| by Victor Cherubim
( March 29, 2013, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) People with a sense of pride in one’s nation of birth will understand that nobody respects a refugee, a recluse or a recalcitrant. Identity is an essence of belonging, either to a nation, a culture or a civilisation. This is a mark of acceptance. This is also quite natural besides; it is quite a human condition. Every creature on the planet has a home, a way of living, a distinguishing characteristic of existence. Yet today due to pressures of conformity, of changing circumstances, of pace of life and perhaps, disengagement with what makes us who we are, or what makes us share this identity, or geopolitics, we have in some ways lost our identity.
What is our identity?
“We are complex creatures whose identities include gender, religion, race, age, geographical orientation and ethnic or cultural identification”. We may be Sri Lankans living in Sri Lanka or Sri Lankans living around the world, currently living multicultural lives in the 21st century. Maintaining our cultural and religious values in a changing and multi cultural and multi religious world requires dignity, awareness and effort. We cannot achieve anything without Identity.
When we list the values, beliefs and ideas present in our Buddhist or Hindu culture and then we list how we think those values developed, we see a pattern. Add another category to our list of values, to explore how our current values conflict with the values of the world outside.
We see a different kaleidoscope, a changing pattern.
What is the changing pattern of the world?
According to Human Rights activists: ”Sri Lanka is faced with two worsening and inter-connected governance crises. The dismantling of the independent judiciary and the checks and balances on the power of the executive and the military. Both crises have deepened with the government’s purported refusal to comply with the HMC’s March 2012 resolution on reconciliation and accountability.”
According to many people in Sri Lanka, the perception is “we often hear people talking about Human Rights, but we never really know what they mean.” According to our way of life, our Buddhist principles and our culture, we have come out of a near thirty year intolerable war and we need time to put our house in order, with so much left undone. To allow our lives to be controlled by the outside world, with way of governance alien to our customs and traditions, will neither change much from the wounds of war, or accelerate our return to our traditional and truly democratic way of life.
The divergence of understanding
It is abundantly clear that there is a provocation to bring Sri Lanka to account, perhaps to use a small nation to teach others a lesson or two. For once our politicians have come to realise that they are running on parallel lines of communication, with the world at large.
We see this in the way we presented our case at Geneva. We had our Foreign External Office
sending variable message systems (VSM’s) to our Permanent Delegation in Geneva. We had reports in the media that Sri Lanka will decide whether it will decide to call for a vote on the procedural resolution brought by the United States. Hardly did they or we realise that we were on the dock, unable being a non member of this august body to call for anything.
We are to blame for allowing our state of affairs. As and until we put our house in order, we can expect the world to treat us as a “third class nation,” and manipulate us in whatever way they want. We went to showcase Sri Lanka to the world. But, we behaved like “mechanics” rather than as “architects” of our destiny.
As long as we behave like “mechanics” finding tactics to win votes rather than using diplomacy to be our weapon to beat our adversaries in their game of provocation, by never playing our trump card, we can continue to expect to be treated as “mechanics.”
The race is on
Let us take our lesson from the competition of sport. The 159 Boat Race between Oxford and Cambridge crews will be taking place on Sunday March 31, 2013. Cambridge leads the overall series by 81 wins to 76 with the sides having drawn, in a dead heat once in the 1800’s.
The first boat race took place in 1829 after Cambridge challenged Oxford to a race on the Thames.
Let Sri Lanka, Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims, with one voice, challenge the rest of the world and show that we have identity, that we are not a third class nation, that we have completed the first lap of the race with well needed development and we are going into the final strait with our might, to show our Buddhist values of reconciliation to the world with dignity and humility. The competition is on.
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