative forces when they could have taken positive steps to have strong impacts on Colombo and New Delhi. The best weapon they have is Gandhian Satyagraha, a more powerful tool one could never have anywhere in the world. Satyagraha is a highly disciplined force that believes both the oppressed and the oppressor need to be liberated for genuine solutions; and no human being is condemned as worthless.

The Sri Lankan majority Sinhalese need not fear India. It is even better if the Sinhalese accept and appreciate that Sri Lanka is the land of the Sinhalese, Tamils, Muslims and others and the country has been their home for centuries. If this is a reality, the political headline seekers in Tamilnadu will have no grounds to stir trouble on the island.

Instead of being contentious about ways and means of sorting out the ethnic nightmare, it is better for the Government of Sri Lanka to recognize three primary stratifications in the ancient order of the Kotte, Kandy and Jaffna kingdoms in a political structure with considerable powers vested in the central government to ensure this evolves progressively into a proper federal state over a period of time.

In working out such a deal, the government should also ensure that no person with known racist or religiously bigoted views should participate in formulating proposals for implementation. This is the biggest weakness of the All Party Representative Committee (APRC) which soon became quite a painful joke if one could label it such adequately. This committee has now met for nearly three years and out of the 58 recognized political organizations or parties only less than 25% has made representations to it. Among those who have not done it are the main opposition party, the UNP and the JVP and Tamil National Alliance which marks a very significant boycott of the APRC.

Taking the APRC seriously with this kind of performance on a most crucial issue like solving the ethnic nightmare that has caused deadly consequences to Sri Lanka is like sending a team of one-legged athletes as sprinters to the Olympic Games. The APRC is a dead horse even before its Derby date! The irony of the tragic story is that a solution to this problem is a mere matter of recognizing the fundamental rights of every citizen of Sri Lanka and honouring it faithfully. Those who militate against such recognition should have their dates in the courts of the land on charges of criminal discrimination than civil disputes. There was never a need for the APRC; worse that this committee should have taken so much time to move on and present a report. It remains still due and indicates nothing but a dilly-dallying filibuster by the government.

If it eventually comes with a report having concluded its deliberations an year ago after meeting for 104 times, it would certainly be a lame duck effort that represents less than a quarter of the country’s political entities. Furthermore if the APRC makes a final report as expected soon after their meeting in a few days, one can confidently expect it to be far short of recognizing the fundamental rights of the minorities to be on par with the majority Sinhalese.

Even if they do recognize, the UNP has placed itself already in a position to oppose it, the way they destroyed the Bandaranaike-Chelvanayagam Pact April 1958 when a campaign against it was organized by some members of the Buddhist clergy and rabid communal politicians most of them from the UNP headed by the Leader of the Opposition of that time, Junius Jayawardene.

A few months earlier he had led a march to Kandy to invoke the blessings of gods for his campaign against the pact. It was Mr Jayawardene who was the head of state when the near-genocidal racial riots were orchestrated against the Tamils in 1983 without doubt with the backing of his government. As for the JVP and the Tamil National Alliance, they are two sides of the coin with which extremist commodities hurtful to the country are procured. They can never be expected to rise to the level of statesmanship.

If there are people who believe one community should have greater rights over another, they must really be ignorant of the fundamental fact that all human beings are born equal and it is a prerequisite of every state to honour and respect it. After all, Sri Lanka is a signatory to the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Canadian writer Sebastian Rasalingam tried to interpret federalism as a racist mindset. It is certainly not; it is a partnership very much like family units in a neighbourhood interacting with each other in a community. Each family is unique and equally each family is a part of a whole that makes healthy communities. And healthy communities make a healthy nation.

Another unfortunate feature is that Sri Lanka is not harnessing its powerful Diaspora to bring into its economic development the sure, willing and certain arms, minds and the high investment potential of her own people, most of whom fled the country because governments after governments followed the ill-conceived spirit of Sinhala-Buddhist hegemony which itself was an insult to the Sinhalese people and Buddhism. The Sinhala people were led astray by the politicians who have now shown how corrupt they have been and virtually brought the country to its knees.

What has Sinhala Only done, now more than half a century after that infamous law was enacted? Just one example of consequence that will tear any heart is the tragic actuality hundreds and hundreds of young Sinhala and Moslem women are slaving under atrocious conditions in the Arab world.

When we reckon their earnings from such wretched and deplorable circumstances and how these add up as the principal foreign exchange income for Sri Lanka and the millions the country spends on arms to contain a movement that emerged following the enactment of the Sinhala Only law, is it difficult to conclude where, how and why we have made such a horrendous mistake; worse as to why we find it hard to extricate ourselves from it?
ENDS

(Victor Karunairajan, a journalist with extensive East-West experience has had an exciting career having worked with Anglican, CSI and Catholic institutions, a Buddhist organization and a socialist government in as many as seven countries.He can be reached at victor@srilankaguardian.org ) -Sri Lanka Guardian