Course Corrections needed for consensus-building

by Shanie

"This morning of Sinhala New Year I went to the market to buy mangoes, a pineapple and kolikuttu plantains A lorry drove up Four men jumped down from the lorry. loosened the chains, The tail gate fell, and inside the lorry Lay the little pink bodies..... Their voiceless bleating Pierced the mind, which remembered Other lorries and other bodies on meathooks - Not under a tropical sun, but In the knife-sharp cold of a cemented cellar. A silly comparison, I told myself, pull yourself together And wish the butcher a happy New Year."

(April 17, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Anne Ranasinghe, who survived the Nazi holocaust, has written many poems like the one above, re-living the past and relating them to the present. She wrote this poem probably in the seventies, not long after we had celebrated the New Year in the middle of the first insurgency faced by our country forty years ago. Seeing the skinned goats being carried from the lorry to join other skinned birds and animals in the butcher’s stall had re-awakened in her the experiences of her family during the holocaust. To many in our country, in all regions, experiences of violence are sadly not merely a remembrance of the past but a living reality as well. All three of the insurgencies in our country have been militarily crushed. When the Army eliminated the leadership of the last of these insurgencies two years ago, the political leadership of the country should have learnt from the lessons of previous insurgencies and embarked on a programme of national reconciliation that sought to deal effectively with the reasons that led to that insurgency. But the political agenda has unfortunately and tragically for our country not moved in that direction.

The Sinhala and Tamil New Year is one festival that is celebrated by over 90% of our people. We refrain from using the term National New Year as suggested in a spirit of reconciliation by Somapala Gunadheera as this festival does not have the same significance and importance to one of the major communities who form our nation – the Muslims. Because of this commonality of this festival to the Sinhalese and Tamils, however, our religious leaders and the civil society should bring pressure on the political leadership to use the opportunity of the new year to usher in a new era and move away from the agenda and direction set before it by the narrow nationalists from both sides of the ethnic divide.

For the resolution of the National Question, which was the basis for beginnings of the Tamil insurgency, the government has before it the 2000 constitutional proposals presented to Parliament by the then President Chandrika Kumaratunga, which was arrived at by consensus among all the major political parties. The issue of the President’s term of office in those proposals raised by the UNP is no longer relevant. The government has also before it the proposals formulated by the All Parties Representatives Committee and its Experts Panel. Both committees were appointed by President Mahinda Rajapakse and the APRC was headed by a cabinet minister. A small minority dissented from both reports; the government’s inability to go ahead with the recommendations of the committees suggests that the government is really a prisoner of the agenda of that small minority. If the government is really interested in resolving the National Question, the government should have the courage and the foresight to formulate and present a set of constitutional proposals based on the three reports/draft bill before it; there is no need to have long drawn out talks with the TNA; such endless talks will not only be a time-buying exercise but make the final resolution of the National Question that much more difficult.

Reform of School Text Books

The Island recently serialised an essay by Tissa Jayatilaka on Nation Building. In that essay, Jayatilaka argues the case for reforming our school curriculum to inculcate in our school students the essential oneness of all the people who inhabit our country. The case for re-writing our text books has been made over the years by several scholars but it appears that here again obscurantists seem determined to prevent it. An educational psychologist once wrote:

‘You’ve got to be taught, before it’s too late, before you are six or seven or eight, to hate all the people your relatives hate. You’ve got to be carefully taught.’

That seems to be the principle that has been followed by our text book writers. Regi Siriwardena, writing nearly twenty years ago, lamented the gulf in attitudes, outlook and objectives between the Sinhala and Tamil readers. Tamil children are taught a sense of common nationhood while Sinhala children are infected with a sense of Sinhala-Buddhist dominance. He refers to a lesson in the Sinhala reader where Deepavali is referred to as a festival of the people of India as well as one celebrated in Sri Lanka by those descended from the Tamils of India. Siriwardena asks whether in a lesson on Vesak, the text-book writer would have thought of describing it as a festival celebrated by those descended from the Bengalis of India. That was twenty years ago but from what Tissa Jayatilaka writes, the position is not much different today. Siriwardena went on to state that by adopting or sanctioning a two-faced educational policy by giving Sinhala and Tamil school children different conceptions of the relation between the two communities and their place in national life, the educational authorities were promoting continuing discord, conflict and bitterness. Siriwardena’s suggestion, which is shared by Jayatilaka, is for text books to provide a new perspective on our history, culture and national life, free of an unscientific recital of myths and obsessions with invasions and wars of another age and another society (and we might add of the present age and society as well), and a recognition of the common elements that link the peoples of this country in shared experiences and mutual assimilation of elements from each other’s cultures. Such a reader would sensitise the young student towards mutual respect for the ‘other.’

Steps towards reconciliation

The government’s declared policy of teaching Tamil to Sinhala children and vice versa is to be welcomed. Though in the current context, it is not going to be easy to implement, given the shortage of qualified staff. Even the teaching of English as a link language runs into the same problem. The other issue is to have public servants and law enforcement personnel to be proficient in the language/s of the region in which they serve. A citizen should be able to transact his or her business at public counters in either Sinhala or Tamil. A start has been made in recruiting Tamil-speaking officers to the Police but much more needs to be done.

Bilingualism at public functions should be the norm, particularly in cosmopolitan areas. In this regard, it is most unfortunate that the singing of the National Anthem in Tamil has been banned at all state functions, including in state schools where the children are exclusively or predominantly Tamil-speaking. Despite initial denials that no decision was taken, this policy has been implemented in the North and East. It is difficult to think of a more backward step to forge national reconciliation. President Rajapakse himself justified such a decision, but the reason he gave for it, either through ignorance or otherwise, was factually incorrect.

It is also time now for a gradual demilitarisation of the North. The LTTE has been crushed and its leadership eliminated. It does not have any power to engage in any militant activity. Government spokespersons are the first to let international visitors know that people are now living without fear and peace exists in the country from Point Pedro to Dondra, from Colombo to Batticaloa. General Shavendra de Silva was the latest among spokespersons to say that even if the LTTE remnant, if any, had even 1% power, they would have disrupted the World Cup matches. But a terrorist threat seems to arise only when the Emergency Regulations have to be passed by Parliament or when questions are raised about the increasing militarisation of the North and East.

The need for course corrections

H M G S Palihakkara, a distinguished former diplomat and a member of the Lessons Learneed and Reconciliation Commission has recently contributed an essay on foreign policy challenges in Sri Lanka to Global Perspectives, an international journal edited by Ernest Corea and Ramesh Jaura, In that essay, Palihakkara refers to the campaign against Sri Lanka being waged by some elements of the Sri Lankan diaspora (sic) and says that there is a need to engage this diaspora and the way to do so would be both to engage with those elements of the diaspora who do not want a return to the ideology of the LTTE and also to ‘launch clearly visible and humanely responsive policies, programmes and projects to address the real concerns of the conflict victim communities’. If these actions were to be taken, Palihakkara is confident that the hostile diaspora (as opposed to the constructive diaspora) will become increasingly irrelevant and the domestic reconciliation process will advance. He says it is the duty of the individual citizen (and civil society) to pressurise the government to make course corrections towards consensus building on national issues. When we get our governance act right, then we will get our foreign policy act also right.

One word of caution, however, with regard to engaging the diaspora. The government must not make use of nondescript persons from the diaspora. Unless they enjoy credibility within the Sri Lankan expatriate community, any such engagement is doomed to failure. Professional diplomats in our overseas Missions have been and are sensitive to the need to engage only with thinking non-sectarian Sri Lankan expatriates. Meddling political appointees can only queer the pitch.

The need, on the occasion of this Sinhala and Tamil New Year, is, as Palihakkara points out, to make course corrections so that we move towards consensus-building on national issues. Only governance based on consensus, tolerance and justice can take the country forward. We need to discard all other agendas.