Image courtesy Daily News

Forty years ago this week, at the auspicious time of 12:34 p.m. at the Navarangahala on 22^nd May 1972, a new constitution was signed into law, creating the Republic of Sri Lanka. This was the first time in the history of the island that the republican form of state was established, discounting the period under which parts of the littoral were controlled by the Dutch East India Company during the time the Netherlands were a confederated republic. Given that the political history of the island spans over two millennia from its mytho-historical origins, four decades might not seem like a long time. But looking back to 1970-72, the country and the world in which the first republican constitution was created seems very different from the present, although the continuing resonance of many of the dominant themes of that era are still felt in today’s Sri Lanka.

In the Third World, it was the epoch of anti-colonialism and nationalism, of non-alignment and nationalisation. Many still regarded Marxism-Leninism seriously as a viable prescription for the political and economic organisation of newly independent states, and revolution as the means and method of social change. Autochthony and autarky were the mood music of the time. Both of Sri Lanka’s two republican constitutions were created in the 1970s: the decade, as some satirists have called it, that sanity forgot. It is one of the more benign ironies of our modern constitutional history that while the socialist progenitors of the 1972 constitution were content to describe their handiwork as simply the Republic of Sri Lanka, it is J.R. Jayewardene who added two ideological adjectives to the official name of the country in 1978, although the extent to which his Bonapartist constitution is either democratic or socialist is at least debatable.

The first four decades of the life of the republic has been nothing if not eventful, experiencing insurrectionary and secessionist challenges to its mainstream political system from without, and elective authoritarianism and institutional decay from within. Since 2009, the month of May also marks another significant event: the conclusion for the foreseeable future of the military phase of Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict. In the last three years, there has been extensive debate about what is and what ought to be Sri Lanka’s post-war constitutional, political and societal dispensation. While the republican form is largely taken for granted in these debates – although perhaps it should not be, given the monarchical presidentialism that dominates the institutional architecture and political culture of the Sri Lankan state – it is the contestation over ideas closely associated with republicanism that recalls many of the concerns which animated the process of constitutional change forty years ago: sovereignty, democracy, citizenship, pluralism, nationalism, secularism, and what ought to be the constitutional form of the polity that preserves its unity in diversity.

A review of the particular ways in which those constitutional questions were dealt with at the historic moment of the formation of the republic would therefore seem to have some value as we engage in the post-war constitutional debate. I do not however intend to provide a comprehensive treatment of the 1972 constitution, or a descriptive account of the proceedings in the Constituent Assembly in 1970-72 for, being relatively recent, much of this history is generally well known. I intend instead to focus in this essay on one of the main issues that remains important in the present: the process by which constitutional change was effected in 1970-72, and the implications the choice of that particular process has had in the constitutional and political development of the republic since. It is of course an issue that has topical relevance, as we engage with the modalities and processes, including the proposed Parliamentary Select Committee, by which a new constitutional settlement is to be discussed and agreed in post-war Sri Lanka.

The idea that Ceylon should become a republic, and sever the constitutional links that had survived the grant of independence as a dominion in 1948, had been gestating for some time before the 1970 general election. It was a consistent demand of the Old Left from before 1948, and after the populist-nationalist watershed of 1956, S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike had appointed a Joint Select Committee of Parliament to consider ways of revising the constitution which included the establishment of a republic. Although centre-left nationalists of SLFP-led coalitions did hold power between 1956 and 1965 (except for a brief interregnum in 1960), these administrations were so crisis-ridden that constitutional reform could not become a priority. But the constitutional model to which we were gravitating from 1956 onwards – that of the republic within the Commonwealth established by an elected Constituent Assembly – had already been founded by India in 1950. The alliance of the Old Left with the SLFP 1964 onwards, in government (1964-65) and in opposition (1965-70), both prioritised constitutional reform and made the likelihood of a democratic mandate for creating a republic a realistic possibility.

It is clear that by the late 1960s the republican ideal had caught the imagination of the public. This is apparent, firstly, from the fact that the UNP-led National Government tried to seize the initiative from the centre-left opposition on this issue by appointing a Joint Select Committee to revise the constitution, and secondly by the fact that even the Federal Party was clearly in favour of a republic, provided that it provided for federal autonomy for the north and east. However, beyond differing ideological visions of the future republic, what divided the UNP and the centre-left opposition in the second half of the 1960s was the preferred method or process by which fundamental change could be effected to the Soulbury constitution. Could the latter be repealed and replaced with a republican constitution according to its own amendment procedure, as the UNP argued, or could a republic be established only by recourse to a revolutionary or extra-legal procedure, as the centre-left coalition argued, because elements of the Soulbury constitution were understood to be absolutely unamendable?

This political divide refracted a genuine theoretical dilemma that confronted constitutional lawyers at the time. The legal quandary arose in the context of certain observations about the scope and content of Section 29 of the Soulbury constitution made by British judges in the Privy Council in several cases of the 1960s, in which it was suggested that the anti-discrimination provision was absolutely unamendable, even by a two-thirds majority. The Privy Council in London was then the final court of appeal for Ceylon, and as such, the final adjudicator of constitutional questions under the Soulbury constitution. Section 29 was the pivotal minority protection mechanism of the Soulbury constitution, which constitutionally restricted the Parliament of Ceylon from enacting legislation having the effect of discriminating against any ethnic or religious community. Section 29 also laid down the procedure for constitutional amendment, for which it established essentially three requirements: a two-thirds majority in the House of Representatives; a simple majority in the Senate; and a certificate from the Speaker that the requisite two-thirds had been obtained in the passage of the amendment bill.

In the August 1968 House of Representatives debate on the motion to reappoint the Joint Select Committee on the Revision of the Constitution, the two positions on this matter were clearly enunciated by Dr Colvin R. de Silva for the opposition (in typically florid fashion), and by the Minister of State J.R. Jayewardene for the government (in characteristically sphinx-like interventions). Mr Jayewardene’s position was that notwithstanding the Privy Council’s views, the wording of Section 29 (4) was clear to the effect that any part or all of the constitution was amendable by the Ceylon Parliament, provided the procedural requirement of the two-thirds majority was obtained. Dr de Silva adverted to the same Privy Council cases in making his argument that the Parliament of Ceylon did not have the power to amend certain parts of the constitution, specifically the anti-discrimination provision in Section 29 (2). He stated that while he did not approve of the implications of the Privy Council judgments in terms of Ceylon’s sovereignty and independence, he had no choice but to agree that the Privy Council’s observations to the effect that Section 29 (2) was unamendable reflected the correct legal position.

There were two extensions to this argument: firstly, that the Parliament of Ceylon, and therefore Ceylon itself, was not sovereign under the Soulbury constitution; and secondly, that if an independent and sovereign republic were to be established, it would have to be done by a process other than the procedure laid out in the Soulbury constitution (in other words, a process that would be technically illegal). It would be only through a process that was completely divorced from the fetters of the Soulbury constitution and of its amendment procedure that the people of Ceylon would be able to exercise their sovereignty in enacting a truly independent republic. Although Dr de Silva’s view had the support of eminent legal academics like Dr C.F. Amerasinghe at the time, there are at least three reasons, in addition to the plain meaning of Section 29 (4) relied upon by Jayewardene, why his view could be argued to be erroneous, or at the very least, an overstatement of the problem.

Firstly, all of the Privy Council’s comments which were cited in support of this argument were obiter dicta, i.e., the part of the judicial decision that is non-biding because it does not directly relate to the main issues on which the decision turned. There was no reason therefore to treat these observations as cast in stone. Dr de Silva’s excessive emphasis on them thus raises questions as to whether he was doing so because it helped to further his broader argument in favour of the need for an extra-legal process to create the future republic.

Secondly, given Sir Ivor Jennings’s involvement in the drafting of the Soulbury constitution and specifically Section 29, it is very clear that this provision was intended to only impose a procedural restriction in the form of the two-thirds requirement on Parliament’s legislative power, and not an absolute or substantive restriction. If the procedural requirement imposed by the higher law, the constitution, was met, Parliament could effect any change it wished on the constitution, including Section 29. There was thus no provision that was absolutely protected from change, contrary to the obiter remarks of the Privy Council.

There is no doubt from Jennings’ writings on the Soulbury constitution that this is what was intended in the formulation of Section 29, but it does require some background explanation. One of Jennings’ major contributions to Commonwealth constitutional law and theory during the mid-twentieth century is what is known as the doctrine of ‘manner and form’ entrenchment. This holds, contrary to the orthodox doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty associated with A.V. Dicey in the context of the unwritten British constitution, that the substantive competence of a Parliament is not affected by procedural limitations placed by a written constitution on the manner and form in which it should exercise its legislative power. Thus for example, the requirement in Section 29 (4) that a two-thirds majority was required for constitutional amendments, and that the Speaker should certify that such a majority has been obtained, are procedural requirements, setting out the manner and form in which the legislative power of Parliament should be exercised in amending the constitution. According to Jennings’ theory, this did not affect the substantive competence of the Ceylon Parliament to amend the Soulbury constitution, provided the procedural requirements were met.

So two types of legislation, i.e., laws that could have the effect of communal or religious discrimination, and laws to amend the constitution, were procedurally but not absolutely entrenched under the Soulbury constitution. The Privy Council’s suggestion – enthusiastically seized upon by Dr de Silva because it strengthened his argument in favour of the need for a constitutional revolution – that there were parts of the constitution that were absolutely unamendable in perpetuity therefore was clearly made in ignorance of Jennings’ theory, and the influence of that theory on the formulation of Section 29.

Thirdly, the extension of the Diceyan view of unfettered parliamentary sovereignty to countries with a written constitution intended to operate as a law higher than and binding on the legislature, could imply that such legislatures were legally not sovereign, and critically, that countries with such constitutional restrictions on the legal competence of their legislatures were not really sovereign. This unfortunate and theoretically incorrect equation of parliamentary sovereignty with legal independence was the approach that was once again instrumentally seized upon by Dr de Silva in his role as the principal spokesman for the republican centre-left of the 1960s. If this were true, then it leads to the absurd conclusion that no country subscribing to the principle of constitutional (rather than parliamentary) supremacy could be said to independent, including the former British colonies of the United States and India, as well as the dominions of Australia and Canada. To this day in Sri Lankan constitutional debates, we see this conception of sovereignty and independence asserting itself against the principle of constitutional supremacy. The fetishisation of centralisation that constituted part of the justification for the design of the National State Assembly in the 1972 constitution (continued in the 1978 constitution in other ways), and in its incarnation as the unitary state, for the fateful rejection of the Federal Party’s constitutional demands in the Constituent Assembly, flowed from this injurious theoretical confusion.

On a personal note, it was also deeply ironic that an individual who had, among other things, registered his aversion to imperialism by refusing the otherwise richly deserved professional accolade of Queen’s Counsel throughout his career, should be the champion of a constitutional doctrine that was so quintessentially British as the sovereignty of Parliament. And indeed, the attraction of the Diceyan conception of parliamentary sovereignty as conterminous with sovereign independence is pervasive within the Sri Lankan legal community, and especially strong among Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist defenders of the unitary state. This is explicable to the extent that the unitary state is parasitic upon parliamentary sovereignty, but as my colleague Rohan Edrisinha has shown in his critique of the Sinhala Commission’s constitutional analyses and prescriptions, it is a peculiar paradox that such paragons of indigenous authenticity should be so dependent on the old imperial oppressor for their constitutional arguments.

I find it quite impossible to believe that Dr de Silva was acting in ignorance when he took up these positions in the constitutional debates of the 1960s. He was too good a lawyer, too broad an intellect, had too much time between 1964 and 1970, and in the close company of too many scholarly colleagues – in particular, Dr N.M. Perera, whose postdoctoral work had been on comparative parliamentary democracy – to have been unaware of the issues I have raised above. To me, therefore, it suggests that he was being at least partly disingenuous on the question of the constitutional procedure to be adopted for the future establishment of the republic, playing up the Privy Council cases in order to not merely strengthen the argument that the Soulbury constitution was a foreign imposition that the Ceylonese were saddled with forever, but also to remind the public that the highest judicial authority of Ceylon was a foreign court, associated with the person of a foreign monarch, that continued to limit our sovereignty.

In Dr de Silva we had a constitution-maker who combined the skills and disposition of the criminal defence advocate with a Trotskyite commitment to revolutionary constitutional change. Projected onto the opposition coalition in the run up to the 1970 general election, it is this combination of professional and ideological dispositions that led to the formation of a dominant interpretative position on the process of constitutional change, that would once put into practice in 1970-72, invite major theoretical questions about the legality and legitimacy of the republican constitutional order in the years to come.

Thus it was that once the United Front had won 77% of parliamentary seats (but, it is pertinent to recall, only 49% of votes) in the 1970 general election that the Constituent Assembly process was established and operated. The UF government therefore had the necessary parliamentary majority with which to amend the constitution legally in terms of the Soulbury constitution, but expressly chose not to do so. The procedure for constitutional amendment was deliberately ignored to signify ‘a complete break with the past.’ It was claimed that the source of authority for the new constitution was the people of Sri Lanka, deriving from the democratic mandate of the 1970 general election.

The symbolism aside, this argument makes no sense whatsoever from a constitutional perspective. How could a new republican constitution that repealed and replaced the granted constitution be held to be anything less than what it is merely because the existing legal procedure was followed in its enactment? On the contrary, the deliberate adoption of an illegal procedure for the foundation of the republic, when there was no pressing necessity for it, created an insalubrious precedent that may be used in the future for less defensible ends than what occurred in 1970-72. It was a meretricious indulgence of wholly figurative anti-imperialist ideological sentiments that would, by rupturing legal continuity, have grave consequences for the future Sri Lankan republic, without at the same time following the normative requirements of inclusivity and consensus that would have added through political legitimacy what was lost by procedural illegality.

While the Indian Constituent Assembly served as the inspiration for Ceylonese republican revolutionaries in the Soulbury era, none of the former’s scrupulous attention to widest possible representation and rigorously negotiated consensus seem to have registered with the latter. Moreover, while the Indian experience was regarded as a great revolutionary model of constitution-making, an examination of the detailed mechanics of how that body was established from the failure of the Cabinet Mission Plan onwards reveals that it was less literally ‘revolutionary’ than widely understood by Ceylonese admirers. As has been demonstrated in many other ways since, the Nehruvian political elite was more adept and relaxed in the dynamics of negotiation and the compromises of liberal democratic politics than what was the suggested by the slogans of its nationalist rhetoric, which our nationalists (from either side of the ethnic divide) have always taken rather too literally for the good of Sri Lanka’s pluralist democracy.

Concretely and immediately, the deliberate illegality of the Constituent Assembly process served to strengthen perceptions of the illegitimacy of its creature, the 1972 constitution, on both democratic and pluralist grounds. The UF’s two-thirds parliamentary majority was the product of the first-past-the-post electoral system then in operation, which enabled the votes of less than half of the electorate to be reflected in such disproportionate parliamentary representation. The question that naturally arose was: can a party that had obtained the support of only 49% of the country in terms of total votes, purport to speak for the entire country, in all its diversity, in the making of a constitution for a new republic? This aspect of its mandate was especially problematic for a government that would in the constitution-making process go on to use its overwhelming parliamentary majority to settle every question; that is, to adopt wholly majoritarian justifications for having its own way rather than inclusive, consultative, deliberative and consensual decision-making procedures in the negotiation of the content of the future constitution. This question would have arisen with lesser force had the UF followed the amendment procedure of the Soulbury constitution, because its parliamentary majority would then have been defensible on the grounds of constitutionality.

The illegal procedure also compounded the complete failure of the Constituent Assembly to sustain the support of the vast majority of Sri Lankan Tamils to the new republic by the contempt with which it treated the demand for autonomy. Instead the Constituent Assembly drafted a constitution that seemed to only reflect the constitutional worldview of the Sinhala-Buddhist majority, in terms of the ‘foremost place’ for Buddhism, the privileged constitutional status for Sinhala, and of course the unitary state that was instantiated in both structural and symbolic terms. It thus added to the illegitimacy of the entire post-republican constitutional order from the perspective of a plural polity, an argument that has been made by Tamil nationalist and especially Tamil separatist voices with more validity than should be the case. The combination of illegality and majoritarianism of the Constituent Assembly created the theoretical space for Tamil nationalists to assert a separate sovereignty on the basis of their lack of consent to the republican constitutional order. An argument made first and most completely by M. Tiruchelvam Q.C., in the Amirthalingam Trial-at-Bar in 1976, and in more demotic terms in the Vaddukoddai Resolution of the same year, this continues to reverberate, making invocations of popular sovereignty and democratic mandates a double-edged sword for Sri Lankan governments even today. While one can politically disagree with the separatist implications of such arguments, it is much more difficult as a matter of legal theory to reject their validity.

Indeed, it was not merely in relation to the loyalty of the Tamils to the new republic that the unadulterated majoritarianism of the 1970-72 constitution-making process proved problematic. It gave grounds for the UNP to change the constitution at the next available opportunity on the basis of the claim that the 1972 constitution only reflected the views of those who had voted for the UF in the 1970 general election. While it is likely that the horrors of the 1978 constitution might have occurred regardless, it is inescapable that the precedent for unbridled majoritarianism and governmental unilateralism in constitution-making was established when Sri Lanka became a republic in 1970-72: a point that present-day hagiographers of the 1972 constitution like Tissa Vitharana would do well to keep in mind. Quite clearly, therefore, the form of the 1970-72 process emerges as a singularly inappropriate way by which to construct a durable democratic republic with strong social foundations in our plural polity; an argument to which the past four decades of instability and extra-institutional violence bears sad testimony.

My purpose in raising these issues is neither historical revisionism nor the expression of some reactionary nostalgia for the dominion constitution, although I do believe that from the perspective of liberal democratic values, the Soulbury constitution succeeded better than either of the two republican constitutions that have been the result of much vaunted ‘home grown’ processes. I think that by the late 1960s the democratic aspiration for the establishment of a Sri Lankan republic was exceedingly clear and probably inexorable. There was thus no reason why an extra-constitutional process was necessary, except for the sheer symbolism of the act, and even less reason for the crude majoritarianism that characterised it. Based on the questionable rationales I have described above, the process that was chosen for the creation of the republic was driven, not only by majoritarian calculations, but also by excessive partisanship. The Old Left, once the exemplar of multi-ethnic accommodation on the basis of the Marxist approach to nations and nationalities, failed to alleviate the Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism of its SLFP ally, and were at one with the SLFP’s authoritarianism in its commitment to centralisation.

These problematic choices with regard to process forty years ago have given rise to enduring questions about the nature, legality and legitimacy of the Sri Lankan republic that were entirely avoidable. As the Indian Constituent Assembly and constitution had shown, legitimacy is the measure of both revolutionary constitution-making as well as republican constitutionalism. By that standard, the Sri Lankan Constituent Assembly and 1972 constitution were an abject failure, and the Sri Lankan republic continues to suffer the consequences.

Are we capable of learning the lessons of the past in respect of pluralism and tolerance, negotiation and compromise, constitutionality and restraint, as we re-engage in a process of constitutional change in post-war Sri Lanka? We shall soon be able to see in the Parliamentary Select Committee.

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Note: The Sri Lankan Republic at 40: Reflections on Constitutional History, Theory and Practice, an edited collection of critical and inter-disciplinary essays by leading Sri Lankan and international scholars, marking the 40^th anniversary of the enactment of the 1972 constitution and the establishment of the Sri Lankan republic, will be published by the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA), later this year.

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Long Reads brings to Groundviews long-form journalism found in publications such as Foreign Policy, The New Yorker and the New York Times. This section, inspired by Longreads, offers more in-depth deliberation on key issues covered on Groundviews

• BUDGET OR NO BUDGET? IT IS A CONSTITUTIONAL QUESTION
• Constitutional Reforms in Sri Lanka: What was asked for, What was promised and What is going to be offered?
• Reforming the Constitutional Council
• Deliberative Democracy and the Sri Lankan Parliamentary Committee System
• The Island Abstains

First interviewed in 2010, Dr. Farzana Haniffa appears again on Groundviews to talk about the Citizens’ Commission on the Expulsion of Muslims from the Northern Province by the LTTE. As the Commission’s website notes, in October 1990, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) expelled the entire Muslim population of the Northern Province of Sri Lanka. Within a period of 48 hours the LTTE systematically chased out close to 75,000 Muslims residing in the districts of Kilinochchi Mulaitiwu, Jaffna, Mannar and parts of Vavuniya.

The Quest for Redemption: The Story of the Northern Muslims is the report by the Commission, release late 2011 and available for purchase online. As one of the Commissioner’s, Dr. Haniffa justifies why the Commission and its findings are an invaluable record of a chapter in Sri Lanka’s history that is often undervalued and glossed over. We talk about how the publication of the report has served to heighten interest over the complex dynamics regarding the Northern Muslims, and how the communities the Commission interacted with are also grateful for what in their minds is the first accurate historical record of what they underwent.

In a submission made to the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) by Dr. Farzana Haniffa in November 2010, the plight of the Northern Muslims was clearly flagged,

In summary then the Northern Muslims feel marginalised by the fact that the state has no policy on protracted displacement, no public acknoweldgement of the old IDPS and their needs, no cash grants for resettlement assistance, no commitment to assist with housing, no provision to address damage to property due to twenty years of neglect due to no fault of their own, no provision to address damage to social networks due to the conflict and the expulsion, no assistance with livelihoods, no plans for compensation. The northern Muslims are also distressed by the fact that they maybe absent from the government’s development plans for the North. They fear that they census and the local authorities bill may marginalise them by not taking into account the virtual limbo in which many of them currently live.

Dr. Haniffa notes that conditions have improved since 2010, and that the Government has unofficially given the assurance that protracted internal displacement would be addressed over 2012. She also goes into the complexities of return (“going back has not been easy” she categorically notes), the perception of the Northern Muslims by host communities and the tensions therein, the challenge of returning to a Peninsula that has still major challenges of infrastructure and the issue of co-habitation after twenty years of absence.

Going beyond the specific concerns regarding the Northern Muslims, Dr. Haniffa also critiques Muslim party politics in Sri Lanka post-independence, and how the real concerns over those evicted were hostage to the electoral desires and design of mainstream Muslim political parties. Towards the end, Dr. Haniffa notes that the process of documentation is still on-going, and that they are now working on getting photographs of the eviction from the families who have them, with a view to digitising them and placing them on the web.

Groundviews has also published three key articles dealing with the Commission.

• The Citizens’ Commission on the Expulsion of the Muslims from the Northern Province by the LTTE in October 1990 by Dr. Farzana Haniffa
• Some observations on the Final Report of the Commission on the Expulsion of Muslims from the Northern Province by the LTTE in October 1990 by Manouri Muttetuwegama
• A Commissioner’s Perspective: Citizens’ Commission on the Expulsion of Muslims from the Northern Province by the LTTE by Chulani Kodikara

• The Muslim question and resettlement of Muslim IDPs in post-war Sri Lanka: Two comprehensive interviews
• A Commissioner’s Perspective: Citizens’ Commission on the Expulsion of Muslims from the Northern Province by the LTTE
• Citizen’s Commission: Expulsion of the Northern Muslims by the LTTE in October 1990
• The Citizens’ Commission on the Expulsion of the Muslims from the Northern Province by the LTTE in October 1990
• LLRC submission: The Citizens’ Commission on the Expulsion of Muslims from the North by the LTTE in October 1990

I’m a scientist by training and as such, generally avoid public debate, which tends to be dominated by charisma rather than fact. Nevertheless, given the strongly homophobic atmosphere in Sri Lanka two weeks away from what Bill Clinton declared is gay-pride month (my embassy informs me that “Homosexual acts are illegal in Sri Lanka”), I thought it pertinent to share some inconvenient truths from the little-known, less-regarded realm of academic research. Make of them what you will.

1. We’re a lot gayer than we think

The two papers I’d like to share are both loosely to do with sexuality in Sri Lanka. The first is a study of sexual health in tea-plantation populations (Jayasekara et al, 2011) and the second is a detailed study of beach boys and the supposed endemic sexual exploitation of children (Miller, 2011). The aims of these two studies are divergent, focus on two distinct cultures (tea workers and beach boys) and set about proving two different points, but they present data that overlap to an appreciable degree.

Both studies found that among men, first sexual encounters occur as early as at age 12, and the vast majority of those interviewed have had gay sex at least once (86% of tea-estate men and 82% of ‘beach boys’). It seems that (at least) a single gay experience is, by definition, the norm amongst rural Sri Lankan men. The majority of Sri Lankan men are also, then, eligible for imprisonment. I find it intriguing then, that we’re so homophobic. Logically I see two options—we can lock up a substantial proportion of tea-estate workers or admit that the country’s homophobia-augmentation law is just slightly daft.

2. Our bigotry might not be where we expect it

Some unexpected findings of Miller (2011) are that (1) the tendency to conflate homosexuality and pedophilia is best reflected in the activities of child-protection NGOs, which happily lump pedophiles, perverts and homosexuals into a single “deviant” category; (2) Religious charities, too, often try to ‘rehabilitate’ former prostitutes and (sometimes happily married) men to ‘cure’ their deviant traits; and (3) Oftentimes it is sexual health charities trying to lower the incidence of HIV that perpetuate the myths that homosexuality leads to AIDS, and that “if you have AIDS it’s entirely your fault”.

It seems though, that while rural Sri Lanka is happy and gay (pun absolutely intended), it is we urban folk who enjoy sitting at home and basking in our self-righteous bigotry. There really is a wealth of (sometimes rather frightening) information in Miller’s (2011) paper that I couldn’t hope to summarise. I can only encourage my readers to find it themselves.

3. We’re here, we’re queer, and you wouldn’t have guessed it, would you?

As far as I’m aware, I haven’t even a gay friend. I mean I might have—I just haven’t bothered to quiz them all on their sexuality. In fact, I worry about the relative extravagance of the approach of gay activism. The received wisdom seems to be that the way forward at gay-pride rallies is to make as profligate a display as possible about sexuality. Given the choice between the Stephen Fry and Gok Wan models of public perception, it seems to me that gay rallies have chosen the latter. I cannot identify with this.

The problem with the public perception of homosexuality is that in it, gay people are in some way “different”, deviations from the norm. The metaphorical schoolyard bully refers to gay people as poofs, queer, camp, fags, fairies, pixies and a litany of other pejoratives. A question I must ask: is dressing up is assless chaps, leather tights, balls and chains, fairy costumes and thongs before dancing on the street in a shower of glitter… is this helping the schoolyard bully’s case or not? Is this aiding the perception that gay people are “different” or not? In fact, what exactly does it do to further the cause? I don’t have an answer to that last question, which is why I ask it.

Here’s one strategy. Given that at a gay-pride rally the public expects a spectacle of weird, wonderful and rather confronting things, a powerful statement would be made if the next gay-pride rally consisted entirely of participants wearing what they wore to work yesterday. “But how would people know what the rally is even about?” I’m often asked. Exactly. We ought to stop thinking about gay people as glitter bugs and start thinking about them as doctors, engineers, coal miners, hairdressers, politicians, teachers, police officers, pilots, waiters, soldiers and people of every other occupation.

There’s an important distinction between being comfortable with ones sexuality and being overt about it. Most people, heterosexual or not, are uncomfortable with overt sexuality for the same reasons they don’t want their children watching pornography or teenage girls getting boob jobs. Parents ought to be able to look at every participant in a gay pride rally and think to themselves, “I’d quite like that man/woman to be my child’s babysitter, school teacher, gym instructor or cub-scout leader. (S)he’s just like me.”

• A homophobic Editorial: Professional negligence or genuine belief?
• Speak for yourself
• Women on Top: Sexuality and rights in Sri Lanka
• Celebrating a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and questioning Sri Lanka
• In conversation with Prof. Harendra De Silva

[Editors note: Sanjay Senanayake in a comment below raises a number of concerns regarding inflammatory statements made by Rev. Dambara Amila Thero in the past, which invariably inform the appreciation of the interview below. Sanjay also alleges that the thero had in the past assaulted journalists from Young Asia Television, which produced this video. We have asked them for a response.]

When first put online by Young Asia Television after it was broadcast on Sri Lankan TV, Groundviews requested the producers to sub-title this video in English to make more widely accessible what Rev. Dambara Amila Thero has to say about the practice of the Dhamma in Sri Lanka today, his views on political Buddhism and religious co-existence in Sri Lanka.

What he says is particularly important and resonant in light of the outrageous violence spearheaded by the Chief Prelate of the Dambulla temple a few weeks ago.

This interview is essential viewing for those who expressed their condemnation over the violence in Dambulla, and refreshing take on the Dhamma over what is today the popular fashion of publicly worshipping the Buddha to bestow blessings on even the most heinous of deeds and men. At around 18 minutes into the interview, Rev. Dambara Amila Thero also supports religious co-existence and comes out strongly against religious extremism – noting that anyone who is such, is not really a Buddhist.

• Not In Our Name: Against religious extremism in Sri Lanka
• Fake video and lies: The strange case of Dambulla’s Inamaluwe Sumangala thero
• The middle finger to the middle-path in Sri Lanka
• The transformation of Buddhism in Sri Lanka
• Photo essay: Freedom, Religion, and Dambulla

Original photograph REUTERS/Damir Sagolj

It is always a curious and odd little matter, to witness how even Buddhists become so obsessively attached to ‘sacred’ lands and in protecting them, commit acts seemingly prompted by hatred, delusion and ill-will.

Ideally, lands should not become ‘sacred’ for simple reasons. The Buddha, in attacking the rigid and unethical caste-system during his time, placed great stress on the importance of deeds or action. That was why it was said (in the Vasala sutta) that one did not become a Brahman (or an outcast) by birth, but by deed. That wonderful message ought to have taught us a very valuable lesson, which, to rephrase the Buddha, could be stated as follows: that a land becomes a ‘sacred’ (or Buddhist) land not by anything else but only by the words and deeds of those inhabiting that land. Even a place of religious worship would lose its sacredness if, in the guise of religion, all manner of nefarious activities are carried out therein. In such cases, your virtuous neighbour’s backyard becomes more sacred than the ‘sacred’ land or place of worship.

However, these are not ideal times and ideal societies. Laws and regulations can be enacted empowering ministers and other officials to declare a particular territorial area a sacred land. And of course, this is not a practice limited to Buddhists alone. But when mob violence is seen to be propagated, as was done in Dambulla on the 20th of April – when a number of Buddhist monks and laymen stormed a mosque in Dambulla and demanded the dismantling of that mosque – we know, very well, that something is not quite right; not only in the ‘sacred’ land of Dambulla, but also in this supposedly Buddhist-country.

Dambulla mob attack: some concerns

The immediate concerns arising from the unfortunate vulgarity exhibited by some Buddhist monks and their lay followers have been already highlighted. In what was said by some of the protesting monks, there are the obvious traces of violence, racism, religious extremism and that burning desire, if necessary, to cleanse the territory concerned of the ‘other’ (the ‘other’, in this case, being the follower of the Islamic religion). How this plays out politically – domestically and internationally, both against the country and against Buddhism – is easy to understand.

But there are other concerns too.

Firstly, the demeanour of such monks – who seem to be going against some of the fundamental precepts of the Dhamma, one being indriya samvara sila (morality concerning sense-restraint), which is one form of sila or morality a monk (a bhikkhu) is expected to follow – contributes greatly to the doubt and skepticism that is generated in the minds of the lay Buddhist follower today. The sangha community (or the community of Buddhist monks) has been traditionally, and principally, looked upon as a community which guides the layman in the path of the Dhamma and morality.

And given that it is the members of this community who ultimately preach and propagate the Dhamma and since they play the principal role of the ‘guardian’ of the Dhamma in the eyes of the ordinary layman (even though the politician is seen to be playing this role too), acts as were witnessed in Dambulla can have the obvious and natural effect of generating a great sense of doubt (vicikiccha) about, and ill-will (vyapada) towards all aspects concerning Buddhism, its fundamental teachings, the community of monks, etc. Doubt and ill-will are factors hindering the path to emancipation. Doubt, of course, can be eradicated through, for example, the knowledge of the Dhamma, confidence, discussion and questioning. But the question is: can a community of monks (of the Dambulla-type) be of any assistance to the layman in this regard when what one witnesses is a community of monks engaged even in, inter alia, ‘animism’? (as Dr. Laksiri Fernando put it, in ‘The government must apologize to the Muslim community’, The Island, 30 April 2012).

Secondly, viewed from a critical legal perspective, the Dambulla incident throws up significant questions about the turn to law, by which I mean a turn towards the laws contained in statutes, ordinances and the like to resolve the Dambulla-incident. Now, resolving a dispute through the law is acceptable and if all parties agree to respect the verdict, the legal-approach naturally turns into a useful mode of dispute resolution. It will soften tensions, calm your nerves.

But this legal-turn has its weaknesses too. By reducing this entire problem to a simple legal dispute, which the law books and laws will now resolve and one which then will be left in the hands of lawyers and judges, the legal profession can also act as a smokescreen which hides or shoves under the carpet some of the underlying moral and ethical concerns relating to the Dambulla-incident. The legal profession, under these circumstances, becomes a profession of irresponsibility, if some provision or the other decides the fate of the entire controversy. Laws, law books and judgments are (as we know) towards which fingers are pointed as a convenient excuse to evade moral responsibility for one’s words and actions: ‘Look, it is not my fault; it is that law, that judgment, which says so.’ Such legal formalism hinders political discussion and the resolution of political or other social problems and controversies through greater public participation and debate. The root causes go unaddressed, and they erupt in numerous other forms and manifestations elsewhere, some other day. And one such problem that law courts don’t discuss is one which is fundamental to the recent controversy: ‘political-Buddhism’.

Buddha and the fundamental problem of ‘political-Buddhism’

The Buddha, undoubtedly, is the most influential and admirable philosophical teacher I have come across.

And, I do not view the Buddha very simply as one who had nice things to say about non-violence, peace and harmony, or as an extraordinary person who, from birth to death, carried out fantastic and unbelievable acts.

But also, thanks to the excellent work of numerous Buddhist scholars (ranging from the likes of Ven. Walpola Rahula to Prof KN Jayatillaka, but more importantly, scholars such as Prof. David J. Kalupahana, et al.) I read the Buddha more as: a philosopher who, unlike any other, stressed the importance of understanding the concept of radical impermanence which runs through all our activities and lives (a concept which is far more complex than what is narrowly and inaccurately defined as one which means that ‘all things that are born end in death’); a critic who went against the traditions of his time and valued critical reflection and inquiry at all possible times (e.g. the Kalama sutta; also note the advice given to millionaire Upali when the latter expressed willingness to follow the Buddha: ‘Of a truth, Upali, make a thorough investigation’); a brilliant social reformer who made timely use of ideas and concepts that ordinary men and women believed in, to introduce the notion of morality as a counter response to the dangerous nihilism promoted during that time by the likes of Ajita Kesakambali (e.g. the Buddha’s deft use of the concept of ‘god’ to narrate the different destinies confronting human beings, stressed in a way that makes ordinary people believe in that concept and thereby are inevitably influenced to do good to reach the world of gods, devaloka); a master linguist who developed words to bring out the nuances of meaning which were not captured in the language during his time and which still baffle the traditional Eastern and Western mind (e.g. the coining of the term paccuppanna meaning ‘arisen with a background’, which expresses the meaning that the present is conditioned by the immediate past; which was in contrast to the strict manner in which ‘time’ was categorized during the Buddha’s day as belonging to the past, present and future, a categorization which did not make allowance for the complex and nuanced connection of the past and present, for instance); and a teacher who employed similes which had an extremely sarcastic bite, to drive home a point which could be somewhat discomforting to a traditional, conservative, mind (e.g. in explaining the futility of praying for salvation and the end of suffering, the Buddha tells Vasettha that such praying is similar in effect to a man who, having approached the river desiring to get to the other bank, calls out: ‘Come here, other bank, come here!’).

But how, one may wonder, could this noble message of a profound philosophical teacher go so wrong in the hands of those preaching that teaching? The seeds lie in the very notion that the Buddha had advised his followers to be extremely mindful of: excessive attachment. From that springs all problems, and when that clashes with other ulterior objectives and motives of various groups (reasons pertaining to history, tradition, race, ethnicity, nationhood, politics, culture, ideology, etc.), Buddhism ends up being another tool in the hands of the politically-motivated. Promoting Buddhism becomes political, and in the process, Buddhism ends up being another political language.

Now, there is absolutely nothing wrong in the practice of preserving and promoting Buddhism. In fact, Buddhism should definitely be protected and promoted. What is problematic here, however, is the way in which it has been promoted and is sought to be promoted and preserved. The noble teaching of the Buddha becomes a problematic form of political-Buddhism when under the guise of promoting the teaching, various other ethnic, political and similar agendas begin to be nurtured and promoted to the detriment of those believing and following different other teachings or religions [This is perhaps the significant problem shared by those following Christianity and Islam, in particular. While all these teachings and religions are a great source of inspiration to the individual, they become extremely problematic when brought into the public realm of politics and governance where people respond differently to different teachings and faiths].

And more seriously, it is very easy and convenient for bigoted and narrow-minded followers with ulterior political motives to intentionally misinterpret and misunderstand the teachings if necessary. To take one example: in the case of Buddhism, it was once the late Ven. Soma Thero (a priest I admired, but critically) who pointed out that getting hold of the wrong end of the Dhamma could cause unimaginable disaster. For instance, wrongly interpreting the meaning of impermanence (anicca), suffering (dukkha) and no-self (anatma) could end up in promoting violence and terrorism – because if everything is impermanent, suffering and without a ‘self’, then causing harm to anyone doesn’t mean much! So, one can imagine how dangerous even these fundamental notions of Buddhism can become in the hands of those who are more interested in politicizing Buddhism.

Responding to Dambulla’s ugly political-Buddhism

It is another version of this kind of political-Buddhism that we witnessed in Dambulla, in the face of which the question arises over and over again: how should one respond to such acts and events? Three broad responses have come to be suggested during recent times. One, the need for a government-apology; two, secularism; three, citizen-initiatives condemning the acts as being not committed in their name.

One: the suggestion has been made that the government needs to apologize for what happened (as usefully made by Dr. Laksiri Fernando, et al). This argument, in general terms, lays much of the blame squarely on the government for being responsible for creating the conditions for inter-religious disharmony. A different version of this ‘government-is-the-culprit’ form of argument has been also raised by those who would not agree with some of the views expressed by the above mentioned authors. So, for instance, even Janaka Perera usefully points out that the real culprits for the present crisis are successive governments and that in the present case, the “ball is now in the government’s court” (Janaka Perera, ‘Dambulla Crisis: Who are the Real Culprits’ in Sinhale Hot News, 3 May 2012).

The suggestion, in principle, is a very valuable one. As regards the Dambulla incident, certain reports suggest that a politician is behind the instigation of the mob-attack; and if so, the government definitely should apologize. But, over-stressing the need of this demand for an apology from the government has the (unintended, but at times even intended) consequence of shifting the blame away from others who ought to be held equally responsible. The government becomes the main culprit, sometimes the only culprit, whereas others go unchecked.

Two: the above form of critique of political-Buddhism and the politicization of any religion leads to the famous argument which demands for a secular state and secular constitution. It makes perfect logic to demand so, and in principle, is a demand that one who is seriously concerned about inter-religious harmony cannot easily dismiss. But one of the nagging problems concerning the demand for secularism (through legal and constitutional means in particular) is that it often has the effect of reducing a complex problem (concerning religion) to a matter that can be addressed through law. Principally, ‘secularism’, when viewed as a term representing a particular mindset, is an immensely difficult destination to reach.

Generally, it calls for: an entire rethinking of the place of religion in life and society, its role in the matter of politics and governance, to what extent religion should be a guide in such matters, and more fundamentally, about how education of religion should be conducted from school-level upwards, etc. In the case of Sri Lanka to argue, for example, that Article 9 of the Constitution is what leads to religious fundamentalism is based on the inaccurate assumption that taking away the provision leads to a better, harmonious and peaceful society. And for the secular argument to be accepted by a majority of the people, it cannot be seen to be made by those who are rabid opponents of Buddhism and Buddhists; which, in other words, calls for a politics of persuasion which has to be undertaken from within.

Three: one of the prominent initiatives undertaken by citizens nowadays, given the advancement of information technology, is the mode of online-petitions. A very useful and important recent initiative concerning the Dambulla mob attack was undertaken in the form of a petition titled ‘Not in our name’ (see http://notinournamesl.wordpress.com). It is yet another important way of expressing the thought that the kind of violence witnessed in Dambulla is not acceptable, is condemned, and is not undertaken in our name. This is, to reiterate, not only an immensely useful form of public protest but also one which has today gained much support. It has, most usefully, generated greater awareness of the incident.

However, what is hoped in the case of such forms of protest is that one is not deluded into imagining that this form of protest could be very effective at the end of the day. While supporting such initiatives, one still needs to be quite skeptical about them. Firstly, it just could be the case that it is precisely this form of protest (online-petitions, etc) that those who instigate and promote religious extremism are comfortable with. And in a sense, the very form of online-protest carries the image of our helplessness in the face of such violence and extremism. Secondly, and perhaps more seriously, the problem with the ‘not-in-our-name’ kind of language is this: contrary to our imagination, the kind of mob attacks seen in Dambulla could be acts which are not carried out in our name in the first place. They may be acts carried out in the name of those who are anyway having very rigid and fixed views about the place of religion in politics. And given the polarization that exists in contemporary society (NGO – anti-NGO, peace activists-war mongers, anti-Buddhist – Sinhala-Buddhist, etc), it is generally understood that those who resort to such violence/silently approve of such violence (group A) and those who say such violence is not in their name (group B) are anyway not on the same page ideologically and politically. Politically, then, group B’s resistance in the present case doesn’t shock group A into adopting a markedly different attitude. In other words: group A has to be critiqued, first and foremost, from within.

Common inadequacy: where are the monks?

This then brings us to the principal question: who constitutes this group within group A? I believe this is none other than the sangha community: the community of Buddhist monks. In all of the above responses, what is essentially missing is the role of the Buddhist monk.

At the end of the day, it needs to be reiterated – not once, twice but a hundred times if necessary – that it is the community of Buddhist monks which can most effectively and significantly end this madness that is being carried out by some in the name of Buddhism. When Buddhist monks are seen to be acting in the way they did, no amount of criticism can prove effective unless those from within that community itself come forward and respond adequately. And it is this glaring absence of a critical response from the community of Buddhist monks which has been the most unfortunate absence in the overall responses that followed. It is this that all of us (especially those who are admirers of the Buddhist philosophy) must perhaps resolve to remind the monks, lay followers, and ourselves, whenever possible.

However, while not abandoning the forms of protest and critique so far adopted, it is also necessary to call for a further nuanced critique and also the adoption of a skeptical (not dismissive) approach to certain comforting arguments which are made concerning the matter of religious harmony in Sri Lanka. The two are inter-connected.

Firstly, the kind of critique necessary is not that which pins the blame entirely on a single monk: in this case, Ven Inamaluwe Sumangala. Rather, it has to be pointed out that this is a problem not limited to the attitude of Ven. Sumangala alone but could be shared by many others in the sangha community who not only directly support him but also do so indirectly, by maintaining a studied silence (and that too, in the name of ‘tolerance’!). Secondly, one needs to be somewhat more skeptical (but not dismissive) of the ‘reservoir of goodwill’ argument that we often raise (see Javed Yusuf, ‘Dambulla: A challenge for all communities’, The Sunday Times, 29 April, 2012). While one can broadly agree with the sentiment expressed, our continued reference to this sentiment could even have the indirect effect of making us utterly complacent and even irresponsible. A probing examination should remind us that while Dambulla-type incidents are somewhat rare, the Dambulla-type mindset may be a more prevalent and rooted one, given the silence of many in the ‘Buddhist-camp’.

In short, the critical intervention of monks in particular is quintessential if they are serious about protecting and preserving Buddhism (and not the grotesque and dangerous aspects of political Buddhism). This is their duty, their responsibility. And this critical intervention, to be sure, is not one which calls for the spewing of hatred and malice directed at monks by monks. Certainly not. As the monks would well know, one can condemn certain practices and policies without hatred or ill-will (ujjhana).

Therefore, before people cry out that Buddhism is too serious a problem to be left in the hands of the contemporary Buddhist monks, or that Buddhism should be protected not from politicians but from Buddhist monks, it is necessary for the monks to come out more openly and critically in expressing their views about the incidents, attitudes, policies and practices that the Dambulla-incident represents. This is also a vital task that critical Buddhist scholars (far more than laymen and women like us) should be mindful about.

Conclusion

It is the Vesak season, and one often remembers that moment which has traditionally been considered the most poignant in the story of the Buddha; the moment the Buddha passed away, the moment of parinirvana. There is great silence that envelops the moment. The Buddha, who is now physically weak, addresses the monks surrounding him and inquires whether there is any doubt in their minds about any aspect of the Dhamma. Venerable Ananda, who is deeply attached to the Buddha, musters up all courage in the face of the great and noble light that now flickers before him, and informs that he has confidence that there is not one bhikkhu gathered there with any doubt or problem. And yet, the Buddha, the ever-mindful, declares: “All conditioned states are impermanent. Strive on with diligence.”

But when witnessing the manner in which the words and teachings of the Buddha have been misused, I, perhaps like many others, tend to consider a different moment to have been the most poignant and moving in the entire life-time of the Buddha. That moment comes soon after the Buddha gains enlightenment, and just before Brahma Sahampathi invites the Buddha to preach the Dhamma.

In this moment, the Buddha, with great compassion, wonders (quite unexpectedly, to our minds) as to whether he should or should not go out into the world and preach the Dhamma. It is this moment, this picture of the contemplating Buddha, which captures that poignancy. For, it is a moment when the Buddha, now surveying the world, realizes that the decision to go out and preach the Dhamma contains enormous risks and challenges, that there are many in the world who have a lot of dust in their eyes, that they are deluded by wrong concepts, ideas and beliefs.

In other words, that moment contains the very fundamentals of the philosophy the Buddha thereafter preached: that element of radical impermanence; that blend of the good and the bad; the happiness and sadness that enwraps a single moment and event; the great opportunity that was before the Buddha on the one hand and the tremendous risks that very opportunity carried with it on the other; the incomparable message of freedom that now had to be spread, and the glaring possibility of a restriction of the freedom of others that very message of freedom, if improperly and wrongly understood, could bring to others.

It was perhaps a moment in which the Buddha saw hundreds of men and women cross the metaphorical river with the aid of the raft named the Dhamma and put an end to their suffering, while a thousand others failed, and failed miserably, and in the process, did all manner of things to the raft, the river and all around them. To strive on with diligence is what is required. And those words contain a very valuable lesson to the socially-engaged monk, in particular, who is genuinely and sincerely interested in preserving and promoting the noble teachings of the Buddha.

• A different take from the Sangha: The dhamma and religious co-existence in Sri Lanka (UPDATED)
• The transformation of Buddhism in Sri Lanka
• Not In Our Name: Against religious extremism in Sri Lanka
• Monks of War – Al-Jazeera on the JHU
• The Mind of Compassion: Buddhism and Violence

Top left to bottom: Advertisements for Fair & Lovely, Clean and Dry Intimate Wash and Vaseline’s Fair & Handsome, from Meets Obsession

Recently, a close member in my family gave birth to a beautiful boy. I have yet to visit her, but I have seen a picture of the tiny infant. He is adorable. Although, we must all admit that newborns are quite odd-looking with their squishy faces, slightly flattened head, and half-opened eyes that seem too large for their faces. But gazing at the picture, I could see my mother in the corner of my eye, waiting for a chance to comment on something that I had not picked up when looking at the photograph – the colour of his skin.

This angered me. Not surprisingly, I must say as this is just one of those random moments where I remain completely baffled by the way my family thinks. She went on about how my family members, including the mother and grandmother of the baby left the infant alone in the crib. No one was cradling him, no one was going “awww” over him, no one was touching him – all because of the colour of his skin.  But what really infuriated me were my mother’s comments. “It’s the first time in our family such a kalu child is born. Everyone was shocked. But the shock will wear off after a day. Then, they will carry the baby”, she said. After I told her that I doubt that’s the reason, considering the colour of the mother, who is considerably tan, she replied “That’s tan no. The baby is really kalu.” She claimed that her statements were based on what people think, and not hers. I let it go, without delving further. But then the next day came and I found out exactly who my mother was. I came across some messages which were sent to my sister abroad. The only thing my mother could think of, to describe the infant was…

“The baby is dark”.

The conversation went on to describe how apathetic they felt to the child because he was “so dark” along with the words “sin no” repeated countless times. When questioned, my mother simply said she was being “realistic, this is how the world is, this is how people think”. Of course I knew this. I even knew that few members of my extended family seemed to think that fair people were prettier than darker people. But these were infants, newborns, babies. Surely, one cannot think such a way?

I am saddened and embarrassed to see this side of my family, to know that people who raised me, people who I’ve grown up with, believe that fair equals pretty and dark is ugly. It is surprising to know that even my sisters think such a way, after years of exposure on effects of discrimination from movies, Youtube clips, newspapers articles and television.

I fail to understand how people, never-mind the older generation, but people in their 20s who are educated and have come to a realization that some parts of yesteryears culture are incredibly unreasonable still think this way? Why is it that dark-skin is not considered beautiful?

But wait a minute.. isn’t there a remedy to this already? Cue the ever-present miraculous tubes of ‘Fair & Lovely’, with commercials that display that side effects of fairer skin include the appearance of one’s true love, increased job prospects, and indubitably gaining the love of one’s own parents, something only ‘Fair & Lovely’ would have you believe is impossible for darker children to gain.

I’m sure you have all seen the self-deprecating advertisements of fairness creams. The instances are laughable, the context is absurd, and the message, although constantly surprising that the human mind can stoop to such levels, is preposterous. From commercials that depict “You’re so dark, you’ll never get married” to print advertisements that portray “My husband loves me more because I am much fairer now” (here’s looking at you Ponds), the marketing approach of fairness products seem to have affected the way people think. It has seemingly introduced a new set of values to our culture, based on the notion that being fair makes you an object of desire which means people will flock around you like moths to a flame. It has been established as a prerequisite for success in both the personal and professional front, heightening the natural anxiety of men and women and their ability remain comfortable in their own skin. No matter how bizarre the story line is, there seems to be no better way to market a product than to feed on pointless cultural views and human insecurities.

This year a new phenomenon was introduced, which truly, in my personal opinion, heightened the concept of fairness creams to a whole new level. It seems that society has found yet another reason to hate your body, which means another opportunity for women to make themselves more attractive to the opposite sex. Turns out that the colour of your lady parts is extremely revolting to our society, so here lies the perfect remedy, an Indian product called Clean and Dry Intimate Wash. Check out the commercial here.

As you can see, it is not simply enough to make people feel bad that they are dark, but now everyone has to be insecure about the natural colour of their lady parts. I was doing some research on this matter and came across a rather hilarious comment by an Indian advertising executive. Here is what he had to say about fairness creams.

“It is hard to deny that fairness creams often get social commentators and activists all worked up. What they should do is take a deep breath and think again. Lipstick is used to make your lips redder, fairness cream is used to make you fairer—so what’s the problem? I don’t think any Youngistani today thinks the British Raj/White man is superior to us Brown folk. That’s all 1947 thinking!

The only reason I can offer for why people like fairness, is this: if you have two beautiful girls, one of them fair and the other dark, you see the fair girl’s features more clearly. This is because her complexion reflects more light. I found this amazing difference when I directed Kabir Bedi, who is very fair and had to wear dark make-up for Othello, the Black hero of the play. I found I had to have a special spotlight following Kabir around the stage because otherwise the audience could not see his expressions.

When you have experience like I have—about 50 years in advertising and more in theatre—then you realise that a lot of people don’t talk out of experience, they talk out of book knowledge. They say, “Oh my God, fairness creams… are they saying that Indians are not as good as Europeans?” It’s nothing to do with that.”

Read more here. So how did we get here?

The colonial legacy in our country is one of the main contributory factors for the belief that fair is powerful, fair is beautiful. The white race subjugating the darker race has been stressed in history, which has established an invisible system where the fairer people are those who are successful, powerful, rich, while the darker people are poor, unsuccessful and powerless. Herein lies the cultural view of fair skin considered as a social marker for high class while dark skin is considered as a social marker for low class while being associated with labour or field work. This has given considerable impetus to the notion of superiority of fairness.

Then, of course lies the American and Indian influences, which has caught the imagination of the masses with its yearly production of celebrities, movies and television shows. Our tele-dramas are often filled with women, who put on layers of make-up to appear fair. A walk down the street, and you will see that such thinking has affected people in all levels of the social ladder, wearing such heavy make-up that it appears similar to a face mask. Matrimonial columns is another depiction of colourism, revealing the influence of a person’s skin colour on marketability to marriage partners. In recent times, it has become clear that men too deal with instances of colourism, heightened by an increasing number of male fairness creams launched in the market today. Check this video here.

Personally, as a Sri Lankan woman with the ability to tan deep brown quite easily, the few occasions I have ever felt uncomfortable with my skin colour has been as a result of people of my own race and not as a result of growing up in a predominantly white country, as anyone would probably expect. This was during my schooling years, when I used to play netball almost every day. An aunt greeted me with a “My… you have got so dark. I remember when you were little. You were so fair”; all this with a tone that meant I had once possessed the fair complexion that is so passionately prized by South Asian communities and now, since I was tan, I was no longer pretty in her eyes.

This needs to change. I am tired of people being judged because of the colour of their skin, which quite frankly, they had no control over. I am tired of people making others feel ashamed because they are dark, to feel burdened by how they look, to feel degraded for their physical attributes.

If darker people do not see people who look like them being regarded as beautiful, this attitude will always remain the same. If they do not receive any positive reinforcements about their skin tone, they will always turn to fairness creams in a desperate need to be accepted by society.

• Unshed Tears
• election 2010
• Hate
• Prices Improve In Jaffna
• Superstitions in the 21st century: Of black pottu, politicians and punools

This Koran is tattered because Buddhist monks had been tearing the pages out of it. Asked if the monks had tried burning a Koran, I was told no – Caption and photograph by Navin Weeraratne

This is in response to the comments to my previous post – Dambulla Mosque Attack: Is there a hidden hand? At the time of writing this, there were nearly 50 comments displaying a variety of stands taken by commentators. The very positive ones are the ones seeking introspection invoking to put the Buddhist house in order to commensurate with their civilised principles and precepts. This identifies the remorseful feelings of the silent majority of the Buddhist who vehemently deplore the mosque attack as an uncivilized act whilst taking a principled stand on the miscarriage of justice by Senior Political leaders at the highest echelons, law enforcement authorities and other wheeler dealers. This is a positive sign indicating that that the majority are not chauvinistic but inclusive. Their comments were also testifying that on the other side, the extremists too are hijacking the silent majority in their name. This is evidently clear in the modus operandi employed where a mob assembled of hooligans from elsewhere is coordinated to cause trouble in Dambulla. Clear evidence of premeditated trouble making that surprised the people of Dambulla.

Peace loving people in this country should be alert to the machination of extremists who work in collusion with bankrupt politicians wishing to create religious, ethnic and other strife in society so that they can emerge as ethnic/religious saviours creating a new voter bank by taking advantage of an artificially created trouble.

Apart from these, there were also negative and irresponsible comments bordering on naivety and foolishness wishing to fish in troubled waters and sensitise the issue to cause more division in society by citing irrelevant and alien factors that has nothing to do with Dambulla. Drawing cues from these hints, the following negative trend settings are evident in the comments:

Failed State Phenomenon

There were complacent comments trying to disprove the emerging failed state phenomenon. The following are some of the distinct feature of failed state phenomenon as evidenced by this incident.

1. Failure of Law Enforcement: Failure of the executive to bring law and order. Dambulla attack is a result of premeditated plan to attack, illegal assembly, organised mob, assault on a public/community asset, taking law to their hands under the gaze of the police/army in broad daylight. Now it is almost two weeks, the violators are yet to be booked.
2. Failure of Justice: Rights, feelings and peace of the peaceful place (Dambulla) its community and the sanctity of the Mosque and the Kovil is violated and yet the perpetrators are deemed above law. A clear evidence of inoperability of the justice system in this case. Though there are rules in the statute, application is evidently discriminatory.
3. Failure to protect the Constitution: Buddhism is the state religion and it is protected by the state as enshrined in the constitution. The non Buddhists in the country accepts this without reservation on the understanding that Buddhism being a philosophy of humanity would not be discriminatory upon them and therefore their religion and their institutions will have protection under Buddhism as a state religion. The state’s failure to protect Buddhism is evident by their incredulous silence to condemn this un-Buddhist act done in the name of Buddhism violating all principles of moral and legal limits. This silence possibly tarnishes the image of Buddhism in Sri Lanka and abroad by implicitly condoning a wrongful act by failing to be just and the failure to protect the interests of all citizens without discrimination.
4. Failure of the state to assert and allowing non state actors to dominate: In this incidence, the state organs miserably failed to prove their credibility as institutions upon which the citizens can repose their trust. The police failed to prevent wrong doings, the sacred land statute/AGA Office failed to define the physical boundaries of the sacred land, the AGA Office/Pradeshya Sabha calls the Mosque an unauthorised structure for a building pre existing Local Government Planning and Building Regulations which effectively came into practice in the region only since 1978. How many buildings in Dambulla have plans approved by the Local Council and how many are built according to the plan as required by the statute? Why did the AGA/Local Council take a discriminatory stand than find a way to regularise and bring such structures within the statute and diffuse social tension. The state authorities are yet to define their stand based on the available statutes, this shows the extent to which the state is equipped to respond to the suffering of the people. This apathy on the part of state rewards ‘non state actors’ and weakens the state supremacy in administration.
5. Rule of Law versus Rulers’ Law: Though Sri Lanka is a modern state, the strains of feudalism and neo colonial Brown Sahib mentality is still prevalent. The highest and the sacrosanct entity in a nation state is its constitution where the sovereignty of its people is enshrined.   In the day to day life of a citizen one is administered by the rules that govern and not the rulers who govern. The government only governs the people through the constitution and not otherwise.  The constitutional ruler is impersonal and everlasting. The failings of modern Sri Lanka is that we are yet to be governed by rules, instead we are still ruled by rulers who  yet decide outside the framework of law, like the Prime Minister’s decision to relocate the mosque to diffuse tension without giving time for the  possibility of judicial intervention.
6. Failure of the state to protect its image: The role and responsibility of the GOSL is questioned by the people, the parliamentarians, and the International Community about this incident. Incredibly the GOSL is silent and not taking any remedial measures to solve this lawlessness. The frailty of the GOSL to protect the image and credibility of the country and doing nothing undermines credibility both within and without.
7. Threat to the Government of Sri Lanka: Should this incident go unsolved, the extremist forces that unleashed this attack would potentially snowball to capture more grounds in their turf war. This would make situations worse for the GoSL . Such a situation would require more power and resources by the GOSL to quell and would render this contagion to spill over. It is wise to nip this violent extremism in the bud.

Allegiance Elsewhere

There were also comments hinting against my Sri Lankan posture and trying to paint me as a Rajapakse sycophant and ‘West’ basher. It is a citizen’s responsibility to protect the state whilst fighting within it to correct it to deliver the rights of its citizens. One’s allegiance should not go outside the state just because the state is wrong, as when such allegiance goes outside the state, there is propensity for one to turn anti-state and play into external factors inimical to a state.

Today Sri Lanka is a fractured society however unified it pretends to be. The reality is that as noted above, there are blatant violations by many actors (state and non state) and failure to uphold justice, and fair play. This has marginalized many both within and without and hence there are resentments, grudges and ill will against many such actors which makes the allegiance of some eccentric to state. This unwittingly makes the resentful citizens to be bought over by foreign players and use to espouse their goals. The state inaction to rein in law and order is implicitly undermining sovereignty by spawning dissenters and creating conducive conditions to turn to be perfidious.

Conflict Resolution

Emergence of conflict in any society is natural and it is part and parcel of humanity. Therefore no conflict is unique except how such conflict is caused. In a civilised society too conflicts do emerge and the responsibility of the citizens and the state is to diffuse conflicts and reinstate justice, fair play and bring normalcy and cordiality to seek peace amongst its peoples.  Disquiet, conflict and violence does no good to either to the state or the citizens and therefore it is a right and a duty of responsibility to diffuse conflict and ease tensions in society.

When conflicts emerge the first victim is the truth. During such times even the paragons of virtue ally with falsehood as was seen in Dambulla. Therefore saner and responsible citizens do have a duty to mankind to speak the truth even if such truth is against their own interest. This is how civilised nations are built upon and not on the basis of ‘might is right’ and take advantage of opportunities. Any capitalization of the opportunity for short term and parochial gains would cause long term damages to society as have happened before. These challenges are opportunities to prove how civilized one is in the way in which truth, justice and fair play are administered in society and not to boast of history but to be correct now in flesh and blood.

Deplorably, some of the comments advocated ‘a pot calling the kettle black’ paradigm and was fuelling exacerbation of this conflict by citing irrelevantly. These clearly display their ignorance and  insidious intents.

The way this crisis in Dambulla is handled is a test to see how credibly the Sri Lankan state and its people depart from chauvinism to a more inclusive and just society.

Unfortunately, Sri Lankans are yet to come out of their ‘mind set created by others for them’ and discover their ‘own by pooling all the positives from all religions and communities’ to build this nation as a model for others as an astute and sustainable nation.

• Dambulla Mosque attack: Is there a hidden hand?
• Photo essay: Freedom, Religion, and Dambulla
• Is Dambulla, Babri Masjid Redux?
• Deeds of mosque in Dambulla and photos of damage: How is this structure illegal? (UPDATED)
• Bigoted monks and militant mobs: Is this Buddhism in Sri Lanka today?

After the email update reproduced below was sent on 2nd May, less than a week after the Not In Our Name initiative was launched, Deshabandhu Jezima Ismail, senior lawyer and HR activist JC Weliamuna, two-time Secretary to Presidential Commissions of Inquiry into Disappearances MCM Iqbal, well-known economist Muttukrishna Sarvananthan, Prof. Michael Roberts and Ranjini Obeyesekere, both leading academics, Tamil activist, poet and academic Cheran, Channa Daswatta, one of Sri Lanka’s best known architects and Harsha de Silva, Member of Parliament, along with dozens of others, have signed up to the initiative.

“I put my name here just to give evidence to my children that at some point in the future, if they happen to suffer from communal violence as a result of what happens under president Rajapakse Government, their father did his bit to condemn his silence.” – Thrishantha Nanayakkara

“The conduct of some of the Buddhist monks at Dambulla was disgraceful. It was an insult to the Buddha.” – Mangala Moonesinghe

“Sri Lankan; not Parsi, not Burgher, not Eurasian, not Sinhalese, all to which I have claim. Not in our name.” - Hans Billimoria

“All Buddhists, especially the prominent members of the Buddhist clergy, should hang their heads in shame at this racist, mediaeval and un-Buddhist act. The government should institute legal proceedings for treasonous public statements undermining the authority of the duly elected President of the country.” – Prof. H.L. Seneviratne

“Certainly not in my name. The Dambulla violence and intolerance can provoke another cycle of mindless chauvinism unless the silent majority voice their unanimous condemnation compelling the Government to act decisively and speedily. The true Sri Lankan patriot, anchored in a rich past of tolerance and co-existence, is a not a racist or religious bigot.” – Jayantha Dhanapala

“This attack and the clumsy, unacceptable handling of it by the authorities has quite certainly not been done in my name.” – Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga

These are excerpts from longer comments in response to the online campaign Not In My Name. In just under a week after it was launched and at the time of sending this email, around 940 have signed up to the campaign. It has been shared over 1,000 times on Facebook alone. The campaign, and why it was established, has been featured on TV in Sri Lanka.

Hundreds have tweeted about it, some have written their own blog posts encouraging more to sign up and many more have emailed all their email contacts the campaign and shared it with professional colleagues on networks like LinkedIn. Those who have signed up to date include,

• Deshamanya Bradman Weerakoon, one of Sri Lanka’s most senior and respected civil servants
• Popular TV personalities, actors and singers: Ranjan Ramanayake, Narada Bakmeewewa, Kasun Kalhara
• Popular theatre personalities and directors: Steve de la Zilwa, Tracy Holsinger, Ruwanthie de Chickera, Nadie Kammallaweera, Shanuki de Alwis
• Gratiaen Prize winners Shehan Karunatilaka and Senaka Abeyratne
• Leading authors: V.V. Ganeshananthan, Shyam Selvadurai, David Blacker, Pradeep Jeganathan
• Former Sri Lankan of the Year Chandra Jayaratne
• Leading journalists, Editors, media personalities and media owners: Hana Ibrahim, Dilrukshi Handunetti, Dharisha Bastian, Easwaran Rutnam, Anoma Rajakaruna, Savithri Rodrio, Lal Wickrematunge, Hilmy Ahamed, Sharmini Boyle
• Human rights activists: Kumudini Samuel, Ruki Fernando, Dayapala Thiranagama, Dr. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu
• Gifted cartoonists like Gihan de Chickera
• Well-known photographers like Deshan Tennekoon and Asanka Brendon Ratnayake
• Prominent artists like Chandraguptha Thenuwara, Nelun Harasgama and Jagath Weerasinghe
• Former Secretary General of the JVP, Lionel Bopage
• Prominent bloggers like Jehan Mendis and Subha Wijesiriwardena

From a 73 year old grandmother to leading academics, from atheists to Hindus, Saivites and Christians, from Burghers and Sinhalese to Tamils and Muslims (and fascinating combinations of these beliefs and groups), the sheer diversity of those who have signed up to Not In Our Name unequivocally condemning the violence in Dambulla is incredible to read, both for what has been written and by whom.

As noted on the blog, after a month, the names and comments of those who signed up will be printed out and sent to the Presidential Secretariat, the Prime Minister’s Office and the Ministry of Religious Affairs & Moral Upliftment, along with the Department of Buddhist Affairs, Department of Christian Religious Affairs, Department of Hindu Religious and Cultural Affairs and the Department of Muslim Religious and Cultural Affairs.

Already, this campaign is a unique collection of comments opposed to violence and extremism. Please read them, and consider adding your own name today.

Young Asia Television asked the following questions about the Not In our Name initiative for their weekly Connections TV digest, broadcast over public TV this week.

1. Not in Our Name: Is it focusing just only on the incident in Dambulla or is it looking broadly at religious extremism in Sri Lanka ?
2. Judging from the responses so far , what do you feel is the general pulse on the role of the State in addressing religious extremism in Sri Lanka ?
3. How will such incidents impact on communal relations and attempts at bringing about ‘National Reconciliation’?
4. In the end what purpose will this initiative serve?

• A different take from the Sangha: The dhamma and religious co-existence in Sri Lanka (UPDATED)
• Not In Our Name: Against religious extremism in Sri Lanka
• The middle finger to the middle-path in Sri Lanka
• Bigoted monks and militant mobs: Is this Buddhism in Sri Lanka today?
• “There is a right way and a wrong way to use violence”: Interview with Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka

A lion carries a dead wild boar in his mouth. He is walking through the grasslands, victorious after the hunt. On the dead boar is a crudely imprinted crescent moon and star.  This is an image found in a Sinhala Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/pages/මාගේ-හෘද-සාක්ෂිය/351343628228268) that among other things compares Sri Lankan Muslims to wild boar, puppies (the Sinhala wording is cruder) and crows. The Facebook page has more than 5,000 likes and increases daily. It is only one of many that stalks cyberspace. This is Sri Lanka in 2012!

We are recovering from 26 years of war but it seems like some of the citizens of this country want to be at perpetual war. The latest fracas is the ‘Dambulla incident’  where a mob led by Buddhist monks of the area are agitating for what they call an illegal structure masquerading as a mosque to be torn down as it contaminates the sacred Buddhist area of the Dambulla temple. It is news to me that other places of religious worship can be considered as less sacred or contamination to a sacred area. But such is their complaint. Soon after this incident was made public, I had a conversation on the topic with a good and close friend of mine who is Buddhist. She is a decent woman, a devout woman. She is charitable and generous and kind but, and here is the surprise: she sees nothing wrong with the incidents of violence involving Buddhist monks. Regrettably she is not alone. Much as we would like to think that those who perpetrate Buddhist chauvinism are in the minority, it is not so. Increasingly, I see Buddhists who believe and engage in violence and un-Buddhistic behavior, trumpeting their achievement as champions of Buddhism.

Let us start with our constitution. I have often wondered how a country can claim to be Buddhist. In my mind it is technically impossible to apply Buddhist values  and survive as a nation in the world as it is. It would be an ideal world indeed to look forward to the time when all countries will be able to say they implement the values of Buddhism and the world will be a much better place for it. But for now, in todays time and place a country may need an army, may  need to engage in battle if  required to do so – both instances that we have experienced. But isn’t that against true Buddhist principles? Then I have wondered how Buddhist monks  who have been charged with drug possession, sexual misconduct, rape, treasure hunting, temple pillaging, murder, violence… the list of offences goes on and on which in itself is astounding,  continue to wear the robes, manage temples and call themselves Buddhist monks. Is there no authority that can expel disgraceful Buddhist monks? In addition, I am astonished that citizens who call themselves Buddhist, who are devout, pray, meditate and do pooja, attend sil, listen to bana and pirith, continue to condone  violence in the name of Buddhism by agreement or staying silent. I just don’t understand.

In my mind, Buddhism is one of the supreme non-violent movements of the world. The Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path (right vision, right emotion, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right awareness, and right meditation) the Five Precepts (do not kill, do not steal, do not engage in false speech, do not engage in sexual misconduct, do not take intoxicants) and the Threefold Way (ethics, meditation, wisdom) are meant to be applied in daily life. How is this in any way possible or compatible with the violence and injustice committed in the name of Buddhism? Bernard Faure, Professor of Religious Studies of the University of Stanford, has this to say:

Which brings me to the question: What are the Chief Prelates of all the Nikayas doing? What is the state doing? If silence is acquiescence, then it appears that the powers that be – both religious and state, endorse the violence, the persecuting of minority communities and sending them the clear message of being second class citizens.

But let us go back to Dambulla. In  disputed cases there are legal avenues to pursue  to rectify the situation. If the mosque is illegal and needs to be demolished, there is a legal mechanism in place that will achieve it. Why the need for violence? For the destruction? For the barbaric and shocking behavior of both monks and men?

War is not unknown in the Buddhist world. In history, there has been what is termed  ‘Buddhist wars’ especially in China, Tibet and Japan. Most of them were begun as a cleansing process to rid threats to its very existence and fought in the name of liberation. Yet, of all the great religions and ideologies Buddhism remains the most pacific – a trait that is increasingly rare in the violent world of today. There are a number of verses from the Buddha’s sermons that support this:

In times of war
give rise in yourself to the mind of compassion,
Helping living beings,
abandon the will to fight. Kutadanta Sutta, (Digha Nikaya V)

Another is:

Even if thieves carve you limb from limb with a double-handed saw, if you make your mind hostile you are not following my teaching. Kamcupamasutta, Majjhima-Nikkaya 1 – 28-29

I am not a Buddhist, but I appreciate the Buddhist ethos. And I wonder: if the behavior of violent Buddhism is puzzling to me, why isn’t it to you? One of the advantages Sri Lanka has is its multi-religious, multi-ethnic population. It is proof that for thousands of years the people of this country, whatever their religion and beliefs, have been open and welcoming , even embracing different cultures and people. It has made our country vibrant, rich in traditions and a truly wonderful place to live in. So we should be concerned when some elements in our modern history want to change that feature. In fact I have noticed intolerance apparent in all our communities not only the Sinhala Buddhist community. Perhaps it is a reflection of the times we live in but this is something we need to avoid. And if it happens we have to speak out.

I leave you with a favourite modern story that to me  embodies the quintessence of Buddhism:

A Vietnam veteran was baffled by Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh’s unswerving dedication to non-violence. The veteran in an attempt to question the monk, asked him if someone wiped out all the Buddhists in the world and if the monk was the last one left would he not try to kill the person who was trying to kill him and in doing so save Buddhism. Thicht Nhat Hanh answered: It would be better to let him kill me. If there is any truth to Buddhism and the Dharma it will not disappear from the face of the earth, but will reappear when seekers of truth are ready to rediscover it. In killing I would be betraying and abandoning the very teachings I would be seeking to preserve. So it would be better to let him kill me and remain true to the spirit of the Dharma.

• The transformation of Buddhism in Sri Lanka
• Not In Our Name: Against religious extremism in Sri Lanka
• A different take from the Sangha: The dhamma and religious co-existence in Sri Lanka (UPDATED)
• Akon and Buddhism in Sri Lanka: A Response to Bhikkhu K. Tanchangya
• Monks of War – Al-Jazeera on the JHU

Photo courtesy Hemant Buch via JDS

In a piece published on Groundviews on 29 April, Ms. Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunge (CBK) makes many pertinent observations on religion and society in South Asia. Underlying all her arguments however, is a certain reading of secularism that warrants contestation, which is the aim of this piece.

Every time we fail to articulate the specificities and diversities in the history of secularism and allied Constitutional practices, and use ‘western’ in an unqualified and uncritical manner to mark it, as CBK does, we not only err factually but also succumb to the binaries of either an exclusivist or inclusivist approach to religion. Contrary to what CBK implies there is no ‘western’ idea of secularism in the sense of a single coherent approach to the separation of religion and state.

As Charles Taylor points out, the two paradigmatic cases of secularism in the West, that of France and the USA have very different historical trajectories and characteristics. In the former, the origins of laïcité, commonly used as analogous to secularism, lies in the opposition of the Republican left to the right-wing aristocratic classes with whom the Catholic Church was seen to be allied. The legacy of the Revolution, which continues to hold significant sway in France today, was thus to ensure that the Church and religious authorities remained under the control of a Republican state. This lead to what is referred to as a case of one-sided exclusion i.e. the state may and does intervene in religious affairs of communities when Republican values maybe infringed but religious institutions or religious affairs can exercise no such hold on civic Republicanism. In the USA, on the other hand, the idea, to begin with, was less a separation of church and state and more about ensuring that no single Protestant denomination gained control of the hard won new political entity. This would later on develop, as religious diversity deepened, into a more broader demarcation that is often termed as a case of mutual exclusion i.e. the state does not interfere in anyway in religious institutions or affairs and vice versa. At the same time, careful scrutiny can reveal what appear to be contradictions or tensions in the practices of both states.

The key point is that political goals of the secular project have not always been the same and have certainly never been limited to the classic religion-state separation even in the west. This is further underlined by the diversity of practices on the question of separation of church and state in other western states. In the United Kingdom, the Constitutional Head of State, Her Majesty The Queen (at the moment) is also designated the ‘Defender of the Faith’ and the ‘Supreme Governor of the Church of England’; Archbishops and bishops are appointed by The Queen on the advice of the Prime Minister; and, the ‘Lords Spiritual’ (consisting of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York and 24 diocesan bishops) sit in the House of Lords. Even Parish priests take an oath of allegiance to The Queen. Yet, despite the institutional alignment of the political authority, the Monarchy and the Church of England at this level, the UK has a secular Constitutional doctrine. Similar diversities are also evident in the political, institutional and Constitutional doctrines of other Western states such as Switzerland and Italy, for example. Western secularism, including the state-religion relationship, is therefore actually rather diverse in its history, institutional form and arrangement.

Secularism as a Constitutional doctrine, in the context of rights, can be understood as the attempt to protect diversity of thought and belief by removing itself from overt allegiance to any particular religious conviction. ^[1] India’s Constitutional doctrine interprets secularism as including “the responsibility to ensure the protection and equality of all religions and provide for regulation and reform.”[2] Rather than strict separation as such, let alone the disestablishment of religion, the Constitutional doctrine lays down a series of duties on the state ranging from ensuring freedom of conscience to non-discrimination (including but not only on grounds of religion) to regulation of religious bodies and legislative reform.[3]

Secularism is an evolving and dynamic concept, in Europe as much as in South Asia, and elsewhere for that matter. For example, over 2010-2011 the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights witnessed the most intense debate on the meaning and nature of secularism in the context of the Lautsi case—pertaining to the display of the Crucifix in public school classrooms in Italy—in which several states and non-state actors intervened.

In fact, positions on the place of religion in the public sphere can no longer be neatly divided into exclusivist and inclusivist. Some have argued that more ‘open forms’ of secularism tend towards “protection of freedom of conscience and religion and a more flexible conception of State neutrality” as contrasted with more rigid forms of secularism.[4] However, as Abdullahi An-Na’im has argued, while its forms are inherently historical and contextual, secularism is, in fact, a pre-condition for the full exercise by all of their freedom of religion and beliefs.[5]

The challenge then for political secularism, as Rajeev Bhargava argues, is to conceive of the terms under which the state engages and interferes in religious affairs “depending on which of the two [interference or non-interference] better promotes religious liberty and equality of citizenship. If this is so the state may not be able to relate to every religion in exactly the same way, intervene to the same degree or in the same manner. All it must ensure is that the inclusion or exclusion of religion into politics be guided by non-sectarian principles consistent with a set of values constitutive of a life of equal dignity for all.”[6]

What does this mean?

To begin with, acknowledge the difference between religious communities and between religious and non-religious communities; look beyond liberal individualism and adopt an attitude of critical respect (as opposed to hostility or passive respect) towards religion. Moreover, under certain conditions, certain communities may be granted “immunities, privileges and guarantees”[7], which however cannot undermine equality of citizenship.

Viewed in this light, the problem in South Asia is the lack of such a principled engagement by the state, especially by its political leaders, with religion and in religious affairs, with serious adverse repercussions but short-term political gain. The recent events in Dambulla and the Sri Lankan Government’s willing capitulation to the Sinhala-Buddhist communal forces is only the latest step in a journey that gained great impetus when SWRD courted the same forces to help him come to power in the 1950s, uncorking a genie that went on to eventually claim his life.

Speaking about secularism only in terms of separation rather than a principled engagement between religion and politics/state is less messy but unreal and alienating.  It is also dangerous because it can provide a liberal cloak for the most illiberal practices, of which there are many examples in South Asia, including in Sri Lanka.

As Taylor reminds us, the case of secularism and religion is a classic case of an internal dyad becoming an external dyad—when one cannot be used without at least an implied reference to the other, independent of context—and hence its polemical character. Ultimately, in a plural polity the question of secularism is connected to the question of justice rather than just the question of religion alone or its separation from the state. In addition to freedom of conscience and expression, justice in a plural context demands both inter and intra-group equality through appropriate social recognition, economic redistribution and political participation, the lack of which are in plain evidence not just in Sri Lanka but across South Asia.

• The questions unanswered by Ass. Sec. Robert Blake: Mapping US engagement in and concerns over Sri Lanka (UPDATED)
• The State and Religion in South Asia
• The Anti-Conversion Bill violates the freedom of Conscience and the freedom of expression
• A Matter of faith
• Forging a Culture of Mutual Tolerance among Sri Lankans: A Path to Reconciliation?

When going through the album, make sure to read the captions.

• Groundviews on Twitter and Facebook
• Launch of Groundviews Facebook Fan Page
• Fake video and lies: The strange case of Dambulla’s Inamaluwe Sumangala thero
• Like Slaves In Jaffna
• A different take from the Sangha: The dhamma and religious co-existence in Sri Lanka (UPDATED)

Photo by author

The current controversy on the identity and significance of the series of mounds linking Rameshwaram in India with Mannar in Sri Lanka has attained international attention due to a proposal to dig a channel though it.  It might also help address a burning question today ‘Where do we come from ?’

The environmental risks of the project were ignored in the pursuance of ‘economic expediency’ until, the tradition of the land spoke of its importance. It was the route that Rama followed in his quest to rescue Sita from Ravana. The developers suggested that these are nothing but mounds of sand, but what if science, rigorously applied, suggests that there might indeed be a historical reality to what sceptics have dismissed as myth?  That these mounds might represent a part of the southern hills of that mythical land called Kumari Kandam?

Studies of the coastline of India and Sri Lanka during the progression of the Holocene Transgression (a glacial event that began roughly 32,00 years ago and culminated about seven thousand years ago)  suggest a factual basis of the ‘ flood’ myth. This phenomenon was not uncommon in geologic time, but it was the first experience humanity had with such a global event. The ocean, at present levels, began retreating about 35,000 years ago. The level fell as the glaciation progressed culminating in the reduction of global sea levels by about 80- 100 meters. Then, about 11,600 years ago it turned, and in a series of three or more waves, spread over a period of about 4100 years, flooded the land to current levels. In eons past, the same process had occurred many times, linking Sri Lanka to India, giving rise to the related, yet different fauna and flora of the two countries. But this time, the flood created human possibilities.

Humans had been hunter-gatherers until about 32,000 years ago, agriculture, it is hypothesised, arose about this time. To practise agriculture one has to lead a sedentary lifestyle, difficult in a hunter-gatherer mode of existence. A sedentary lifestyle was possible only if one was surrounded by an overabundance of food.  About 32,000 years ago, the retreating seas created such salt marshes around the planet, with a superabundance of human food providing an opportunity to lead a settled lifestyles. For over 20,000 years the ocean retreated creating between Sri Lanka and India, new land, a’ Virgin Continent’, which is a literal translation of’ Kumari Kandam.’  A very apt name for the huge landmass that appeared literally out of the ocean. This new land, recently won from the sea would have been highly productive and a settled culture arose. Somewhere on this new land, the first sangam was established by the rising dynasty of the Pandyans.

The question before us is this; “ does the area that lies between India and Sri Lanka  really represent the drowned land of Kumari Kandam or is it merely a nodescript ocean bottom with a few sand mounds?’ The proponents of the proposed Sethusamudran channel, underwater  drilling, dredging and other mining related activities would have us believe that the sea floor is an unimportant area where dredging, drilling and construction will create no significant damage, while the opponents claim that it is a part of India’s heritage representing a geographical setting of the Ramayana, where dredging, drilling etc. would irreparably damage a valuable site with great cultural and religious significance.

The answer to the question lies in the modern work that is revealing the signs of a great cataclysm and flood in the region. The National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) in India has discovered and provided ample evidence of drowned cities off Poompuhur in the South East coast of Tamil Nadu, right within the area where Kumari Kandam has been hypothesized. The discoveries of other constructions off Mahabalipuram adds weight to the idea that the region now underwater had been once habituated by a large population. The fishermen of the area around Rameshwaram are also familiar with these sunken ruins, as this is where fish gather.  The evidence that there were cities and temples in what is now the sea between Sri Lanka and India is overwhelming.

The bio geographic work done in Sri Lanka adds further weight to the hypothesis. Research on the nature of sea levels during the last glaciation, suggest that at about 32-28,000 ybp a large landmass was formed to the north of Jaffna peninsula extending it to join with the mainland around Poomphur. Mannar Island extended into range of low hills that connected Sri Lanka with the mainland on the southern boundary of this new land.  A significant geographical feature was expressed at this time, a new riverine floodplain south of the Mannar peninsula.  This was the course of the now drowned ‘Dereniyagala Oya’. Two large rivers, now drowned but whose courses researchers have described in the 1950’s created the riverine floodplain to the north. One river was an extension of the Aravi Aru of today; the other drained the watersheds of the Kal Aru, Modaragam Oya, Kala Oya and Mi Oya.  They both joined south of Mannar.  This large river created a series of riverine flats that existed for about 22,000 years, flowing northwards to water a land that was comprised of large and small hills and whose remnants are seen as the islands and shoals of what is known as ‘Adams Bridge’ between Mannar and Ramsewaran today. The river course to the south still exists, and is visible today, the stumps of drowned forests have been recoded in this area as far back as 1950 and confirmed by divers examining the sites in the 1980’s (Senanayake 1994). Thus the evidence of a recently drowned land to the north west of Sri Lanka is a scientifically verifiable fact.

On the Northern part of the hills lay a massive area of land that comprised what is the Gulf of Mannar today. The area is still relatively unexplored due to the war, but modern research points to the possibility that this region could be one of the central areas that support the veracity of the Ramayana.  The role of this landmass in providing a historical setting for the Ramayana is seen in books such as the Rajavali complied about the fourth century AD. It speaks of an antiquarian time when ‘The citadel of Ravana, 25 palaces and 400,000 streets were swallowed up by the sea’ The submerged land was suggested to lie between Tuticorin in India and the island of Mannar in Sri Lanka’. It has been suggested by many researchers that Mannar Island is a remnant of that ancient landmass

In Sri Lanka, neither underwater archaeology nor evaluation for such a possibility has been undertaken before rushing to ‘development’ and destruction in the region. The need to create a protected site in the Gulf of Mannar has been proposed internationally, but interest from politicians has been lacklustre. This is an important work, especially as it points to the possibility that we were once a part of a large group of people who moved to high ground on both sides of Kumari Kandan at the time of inundation.  An appreciation of our common roots, could help water down the ‘insular’ mentality that has been so destructive to the national psyche for so long.

Reference:

Senanayake. R. 1994.  The Evolution of the Major Landscape Categories in Sri Lanka and Distribution Patterns of Some Selected Taxa : Ecological Implications.  In Ecology and Landscape Management In Sri Lanka pp 201-219 (eds) W,Erdelen, Ch.Preu,N.Ishwaran and Ch. Santiapillai. Verlag Josef Margraf, Weikersheim.

• Discovered: A sunken island, an Indian Ocean Atlantis?
• Madness
• Sethu Samudram: Bridging art, history and human relations
• Doesn’t she have the right to live with her daughter?
• My abducted brother found in Colombo National Hospital

A week ago, we disgraced ourselves. Racist louts, some in the garb of Buddhist monks, engaged openly in speech and behaviour so violent, even those who led it were forced to suggest later the footage broadcast on TV and now globally viewed on YouTube was doctored.

This was, of course, not the case.

Sri Lanka’s tryst with militant Buddhism is not new. It is the fundamental basis of the JHU, which is today deeply embedded in government. As much as the telegenics of last week’s outrageous violence shocked many, it is this very behaviour that most temple-going Buddhists in Sri Lanka have nurtured over decades, and continue to unquestioningly venerate when they support, through silence, word or deed, this violence.

Much remains to be said by the President, government and media on Dambulla. Not so long ago, a journalist – J.S. Tissainayagam – was jailed, tortured and humiliated for writing the government thought incited communal hatred. No such action will even be contemplated against the Mahanayaka of the Rangiri Dambulu chapter Inamaluwe Sumangala thero.  The Ven. Thero joins the ranks of good Buddhists like Mervyn Silva, openly protected, supported and championed by the Rajapaksa regime. Sadly, it is not over Dambulla’s priapic priests that we must be most ashamed about, but our President, his family and government.

There is some hope. On Thursday, fearing more violence, I created a simple blog for people to register their opposition to the soi-disant Buddhism on display in Dambulla. The responses, available online, are a humbling counterfoil to a saffron rage, and showcase a Sri Lanka that’s extremely diverse and refreshingly different. Excerpts from a few I reproduce below. There are literally hundreds more online.

Read them, and I urge you, add to them.

I am Mohamed Niyas, a Sri Lankan Muslim, professionally a Teacher. I respect all religions and beliefs in this country and teach the same to all my students of all ethnic groups. I was shocked how can the monks who always preach saamaya, maithriya, karunaawa like great philosophies could lead such a racist mob in Dambulla. I feel relieved to know many of Buddhist people in Sri Lanka condemned this violence.

fahima7s: This is the first time the violence towards other faiths has been filmed so vividly. Many churches and kovils have also been bombed and burnt in the past. What do these Buddhist monks want? Don’t they know that our culture is enriched with other faiths? We have already lost a lot of our Burghers and Tamils and we are impoverished by it. Even if we build highways and prosper economically, we will still be poor. Cannot Buddhism flourish without the Buddhist monks protecting it?

Iranganie H. Fernando: Have these perpetrators of this incident of shameful violence learnt nothing from the terrible experiences of the past 30 years? All religions teach love & compassion to all beings and respect for each other… there must be action & strategies to prevent such abominable behaviour. I am a 73-year-old woman who grew up in a mainly peaceful society in pre & post independent Sri Lanka… Certainly these horrific acts of violence are not in my name!

Maithri: During the war, the government tried to show the world and the country that SL is a nation of cultural and religious diversity. And I believed in it, and to an extent that is still true. But this whole thing has just gone to show that the government don’t care about that unless it is in their own interest. Shameful behaviour from them, and members of the sangha who should really know better.

My name is Chhimi Tenduf-La. I am not Sri Lankan but I am embarrassed. I am proud to live in this amazing country and, for the most part, I think you would be hard pressed to find nicer people than Sri Lankans anywhere in the world. Most foreigners would say this (except, to be honest, when driving). The actions of this mob, and the official response which as good as sanctioned it, is very sad indeed. We can only be proud of the brave woman in the video who stood up to these bullies. She is a Sri Lankan. Not really sure what the other people are.

David Blacker: Some of us fought, killed, died, were crippled, and watched our friends die beside us so that this country would remain united and free. We did not do it so that another bunch of violent extremists could divide our country again in the name of religion; nor for you, the government, to support it.

###

Published first in the print edition of The Nation, 29 April 2012.

• Not In Our Name: Against religious extremism in Sri Lanka
• Monks of War – Al-Jazeera on the JHU
• A different take from the Sangha: The dhamma and religious co-existence in Sri Lanka (UPDATED)
• Fake video and lies: The strange case of Dambulla’s Inamaluwe Sumangala thero
• The Mind of Compassion: Buddhism and Violence

54% of adolescent girls in Sri Lanka feel that a husband is justified in beating his wife. The UNICEF Global Report Card on Adolescents 2012 however is not available yet to try and unpack this further. What do they mean?

Surely, they cannot be suggesting that the arbitrary violence that some wives are subject to in Sri Lanka is acceptable; burned rice that results in cut lips and black eyes? It must be wives that were somehow overly flirtatious with another man. Wives that have behaved, or even worse, dressed, inappropriately. Wives that have proved to be whores!

What about those husbands that use wives like dogs? Psychologists call it displaced aggression, commonly known as kick-the-dog syndrome. Surely the adolescent girls can’t mean these husbands? Their wives did nothing more than open the door and welcome them home.

What about the husbands that come home inebriated and then proceed to beat their wives to a pulp for looking at them the wrong way? Do the 54% think this is justified?

Our friends at the Alcohol and Drug Information Centre (ADIC) have a theory that the alcohol socialization process in Sri Lanka begins with the mother at the fence discussing with her neighbour her husband’s need to consume alcohol due to the various problems he faces. ADIC says this results in young people (who accompany their mother to the fence as kids) turning to alcohol to solve their problems – meka bonna ona prashnayak!

Do you think the mothers at the fences talk about how beleaguered their husbands are to rationalize their still bloody noses, or visible grab marks on arms? Perhaps the 54% have stood by holding on to maternal hems listening to why this is ok, understandable even, that’s it, understandable.

Do you think that this level of acceptance among young adolescent girls mirrors our own as Sri Lankans?

Violence is under reported here.  As a Nation, we’re also on record refuting allegations that we in anyway mistreat women. Apparently we revere them, and have placed them in the highest offices of the land as a symbol of our respect and adoration. This ridiculous response however was not pilloried by our free and easy going mainstream press. We seem to accept that this is just the way things are in Sri Lanka…

Is it a really surprise then that 54% of young adolescent girls think that wife beating is acceptable?

We did a series of workshops for the Rotaract Club in 2010 and also 2011 that included a discussion on violence in relationships. Over two thirds of the participants, predominantly from Colombo, affluent, English speaking, agreed that a man can in fact hit a woman, if the woman has done something to deserve it… defining what deserved a violent response in relationships ran the gamut from overcooking rice to being unfaithful. We were surprised at the levels of acceptance that first year, and then, as we did more workshops and listened to what were rational and well thought out justifications for intimate partner violence, our surprise soon gave way to disbelief and finally almost resignation.

This is the way we are. Simple, really. It’s not even about insidious forms of patriarchy. There’s nothing insidious about our acceptance of intimate partner violence… or at least, it’s no more insidious than us using the term intimate partner violence in a bid to be inclusive of men and women who face emotional and physical violence in their relationships, regardless of marital status and sexuality. No, in Sri Lanka, we’re honest, open, even proud of our patriarchal weltanschauung. A man is a man, with man responsibilities and commitments, and similarly, a woman is a woman, with woman obligations and duties. Those who fall between and into the cracks… well, tough, this is Sri Lanka.

Recently we have wondered if Sri Lanka’s patriarchy has its roots in Buddhism. You might think this an unnecessarily reductive approach to what has long be acknowledged as an amalgam of anthropology, religion (especially the people of the book) and their resultant socio-cultural influences. But still, we have to examine our contemporary expressions of Buddhism, which must surely be derived from the various influences just outlined, including the Judeo-Christian God of those who colonized us for nearly 450 years.

Religion’s role in patriarchy is well documented. It is steeped in power. Just read the Ten Commandments. They were written for men who owned slaves, donkeys and women. Nietzsche, before syphilitic insanity claimed him – a judgment from God, of course – spoke at length of how faith and belief was used to manipulate the masses. The herd. The priests didn’t believe in the lie of God, and most crucially heaven and hell. They merely perpetuated it.

Have we men similarly perpetuated a lie that it is in fact normal i.e. the norm, to slap our women about, especially when they deserve it?

Do we believe this, or do we find it convenient? Are we afraid that our women may wake up to the fact that we’re bullies and cheats and, in general, loathsome? Surely this is unnecessary Feminist vitriol? Next thing you know, I’d be advocating that all women become lesbians? That’s what feminists do apparently, even the men.

This last week, we’ve been forced to engage with our Buddhist ways in Sri Lanka.

When we heard of what happened in Dambulla, did we collectively shudder, or did we bang our hairy Sinhala chests in exultation? Nietzsche’s ascetic priest that believes not what he preaches was alive and well. Power was on display. Policemen and the armed forces were mocked and chided.

Is there a connection between Dambulla and the 54% of young adolescent girls who have beatings and marital rape to look forward to? Are they not both a reflection of what we have become… or even worse, who we’ve always been?

There are answers out there, but we mustn’t be afraid to ask the questions.

How do we recover? How do we help the 54% and the rest of our young girls feel self worth and value that will not perpetuate our peculiar patriarchy?

We’re as far from comprehensive sex education – any well structured programme addresses gender and patriarchy – in schools as we’re from freedom of speech. But how far is that really? What is the distance? How many miles to go before we sleep?

The shortest verse in the Bible is John’s Gospel Chapter 11, verse 35: Jesus wept.

This last week, as I watched and read of the ugly militant Buddhism that has raised its head and stripped itself of robes to jump up and down naked and unabashed, all I could see were tears in Buddha’s eyes. Today, reading of the 54%, Buddha’s tears continued to flow.

Buddha wept, and we, if we don’t laugh, we’ll cry too.

• The transformation of Buddhism in Sri Lanka
• Aiyo!
• V-Day: Writings to end violence against women and girls
• Aroused by Akon’s Sexy Bitch: the Rise of Sinhala-Buddhist Fundamentalism?
• The Islamic Republic of Sri Lanka

A week ago, a violent a mob of about 2,000 Sinhalese, including a group of Buddhist monks led by the Mahanayaka of the Rangiri Dambulu chapter Inamaluwe Sumangala thero, stormed and vandalised a mosque in Dambulla. The mosque was declared an illegal structure, but it is unclear how this far this is accurate.

The shameful behaviour and expression employed by the Mahanayaka of the Rangiri Dambulu chapter Inamaluwe Sumangala thero, along with the monks he led and the crowd of thugs is not remotely associated with or reflective of the philosophy of the Dhamma, the teachings of the Buddha, or the way in which a Buddhist monk is supposed to behave and speak. Many online have already expressed their dismay and deep concern over the actions of a few, placing Sri Lanka in the media spotlight again for all the wrong reasons.

We have a choice, but time is running out. Speak up. Sign up to this online statement and say that this violence was not in your name, and that more calls to violence are futile. Renounce a fringe lunacy and resist extremism. By putting your name below, you are opposing mob violence and bigotry as ways to resolve disputes.

If we have to fight, let’s fight to keep Sri Lanka free of extremists who threaten not only what they seek to destroy, but also who and what they claim to represent. Add your name, and please pass the message on.

Read the full statement and sign up in English here, in Tamil here and in Sinhala here.

• Fake video and lies: The strange case of Dambulla’s Inamaluwe Sumangala thero
• The middle finger to the middle-path in Sri Lanka
• A different take from the Sangha: The dhamma and religious co-existence in Sri Lanka (UPDATED)
• Bigoted monks and militant mobs: Is this Buddhism in Sri Lanka today?
• Monks of War – Al-Jazeera on the JHU

Image courtesy BBC

The storming of the Dambulla Mosque on Friday the 20^th April and chasing away of the Muslim worshippers attending Friday prayers by a mob led by Buddhist priests is epoch making in modern Sri Lankan history. The majority of the people of all communities are shocked and incensed by the way Buddhist priests lead this violent and destructive mob against the Dambulla Mosque.

According to authorities this mosque has been in existence since 1964 and built with the support of the people of the area and the Viharadhipathy, the Chief Incumbent of the historic Dambulla Rajamahavihara. Deplorably the pretext used by the mob led by the Monk is that this mosque is built on sacred land. This casts aspersion upon the goodwill of the people and the then Chief Incumbent of the Dambulla Rajamavihara as lesser Buddhists than the latter to permit the Muslim countrymen to worship in the place they domicile/work.  This raises several questions about the authenticity of the Buddhist Monks who participated in this about their true Buddhist credentials.

The Buddhist –Muslim relation in Sri Lanka is more than ten centuries old and this bond has hitherto been not broken despite the 500 years of colonial rule, the post colonial period and beyond. The Muslims did not succumb to the divide and rule politics of the colonial powers and they distinctly identified those that are alien from those that are their countrymen. This is the reason why Muslims did not become surrogate of the colonial masters and therefore bore the brunt of suffering with the majority Buddhists during the colonial period. This is because Buddhist –Muslim relationship is not built on opportunities or marriages of convenience but of sincere understanding and goodwill, time tested by centuries of coexistence. This is the reason why Muslims stood as a buffer against the division of the country inspite of the bulk of them being Tamil speaking, therefore they got battered and butchered when they were praying in the mosques by the LTTE and still, more than 100,000 Muslim IDPs are living in squalid conditions and are deprived of their livelihood and domicile in spite of the end of war, which, neither the GOSL nor the International community shows pity on them. The reason why this bond is stronger is because both these communities strongly believe in the unhindered sovereignty of the Sri Lanka state. A cursory glance at the history of Sri Lanka would testify why the colonial invaders found the Buddhists and Sri Lankan Muslims as their enemy and not otherwise.

Dambulla mosque attack is not a yardstick to measure the strength of the Muslim-Buddhist bond and it is not going to be broken just because some believe that few frictions here and there would weaken both communities by polarization. This attack is not against the Muslims, this is an attack against the sovereignty of the state judging by the way these are emerging. Since Buddhists cannot be taken head-on, the strategy is possibly to polarize the Muslims and the Buddhists so that would create justifications to paint the majority Buddhist community as racist to achieve the grand plans of those who are pulling strings.

Prelude to Geneva Resolution

With the end of the war and elimination of the LTTE, India and the western powers lost leverage in Sri Lanka. India lost its geopolitical spindle and so has the West. Ever since both entities were on the lookout for regaining leverage in Sri Lankan affairs and the hype created by the Channel 4 and the lackadaisical response of the GOSL to the suffering of the Tamil community gave them the opening. In the prelude to the Geneva Resolutions too, the Muslims played a distinct role to safeguard the sovereignty of the state from interference and interventions.  The Muslims staunchly sided with the GOSL not because they were against their Tamil brethren but because the sovereignty of Sri Lanka is a shared responsibility.  The ministers, deputy ministers and their bandwagon went with fanfare and squabbled upon their return. This shrouded the catalytic role played by the Muslims. Sheik Rizvi Mufthi and Sheik A.C.Agar Mohammed, both senior Islamic scholars from the All Ceylon Jamiyyathul Ulema toured Geneva and influenced and invoked Muslim country representatives to vote for Sri Lanka at the resolution. These are unofficial ambassadors who volunteered to save the sovereignty of Sri Lanka from being tarnished.

Those who harbour ill will against our country know that Buddhist-Muslim bond is formidable and would be a deterrent to their schemes and therefore polarizing both these communities would be the first step. Attack against the Muslims should be viewed in this light. The more we are divided external interventions would become stronger.

Nuwara Eliya Mosque opening by the President

President Mahinda Rajapakshe set a precedent in modern Sri Lanka by opening a Mosque in Nuwara Eliya on the 11^th April 2012 . This is the first time in Sri Lanka’s modern history that the Head of the Nation a devout Buddhist inaugarated the opening a Mosque for the Muslims. It is also noteworthy in the President’s speech, that he pointedly mentioned that   “the Muslims have always been friends of the Sinhalese historically as well as today and that they have been defending the country together with the Sinhalese”. This is a testimony to the Buddhist – Muslim bond which some can feel disturbed about. Definitely this visible emerging bonding relation between two communities is an eyesore to those who harbour ill will against Sri Lanka and they would go to all means to polarize its people.

Extremism

Extremism is not a part of the religion of the Muslims or Buddhists in Sri Lanka or the world over. Widespread extremism in modern societies is a modern phenomenon. Extremism is a by product of seeking change at an accelerated pace with emotional overdrive or is an intelligent manipulation of the gullible. Studies indicate that in post colonial Muslim countries, extremism is identified as the product of the Western or proxy intelligence agencies’ manipulations.  This was done to hinder gradual transition from post colonialism to nation building in their own terms and choice. So that nation building would take a rational and evolutionary process and result in formulating a peaceful and stable society. Such a stable and peaceful society would effectively discard colonial vestiges and build nations based on their values and ethos. Extremism is an anathema to progress and hinders stable growth of a society. The post colonial societies are not immune from this scourge and in particular Muslim countries are the most spawned to keep them divided. Extremism does no good to a society. It breeds conflict and violence and acts as a barrier to gradual progress and inhibits sustainable development in society. It makes society unstable and contributes to failed state conditions. Religious extremism of any hue or colour is not a positive contributor; instead it destroys the very religion it represents and polarises societies. Such societies will be unstable and vulnerable to external interventions.

Fortunately in Sri Lanka religious extremism from all religious groups is a rare commodity and violent extremism was non-existent. It was only chauvinism that had notoriety in Sri Lanka. The debilitating three decades separatist war brought sense to our leaders about the need for nation building which we should have embarked upon immediate to the British exit from the shores of Sri Lanka and which we didn’t. With the end of the war and decimation of the LTTE, time was ripe for nation building. This includes physical building of the state as a sustainable and stable system and mending hearts and minds of all people across the country and building a single nation of diverse cultures, beliefs and values. Unfortunately at this stage Sri Lanka as a majority Buddhist country is experiencing emergence of Buddhist extremism. The timing of this emergence raises many questions of why it did not emerge during the war and why not immediately after independence from Britain in 1948? Why should it emerge now and who are behind such an emergence?

What national benefits does the country get by Buddhists destroying mosques?  Are they going to increase our GDP or Gross Domestic Happiness? Are we not driving our motherland to another abyss? It is very doubtful that any sane Buddhist would embark on such a suicidal mission at a time the sovereignty of the state is questioned and with a partner community that has an asymmetrical advantage to grant to the Sinhalese. This creates suspicions about genuineness of the group that attacked the Dambulla Mosque. Whether they are for a parochial gain or are mercenaries working for agents of a foreign master should be probed into.

Failed State Phenomenon

Sri Lanka is turning out to be a lawless country and a failed state phenomenon. The  Dambulla Mosque and similar incidences where mobs led or instigated by Buddhist monks goes unpunished for violating all the legal norms and public decency and the victims are victimised by the state by not providing legitimate protection a state ought to provide its citizens. This is a distinct failure on the part of the state to protect its citizens and their assets from these marauding mobs. If the state continuously fails to provide security to its citizens and their assets, where can the citizens seek protection from?

The Government is caving into extremism; in this case of Dambulla Mosque which is existing since 1964, the GOSL seems weak and has approved the relocation of the mosque to a new site. Is this the right answer, aren’t they setting precedent which would drive score of mosques to seek new sites and create commotion all over the country? Such a move would certainly play into the hands of those who are fomenting trouble in the country using the mobs as their mercenaries to cause division amongst the people and open the country for external interventions.

Would this be a threat to the GOSL?

In the post 9/11 world, the West is in the process of restructuring the architecture of power and global controls. This revivification and realignments are today achieved through some NGOs and Dissenting Groups (DGs) in societies amongst other tools. Therefore the West and regional powers are strengthening DGs & NGOs and surrogating them. At times they provoke the surrogates to foment conflicts within societies and use such artificially generated conflicts as pretexts to intervene in nation states in the guise of Responsibility to Protect (R2P). There are ample evidences in Egypt, Libya and Syria proving the fact of how DGs were used as de-stabilizing forces in countries followed up by Western intervention of some sort. In this scenario, GOSL impotence to uphold law and order and failure to bring quick and effective control of mob pressure and violence at the incipient stage is very dangerous. Such mob pressure if let loose would possibly snowball into a mammoth mob almost threatening the GOSL and swarm and immobilize them as happened in Egypt and other countries.

In light of this, it is recognised how spurious the claim of those who attacked the Dambulla Mosque. Sri Lanka as a historically Buddhist country, any part at any time can become ‘Sacred Land’ and conflict can emerge anytime anywhere. These spurious claims do not help the living to live as peaceful citizens but disturb the stability of the country eternally. This inhibits nation building and peaceful co-existence.

Taking note of these facts, the GOSL should never allow anyone to take law into their hands.  Maintaining law and order and civil administration should be the prime prerogative of the GOSL and the state machinery unless the GOSL wishes to abdicate their authorities to the mobs and stamp Sri Lanka as a failed state.

• Is Dambulla, Babri Masjid Redux?
• Dambulla Mosque Attack: A Litmus Test of a Nation in Transition from Chauvinism to Civility
• TMVP in same dustbin as LTTE in the past?
• Not In Our Name: Against religious extremism in Sri Lanka
• Photo essay: Freedom, Religion, and Dambulla

The largest animal on the planet, the blue whale, is found in Sri Lankan waters. Unusually, the blue whales off our coast do not to migrate to polar waters for feeding – a characteristic of other populations. We do not yet know why. In this interview, we talk about additional qualities that make them unique and interesting while highlighting the need for a scientific understanding of the population in order to manage and protect them into the future. In light of current and growing human encroachment in our oceans, Sri Lankan marine biologist Asha de Vos makes a strong case that the time is now.

Asha’s Sri Lanka’s second TED Fellow (and the second TED Fellow to be featured on this site). She was awarded a Zonta Woman of Achievement award in 2011 and has coordinated and implemented projects related to marine and coastal resources in Sri Lanka in collaboration with donors and partners. As a marine biologist she has worked at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and as a consultant on projects for NARA. Asha de Vos has written numerous journal articles, publications, and presented her work in several countries including Australia, Maldives, the US and Sri Lanka. Most recently, at the TED conference in Long Beach, California, she delivered a presentation titled “The Unorthodox Whale”. She is currently a Ph.D. student at the University of Western Australia, where she studies the ‘factors influencing blue whale aggregations off Southern Sri Lanka’.

Relevant to our conversation was the fact that Asha leads the first major study of the unique Sri Lankan blue whales, and is attempting, over the long term, to get an estimate of the numbers of whales in Sri Lanka.

We begin by going into how Asha began her interest in cetology and marine biology, and how it was a journey on a ship near Sri Lanka’s coastal waters, and a random encounter with blue whales, that started her on a path to study these amazing mammals. Asha comes out strongly on two points, the need to regulate the whale watching industry that’s blossoming in Sri Lanka and the whale population’s proximity to one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, and the inevitable, tragic consequence of collisions.

Image courtesy Wired. The lines in yellow reflect lanes with the most amount of ships per annum.

Photo courtesy Sopaka Karunasundera, taken in Colombo harbour in late March 2012. The ship’s crew didn’t even know they had hit and killed a blue whale.

Asha notes that she’s using technologies never been used in Sri Lanka before to more accurately map the area in which these amazing mammals swim and breed in, and stresses that aside from the obvious danger of fatal collisions, the sonar pollution from the low range frequencies of ship propulsion pose a serious threat to the health of the whale population. On regulations, Asha expresses her concern that there are no regulations around whale watching in Sri Lanka, which leads to policies and practices that are harmful to the mammals. Asha also notes how disruptive the practice of charging right towards whales on boats is, in search of a good photograph. Instead, she notes that the best chance of a great shot of a blue whale is to stop, sit, wait.

Asha’s also passionate about raising awareness about marine biology and conservation, and speaks of the need to encourage children and youth to learn more about the rich diversity of marine life around Sri Lanka. Towards the end of our conversation, we talk about how technology, including Asha’s output on the web and through her blog, advances our understanding of the issues she is working on. Asha also responds to a question as to whether technologies that bring closer, to those who haven’t experienced a blue whale sighting in real life, the magic of the mammals enhances interest in its conservation, or makes it an experience more ordinary, and as a consequence, more forgettable. Inspired by this question on our programme, Asha went on to host and curate a great conversation on TED, titled Technology doesn’t kill the magic.

We don’t talk about it much, but one of the biggest challenges Asha’s faced in the study of blue whales is not so much the complexity of the subject, but her gender. Asha’s a pioneer in this regard, and as she notes in a recent initiative to celebrate Sri Lanka’s female role models by Reach Out, “Being a marine biologist is uncommon enough, being a female marine biologist is stare-worthy. I carry heavy equipment and direct teams of researchers who are often men”. We end our conversation with Asha stressing the importance of pursuing one’s dreams, and never giving up on them, especially if the interests lie with marine biology and conservation.

• Tears
• The future of tourism in Sri Lanka: A conversation with Renton de Alwis
• Humans vs. elephants: Sri Lanka’s tragic on-going conflict
• In conversation with Shashi Tharoor at Galle Literary Festival
• Diaspora dilemmas: Australia and the Sri Lanka conflict

The Sri Lankan government’s denial of things extends well beyond allegations of war crimes. Earlier this year, Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to the US, Jaliya Wickramasuriya “Rapes, this and that not taking any place in Sri Lanka”. Writing about this daft and peculiar statement, Roel Raymond noted,

I don’t understand this. I don’t understand why our diplomats and politicians continue to bristle defensively, refusing to accept fault, scrambling to cover the massive chip on their collective shoulders. How hard can it be to admit one is wrong? How very different would it have been if Ambassador Wickramasuriya had said ‘Yes this is a problem, but we as a nation are committed to ending it’?

On 1st April last year, The Grassrooted Trust led the global V-Day celebration in Colombo at the Barefoot Gallery with a production of ‘A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant and A Prayer: Writings to End Violence Against Women & Girls’, a groundbreaking collection of monologues by world-renowned authors and playwrights. The show was sold out, and The Grassrooted Trust was able to raise and donate LKR 50,000 to the Women’s Devenlopment Center, Kandy.

The show’s success was the catalyst for this year’s ‘වී DAY’, where as promised, we will showcase Sri Lankan stories that discuss not only conventional forms of violence against women and girls, such as rape, battery, incest and sexual slavery, but also more unconventional, far less reported forms of violence, stemming from patriarchy, and cultural hypocrisy.

Under the direction of Anuruddha Fernando and Hans Billimoria ‘වී-DAY 2012 – Writings to end Violence Against Women and Girls in Sri Lanka’, a selection of original writings which will be staged on Sunday, 1st April 2012 at the Warehouse Project, Block # 26, Tripoli Road, Colombo 10. Directions here.

A total of seven pieces, all of which have been written by Sri Lankans living and working in the murky field of sexual and reproductive health and rights in Sri Lanka, will be performed by experienced cast of actors from both English and Sinhala drama traditions. The entire programme will last approximately ninety minutes, including an interval.

Groundviews caught up with Hans Billimoria and a few actors in the play to talk about the production, and the issues it aims to raise.

We talk for around 25 minutes, and address issues of sexuality, the sponsorship of this kind of production by media organisations that have been openly homophobic, the challenge of moving the action from stage to polity and society, over the long-term, the ways in which theatre can help strengthen awareness over this prevalent issue.

Also see video on V-Day produced by Vikalpa here.

• Violence Against Women and Girls in Sri Lanka: No April Fools joke
• The Travelling Circus on video: Looking at war and IDPs through theatre
• The Right to Respond
• Women’s Day 2012: Concerns, challenges and opportunities from Sri Lanka
• Floating Spaces: Theatre and censorship in Sri Lanka

Groundviews caught up with Gustavo Fijalkow, one of two (the other being Gerda König) responsible for the concept behind ‘changeABLE cohesion‘, a contemporary dance performance that will kick off the Colombo International Theater Festival on 26th March. changeABLE cohesion features six dancers, two women and four men, three with and three without physical disabilities.

In the interview, we ask Gustavo as to why the Theatre Festival decided to go with a production such as this for opening night, and obviously, details of the production and what the audience could expect to see and take away. More broadly, and interestingly, we speak on disability and the differently abled in performance – how their interaction is framed by the performance space and tradition, but also redefines both. Gustavo, a trained dancer for over 20 years, speaks of his frustration with traditional dance companies and their auditions process, and how markedly different DIN A 13 tanzcompany, one of the few mixed-abled dance companies worldwide, approaches dance.

In the 20 minute interview, we also pose questions to Gustavo on how what DIN A 13 tanzcompany is doing in Sri Lanka can be sustained after they leave, whether the experience of being part of a production for over four months has in any way changed those who are part of it.

We apologise for the bad exposure in some parts of the video – we are still learning to shoot HD with a newly acquired D-SLR camera. changeABLE cohesion will go live on March 26th 2012 at 3.30pm and again at 7.00pm at the British School auditorium.Tickets are available at the venue British School Auditorium and at the Goethe Institut Sri Lanka.

Audiences can expect performances on the lines of DIN A 13 tanzcompany’s previous performances, trailers for two of which can be viewed below.

From Terrains Decouverts, Senegal

From Patterns Beyond Traces, Ghana

• Samhara: An interweaving of the Nrityagram Dance Ensemble and the Chitrasena Dance Company
• Heshma Wignaraja: Thoughts on dance and choreography
• Interview with Mohamed Adamaly: A life in English theatre
• Interview with Vajira, Sri Lanka’s Prima Ballerina Assoluta
• Thoughts on ‘Dancing for the Gods’ by the Chitrasena and Vajira Dance Foundation

Image courtesy Women’s Views on News

The lady in front of me in the queue put a packet of condoms on the counter and we both could see the cashier’s eyes flicker over her left hand, obviously checking if she was married. Not seeing one, he looked at her and smirked. I watched her look at him straight in the eye and I’m sure we both almost wished he would say something. I know I wanted to give his judgmental mind a lecture he would never forget.

Watching this reminded me of a story I had been told a few years ago by a friend who was intent on spreading the word about a gynaecologist in Colombo who had put a colleague of hers through an extremely humiliating experience.

Let’s call her M. So M had gone to see this gynaecologist regarding an issue she was having and during the routine questioning at the beginning she had given her basic details – age, relationship status etc. When the time came for her to be examined he had looked at her vaginal area, after not more than 5 seconds spread her legs a little more and asked her “I thought you said you are not married?” She had been mildly puzzled and responded that she was indeed unmarried. The doctor had roughly pushed her thighs aside a little more, called the nurse (an elderly matronly individual) over to him and said “Bandala naa lu, eth ara balanna, hyman ekak naa” (She says she is unmarried, but look, no hymen).

M had said that she had felt so judged, so violated – to an extent that she had actually said being raped would have been a walk in the park compared to this mental and physical anguish. She had remained on the bed while he continued checking her issue, and said later that she wished had gathered the strength to tell him off and stop the examining then and there. He had lectured her while writing her prescription and had told her that she would find it very difficult to find a husband as she did not have a hymen. She had told him that if it meant not being married to the likes of him she would find herself extremely fortunate and walked off.

Her humiliation did not end there unfortunately – at the pharmacy while she was waiting for her medicine she had been hassled by the pharmacist (a woman) who refused to give one particular pill after she checked on M’s marital status. It was only after M had firmly said that she is well aware that the pill was not meant to be taken orally, that while she was not married she did not have a hymen and if the pharmacist had such a problem with giving this pill she would take her business elsewhere. She had subsequently been given the medicine while other people at the pharmacy had heard every word of this exchange and she left the building with several judgemental eyes on her.

Every time I remember this story I feel humiliated imagining the experience of M. I cannot imagine what she and countless others have gone through (and continue to go through) in the hands of these archaic doctors and nurses still unfortunately serving in our healthcare system.

It was appalling that the doctor never considered that she could have been married before (divorcees, widows – I wonder if he had heard of those terms?), whether she had been raped or molested, whether she had been active in sports and the possibilities can go on. But no, he functioned on two possibilities – 1) Married, no hymen. 2) Unmarried, hymen intact. He had not even bothered to check and treated his patient very badly.

What is dangerous about such conservative people working in our healthcare system (and this also includes people working in pharmacies who are as important as a doctor given the level and frequency of interaction) is that they are also unwilling to accept the changes in culture and lifestyle in Sri Lankan society – such as pre marital sex which has over the years become more and more accepted and part of the lifestyle of Sri Lankans, specifically among the young generation. One can take whatever stand they like on the issue but it needs to be recognised that Sri Lankans ARE indeed having sex and sometimes they are having sex with people who they are not married to. So behaving like a condom is a prize exclusively for married folk contributes to several issues – unwanted pregnancies, abortions, HIV/AIDS, STIs etc.

The value placed on a woman’s virginity, the growing acceptance of pre marital sex are discussions that have been taking place for years and not one I intend to get into by writing this piece. The intention of this piece is however, to speak out to the women who have had the humiliating experience at the hands of a pharmacist or a doctor – who were judged because they did not have a ring around a finger to justify the choices they wish to make with their own bodies , to those who do have a ring around their finger but still have to endure the glances of people when buying a condom or a morning after pill and also to those who have not had the misfortune of such experiences but should know that it can happen to them.

Speak up. If you have had a bad experience at the doctors – tell other women about it, tell other doctors about it, write to the management of the hospital.  If you encounter a judgemental cashier or pharmacist – don’t be ashamed. Look at them directly in the eye and challenge them. If you see another girl or woman experiencing this – show your support, speak up on behalf of them. Just as they are entitled to their opinions, you are entitled to yours. If they choose to make theirs known to you, even by smirking at you – make sure you make your opinion known to them, but never explain yourself and give reasons.

Talk about it. Why these things still happen is because any topic related to sex, reproductive organs, and contraception is treated as taboo. By talking about any incident you hear you might even enlighten some people that a hymen can be damaged in many ways. By talking about it you can prevent someone from going to dreadful doctors and instead seek out the many wonderful open minded doctors who do exist in Sri Lanka.

We cannot change the old fashioned views of people nor can we make them accept the changes in our society. Individuals speaking up will not bring about a revolutionary change among the conservative doctors, nurses, pharmacists and cashiers in Sri Lanka. However, it will in some way ensure that even one woman out there will never experience the violation M did. That even one woman out there is having safe sex because she was able to buy a condom because the cashier’s attitude did not make her leave the store without buying one. That even one woman feels like she can go to a doctor without feeling nervous and not contemplate for days about whether she will be judged.

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