Natural Diversity

| by Gajalakshmi Paramasivam

( May 28, 2012, Melbourne, Sri Lanka Guardian) Through my own experience here in Australia, I feel that I am becoming more and more appreciative of our natural powers to remain independent by remaining naturally different. Diversity when practiced genuinely, leads to independence and integration. Without independence there can be no integration.

Custodians of Power who are not natural in their seats, tend to suppress diversity and promote assimilation. Similarly, those who desire the benefits in the custody of those in whom they do not have faith. One who is self sufficient, would sacrifice earned benefits and forego earned opportunities to prevent assimilation. That which is not based on faith, needs to be through conscious application of discriminative thinking on the basis of the substance of the matter. Hence Laws, Policies and Principles that regulate our inputs and distribution of outputs.

Money rich countries tend to be high users of the calculated paths and People rich countries tend to be high on the use of faith based paths. The former are more visible than the latter. This does not mean that they are more independent than the latter. The Tamil Tigers belonged to the latter group becoming the former once they had power. This confirms growth faster than could be sustained by their faith.

Sri Lanka is a People rich country whilst Australia relative to Sri Lanka, is more Money rich. Australians relative to Sri Lankans demonstrate greater respect for the freedom of the individual and hence for the values of Diversity. Sri Lankans on the other hand tend to be driven by their faith and any expression of diversity tends to be natural rather than calculated. There is no visible reward in Sri Lanka for claims of diversity. It’s usually punishment if one crosses the path of extremists on the other side.

In every family and institutional Governance also, there is often conflict between Diversity and Uniformity. Unless we have exercised or sacrificed our earned benefits to uphold diversity in our units where we are the government, we would fail at the national and international level to realize natural diversity. We would therefore need to consciously apply the principles as per our position duties.

Dr. Laksiri Fernando in his Sri Lanka Guardian article ‘Three Years on, Reconciliation is getting too late’ , states ‘When the war against terrorism was launched, there were two main strands of people within the government and outside who supported that effort. First were the ‘rationalists’ who considered terrorism as a menace and its defeat as legitimate by the constitution and by all means of civilized thinking i.e. liberal, democratic etc. Second, obviously were the Sinhalese ‘extremists’ who always equated terrorism with Tamil aspirations and wanted to defeat the LTTE as part of subjugation of the Tamils by the majority Sinhalese.’

As per the laws of Nature there are two sides to everything physical. When we consciously recognize the ‘other’ side – we confirm independence. Hence if the rationalists and the extremists existed in relation to the Sri Lankan war, so did their Opposite. As per the above statements , on the ‘other’ side - are those who were against the war against alleged terrorism. Most of them were Tamils because we intuitively knew that it would result in serious loss to the Tamil Community. Loss of humans is a greater loss to faith driven groups than to money driven groups.

They are also of two groups – the rationalists who sought to express themselves through the Administrative and Judicial paths and the extremists who sought the ‘eye for an eye’ path. Natural separations happen when the power of the extremists is greater than the power of the rationalists. When this happens there is no need for Reconciliation. It has to be recognized as natural Devolution. A government that values this would benefit the whole nation. A Government that pays lip-service to Reconciliation would lose many rationalists to the extremists and therefore to assimilation.

At Community and group levels too – if we recognize natural diversity and therefore devolution, we would truly be multicultural. Those of us who are not able to respect and value the independence of others, need to prevent ourselves from exercising powers beyond our official authority, but merely observe for our individual purposes. That I believe would promote Peace and Diversity – which is the more Natural way for Sri Lankans driven my lateral majority power. Reconciliation is needed by the ‘rationalists’ driven by the vertical intellectual power, who directly influence global powers – with and/or without official positions. Those with official positions are more apparent whilst those without official positions contribute directly to the core powers that influence Global Peace.