Photo courtesy M.A. Pushpa Kumara / EPA, via Photo Blog on MSNBC

Poya must be one of the first Sri Lankan English terms to enter the vocabulary of foreigners when they arrive in Sri Lanka. A poya day is a full moon holiday, a day when devout Buddhists go to the temple and observe sil. To non-Buddhists it is a welcome day off, but (not so welcome for some) a day when meat and alcohol are not available in shops and supermarkets, and are not supposed to be served in restaurants and hotels. Many people are critical of a system which reportedly gives Sri Lanka more public holidays than any other country, and which is seen to favour Buddhism over other religions. But most of us look forward to poya days anyway!

The day before a poya day is called pre-poya. This is a day when evening events and get-togethers are often organised – the equivalent of a Saturday night, the next day being a holiday. It is also a day when liquor stores do brisk business as people stock up for the next day.

The term pre-poya originated in the 1960s during the period when Ceylon adopted a lunar calendar. Instead of the normal Saturday-Sunday weekend, each quarter moon day was a holiday (poya), and the previous day (pre-poya) was a half-day. The days inbetween were labelled P1, P2, P3 etc. Most working weeks consisted of five days (P1 – P5), but since the lunar month is approximately 29.5 days, once every few weeks there would be an extra day (P6). This made it difficult to plan ahead; weekends were out of sync with the rest of the world; and the Roman Catholics were upset that Sunday became a normal working day.

One British diplomat recalled arriving in Colombo at this time and being greeted by a memo which began “Since there are two Thursdays in this week …”. And my correspondent Fazli Sameer recalls that the title of the contemporary Beatles song “8 days a week” became a popular source of humour! If anyone has other memories or anecdotes from this period, I would be interested to hear them.

I had always assumed that this system was introduced by Mrs Bandaranaike during the 1970s, the famous period of isolationist left-wing policies, food shortages, etc. And in researching the subject for this piece I found that several others were under the same impression. But in fact it was adopted by Dudley Senanayake’s UNP government on 6^th January 1966, and abandoned by Mrs Bandaranaike after the SLFP election victory in 1970. But the monthly full-moon poya holiday remained.

The introduction of the lunar calendar is remembered as an example of a government pandering to the Sinhala Buddhist nationalist agenda – but, compared to other examples such as SWRD’s ‘Sinhala only’ policy, a relatively harmless one. It is a distant memory now – little seems to have been written on the subject, and many younger people are not even aware that it happened.

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• Vesak and Violence Against Women
• Now our New Year has no moon
• A tragi-comedy? The UN Advisory Panel and war crimes in Sri Lanka
• Chandrika Kumaratunga responds to Dayan Jayatilleke’s comment on the murder of Lasantha Wickremetunge

Photo courtesy World Bank

“If a tree falls in a forest and lands on a politician, even if you can’t hear the tree or the screams, I’ll bet you’d at least hear the applause.”

Paul Tindale

Something is of universal value if it has the same value or worth for all, or almost all, people. This claim could mean two importantly different things. First, it could be that something has a universal value when everybody finds it valuable. This was Isaiah Berlin‘s understanding of the term. According to Berlin, “…universal values are values that a great many human beings in the vast majority of places and situations, at almost all times, do in fact hold in common, whether consciously and explicitly or as expressed in their behavior…”. If such were the case, it would seem logical that ‘a benign quality of life’ would constitute a most fundamental universal value.  From there arises the various issues of fertility, pleasure, or democracy as universal values.

The term quality of life is used to evaluate the general well being of individuals and societies. The term is used in a wide range of contexts, including the fields of international development, healthcare, and politics. Quality of life should not be confused with the concept of standard of living, which is based primarily on income.

The quality of life may be benign, free from perturbation and stress or malign, constantly exposed to perturbation and stress. These two states are two poles of a continuum that describes this  ‘quality’.    Thus the maintenance of a benign environment that protects the human being should be the primary concern of any development programme.  After all, it is for the benefit of humanity that all development programmes are mooted.

The human being is a biological entity. The ideal state for such an entity is when it is healthy and free from any harmful or injurious input.  Both science and tradition have identified many inputs that are harmful or injurious to the biological being.  Since the ideal conditions for biological organisms are being free from these negative inputs and since development must be a movement towards the ideal state that enhances our quality of life; we can summarize that ‘Any process or activity that leads to the reduction of the biological quality of life cannot contribute to real development’ or that ‘any process or activity that produces physical or chemical inputs demonstrable to be injurious to human well being leads to mal development.  Such a stand will allow people rather than abstract concepts to attain greater importance in the assessment of ‘development’.  Thus no amount of economic gain, media or propaganda should be able to justify the erosion of the well being of people.

Development, beyond the provision of human well-being, becomes a particular word view or set of values.  In today’s declining quality of life, the development paradigm addressing public health or agriculture is still driven by the same values that created the problems.  How to incorporate the scientific reality of the erosion of public health and environmental sustainability in setting development goals?  Will certainly be a question that calls for urgent answers.

Traditional society worldwide represents a wide diversity of expression, reflecting a long history of co-evolution with the local landscapes. The product of these incredibly long processes of ‘informal research’ is codified as traditional knowledge and practice.  The inroads of modern consumerist society, the present claimant to globalization, are rapidly homogenizing many traditional societies, in pursuance of development.  Often it is neither democratic nor requested by traditional people.  There is no recognition of the fact that each society has a worldview that must be recognized and incorporated into the international agenda of development.

In addition to being sensitive to the needs of the land, there must also be recognition of the fact that agrarian societies with long histories, posses the credibility of having sustained themselves successfully under the rigor of survival in the natural world.  The concern for the future is that the model chosen for sustaining future global agrarian society is an energy and resource demanding production system.  The sustainability of which is dependent on the timely delivery of external inputs.

Agrarian societies have existed on this world for a very long time.  Many in existence today have historical records that attest their capacity for sustainability. The challenge is to understand their structure well enough, so that it provides the paradigm for development.  Development, in this context will mean capacity building within the traditional paradigm.  The aspects of globalizing such a plurality are challenging, it requires addressing phenomena that have meaning to all members of such a plurality.  For instance, climate change is a global phenomenon that has the potential to affect all agrarian society.  Sustainability of the production base is another.  Yet no investment is being put into developing the traditional approaches to agriculture.  Development funding is still narrowly focused towards ‘Economic Development’ and ignores all other considerations of ‘Development’.

Perhaps it is time to revisit development once again.  Economic yes, but it must also be ecologically and socially valid.   In Sri Lanka the tragedy of uneducated and greedy politicians, tutored by conniving bureaucrats mindlessly cheering the process of ‘economic development’ is evident. The fact that they do not consider any other aspect of sustainability, must demonstrate the bankruptcy of a national vision and of any responsibility to the nation.

A development process that creates massive infrastructure, mega buildings etc. requiring enormous quantities of energy to maintain them, without considering the long-term cost of providing fossil based energy, cannot contribute to sustainable development.  It will result in the construction of more and more polluting energy plants dependent on external sources of fossil energy that we will have to purchase from an ever-expensive market. Borrowing money for such an extravagant lifestyle is no way to make the future sustainable.

Our political pundits are fond of using terms such as Universal Values and Accountability to window dress the ongoing charade. It is even more tragic to read the words of politicians who claim to represent the Buddhist view when they state:

“The so called development based on greed and excessive utilization of the natural resources of the world, …Excessive consumption of meat is a sacrilege of vegetation and animals… To build artificial towns that are only a travesty is the motivation (of developers).”

And then go on to support enthusiastically the addiction of the nation to energy consumption. What hypocrisy!

To see the consequence of the current ‘ Economic Development’, that our politicians so unquestioningly participate in, should be obvious to the educated.  Energy addiction is the worst form of addiction as it impacts a whole nation, not just the individual. To miss the obvious connection between ‘Economic Development’ as sold today and the need for ever-increasing deliveries of power, is to blind or ignorant.

As for accountability in Sri Lanka, the response of Mahatama Gandhi to the question of what he thought of ‘Western Civilization’, might be well applied. His response was  ‘What a good idea !”. The challenge before us is, how to make manifest this ‘good idea’ of accountability in the sea of impunity and corruption that we are mired in.

• Desire, Violence and Leadership
• Future of Farming in Sri Lanka
• Right to Food: Ecologically based agriculture
• Agricultural Madness
• De-globalisation: A paradigm for sustainable development?

Assorted charlatans and religious zealots across the island of Sri Lanka must have heaved a collective sigh of relief when they heard that Dharmapala Senaratne was no more. He had made it his business to make life difficult for those preying on the gullible public.

Rationalist and myth-buster Dharmapala made his final exist a few days before 2012 dawned. At 67, he still had a few more years of the good struggle left in him. He would surely have enjoyed countering the false prophets of doom — and their credulous followers — who predict the end of the world on 21 December 2012.

Although Dharmapala was also a teacher and lawyer with decades of experience, he was best known for his public activism as a rationalist. His was a determined and sceptical voice questioning fanatical peddlers of all kinds of dogmas, faiths and (mutually exclusive) brands of ‘salvation’.

Even more importantly, he fearlessly took on confidence tricksters hoodwinking superstitious people with black magic and cheap conjuring tricks. He was a courageous public intellectual in a land woefully short of their kind.

At its core, rationalism involves nurturing the spirit of enquiry and critical thinking in every aspect of life and living, at both private and public levels. In short, rationalists and sacred cows are mutually exclusive.

Dharmapala was President of the Sri Lanka Rationalist Association (SLRA), a small group of earnestly sceptical enquirers who won’t take anyone’s word about anything. They want to investigate and debate.

The voluntary group was originally set up in 1960 by the late Dr Abraham Thomas Kovoor (1898 – 1978), a Kerala-born science teacher who settled down in newly independent Ceylon and, after his retirement in 1959, took to investigating so-called supernatural phenomena and paranormal practices. He found adequate physical or psychological explanations for almost all of them. In that process, he exposed many so-called ‘god men’ and black magicians who thrive on people’s misery and superstitions.

In 1963, Kovoor issued an open challenge (with the then princely sum of LKR 100,000 tagged to it) for anyone who could demonstrate supernatural or miraculous powers under fool-proof and fraud-proof conditions. He also challenged the high profile Sathya Sai Baba of India, arguing that the latter’s ‘materialising’ of holy ash (vibuthi) out of thin air was nothing more than a sleight of hand. Kovoor’s challenges were consistently dodged by Sai Baba – and all others of his ilk.

Kovoor was fond of saying: “He who does not allow his miracles to be investigated is a crook; he who does not have the courage to investigate a miracle is gullible; and he who is prepared to believe without verification is a fool.”

These words, and the far-reaching influence of other well known rationalists like Bertrand Russell, inspired young Dharmapala Senaratne to promote rationalism in his spare time. Two other young men who joined Kovoor in the heyday of the Ceylon Rationalist Association: Amunugoda Thilakaratne and Ajith Thilakasena, both of who became writers of their own merit. Pooling their talents, the trio popularised Kovoor’s thinking and work among the Sinhala reading public.

Sri Lanka’s rationalist movement lost its lustre after Kovoor’s death in 1978, even though (lawyer and poet) Mervyn Casie Chetty kept it going for some more years. When the sceptical flames were reignited in the new millennium, Dharmapala became its new President by popular choice.

“Dharmapala was the bridge between generations when we set out to revive the rationalist movement of Sri Lanka in 2005,” recalls Tharaka Warapitiya, general secretary of SLRA. “He helped enormously to connect us with activists who had been heavily involved in its work during the Kovoor era.”

Different Times

By this time, however, the island of Lanka had been completely transformed. The Children of 1977 – products of economic liberalisation and Sri Lanka’s first television generation – had come of age.

Partly reflecting this new reality, Dharmapala’s style was different. While Kovoor had been charismatic and flamboyant, Dharmapala was measured and studious — yet no less passionate when it came to separating the wheat from the chaff.

He was astute enough to realise that the public moods and media attitudes had changed drastically from the more conducive 1960s and 1970s.

That was when a recent Indian immigrant (well, aren’t we all that, historically speaking?) could speak truth to power and command a sizeable audience of discerning Lankans as well as attract sufficient attention of the island’s media.

That was also a time when an eager young medical graduate (Dr Carlo Fonseka) could debunk the much-hyped ‘spiritual base’ for the ‘holy’ practice of fire walking. His finding – that ‘it’s the thickness of the sole and not the soul’ that matters in walking over red hot coal – shattered a core myth that propped up sacred cows of Kataragama.

While such acts elicited predictable resistance and threats from those afflicted, societal support at the time was more open and forthcoming. Many intellectuals and newspaper editors accommodated Kovoor, Fonseka and fellow sceptics, with a gleeful Arthur C Clarke cheering from the sidelines (he would later feature them in his global TV series).

It was the song — not the singer — that mattered then. Alas, not now.

Paradoxically, we now have far more communication channels and technologies yet decidedly fewer opportunities and platforms for dispassionate public debate. Today’s Lankan society welcomes and blindly follows an entirely different kind of Malayalis who claim to know more about our personal pasts and futures than we’d ever know ourselves. And when we see how our political and business elite patronise Sai Baba, Sri Chinmoy and other gurus so uncritically, we must wonder if there is intelligent life in Colombo…

Sacred cows, it seems, have multiplied faster than humans in the past half century. Our cacophonous airwaves and multi-colour Sunday newspapers are bustling with an embarrassment of choice for salvation, wealth, matrimony, retribution and various other ‘quick fixes’ for this life and (imagined) next ones.

Embarrassment, indeed!

So Dharmapala had to adopt different strategies to reach the same goals.

He was well versed in scientific thinking and principles, to which he added his own legal perspectives.

His position was unequivocal: “Let anyone believe in anything privately if they choose to — but no one has the right to mislead others or to hoodwink them into parting with money. That’s fraud, which is against the law!”

As he repeatedly pointed out, Sri Lanka has strict laws dealing with fraud. If anyone has been tricked into paying money on false promises, the affected may take civil or criminal legal action.

In reality, however, very few do so – lest it exposes their own gullibility! Apparently, when it comes to the occult and paranormal, many ignore the time-tested caution of “Caveat emptor” (Latin for ‘Let the buyer beware’).

“This is the very weakness that fraudsters exploit,” Dharmapala said. “These are organised rackets to rob people of their hard-earned money.”

Confronting conmen

Dharmapala took on the assorted charlatans by publicly exposing their conjuring tricks and bogus claims. He also used the media (especially television, not available during Kovoor’s time) to counter the mesmerising hype peddled by the other side.

A memorable example was when, in 2010, he pooh-poohed the hilarious practice of a ‘possessed’ wooden stool (kanappuwa) ‘walking’ down the streets in search of thieves.

“Inanimate objects are completely incapable of self-propelled motion,” he argued citing the laws of physics. “These furniture items are being manipulated by the humans involved. Kanappuwas most definitely can’t catch any thieves, or the police would employ them for their own crime investigations!”

On prime time TV, he offered LKR 100,000 for anyone who could prove beyond any doubt that a stool could ‘walk on its own’. He added: “This is a complete rip-off – further victimising persons who have already lost their belongings. It’s cruel to exploit such misery!”

He also cautioned against community divisions and hatred nurtured by dubious practices like walking stools and light-readings (anjanam): those falsely implicated are immediately (and unfairly) maligned by neighbours.

As an antidote, he called for more scientific thinking and attitude at all levels of society. “If we can get our people to think more logically and critically, we can easily dispel many myths and superstitions.”

But that is just not happening enough in Twenty First Century Lanka: a majority among its 20 million believe in a broad range of superstitions, some more harmful than others. Confronting conmen can be hazardous in a post-war society where trigger-happy goons are available for cheap.

Dharmapala reserved his most scathing criticism for (apparently) educated Lankans dabbling in unproven or fraudulent practices. This includes a number of credentialed scientists trained in disciplines such as astrophysics, geology, atmospheric physics or nuclear chemistry.

“Tragically, certain individuals with legitimate Ph Ds in various branches of science also engage in peddling pseudo-science and bogus practices. Some are doing it with commercial motives. Others, for cheap popularity,” Dharmapala said.

As we saw during the 2011 controversy over arsenic in rice, some of these learned men and women won’t allow hard evidence get in the way of a good conspiracy theory! And large sections of our media (especially in Sinhala) hero-worship them uncritically, labelling them as ‘patriots’ and projecting them as ‘defenders of indigenous knowledge’.

Dharmapala entered many contentious debates when a majority of our intellectuals diligently avoided them. He didn’t mince words when taking on scientists indulging in pseudo-science or complete non-science. He wrote in one such debate on hypnotism as ‘proof’ of reincarnation: “When learned people like Dr. J propagate and disseminate misconceptions, ordinary folk tend to be misled and embrace wrong notions thereby rendering their thinking faculties blunt.”

Rational communicator

Frustrated by the limitations of our uncritical mainstream media, he also communicated through books and the new media, so that discerning readers can make up their own minds.

His lasting contribution to rationalist literature was translating two seminal works by Kovoor: Begone Godmen, and Gods, Demons and Spirits. He also penned three original books: Kovoor saha Hethuwadi Darshanaya (Kovoor and Rationalism); Sai Baabage Anduru Paththa (The Dark Side of Sai Baba); and Elowin Aa Jeewakaya saha Wenath Hethuwadi Lipi (The Healer from Outer Space and other Rationalist Essays).

Unlike many others of his generation, Dharmapala kept up with the march of communications technologies. Early on, he recognised the web’s potential for nurturing public debate and promoting the public interest. He joined the Secular Sri Lanka group blog, well aware how its thematic focus evokes the wrath of Sinhala Buddhist nationalists. He was also active in various online discussion forums and social media platforms (such as Facebook, Twitter, All Voices and LinkedIn), and was fond of sharing interesting weblinks.

While engaging the new media, Dharmapala never gave up on the old media. He was a prolific writer of letters to the editors of English newspapers in Sri Lanka. Whatever the topic – from faith healers and vegetarianism to demons and reincarnation – he was an indefatigable practitioner of this quaint craft: he would doggedly pursue an exchange until editors intervened to close a prolonged debate.

Hopefully, these multiple communications woke up a few from their culture-conditioned and society-enforced slumber. But how do we awaken those who only pretend to be asleep?

Why do otherwise moderate people turn emotional and fiercely defensive in any discussion about their religious faith?  Why is it that a majority of Lankans seem so threatened if anyone were to even mildly question the ‘certain certainties’ of a dogma randomly assigned to them at birth? How come any discussion on secularism in Sri Lanka elicit so much vitriolic comment from the virtuous defenders of a religious state?

Could it be because, as Mark Twain once remarked, “Faith is believing what you know ain’t true”?

Sure, it’s a free world: every individual may choose what to believe in, and also change beliefs from time to time. That’s fine — as long as believers confine it all to their own private lives. But when some try to force their beliefs on everyone else, or institutionalise these as state policies, it becomes hegemony.

In a heated newspaper exchange on the ultimately unverifiable existence of an afterlife, Dharmapala said December 2009: “Having been brainwashed from the very first day of birth and then throughout a lifetime, different religionists hold a deep rooted conviction in mind that only the particular dogma, taught by their respective religions, is the absolute truth and what is taught in other religions is false. Thus, while Buddhists and Hindus are absolutely certain of rebirth, Christians and Muslims are equally certain of Almighty God and Creation.”

Associates confirm that Dharmapala had worked on another Sinhala book, a critical look at reincarnation. Its posthumous publication could restore some sanity to the emotionally charged debates on this topic.

Credulous Nation?

Meanwhile, true Buddhists – may their tribe increase! – could finally start following what the Buddha taught. For half a century, Lankan rationalists have been citing, as one of their favourite quotes, the Buddha’s well known advice to the Kalamas, captured in the kalama sutra.

Kovoor used to quote this regularly at public meetings, as do his successors to this date. The Buddha’s rejection of authority, tradition, hearsay and dogma, and his position that one should accept something as true and valid only on the basis of verification by oneself, is probably one of the earliest rationalist principles expressed in history.

But as Colombo University’s historian and public intellectual Dr Nirmal Ranjith Dewasiri told a rationalists’ meeting in Colombo last week, a majority of today’s Lankan Buddhists would rather not follow that sound advice. Doing so risks shattering too many dogmas and contradictions on which their history and current political posturing are based…

It remains to be seen who among our rationalists would take up the daunting task of keeping the sceptical flame alive. Doing so now is even more critical than when Kovoor founded the movement. At stake is much more than debating religious faiths, or safeguarding the public from exploiters of ignorance and misery.

As astronomer and science populariser Carl Sagan put it so well in his last book, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (1995): “If we can’t think for ourselves, if we’re unwilling to question authority, then we’re just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us. In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness.”

Early in life, science writer Nalaka Gunawardene was influenced by educator and free thinker Dr E W Adikaram, and later worked with Sir Arthur C Clarke as his research assistant. He thanks Dr Kavan Ratnatunga and Tharaka Warapitiya for some information used in this essay, but the opinions are entirely his own. 

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• Some rudimentary thoughts on Arthur C. Clarke’s funeral
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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 2 weeks the LTTE systematically chased out close to 75,000 Muslims residing in the districts of Kilinochchi, Mullaiteewu, Jaffna, Mannar and parts of Vavuniya.

The LTTE expulsion of Muslims has not been adequately integrated into any mainstream historical narrative in Sri Lanka. Most commentators routinely get the date of the expulsion wrong and few give it the status of a highly significant historical event that it warrants. This is unfortunately true of most events involving Sri Lanka’s Muslim community.

The Law and Society Trust (LST) in partnership with the Rural Development Foundation (RDF), the Community Trust Fund (CTF) and the Peoples’ Secretariat (PS) and an advisory group of prominent Muslim civil society actors conducted a two year long truth seeking initiative in the form of a Citizens’ Commission. The objective of this exercise has been to produce authoritative documentation of the expulsion and its consequences that is sanctioned by the community, and to list the community’s grievances through a document endorsed by the Commission consisting of eminent civil society actors. The Commission’s broadly defined terms of reference looked at a) the history of the expulsion, b) two decades of displacement, and c) the resettlement experience.

The Commissioners are eminent persons from civil society who are outside the Northern Muslim Community. The nine commissioners are Dr. Devanesan Nesiah, Dr.M.S.M.Anes, Dr.Catherin Brun, Dr.Gameela Samarasinghe, Dr.E.Santhirasegaram, Dr.Nimalka Fernando, Mr.Javid Yusuf, Ms.Chulani Kodikara and Judge.U.L.Abdul Majeed.

Shreen Saroor Juwairiya Mohideen and Jensila Majeed have assisted the commission process as members of the advisory group.

The commission has been conducting its inquiries since September 2009. Desk research has been done to collect newspaper reporting on the expulsion and scholarly articles that have been written on the event and the northern Muslims’ displacement experience. Commissioners have held 22 sittings in Puttalam, Negambo, Colombo, Mannar, Jaffna, Kilinochchi and Vavuniya.  Several of the Puttalam sittings were especially designed to elicit the participation of representatives from all five districts in the North, women from the Northern Muslim community, young people from the Northern Muslim community, and representatives from the host community in Puttalam. The commission has also collected 390 testimonies and 13 focus group interviews. These include 26 testimonies from host community members.

The Commission Report is now complete and was launched at the International Center for Ethnic Studies auditorium on the 3^rd of November. The report was very favorably received. The commentators were Manouri Muttetuwegama, Barrister, Attorney-at-Law, former Commissioner of the Sri Lanka Human Rights Commission, Chaired the Commission of Inquiry into Involuntary Removal/ Disappearance of Persons (All Island 1998- 2000) and member of the Commission of Inquiry into Alleged Serious Violations of Human Rights 2007 and Seelan Kadirgamar, former Senior Lecturer in History, University of Jaffna.  Both commentators praised the nature of the initiative and the quality of the report. They also stated that it was an important precedent that highlighted the voices of those who were affected. Kadirgama stated that it was one of the few documentation projects of the kind and hoped it would serve as a precedent for other such projects.

The report is comprehensive and consists of 11 chapters. The report was written in order to give as much prominence as possible to the voices of the northern Muslims who spoke to the commission, and also to give as much social and political background to the particular conditions of the northern Muslim experience. Therefore a section of the report is devoted to capturing the experience of the expulsion and also a sense of northern Muslims everyday lives within the war zone, and in the context of displacement. (Chapter 4, 5 and 9)These chapters mostly contain narratives from the testimonies. These narrative most poignantly capture both the time of war in the north as well as the shock of having to leave their homes with no notice.  The following two quotes are from Chapter 4 of the report- Life in the North During War Time.

My mother was not very interested in associations etc but she was a popular person. She will help a lot for matters related to young girls and others. She would go forward for anything. Once 32 people died as a result of a shell attack, and she bathed all the ‘Janasas’ (all were female ‘Janasas’) alone. All the houses that came under this attack were destroyed. The army was on one side and the LTTE were on the other side and shells attacks were happening here and there. It was my mother who bathed them in a hurry and buried them. It was a very difficult time. They were in the mood to shoot anyone they saw. (p. 47)- The quote is from the testimony of R. Faiza of Moor Street Jaffna

The following quote captures the moment of the expulsion in a different location- this is from Sameena of Puthukudiiruppu on Mannar Island.

We left on the 25^th of October 1990 at 5 pm. The LTTE came to the village and announced through loud speakers that we had to leave immediately by the route they  showed us. About 40 cadres came into our village and came to all our houses and demanded 10,000 rupees or 10 sovereigns  in gold or to give them the house and leave. They came at the time my husband was having lunch. When they asked me where he was I said he was not at home as I was afraid they would take him away so I did not let them come in. Then I heard from the other people that they came and robbed the houses in the night so I removed all my jewellery  and put them in a tin and buried the tin.

They came again later that day and asked for my jewellery.  I told them I don’t have it with me now and told them to take the things from the shop and leave. They said it was there in the morning and how come its not there now? One of them got very angry and shot at the table in the shop and broke all the things. They behaved in a violent manner.  From next door they took all the sacks of paddy they had. Then the mosque leaders gathered and decided that we should all leave together and so we left.

Sameena later stated that they were able to recover the jewellery that they buried when the husband came back to the village in 1996. (p.62)

The other chapters trace the social and political background to the expulsion (Chapter 4) the state’s minimal attention to the issue (Chapter 6) and the northern Muslim in the context of Muslim politics.  Chapter 6 refers to the particular manner in which the northern Muslims featured in the political agenda of the SLMC under Mr. Ashraff, and the many developments both positive and troubling that occurred in Puttalam after Risharth Bathiudeen was made minister of Rehabilitation.

The northern Muslim displacement experience has lasted now for twenty one years.  At the time of the expulsion people thought they would go back in a matter of weeks, months—sometimes two years. No one expected it to last two decades.  I would like to read one quote that speaks to the initial moment of displacement.

A.Kuriza from Muslim College Road, Jaffna provides a narrative that amply illustrates the  pathos of trying to live in a place that was unfamiliar.

We reached Zahira School. Puttalam people were very helpful. We were expecting to return back. We were searching for a house for rent. We got a house for six months. But we said we do not need for that long, we want to rent only for a month. My son found a house which did not have doors, windows or grills. My children started to cry, when they saw the house. Then we did not take that house. My son took us to another house even this was not pleasant to any of us. Everyone started to cry. Then my son was angry that we did not like any of the houses he was showing. He was asking us if you all do not like anything I show what I am going to do. Later we went to a relative’s place in Kalpitiya. They used to come and stay in our place, when we were in Jaffna. We stayed with them for three months. (p. 103)

The fact that they were sent out of their district of displacement into a new province had consequences for them. In some ways they did not have the same restriction and security threats as those displaced in the north. However, they were not considered residents of the places that they lived in and this posed many administrative problems that affected their displacement experience. It affected their ability to vote, access to employment opportunities, and also lead to maintaining the distinction between hosts and displaced and obstructed integration and the increase of tensions between the communities.   Also while some displaced were very enterprising and managed to rebuild their lives many still languish in Puttalam in conditions similar to that which they arrived in to twenty years ago. This is covered in chapter 7.

Chapter 8 is devoted to the Puttalam host community’s perspective on the northern Muslims’ long sojourn in the four DS divisions of Puttalam—Puttalam town Kalpitiya Mundel and Vanathavillu.  The northern Muslims were compelled to over stay their welcome due to no fault of theirs. The Puttalam community has been forced to share their already insufficient resources with a community that suddenly arrived and almost doubled the areas’ population. And these people’ did not go back for twenty years. Chapter 8 looks at the host community’s perspective on the influx.

Almost all the northern Muslims that the commission spoke with referred to their northern homes with great love and sadness – even when they didn’t have plans to return. The report has one chapter –chapter 9 entitled The Loss of a Way of Life that explores this element of pain and nostalgia for a lost time and a place. This chapter also records testimonies about the way of life in the north – festivals, religious gatherings and lifecycle rituals that are no longer practiced.

The vast majority of persons that we spoke to wanted to return. And all northern Muslims that the commission encountered in the north were uniformly happy to be back. They spoke about the sense of freedom and independence that they had regained by returning to their own land (sontha uru) and the fact that they were no longer crippled by their language inabilities.  But they faced huge problems with lack of attention from the government, lack of infrastructure facilities, minimal interest of NGOs, and indifference and sometimes hostility from administrative officials.  Sometimes hostility was experienced from the local Tamil leadership in the north. This was particularly true of Mannar where there are a several conflicts among returning Tamils and Muslims over land. The report attempted to capture the problems of return in the 10^th chapter.

A review of the most important scholarly works dealing with the northern Muslims has also been done.

The expulsion, displacement and return experiences of the northern Muslims are particular and somewhat different from other experiences of protracted displacement. The Commission wanted to capture this difference and draw attention to it.  For instance one of the “problems” of Muslim return is that as one NGO person described it —one foot in the north and one foot in Puttalam. The act of ethnic cleansing by the LTTE compelled the northern Muslims to live outside the north for twenty plus years. This is the reality of their displacement and such feet in different places is a strategy that is necessary for their survival. The literature on displacement refers to this process as trans-local strategies of survival. Those designing programs have to take note of these strategies and not expect the northern Muslims to forget twenty years of living outside the north.

Chapter 11 contains a series of conclusions and recommendations. These are divided into recommendations to the state, the NGO/INGO community and the Muslim leadership.  The northern Muslims need assistance to return,  we have heard that due to lack of transport to school and poor facilities, children are dropping out. Some people who went to the north are returning to Puttalam due to the lack of a house and facilities for fishing and cultivation.  We also know of sections of the population that are not going back and will register as residents of Puttalam and elsewhere. However the situation in Puttalam is fairly tense and much work needs to be done there as well. And this work needs to address the needy of those areas in Puttalam without differentiating between the displaced and the host.

• LLRC submission: The Citizens’ Commission on the Expulsion of Muslims from the North by the LTTE in October 1990
• Citizen’s Commission: Expulsion of the Northern Muslims by the LTTE in October 1990
• 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
• Some observations on the Final Report of the Commission on the Expulsion of Muslims from the Northern Province by the LTTE in October 1990

The Pope with Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith

Though my political approval of and personal liking for Mahinda Rajapaksa, (certainly in relation to his competitors and immediate predecessors) are shared by nine out of ten Sri Lankan citizens (according to the Gallup poll), it is not comfortable to be alone in one’s analysis and evaluation, among one’s own social stratum, the intelligentsia, especially the English-speaking and writing urban intelligentsia. It is therefore a good feeling when you discover that your views coincide with someone who stands above the fray, and cannot but evoke respect from all rational people. Nicest of all, is when the public personage with whose views your own coincide, has achieved a status and recognition that is truly global.

My perspectives on Mahinda Rajapaksa, his administration, Sri Lankan politics and the issue of accountability and international pressure have been denounced by political partisans of almost all sides. The Tamil Diaspora accuses me of Sinhala chauvinism or neo-nationalism (as Taraki put it). The Sinhala chauvinists accuse me of being Eelamist because I support provincial devolution. The Left accuses me of having sold out to the Right. The Right accuses me of a dangerous Left radicalism in international affairs.

The liberals who support international calls for boycotts and accountability hearings will never forgive my defense of Sri Lanka’s sovereignty in Geneva, May 2009. The Sinhala hardliners will never forgive me for my advocacy of provincial level devolution.

The dogmatic Left regards Mahinda Rajapaksa as a Rightist. The cosmopolitan liberals and Diaspora Tamil lobbyists consider him the chief representative of the Sinhala Buddhist Right, without whose patronage that Right would not exist. The Human Rights constituency sees Mahinda Rajapaksa as the most authoritarian, autocratic and possibly fascist element in Lankan politics, and the main danger to democracy.  I consider Mahinda Rajapaksa a centrist and a Bonapartist balancer.

It is gratifying, in this context, to note that Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, at the time Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith, had arrived at almost the same conclusions, and expressed them way back in 2009 to the US Ambassador.

The Cardinal can hardly be accused of being a Sinhala Buddhist chauvinist. Even if one modifies the charge to one of Sinhala chauvinism, it is hardly credible that the world’s oldest and most far-flung transnational organization, a fount of ‘universality’, would choose a Sinhala chauvinist, representing under 20 million people, as one of the youngest cardinals in the world, and as the only Asian in the electoral college that finally chooses the Pope.

Nor can the Cardinal be accused of being less than intelligent. Lack of intelligence is not a shortcoming that even the worst enemies of the Catholic Church would accuse it of, and with its high premium on training, we may readily conclude that a young Cardinal must be a very smart person indeed, with solid scholarly credentials and considerably wide and diverse experience.

The Catholic Church being the sole social institution that cuts across Sri Lanka’s ethnic divide, or that social institution which transcends it most, it could be said that it is suitably positioned to articulate an inclusive Sri Lankan identity and ideology.

Furthermore, a high ranking official of the Church, the most globalised and multicultural of institutions, is likely to provide a truly global and comparative perspective, and is least likely to provide a parochial one.

Finally, no institution has grappled more with the tough task of combining virtue and power, as has the Catholic Church. No intellectual tradition has attempted to wrestle with and synthesise ethics and Realism as has that of Christian theology (e.g. Just war theory).

It is against this backdrop that we must read Cardinal Ranjith’s reading of Sri Lanka’s politics and the Rajapaksa/s role, or more precisely, the US Ambassador’s reading of Cardinal Ranjith’s reading. Wikileaks tells the tale. According to Ambassador Butenis’ Oct 2009 cable, the perspective of the Archbishop, in summary was as follows:

“SUMMARY: Roman Catholic Archbishop Ranjith told ambassador that pushing the GSL too hard on the war crimes accountability issue now could destabilize Sri Lankan democracy and would set back the cause of human rights.  He reasoned that weakening the Rajapaksas — who despite their public image were relative moderates in the Sri Lankan polity – could backfire.  Moreover, if Sri Lanka were denied GSP-plus or the U.S. were to enact strong economic sanctions, leading to a sharp downturn in the economy, Sri Lanka could suffer revolution from the right or a coup by the military, which now had a very strong position in society.  Ambassador countered that this was an interesting perspective, but if the Rajapaksas were in fact moderates, they needed to show it.  END SUMMARY ».

The cable says that “In a September 30 introductory meeting with Ambassador and PolChief, Roman Catholic Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith recounted the recent political evolution of Sri Lanka, of which he has been both an astute observer and important participant, and described the role of the Church in society. He noted that while he himself was a Singhalese, he was very sympathetic to the plight of Tamils, who had suffered greatly from pogroms and discrimination by the majority and from the disastrous results of LTTE separatist ideology.  He explained that the Church had played a key role in brokering talks between the GSL and the LTTE over the years, including the 2002 cease-fire agreement.  After the war, the church was advocating publicly for the release of IDPs and other controversial positions.  This had led to criticism from the Buddhist right and even death threats against the archbishop himself.  This was the opposite of the leading role in reconciliation the archbishop believed Buddhists should have been playing years ago.

Despite this criticism, the archbishop said he believed President Rajapaksa personally was a good man and in the constellation of Sri Lankan politics was a relative moderate (he reminded us that Rajapaksa used to attend human rights meetings in Europe as an opposition MP).  Rajapaksa and his brothers were under great pressure from the Singhalese Buddhist right, and any show of what would be perceived as weakness before the international community could result in their losing ground to much more extreme elements.  Indeed, he argued that if something happened to the president there would be “chaos” in Sri Lanka.

This led to the archbishop addressing directly the question of war crimes accountability.  He said “my suggestion is, in order to strengthen democracy in Sri Lanka, don’t push accountability now.”  He reasoned that weakening the Rajapaksas could backfire.  Moreover, if Sri Lanka were denied GSP-plus or the U.S. were to enact strong economic sanctions, leading to a sharp downturn in the economy, Sri Lanka — where democracy was not strong now — could suffer revolution from the right or a coup by the military, which currently had a very strong position in society.  The archbishop said this was why he had recently come out publicly in favor of extending GSP-plus to Sri Lanka, despite the GSL’s many human rights problems.  Ambassador countered that this was a very interesting perspective, but if the Rajapaksas were in fact moderates, they needed to show it in at least a few ways.  The archbishop said this was the challenge that he had been working on — how to get the president not to worry only about the “forces lurking beneath him” and to act as a moderate.  He told the president it was important to work with Tamil leaders on reconciliation and to invite the Diaspora to help re-build the economy.  “The Rajapaksas will come and go,” the archbishop opined, “but the Tamils will always be here.” ’ ( Wiki leaks FILE, Oct 2, 2009)

Ambassador Butenis’ concluding comment to her bosses in Washington DC bears repetition:

“Archbishop Ranjith purportedly is respected by the pope and served as papal nuncio in Indonesia.  He also commands considerable authority in Sri Lanka — despite his problems with the Buddhist right — and has a good relationship with the president (whose wife is Catholic).  It is certainly true that the president is under great pressure from the Singhalese Buddhist right.  It is also arguable that the international community’s pushing too hard on accountability could backfire.”

Two things that senior clerics know about are ideologies and to evaluate and judge the character of men. Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith characterises Mahinda Rajapaksa as essentially “a good man” and “a relative moderate in the constellation of Sri Lanka’s politics”. This should surely be taken into account.

• Destroying monuments for those killed & disappeared: The Catholic Church and the Sri Lankan Government
• Violating the Madhu Sancuary – Some brief thoughts
• Sri Lanka’s Libyan Spring
• Political Opposition in a Nihilistic Sinhala Society: Responses and clarifications
• Moving away from democracy in Sri Lanka

This was a part of well-loved hymn I would love to sing during the early years of my school career. I cannot actually remember whether these words were omitted by then as they are now, or if I sang it without disdain at that time. As I became politically aware, these words stirred resistance within me as I felt that it was contrary to my faith and the book that guided it. It came back to me as I read last Sunday’s paper and other recent reports of the attempts being made at grabbing land, the poor who have had promissory deeds or real deeds evicted without any compensation, the Mews Street fiasco but very specially the video clip of the political offspring doing some threatening of what would happen to people if they do not vote with the current political juggernaut.

What came back to me was actually in question form. Why have not any of the religious leaders protested? All religions of Sri Lanka have common ground in that they call for concern for the poor, albeit could be for selfish reasons. Why cannot we see any problems with a situation, which places the rich man in Colombo and puts the poor man to be in the outskirts?

This article desires to question very specifically leaders of the Christian faith. The protestant ethic we have been told by many a management historian was one of the propelling forces of industrialization. A people enjoying freedom from spiritual bondage due to the sacrifice of another felt a stirring within them to be productive for the good of the larger community, which was to be their act of gratitude to the one who sacrificed for them. True enough that capitalism squashed all such altruism, but there was always a voice in the wilderness. Why is that voice missing in this island nation?

Having mentioned the protestant ethic it might sound absurd to talk about the Catholic Church. Maybe frustrating the poor is not a cardinal sin in the Catholic Church, or maybe the Cardinal feels that nothing done by the current regime can come close to being put into the sin bin. If the plans to beautify Colombo by removing all that is displeasing to the eye people included is carried out, a significant number of those affected will be from the catholic community. The protestant church having made some noises in the pre May 2009 era is reported to have come under fire from both sides of that divide and might have decided that the apples look better when in the cart. The new evangelicals might be the biggest surprise here. Proclaiming loudly that the whole book is meaningful and needs to be practiced, have they succumbed to the constant accusations that the means of their increasing influence is due to unethical practices and have decided to be safe rather than serve? They make some declarations under names of umbrella organizations, which are unknown and thereby ineffective, though non-have been made with regards the eviction of the poor.

What is so disgusting about the phrase “The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate…”? Quoting Professor Rodney Barker who is Emeritus Gresham Professor of Rhetoric,

“This long since omitted verse from ‘All things bright and beautiful’ is often quoted slightly derisively for the distance that is supposed to exist between the assumptions of the Victorians, or at least some of them, about social hierarchy, and our own. The relative positions of the rich man and the poor man were as immutable, natural, and God given as the purple headed mountains or the river running by. God made them what they were, high and lowly, and ordered their estate but there is an equally interesting assumption in the verse that is less noticed: rich and poor are synonymous with ‘high’ and ‘lowly’. Social status is not only fixed and God given, but it is measured, equated with, determined by material wealth. This skeleton in the cupboard verse of the hymn points out, in musical form, a defining characteristic of ideology in both the long and the short twentieth centuries: It reveals the classification of society, the account of social identity, principally (not of course exclusively) in material terms, in terms of control over or access to material resources, in terms of wealth, property, land, houses, capital.”

What is disgusting is that it is not keeping with the Christians book. It results out of syncretism with the popular culture of the day, and was thrown into the dustbin of Christian history or so we thought.

Evicting the poor is not about beautifying the city, it is about access to material resources, in terms of wealth, property, land, houses, capital. We judge wages paid to the labor force based on how much three square meals would cost the laborer and the amount left over. We keep ignoring the larger families that are at home, ignoring the aspirations of their children, ignoring that a work day lost due sickness, lack of business or in the past a curfew causes undue frustration. In short we are ignorant. Now consider that those who provide vital labor have to travel from afar to their work place causing further expenditure from their near non existent resources. Think of the extra time consumed in such travel. More importantly it is good for the well-to-do to see daily the lives of those who are struggling and their families. To see their life style and the meager resources with which they manage. Not to cause them pride as to what they have inherited or achieved nor as a punishment for their wealth but to elicit the purpose for which they have been blessed. At least for some it could be a moral mirror to do what is right.

Our poor have become so servile they most probably will be travelling from somewhere way beyond Godagama having got up at 4 in the morning in an overcrowded 170 bus on a humid and sultry morning, plying on the Parliament road and contort their neck to view an air taxi landing on the new lake made by the armed forces on what was the Waters Edge golf course earlier, to take people from a highly developed high-rise residential complex to the airport or some leisure destination, and be thankful that the country has made progress. That would quite fit the description of the poor man at the gate.

This article was aimed at the religious leaders of the nation. The loss of morality is the responsibility of the moral rather than that of the vile. As I have closed in on the stunning silence of the leaders of the Christian faith I conclude with a quote from the book,

What sorrow awaits you who lie awake at night,
thinking up evil plans.
You rise at dawn and hurry to carry them out,
simply because you have the power to do so.
When you want a piece of land,
you find a way to seize it.
When you want someone’s house,
you take it by fraud and violence.
You cheat a man of his property,
stealing his family’s inheritance.

We Need a Voice. If we don’t call for reform we will have rebellion.

• Measuring poverty differently
• A Matter of faith
• Destroying monuments for those killed & disappeared: The Catholic Church and the Sri Lankan Government
• The Buddha Sasana: Sri Lanka’s biggest NGO?
• The Anti-Conversion Bill violates the freedom of Conscience and the freedom of expression

Photo courtesy Ada Derana

My new neighbour, a quiet middle class, young Sinhala Buddhist professional from beyond Matara, who started constructing his own house, brought down a “Kattadi mahathtaya” from his village to evoke blessings on the property, the new construction and on himself and his young family, before the foundation stone was laid. The ritual went on with loud chanting and drumming through midnight, a public nuisance, but tolerated in silence, as it was his belief for which he also had a right. Early morning we woke up when a cockerel screamed it’s life out. The final sacrifice of a “life” made in this ritual called the “Bhahirava poojah”.

This is no isolated event in this Sinhala Buddhist society, where people construct their own houses and often indulge in such sacrificial poojahs. May be there are other similar rituals too, when “life” of animals and birds are sacrificed, in lieu of a safe and prosperous future for the person(s) who provides that animal/bird life to his or her preferred God.

Yet, this year when in Munneswaran Kaali Temple, the annual festival had goats and poultry lined up for “sacrifice” by Tamil Hindu devotees, this Sinhala society took it upon themselves to go against “cruelty to animals” at this Hindu festival and stop their religious ritual.

Munneswaran temple had been in existence, even before the 12 century, as records say, King Parakramabahu who had the whole island under his reign, brought down an artisan – “Silpačãri” – group from Kapilavastupura to renovate the temple. Pleased with the work, the king had conferred the title “Mutugala Rãjakarunadi Viravardana Viskammandana Ačãri” and given land for the whole group to “reside and enjoy until the sun and the moon would last”.

This ritual of animal sacrifice, is thus over 10 centuries old in practice and the annual festival with animal sacrifice at Munneswaran is a Hindu religious belief that had continued for that long. After all these centuries of seeing, accepting and may be participating in this animal sacrifice, what provoked the Sinhala Buddhists to go hard line “animal lovers” ?

There is definitely “Sinhala politics” in it, for the Sinhala Buddhists to take up cudgels against this ritual, as it is now practised by only the Tamil Hindus in this form of a festival. The hyped trend against other minority religions is an extension of what was cropping up now and then against different unorthodox Christian sects over the past decade or two. On 10^th September Saturday, reports say a Buddhist monk, Amatha Dhamma thero led a mob of Sinhala youth to destroy an ancient Muslim “shrine” within the Anuradhapura sacred city. The Buddhist monk’s claim according to a BBC report was that, the land belonged to Sinhala Buddhists for over 2,000 years.

If historical length is the defining factor for ownership, then a 10 century old religious ritual is also one that can not be denied. Tamil Hindus thus have a right to continue with their religious identity where the festival at Munneswaran with animal sacrifice is a historical presence. It is for that reason, the Sinhala Buddhist fundamentalists have opted to use the slogan, “stop cruelty to animal” for that fits in with “Buddhist compassion” and also the modern law. Thus Mervyn who tied a public servant to a tree, attacked the media every now and then and leans on ugly, obscene retorts on TV shows, too becomes a “lovable” hero for this Sinhala Buddhist gallery.

What nevertheless baffles rationality in this argument against animal sacrifice is, why they were not worried about killing of animals for sacrifice, all these decades. Why suddenly now? Is cruelty to animal defined in terms of “killing for sacrifice” and not on “killing for human consumption”? There can not be any difference to an animal, whether it is taken to Munneswaran kovil to be beheaded as a sacrifice, or to a Municipal slaughterhouse, to be killed and sold.

Even in Sri Lanka, Tamil Hindus don’t consume “beef” for they take the cow as holy. Beef is consumed only by other religious groups including Buddhists, Christians and Muslims. Some one would have to do a count on cattle that is slaughtered daily in municipal and other licensed slaughterhouses, for their consumption. In 2004, the Colombo Municipal Council had a project to renovate and modernise their Dematagoda slaughterhouse to accommodate 250 cattle per day.

Goats have become more popular with scattered campaigns against slaughter of cattle. A survey done on goats and their diseases by the Peradeniya Veterinary Research Institute and the Colombo Municipal Council, led by R.P.V.J Rajapaksa and A.C.M. Faizal has recorded that around 125,000 goats are slaughtered annually in Sri Lanka, for consumption.

According to Sunday Times (10 April, 2011), the present demand for chicken is around 8.5 to 09 million kg per month as told by the Chairman, All Island Poultry Association of Sri Lanka. That’s about 102 to 108 million kg annually and roughly about 70 million birds killed every year. The best part of these lives definitely go to feed the Sinhala society. This is leaving aside all the billions of lives of fish, eaten and exported dead.

“Life” in Buddhism has no varying values according to varying kinds and sizes of animals, birds and fish. There is also no justification in Buddhism for killing animals, birds and fish, for any reason. “Killing” is killing and killing cannot be any humane, when killed for consumption.

Where then is this Buddhist campaign against cruelty to animals perched, with its consumption of thousands of metric tons of animal flesh ? There certainly is a politico religious bias in this intervention that obstructed a religious belief. A racist bias, against the minorities. It can not be otherwise, in this heavily omnivorous Sinhala Buddhist society.

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• In the midst of the Adi Vel festival
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• The Anti-Conversion Bill violates the freedom of Conscience and the freedom of expression

I have a bone to pick with these two. In fact maybe an entire rib cage. One of them caused me to question my nationalism and my identity as a Sri-Lankan and the other caused me to have to answer countless questions about my religious beliefs. In essence all my adult life, my religion and my country have been under attack; and yet how did I turn out to be such a pacifist? Shouldn’t I theoretically have bombs in my make-up case and hidden amongst my Manolo’s? Considering the chaos that these men have caused in their bid to achieve their agenda’s I should be a roving lunatic with a thirst for vengeance. As noble as their intentions may have been to their followers, they did harm their own and others in the process, to no significant outcome. In my opinion that is.

Firstly let us start close to home. I was brought up in the comfortable bubble that was the Middle East with no real sense of what it meant to be Sri-Lankan or what the trials back home were like. Sri-Lanka was a holiday; cricket, grandparents, cousins and Tipi-tip. After moving to Lanka for secondary education, having lived in Kandy the bubble was further extended since we did not have a real sense of what was happening in the enveloped hills. Then there was the blast at the Dalada Maligawa; that changed everything. We began to notice people who were Tamil and we began to form a “them” and “us” mentality. In Kandy however this notion was and thankfully is not acute, however it exacerbated the already tense ethnic division within the island.

The problem got worse as the LTTE stormed the country and caused tremendous civilian casualties. It made us become desensitized to human suffering as we began to make it part and parcel of our morning cup of tea to ask “how many dead” and “where” nonchalantly. It also caused an exodus of human capital and a distancing of recognition as being Sri-Lankan. This extension was very evident abroad, more so than in Sri-Lanka. As I travelled to Australia for Undergraduate Studies, I realized that at university Tamil students grouped among themselves and tended to foster a more “them” and “us” mentality than at home this was also the case with the Sinhalese students. This is primarily because as you migrate you form enclaves and feel comfortable amongst your own. Some of these students had much more vigour and zest for the Eelam cause than any Tamil person I had met in Sri-Lanka. They had never been back home but they believed that the cause of the LTTE was Just and the means it was being carried out with was fair. I wondered how they could come to a country like Australia and live in its sanctuary, enjoy its comforts and freedom and believe that it was FINE to attack others. Yet I understand that their devotion to the Eelam cause came from their parents who would have suffered much hardship in the 70’s and 80’s and their stories would have been Just cause for these youngsters to find a reason to create an ethnic division that in essence did not need to exist. However I also found that some of them had put behind all the baggage that comes with being Sri-Lankan and concentrated on one thing; being Sri-Lankan. They used dance, sport and created an Association to form kinship and this was a wonderful thing to be a part of, because up until then I had never needed to be part of an organization just due to the fact that I was “Sri-Lankan”, and this led to deepening of my identity and my need to strengthen my countries future.

I was caused more strife by this Civil War, but this was entirely my own fault. I studied International Politics, and therefore opened the door to being questioned about my country and my religion. When you put yourself in that vulnerable position you need to have answers, and at university these answers have to be good ones. I found that some students, especially the European exchange students were more informed about the politics of my country than I was, about the past carnage and the atrocities committed on both sides. I no longer could hide and turn a blind eye. I had to answer that YES we KILL because we are threatened, and, thankfully on the issue of the Sri-Lankan Civil War there was proof that indeed we were being attacked. At the time however I was yet to learn about the huge scale displacement of Muslims in the East- the forgotten people of this war, I was also not acquainted at the time with humanitarian law, the use of child soldiers, suicide bombers, and the colossal loss of civilian life in the North because of use of weapons against “jus in bello” or what was permissible during war.

However a “threatened” argument did not suffice on the religious front. That was a whole other ball game because in the eyes of my peers I was on the wrong side. Discussions during subjects like “War and Peace”, “International armed conflict”, “Just cause”, “Terrorism in the 21st Century”, often left me upset, furious and tongue tied, causing me to defend and explain myself, but altogether it educated me. Being a Muslim in a Post 9/11 world meant having to answer constantly about your beliefs, when in fact they did not encompass and in fact had nothing to do with what happened on that fatal September morning. Questions on Jihad, Violence, Abuse, Hijab, Polygamy, were directed like a fully loaded Kalashnikov at me, and I had to consider things that were not part of my day-to-day religious practice. We pray, we eat halal meat, we fast, we treat our neighbours and family with consideration, we act charitably, go for Hajj and we have a good jolly Biryani during Eid; that was up until then my ISLAM. Now I had to stipulate the conditions of Prisoners of War during Jihad, and the intricacies of fatwa’s. In order to set the record straight for my own personal justification I wrote a dissertation titled, “Islam: A religion of Peace?” and this allowed me to clinically explore my religion leaving me at peace with my findings.

On the religious front however I am both thankful to Osama and frustrated. The good thing was that he made it necessary as a Muslim to be more aware of what Islam entails, since educated Muslims refused to be hood winked into believing that destroying the twin towers is what God wants. It caused a conscious switch in mentality from the brutish behaviour of Arab countries to a more informed global movement that is still strong and growing. A greater thirst and understanding for the true meaning of Islam and the evident need for its teachings now more than ever was apparent in order to bring about world peace. On the other hand the frustration was caused by the difficulty it brought about to many people who had to constantly be cross examined because of religious beliefs, having to answer questions at airports, explain the right to wear a headscarf, defend the right to pray at work and have a mosque, having their sovereignty be slowly eroded and shaw-shanked away. The daily make-up of Muslim lives changed forever; each and every Muslim had to search within them and decide how much of their faith was really what was out there in the global media and how much of it was really just what it was; faith, a PERSONAL belief in a higher power.

Today these two baddies are no longer around. How do we feel? These men shaped our lives. I have lived where I lived, studied what I studied and believe in what I believe because of what they have done. Have they left deeper scars in our lives than we can simply take off with a bullet to the head? Conspiracy theories aside, there were wars, people were killed our lives were affected. Yet their deaths cannot change our pasts or our personal beliefs and views, because those are already ingrained. What it can cause however is a hope that dialogue can make things different. That as Sri Lankans we do not become arrogant and continue along ethnic divisions and that as Muslims we do not become complacent and let the perverted agenda’s of extremist militants interfere with our religion, we need to ensure that a candle is lit with knowledge that as Sri Lankans we believe in Unity and that as Muslims we believe in Peace.

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• Interview with Ameena Hussein
• Hijab whereforth dost thou commeth?
• Does cricket have a citizenship?
• After Today’s BMICH Explosion

9.30am Saturday morning. I was walking on the pavement in Bambalapitiya when I found myself in the midst of the Adi Vel festival. I had passed it earlier near the Kovil in Kirullapone and had found myself feeling slightly unsettled after seeing men being hung on hooks and suspended from trucks in order to ask for help from a higher God. But I was there and seeing the hundreds of people involved in the Vel festival in different ways just made me stop and watch.  I wished I knew more about the festival to have appreciated it fully. I also wished I had my camera with me but at that moment, my mobile had to suffice.

The decorated coaches pulled by men and women, people getting their children and themselves blessed by the priests, devotees with their offerings, the breaking of the coconuts, people fulfilling vows by rolling on the ground (the entire distance of the walk I believe), putting skewers through their faces, being suspended by hooks and hanging from trucks – I was simply awestruck and didn’t realize that I had been standing there for more than one hour. I couldn’t get my head around the people who had put hooks through their body though, it seemed incredible that one would do all this do fulfill a vow or to ask for help and that more pain, more God-earned merit.

According to an article in the Sunday Observer in July 2010, “The Colombo Vel Festival, dedicated to Kataragama Deviyo, originally came into being because of a cholera outbreak in 1874. The Kataragama Deity is a very popular God amongst most Sri Lankan Hindus and Buddhists. For this Adi Vel Festival, pilgrims from all parts of the island were in the habit of going on a ‘Pada Yatra’ (pilgrimage by foot) which took several days, consisting of several days to Kataragama. In 1874, there was a cholera outbreak and the colonial government then in power forbade people in Colombo to go on the Yatra. Unable to go to Kataragama, they made do with the local Murugan temples and thus was born the Colombo Vel Festival.”

In addition to the hundreds partaking in the Vel festival, there were dozens of curious bystanders like me taking pictures and just observing the festival. It was slightly drizzling and the skies were gloomy and many of us had other places to be at that time. I would’ve imagined it to have been even slightly chaotic with all the people, but that was the last thing it was. It was truly a festival worth experiencing and I was glad to have been in the midst of it, even by accident.

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I am not only a pacifist but a militant pacifist.
I am willing to fight for peace.
Nothing will end war unless the people
themselves refuse to go to war.
Einstein

This government inherited a very complex challenge with the LTTE so focused on the mission of creating Eelam using any means possible, with terror as its central strategy.

At the same time, I do not stand in judgment on Prabhakran for starting this movement as he probably had just cause at the time and I even do not judge the use of force and violence to make a point, like Mandela did to get the attention of the Apartheid government in South Africa of their unjust policies.   I do, however, abhor what Prabhakaran did as a ruthless leader who did not value any life in his quest to achieve his goal.

LTTE had clearly showed that they were not interested in talking for a settlement. It was all or nothing.  This government unlike any other before simply resolved on its own single vision – destroy the LTTE at any cost.

LTTE being a terrorist organization had no bounds in meeting its ends, but the government has to be accountable.  Therein lies the problem.  War is horrific and any war will have atrocities committed where even civilians are hurt.

Lessons from History

One does not have to look far in history to see this.  The very countries that accuse Sri Lanka of war crimes as allied forces during the Second World War performed air raids on civilian populations in Europe and Japan and many other atrocities on the ground. These have been defined crimes by some historians and yet not a single allied government official or a soldier was held accountable as they believed that they were conducting a just war against Hitler and his friends for defensive reasons.

Later, the USA was tainted forever by the My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam war. US soldiers killed close to 500 unarmed citizens in South Vietnam, mostly women and children on March 16, 1968.  Some of the victims were sexually abused, beaten, tortured, maimed, and some of the bodies were found mutilated.  Of the 26 US soldiers initially charged with criminal offences or war-crimes for actions at My Lai, only one was convicted.  He served four and a half months of his two-year sentence.   This was a huge crime, but who knows what those young men who committed these crimes were going through on the ground in this horrific war?.

We are all seeing in graphic details the more recent collateral damage the western allies are committing in pursuing Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I am not saying Sri Lanka should be absolved from the allegations, but these are complex issues to debate and do not have black and white answers.   As such, Sri Lanka has to open up for a skillful discussion both internally and internationally and seek a fair hearing from the world.

Understanding the West

As such, the Sri Lankan government did not have to run for cover in meeting war crimes allegations with nations who know about collateral damage in war so well.

To do this with skill, Sri Lanka needs to understand the west better from a philosophical point of view to address its allegations, whether or not they are spurred on by the strong Diaspora.

The western worldview was formed over the last 400 years after Bacon, Descartes, Newton among many others took the power away from the church and the glorification of a transcendental god.   They linked knowledge to power and transformed study of nature empirically.  Things are black or white.

This created a very objective world with no room for subjectivity. The mind and physical reality are separate.  Only humans have the capacity for rational thought and action and giving meaning to the world.  We also know in reality that here there is a grading for this ‘human’  based on where they were born and live starting from the first to the third world.   So, the western construction of human identity, based on social and economic class (colours and races are now getting mixed) makes them patriarchal leading to the kind of finger wagging that goes on at the ‘lower class’ humans in the third world.

So, when the third world Sri Lanka wins a battle with the most ruthless of terrorists in the world, there is bewilderment – they need to know how and what was the cost of this victory.  They seek to know whether the rules were broken and if they were, they seek accountability for them.  The irony is that these rules are different for the first world as they deem the judge to be above the rules, hence the double standard.

Sri Lanka does not have to flinch in any way to face the world in this instance as it has got leverage from ending this war.  It was telling when last week the international agencies Fitch Ratings and Moody’s Investors Services upgraded its rating on Sri Lanka’s debt to a B+.   Also the US 1 billion dollar bond issue of the Sri Lankan government has been oversubscribed 7.5 times to US 7.5 billion dollars.

As such, we have to put things in perspective and respect, for instance the US Congress threatening to cut of foreign aid to Sri Lanka, amounting to about $13 million and not harangue them about it.  That is their decision and more Sri Lanka becomes independent as the economy grows, better it is to be gracious and act in dignity.

Sri Lanka being so small, yet strategic, has value in who we are, value in its position and what we do and its potential and as such cannot afford to have enemies.  Sri Lanka has to learn to be skillful at the geopolitical game and that requires objectivity, expertise, experience and not emotional jingoism.

That is exactly why the Sri Lankan government needs to create the spaces for a dialogue and discussion for these difficult conversations, first locally and then internationally.

Facing the Dilemmas

If I think about the war in context of my own beliefs and values, as a person brought up with Buddhist teachings, I faced a dilemma.  The first contradiction was, how can I cling to the ideal of peace, when the other party did not want peace?.

That dilemma led to the violation of the very precept that Buddhist teaching is founded on – killing another being.

On the other hand allowing my-self to entertain killing to attain peace was liberating, as I experienced the LTTE terror when bombs blew in Colombo.  Now that the war is over I know how palpable the LTTE terror was and feel that freedom from fear which pervaded my entire being weighing me down.  As such, this violation of the first precept has alleviated suffering for many, since the end of the war.

Yet, I do acknowledge and lament the innocent lives that were lost not only to the bombs that went off around the country but all those in the Wanni and the North in the process.

This is an extremely complex issue that needs to be addressed with compassion and empathy for everyone who is now deemed a perpetrator and also all the victims as the so called perpetrators are victims too.

Space for Dialogue

I reiterate the government then has to create wide spaces and a lot of room for dialogue on this topic, as we have to now begin shifting gears from the war to peace, violence to non violence and commence on a new era of development for Sri Lanka.

This is especially important as, violence has now become commonplace in the country, as it bore results whether it was the early victories for the LTTE, everything in between and now this victory for the government.   Jaques Ellul in his book Violence: Reflections from a Christian Perspective has written

“First law of violence is continuity.  Once you start violence you cannot get away from it.  Violence has brought clear visible results; how then to go back to a way of acting that certainly looks ineffectual and seems to promise very doubtful results? “

That is why hearing Groundviews was blocked tugged at my heart, even though I was not surprised as there has been a pattern of fear of people voicing their opinion, if they do not tow the official line.  This fear, as we all know, has even led to lives being taken from those who have asked questions and put forward a different point of view, confirming Ellul’s assertion.

Spaces like Groundviews allows for those multiple dissenting or assenting voices to be aired in the open and safely for many and give the government many insights into the ground situation whether it is within the country, with the Diaspora or the international community.   This is the only way we can end this cycle of violence that is in everyone’s hearts and minds.

Challenges for the Government

Governing Sri Lanka now must be most challenging at the moment.   I wonder how the leaders are dealing with the conflicting advice they must be getting or all the issues of running the country and also to work towards a national reconciliation and to rebuild.

This is the very time then to open up and listen skillfully to all kinds of views, and use conflict in these dialogues deliberately to protect decision making options and power.

Government also has a great opportunity to use these diverse and opposing views to structure the political environment to maximize the dissonance constructively paving the way for informed decision making.

Yet I empathize with the decision makers and wonder what suffering and paranoia dictates decisions to stop the dialogue and discussion.  I wonder what fearful extremist thoughts lead to these actions?.  These times require introspection from the leaders, reflection and contemplation and great skill in thoughtful action.

Inquiring through a Buddhist Perspective

Even though Groundviews was back on line a day later, I want to explore the mindsets that provoke these kinds of decisions from a Buddhist perspective.

First of all, we have to accept that an educated society is bound to have dissension.  To add to that, it is the age of knowledge and information with news flowing into every corner of this country and the world.  Locally, this is a good thing as now many more people are participating in the affairs of this country bringing in a certain creativity that fuels development in a sustainable manner both to society and nature around us.  Internationally, this confirms the interconnected and interlinked nature of the world.  What happens here impacts the entire world too.

Obviously, these kinds of decision to oppose dissenting views whether by shutting out Groundviews or attacking newspaper offices or TV stations or sadly killing journalist come from a place of deep fear and paranoia and mistrust.  How do we address this suffering of fears from a Buddhist point of view?

The Noble Truths

We also know conflict is a part of our human condition, as with suffering, the first noble truth of the Buddha. There is certainly suffering arising from differences in opinions and then we cause much more suffering in the way we handle these differences.  

If we examine Buddha’s parable of the two arrows found in the Samyutta-nikaya, xxxvi.6 (the Sallatha Sutta) it states

When afflicted with a feeling of pain those who lack inner awareness sorrow, grieve and lament, beating their breasts and becoming distraught. So they feel two pains, physical and mental. It is just like being shot with an arrow, and right afterwards being shot with a second one, so that they feel two arrows

Buddha explained the distinction between these two pains – an affliction – in this case a written opinion in Groundviews that aroused pain and fear in the mind on the one hand, and, on the other, the suffering that came from this pain and fear, — to frustrate and agonize them which led to the unskillful action of blocking the site.

It is important to make this distinction, as many first arrows are bound to keep coming at us and they are not within our control.  The second arrow is within our control. We become the victims first, if we allow the second arrow to manifest and then victimize others.

It is fear of losing power and position that manifests itself for the political leaders through the first arrow that drive the decisions that end up leading to conflict.

The Buddha said, they lead to the Akusalamulas (unhealthy roots of action) – Lobha (greed), Dosa (hate and resentment), Moha (delusion and self centered action) and these interact in the minds of the aggressor in turn leading to actions that lead to more fear and paranoia.  So, there is no end to this cycle.  It just escalates, ending with the mightier with the power of swords and guns winning for the short term, but it increases their fear further.  How sustainable is that ?.

If the Sri Lankan leaders can take some time to trace the origins of their fears testing the akusalamulas, they may be able to break this cycle and become much more skillful at governing a people that are intelligent and informed and Sri Lanka can lead the way in balancing the virtues of metta (loving kindness), karuna (compassion), muditha (sympathetic joy) and upekka (equanimity).

Buddha tied his Dhamma together through the concept of patticcasamuppada (dependent origination) which tells us everything is interconnected and interlinked.  So, if we trace far back enough, we may be able to link the chain of thoughts and feelings that brought us to this level of fear and paranoia.  This also means that every word we speak, action we take has some sort of an impact somewhere.

In this inquiry, our leaders may identify the suffering that leads to despair that leads to greed to stay in power leading to fear and resentment of people who question policies and decisions and that can arise from delusion that, their lives and positions are permanent and that nothing changes based on a self centered action.

Buddha’s second noble truth states there is no need to despair as nothing is permanent.  Whether it’s anger in our hearts,  guns blazing in a battle, the wrath of the west or an article in Groundviews espousing an opinion contradictory to the government’s, all these will lose energy and change with the next minute, a new day and the next, people will forget and move onto new things.

End of suffering can arise then from the cessation of clinging forming the third noble truth.  Buddha tells us that clinging to power and position can lead to more suffering and conflict so let go, detach as the other way is a losing battle.

As such, an article that may seem defamatory, it may be wiser to read it for what it is, as those opinions themselves are impermanent, learn from it, inquire deeper into why such an opinion is coming forth, reflect, respond skillfully, take action to address the issue, let go and move on as there will be another opinion that is lobbed that needs thoughtful action again.

Handling differences unskillfully because of clinging causes suffering for so many, in fact an entire nation and imagine the bad karma of killing for a difference in opinion.

The fourth noble truth provides a middle path to live by through the noble eightfold pathway which is divided into wisdom (right understanding and thought), morality (right speech, action and livelihood) and meditation (right effort, mindfulness and concentration).  Yet, this is not a dogma, nor an ideology, just a way of life that will bring peace and harmony to self and others.

Putting a Mirror on Self

This then is about putting a mirror on self first, as my thought will lead to a feeling then to a thought that will lead to action.  The contemplative action will have a tremendous impact on my-self first, people around me, the world and the universe.

Leaders have even a larger moral responsibility as every word, every little action has tremendous energy to impact so many.  So, should they not be mindful of what they say and do, as it could mean happiness for so many or much suffering if it comes from a place of the akusalamulas ?.

Sri Lanka can Show the Way

A nation that is called Dhammadveepa should lead the way to transform this complex and competitive world clinging to an ideology of materialisms and consumerism through the mantra “growth is great” as all this is bringing out the worst in us humans leading to war and the akusalamulas in the process. This then leads to a slow destruction of the world, way before its time.

Sri Lanka has such a wonderful opportunity to be much more skillful and show its true Buddhist colours as a secular nation after winning a brutal war.  As a martial artist I also believe in defense and defeating the enemy, when non-violence is impracticable or had failed after many peace talks with the LTTE and even a greater violence would have continued if the war was not ended.

Then the defeat of the LTTE was for all peace loving people, be it Thamil, Muslim, Malay, Burgher, Sinhala and others in this country and for the world. Then there has to be magnanimity in victory and most of all to acknowledge that every person living in this country has a say, has an opinion as they are here by choice, as they too love this country as much as anyone else.  This is the true middle path.

May all beings be well and happy!

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Spirituality
The desire for the triumph of good over evil is an inherent human spiritual need and consequently it is the underlying theme of all religious teachings. It is a universally accepted truth that the propagation of good leads to happiness while the propagation of evil leads to suffering. The concept of Good can be defined as human thoughts, words and deeds which benefit and sustain the physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual wellbeing of humanity without compromising all other life and non life which supports and sustains human survival. It follows that the definition of Evil is the exact opposite of Good.

A feature common to all religions is the personification of good and evil primarily through icons such as God and the Devil portrayed as super natural beings. The purpose of it could be that personification of abstract concepts serves to facilitate better understanding of same. Religious belief is further reinforced by unique faith based doctrines and rituals built around religious icons, myths, legends and history distinctive to peoples, cultures and regions of the world.

Since the advent of the scientific method, there has been a growing trend towards reason based spirituality, particularly, in privileged sections of society. Reason based spirituality can be defined as the understanding of the concepts of good and evil and its impact on humanity based on logical reasoning. According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, man’s needs start with satisfying physical needs followed by emotional needs then by intellectual needs and finally by spiritual needs. The power of reasoning which comes with intellectual maturity leads to a greater emphasis on reason based spirituality. In contrast, people  who have not yet achieved intellectual maturity  find faith based spirituality more comforting as it provides hope for supernatural intervention when human intervention is not forthcoming in addressing their  basic  needs. Faith can be defined as the unquestioning acceptance of religious doctrine which identifies God, a divine power as the source of all good and the devil, a supernatural being as the source of all evil.

Religion
Is organized religion too compartmentalized through rigid doctrine and rituals which serve to divide rather than harmonize the common spirituality of man? If so, who is responsible for this? Are religious authorities guilty of over emphasizing differences in doctrine while underplaying common spiritual values?  Religions survive mainly by advocating the supremacy of their own doctrines. Competing for supremacy can corrupt religious authorities. History is replete with evidence to this effect.

Man’s primeval need for belief in the supernatural can be attributed to his apparently isolated state in the universe, inability to physically identify a Creator and due to lack of understanding of the role and purpose of humanity. When man lacks rational explanations for such profound issues, he tends to turn to the supernatural which can fill the void easily through faith based religious doctrine.

Consequently, the spirituality of man is in a constant state of tension between reason based as spirituality versus faith based spirituality. Faith based spirituality has a greater influence on society as it is strongly backed by religious advocacy. Thus it is evident that man’s appeal to the supernatural in seeking spiritual solace can be easily exploited through the influence of organized religion which is pervasive at all levels of society. Many progressive countries have opted to do away with religious education in schools in order to promote reason based spirituality which has a harmonizing effect compared to faith based spirituality.

Islam and Social control
The practice of Islam in the Arab world provides a striking example of the use of religion to control society in several ways, the most obvious being the strict dress code, particularly for women. Laws which infringe on a person’s fundamental rights such as dress code, public display of emotions, sexual relations and blasphemy laws based on Islam are embedded in the constitutions governing most Islamic countries. Punishments prescribed for any violations of faith based laws are generally extreme and inhumane as they are highly anarchronistic such as stoning to death, cutting off limbs and ‘eye for an eye’ type punishment. Consequently, the fanatical practice of religion can have a detrimental impact on the basic freedoms of people.

Buddhist Nationalism and ethnic conflict
In Sri Lanka, we can also see the negative impact of nationalizing Buddhism as a state religion and the obligation of the state to give it primacy of place over all other religions and foster its practice as required by the Constitution. The politicization of Buddhism favours the majority Sinhalese as it happens to be practiced only by Sinhalese in Sri Lanka and therefore marginalizes all other ethnic/religious minorities, particularly the largest minority group, the Tamils which has contributed to the ethnic conflict. Although the conflict culminated in a war resulting in the successful decimation of the extremist terrorist movement by the state, it has given rise to fanatical Buddhist supremacy which is intolerant of other creeds.

Hinduism and Caste discrimination
Hinduism is a ancient religion based largely on myths and legends which serve to define the universal principle of the triumph of good over evil. A serious flaw is its anachronistic belief in the archaic Caste based classification of society which has unfortunately endured over the centuries and also has been transmitted to Sri Lanka and currently practiced by both the Buddhist clergy through caste based sects as well as covertly by its followers in the social context. Despite suffering the epic tragedy of the Tsunami, it was common knowledge that many ‘higher caste’ Sinhalese victims were not prepared to re locate their homes close to those of  ‘lower caste’ victims which was an even greater  tragedy. In fact, many believed that the fisher caste community were most severely impacted by the Tsunami as punishment or ‘karma’ for practicing a trade of killing fish which is considered immoral according to Buddhism. Hypocritically, it is not considered unethical to consume fish and meat according to Buddhist religious authorities.

The ethnic conflict can also be attributed, in part to, marginalization through caste discrimination within the Tamil community resulting in the impoverishment and consequent frustration of many, particularly the youth. This was one of the reasons for the extremists who largely represented the impoverished ‘lower castes’ to be in conflict with the ‘high caste’ Tamil political leadership as they did not consider them their true representatives. Even after the war, we can see the unethical issue of Caste in the context of rehabilitation and re settlement. ‘Higher caste’ Tamils continue to covertly resist in assisting impoverished war victims who are predominantly ‘lower caste’ in re settling in ‘higher caste’ neighbour hoods or admitting such children into ‘higher caste’ schools. Unless and until ‘higher caste’ Tamils accept Caste as an  unethical practice, the impoverished and marginalized in their community cannot hope for justice and equity provided through legitimate means and may thus seek redress through illegitimate extremist methods as attempted in the past. Ironically, Tamil Christian religious leaders have always empathized with the Tamil marginalized classes and consequently were suspected as terrorist supporters.

Christianity, Evangelism and Conversions
Active Christian missionary work has been obnoxious to Buddhist religious leaders ever since colonial times Consequently, Buddhist religious authorities in Sri Lanka have always been suspicious of Christian evangelism due to many conversions from Buddhism to Christianity among the marginalized classes. Consequently, the state is  seriously considering an anti conversion law “Bill for Prohibition of Forcible Conversions,” against the spread of Christianity. In this instance as well, Christian religious leaders have also empathized with Sinhalese Buddhist ‘lower caste’ communities resulting in many conversions to Christianity which has been criticized by Buddhist religious leaders as the spiritual manipulation of vulnerable social groups.

Conclusion
It is evident form the above analysis that religion plays a negative role in harmonizing the common spirituality of man. In fact, religion, throughout the ages has aggravated human conflict and imposed arbitrary control through stringent laws which have compromised fundamental human rights. Its requirement  for unquestioning faith in the divine causes conflict in the minds of men who have been educated to think rationally and scientifically on all other issues.   It is time that societies in the developing world are made aware of  the divisive effects of organized religion and encouraged to turn towards reason based spirituality which has no vested interests and consequently  far more ethical, moral and intellectually dignified in addressing man’s spiritual needs.

Sri Lanka, in particular, is the target of this article as a developing nation with a highly vulnerable society due to its endemic poverty, religious and ethnic diversity, a recently concluded brutal ethnic conflict, allegations of war crimes and the government’s unwillingness to investigate such a grave accusation which will have serious repercussions to the country.

There is a palpable need to break away from the organized religious shackles of Buddhist nationalism, Caste Hinduism, Christian Evangelism and Islamic fundamentalism not only in Sri Lanka but throughout the world .  Countries which have religion embedded into their constitutions in order to establish religious supremacy need to re consider its validity for achieving national peace and stability.  Buddhism is a religious philosophy which advocates personal salvation through ethical and moral conduct based on reason. Unfortunately, the custodians of Buddhism have reduced the philosophy to a religion which recognizes divine intervention in the form of deities and also by subscribing to numerous archaic rules and practices which are anathema to Buddhist philosophy. Unfortunately, the majority Sinhalese Buddhists are caught in a trap of deception and manipulation by vested interests to claim the supremacy of sinhala Buddhist nationalism by marginalizing the minority communities.

If we are to prosper as a united country, society needs to break away from divisive thinking based on narrow religious dogma. We need to extract the universally accepted values and principles embedded within archaic and anachronistic religious doctrines and rituals most of which are redundant and irrelevant due to the evolution of civilization to higher levels of thought and existence. For this, we need to exercise our powers of reasoning in addressing our spiritual needs which have a strong bearing on our mutual objective of striving for sustainable peace, justice and equitable prosperity in harmony with our environment.

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1. Today, Wesak is the most revered day in the Buddhist calendar. Unfortunately, in Sri Lanka, the celebration is led by a small group of apparently sanctimonious humbugs followed closely by a larger herd of population of self inflicted ignorance. Their mutual objective being the public display of religious fervor through the performance of religious observations at the obvious expense of the practice of Buddhist precepts. It appears that they are trying to create an image of high standards of moral and ethical conduct despite their very apparent behaviour to the contrary.
2. The negative reaction of the leadership to the UNSG’s request to respond to the POE report is the most powerful case in point. Their floundering behaviour of non- cooperation was followed by outright denial of allegations of war crimes and human rights abuses compounded by denigration of the UNSG and Panel of Experts by political buffoons even as country representatives at Wesak celebrations at the UN.
3. The leadership’s blatantly immature and ill conceived response has aggravated doubts of their credibility. It would have made very good sense if they responded in a more rational and cooperative manner in keeping with international codes of diplomatic conduct expected of member nations of the UN and as responsible stake holders in the global system of international justice, protection and security.
4. Their uncalled for aggressively defensive behaviour has made it quite obvious to even the most simplistic minded that they have much to hide.
5. It is indeed sad that the few intellectual elite who have acquired their education at the highest fonts of western learning and currently serving the leadership in the international arena are unable to advice the leadership to act in a credible and responsible manner. Is it because their thirst for position and power exceeds their concern for national interest?
6. The leadership could have defended war crimes allegations through a rational legal approach using international precedents as well as international law. Acceptance of the possibility of collateral damage and war crimes by some ill motivated members of the armed forces requiring investigation would have been the most realistic course of action.
7. Unfortunately, aggravation of their self inflicted lack of credibility has legitimized the imminent possibility of a case for war crimes investigations by the International Criminal Court. The ongoing international investigations of similar incidents in other countries and their pretended indifference to the possibility of a similar fate befalling them is equally baffling, to say the least.
8. In addition to the above, there is very little compassion shown by the leadership for Tamil survivors of the war and regret for the grievous collateral damage caused them as a consequence of a brutal war. In fact, their indifference to and denial of abuses and violence during the final stages of the war is a very explicit indication of their negative attitude towards genuine post war reconciliation.
9. This is justification enough for suspecting the government’s guilt in deliberate neglect and targeting of innocent Tamil civilians caught in the cross fire of the final stages of the war.
10. The leadership’s behavior is undeniably not in keeping with what the Buddha taught and is particularly glaring to many on this sacred day.

• Tamil National Alliance statement on the leaked UN report: An irrefutable confirmation of events
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• Sacrificing essential liberty for temporary safety in Sri Lanka

Original photograph REUTERS/Damir Sagolj

I have not hidden my increasing disdain for the way Buddhism is practiced and promoted in Sri Lanka. To say the least, we have not only forgotten what it is truly about, we often downright contradict and insult it. I wrote about it here, almost exactly a year ago, after the Poson holiday of 2010.

In the last year, I have become even more disillusioned with the establishment of Buddhism in Sri Lanka – I am always shocked by the bigoted sermons given on TV, the terrible behaviour displayed by monks turned politicians, and how the Nationalistic element of Sri Lankan Buddhism has seeped into everything. I felt even more wary as we as a nation approached Vesak this year.

For anyone that needs a heads-up, the Vesak full-moon Poya day is a special day for Buddhists. The Buddha was apparently born, attained enlightenment and passed onto Nirvana all on Vesak poya days. Don’t ask me how he managed that timing, but it has long-been accepted that Vesak day was the anniversary of his birth, enlightenment and attaining of Nirvana. This Vesak is meant to be extra special, as we celebrate the 2600th anniversary of the attaining of enlightenment; of a prince becoming a Buddha, of an amazing journey of meditation, introspection and self-discovery that unveiled to him the truth about life and existence.

I look around and I think, ‘What do we have to celebrate?’ The disintegration of his philosophy? The complete bastardisation of everything he stood for? Of everything he discovered and taught? The total and deliberate misinterpretation of a value system that saw everyone as equal, now replaced by beliefs of superiority in race, sex and caste? The convolution of his message for political gain? What introspection has his teaching led us to, in 2600 years? What self-discovery? What revelations?

I always enjoy the sights and sounds of Vesak, and had already for the last few years, sought to enjoy it as a secular holiday filled with crowded nights, looking at Vesak lanterns and colourful pandols. This is of course once again ritual vs. philosophy, as I’m fairly certain the Buddha did not want huge pandols and lanterns erected in his name, and would rather have us reflect than worship. However, this is an ongoing Sri Lankan custom, now an imbedded part of Sri Lankan culture.

But Vesak pandols in particular are a wonderful and interesting thing; and this is how I stumbled upon this.

It seems that the advertising agency JWT is creating a special pandol for Vesak this year, depicting not the traditional Jathaka story (Jathaka stories are the stories of the Buddha’s previous births, told mostly as fables about the Buddha’s compassion, kindness etc.) but the various forms of abuse suffered today by women.

This to me seems by far the most fascinating thing I’ve seen during Vesak for years, and doubtlessly something the Buddha himself would support above the meaningless expenditures spent on celebrating and worshipping him. I think this is a really clever way to bring the topic into the consciousness of thousands of Sri Lankans who will be on the street tonight and tomorrow night, ‘seeing’ Vesak. Imagine walking past a seemingly traditionally constructed pandol to discover that it is about violence against women; it will compel you to look again.

They also have this great video , which is a clip of an interview with the man who built the pandol – someone who’s been doing it for years – and how he feels this is unique and interesting.

To me it seems as though this idea will be more in line with Buddhist philosophy than many things that pass off as ‘Buddhist’ these days. To create awareness about the fact that women deserve the right to live a safe life with respect and dignity, and to push people to truly feel inclined towards building a society in which women are respected and are given equal opportunities: this seems more Buddhist to me than banning Akon, or getting up in arms about a “Buddha Bar”. It seems more Buddhist than monks in parliament, or protesting on the roads with their robes hiked up to their knees. It seems more Buddhist than loudly blaring 1 hour sermons through megaphones across neighbourhoods.

In this day and age, when Vesak celebrations seem to have come a long way from their origins (just today I saw in stalls, alongside Vesak lanterns, a favourite item for sale seems to be masks of serial killers, such as the one from the famous Hollywood slasher flick, Scream.) it seems appropriate to spend this momentous 2600th anniversary of Buddha’s enlightenment, reflecting on and celebrating one of the key cornerstones of Buddhist philosophy: equality.

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For those of you who might not be able to access the Facebook page: this pandol will be open to the public from 18 May – 22 May from 7.30 pm onwards at the Buddha Rashmi Vesak Zone – Navam Mawatha Car Park (Behind Cinnamon Grand) Colombo, Sri Lanka.

• A is for Adhi Vesak
• The transformation of Buddhism in Sri Lanka
• The Priority Vesak Thought for Action: “Care and Compassion for the Most Needy”
• A-Z of Sri Lankan English: P is for pre-poya
• Akon and Buddhism in Sri Lanka: A Response to Bhikkhu K. Tanchangya

‘I think someone forced you to wear this. I will help you. Here is a fine of €200’. Sounds stupid? Well that’s the bizarre logic of the French rescue plan/law to help around 2000 Muslim women get out of the burka. Whilst prostitution and pornography flourish it is the burka that is banned. The debasement of women in the sex industry is well known but it is the attire of Muslim women that inspires French chivalry. I doubt anyone’s being fooled here – this has nothing to do with helping women but is another instance of the exploitation of women and women’s issues.

The ban is ridiculous. It’s another blemish in the deteriorating relationship between European Muslims and White Europe. But why is Europe getting all jittery about what Muslims wear or to state another example, how they build their mosques? In Switzerland they banned minarets when there were only four in the country. Minarets and domes are fairly controversial construction in other European countries as well. No doubt the burka or the niqab are not mainstream behaviour. Yet European society has enough non – mainstream conduct. Like the men who dress up as women or those who don’t want to wear anything at all. Then why is it that European society finds anything that is ‘Islamic/Muslim’ uncomfortable? The answer may be found in Europe’s historic discomfort with ‘the other’ particularly when ‘the other’ represents a competing ideology. Whilst a nudist at the annual nudist parade does not challenge mainstream European ideology – a Muslim woman in a burka is symbolic of an alternative and in the eyes of the right – a competing ideology.

The burka ban is a good example of this ‘competing ideology discomfort’. For it is not in the number of women i.e. 2000 in a population of five to six million Muslims that troubled the conservatives in France but that these women were second or third generation French citizens and some were white French converts. The ‘cancer’ it seemed was spreading. Those born and exposed to French culture were opting for the alternative.

This is not mere conjecture. An expert appointed by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination has found the present attitude and practices of the Sarkozy government as similar to the Vichy regime that collaborated with the Nazi German forces which occupied France during the Second World War. The Holocaust was rooted in the fear of ‘the other’. Popular narrative pins the Holocaust as a creation of Hitler and Nazi Germany but there were Nazis all over Europe. This included France and Netherlands – another country where Muslims in particular and migrants minorities in general have a troubled relationship with the majority.

A few weeks back I had to go through immigration at Heathrow. The immigration officer thought fit to tell me how well qualified he was for the job. He even had a research doctorate. I was naturally curious as to what he was doing in immigration at Heathrow – with a PhD. He replied that he was working to protect his country. What’s the point of the story? It is that he had distinct South Asian features and spoke with a South Asian accent. I am quite certain that his ancestors were not living in England when William the Conqueror marched through. Yet this was his country and he was defending it with pride. However like many citizens with migrant backgrounds, so long as he clings to his migrant roots – he would be as much an outsider as me. The Muslim versus Europe debate takes place in the context of ‘the immigration problem’. Migrants need to integrate they say. Yet most of the women who wore the burka like the majority of Muslims in France were citizens of that country. The question is when do you stop being an immigrant and become a citizen or is it never?

The insecurity is heightened when these parallel ideologies are practiced in parallel societies or ghettos. There are ghettos in every major European capital. If you take London for example there are certain areas which are densely populated by a particular ethnic, racial or religious group – like Brick Lane or Brixton. Who creates these barriers? How do people choose where they live? I am yet to meet a Bengali who can afford to live in Hampstead but who still chooses Whitechapel. That then is the reality. The latest figure to hit headlines is that 94.7% of school head-teachers in 21,600 schools in England are White British. This is just one industry where there is clear evidence of institutionalised racism that prevents other ethnicities from rising to the top. Examples for other industries are also available and well known. In France the unemployment amongst North African – Arab communities was thrice that of Caucasian communities. No one lives in ghettos out of choice but ghettos reflect systemic and institutionalised prejudices against particular communities which hamper their mobility up the social and property ladder.

Europe’s discomfort with the burka stems also from a very colonial mentality which is that ‘what is good for us is good for all’. The corollary of that idea is the idea that only those who are like us are civilised and the rest – barbarians. Thus colonialists attacked, ravaged and destroyed indigenous communities and cultures all over the world under the pretext and goal of civilising them. Many cannot fathom why women in modern Europe opt for the hijab or niqab which to them symbolises oppression and inequality. A Muslim woman who wears an Islamic attire is portrayed as being gullible, enslaved, brainless and opinion less. When she says she feel actually empowered – they look at her with sympathy and scepticism. In the entire debate on the burka, the mainstream Muslim voices were never represented. I doubt if even twenty of the 2000 women who wore the attire were consulted. There is nothing more degrading for political decisions affecting women to be made without prior consultation.

Despite the disgust and the disappointment, the fact remains that Muslim communities will have to continue to live with Europe. The only way forward would be keep working at building partnerships and removing distrust through the process of engagement and dialogue.

• Hijab whereforth dost thou commeth?
• Does cricket have a citizenship?
• World Cup Cricket and Football: Nationalism in France and Sri Lanka
• TMVP in same dustbin as LTTE in the past?
• The Hijab unveiled – a response to Nazeeya Faarooq

Moving Images is a series of stunning short-form documentary and narrated photographic portraits on facets of life in post-war Sri Lanka.

These high-definition productions, the country’s first, range from portraits of resilience from the war ravaged Jaffna and reflections on the Eurasian community by the last surviving Eurasians themselves to fascinating lives in Colombo invisible even to most who live and work in the city.

Produced for and supported by Groundviews, this unique content is will be progressively uploaded to the Moving Images website over April and May.

Trailers for the productions follow along with the flyer announcing the launch of the content.

• Watch Moving Images at Kandy International Film Festival (KIFF)
• A Public Memo to Members of Parliament representing the Tamil National Alliance from the Tamil Civil Society
• Sinhala and Tamil translations of UN Panel’s report on accountability
• Mojo for mayhem or source of serendipity? Sri Lankan Army’s model to defeat terrorism
• An elephantine gestation: UN Panel’s report on accountability in Sri Lanka released

To all who read and commented and did not comment, “Thank you”.

Comments by and large, have the same mindset, though with trivial variations, except for ‘Heshan’. The gist of all other comments is that, questioning the impact of caste influenced “Heenayana” Buddhism on society, is “treacherous” and arguments are “garbage”. Questioning the negative aspect of this “Buddhism”, is blaming it, as Raghavan understands it. For others, its dumping on us an alien “Western” democracy and theory.

For all of them, again except Heshan, discussing Sinhala Buddhist politics is taboo. That has to be taken as “natural” and “justified” in this country and needs no discussion, they feel. Why can’t politics be discussed “without touching upon Sinhala Buddhist influence” or impact, is their angry question. What they don’t want to accept is that, as in Rwanda where “Hutu” racial extremism can not be avoided when discussing politics, as in Israel where “Judaism” can not be forgotten, as in Iran where Shi’ite Islamic hegemony can not be ignored, in Sri Lanka, even in modern politics Sinhala Buddhist politics with its caste influence can not be avoided, starting with Anagarika Dharmapala’s intervention at least, from the colonial period.

Instead they drag the discussion into their own fancied playgrounds and have failed to positively contribute in understanding the religious influence on this “socio political culture” that allows this society to fester and nauseate with murder, abductions, corruption, waste, poverty, racism and all things negative in governance that is anything but decent and civilised, even on “Dharmasokian ethics and values”.

The approach in dividing this world into a noble East and a vicious West and the attitude of those who wish to feel “pure” in their Heenayana Sinhala dressing, negates the fact that “knowledge and technology” in this world grew and evolved to what it is today and what it would be tomorrow, with different societies across the globe from East to West, contributing, acquiring and assimilating knowledge and technology, and developing them to new levels of knowledge and technology. Thus it would be apt to ask, to whom does “printing” technology belong to ? To Chinese wooden block makers who initially developed the technology of carving out Chinese characters or to Gutenberg in Germany who used that in developing interchangeable metal characters ?

So is “democracy” and modern political philosophy. Democracy that is identified as “Western” is a long process of capital formation, growth of nation States, exploitation of colonies and how they themselves could be governed. Grown and developed over centuries, through many debacles and struggles of mostly oppressed people. That also includes the break away of the “Lutheran” Clergy from the Roman Catholic church, in progressively interpreting the Bible. Such knowledge accumulation and technological advancements took off in the West, with the development of printing, that for the first time allowed knowledge and philosophical discourse to be shared socially.

All societies that does not understand such growth and advancement of “knowledge, science and technology” as borderless “human achievement” and close themselves up to outside influence and growth, had been failures. China’s fall during the ‘Ming dynasty’ is a classic example. The strength of the West lies in its culture that was ever an open process.

What is instead proposed by those who shy away from modern “democratic” concepts and governing structures as “Western” dumps on us, has nothing for us to lean on, as a solution. If not the globally accepted human and democratic rights, what choice ? If not the internationally accepted concepts of representative and participatory democracy, what choice ?

The choice is that of a tyranny, that I don’t concede to, or accept as a choice, under any socio political context. Therefore, this attempt at understanding why this Sinhala Buddhist society, does not allow a change for a better, for a decent and a modern society, with equality across religio- ethnic divisions. Therefore this attempt at understanding why this Sinhala Buddhist society, that is fundamentally a “Heenayana” (The term ‘Theravada’ was adopted later) thinking society, accepts violations of all decency to live a subdued, grumbling and a “nihilistic” life. Often a contradiction of its religious beliefs and its secular, personal cravings.

That can not come about after 1978, with the neo liberal “free economy” alone. That can not be the influence of JVP and JHU politics. That is also not what Rajapaksa created by himself through his “Mahinda Chinthanaya”. Its historical social thinking, all of them fell upon, to mobilise the society. But it is only the Sinhala Buddhist society that can be mobilised by calling for a “Unitary” State and a “motherland”. Why ? Because that call has to be qualified by Buddhist presence, which is not “Mahayana” but “Heenayana”.

No comment has provided any counter argument on that and to accept that Heenayana is positive and socialising, in its social impact. It is what I defined as and is precisely why, we don’t have a strong aesthetic culture. The 2,560 year history does not show any growth of aesthetics for a lay life. Not even a palace culture rich in music and dance, as in India. If Hindu and Moghul (Muslim) empires in both North and South India could provide space for their very rich and varied traditions of dance and music, art and sculpture, costumes and cuisines, why could not “Lanka”?  All dances, art, music and song that we talk of as Sri Lankan, are borrowed traditions. How will that be explained?

There is therefore a necessity to break off from this rusty ideological shackle of living in the past and being introvert in approaching life, in working towards a future. We got to leave this baggage and move forward. Change is often painful and disadvantageous for the coward and the opportunist.

• Political Opposition in a Nihilistic Sinhala Society
• In conversation with Joshua Roman: Videos and photos
• Measuring poverty differently
• Dismissing inconvenient truths – The Divaina’s take on Groundviews
• In conversation with Mandhira de Saram

Female deities do not occupy major positions in the Theravada Buddhist pantheon. In Sri Lanka the goddess Pattini is an important exception. And, unlike most other deities revered by Sinhala Buddhists, her origins are particularly South Indian. Pattini is considered the goddess of fertility and health, a guardian of Buddhism and, indeed, protector of the island.

The goddess descends from the wind and cloud and sky
She looks at the sorrows of Sri Lanka with her divine eyes
She takes the anklet and carries it on her shoulder
Arrive O Pattini of wind and cloud and flower.

From Pahan Pujava: Offering of Lights, from the Gammaduwa ritual texts
Gananath Obeyesekere, Cult of the Goddess Pattini (Chicago: 1984)

The anklet is an important symbol of the goddess. Kannagi, the central character of the Tamil epic Cilappatikaram (The tale of an Anklet) sought – and gained – justice for her husband wrongfully accused of stealing the queen’s anklet. Kannagi avenged her husband’s death by destroying the city of Madurai, the royal seat – an act that gained the respect and reverence also of people across the samudram. Today her influence continues to be visible in Sri Lanka: she is worshipped by the Hindus of the east and north as Kannaki Amman, but by far the larger numbers of devotees are among the Sinhala Buddhists, from all parts of the island, for whom she is Pattini Amma.

When the time for offering mangoes arrived
And seeing that the mangoes were ripe
She covered them in cloth at the correct time
And offered them to the Buddha.

By the merit of the mango I gave

May I be born in a golden mango…

From the Pattini Patuma, the wish to become a Pattini
Gananath Obeyesekere, Cult of the Goddess Pattini (Chicago: 1984)

Sharni Jayawardena is a photographer participating in the Sethusamudram Art Project of the Theertha International Artists Collective. The project, which explores the complex histories shared by India and Sri Lanka, includes both Sri Lankan and Indian artists.

• Ashes at the Stake – For Lasantha
• The Jaffna priest and the policeman who turned IGP
• election 2010
• Sethu Samudram: Bridging art, history and human relations
• A brief impression of ‘My Other History’

Taking off from the present

This new year loaded my “In box” with that ritualistic “New Year” wish which said, the year would be “wonderful-happy-prosperous-peaceful and even healthy”. Just one meanwhile opted out to say, this traditionally accepted “wish” had been so for decades and virtually forgets poverty, discrimination and injustice and instead wished “strength to treat all humans as equals with justice”. Unfortunately, both the commonplace wish and its antipathy means little or nothing, in this present day Sri Lanka.

This Sinhala society as a collective entity has no such will, though individuals may show a dislike to what’s around them. Its the societal mindset that matters. Governments reflect that and so are their budgets and plans. Budget for this year (2011) is no good proof. It is obvious that this regime has no political desire and a will to find answers to those long overdue issues of poverty, rural economic growth and national development in an inclusive, plural society with much diversity. The path on which this Rajapasksa regime treads, is definitely nowhere close to the path of decent national development for a disciplined, modern, inclusive society.

With that comes an unavoidable question. How will this Sinhala society that has usurped the responsibility of deciding national politics, react to this regime’s failure in delivering post war dividends ? Or, will they ever challenge this “Al Capone” type regime ?

A case for People’s Power

There is often reason to believe that people would sooner or later react against any “Al Capone” type government. Often there is reference to the Iranian people’s upsurge that removed Shah Phalavi and to throwing out of Ferdinand Marcos, in the Philippines.

Yet, my sad and pessimistic conviction is, this present day Sinhala, Heenayana Buddhist society would not play Philippines or Iran. Not in the foreseeable future. This Sinhala society is awfully different, seasoned over centuries by Heenayana Buddhist ideology. It has turned into a grumbling, cussed entity, very much nihilistic in its culture of living.

Iran had its resentment brewing from the 1930s with senior Shah, General Rezah  accused of “Westernising” Iran. His son President Shah Phalavi continued unchanged from around the 60′s with overt US support. Accumulation of resentment over decades, translating itself into an Islamic upsurge led by Mullahs, Iran finally threw him out of power and out of the country as well, in 1979.

“People’s Power” that came on the roads of Manila as an unstoppable force, was catalysed after a decade and more of Islamic Moro guerillas and the Maoist guerilla outfit, “New People’s Army” destabilised the society that Ferdinand Marcos strangled with his callous power. Thereafter with the assassination of popular Opposition leader Benigno Ninoy Aquino, sections of the army refused taking orders from the Marcos regime. It was finally the Catholic church with its “Radio Veritas” that brought people on to the streets in thousands that saw Marcos flee the country, in February 1986.

As one former President of the University of Philippines, Fransisco Nemenso put on record, “bringing hundreds of thousands of people on to the streets, in hours, in a day, would have been impossible, not just difficult, if not for Radio Veritas.”

Religious contradictions in history

This Sri Lanka is wholly different. This society lacks the religio-political inertia as in Iran and the Philippines, in translating social injustice into people’s actions. In both those countries, religion as an institution, was a socialising factor. Here in Sri Lanka, there are also no “Ayathollas of Iran” and a “Veritas Radio” as in the Philippines. There simply can not be, with Heenayana Buddhism.

Buddhist temples and monks are no organised institute like the “Church” and its clerics. It has no ideological capacity like Islam, to hold its loyal “faithfuls” from birth to adolescence to marriage and death. On a fundamentally individualistic imposition on life, Heenayana Buddhism is the opposite of the Catholic church that mobilises its constituency every Sunday and the Muslim mosque, every Friday afternoon.

There is also a feudal and a trader-business factor, hardly spoken of openly in relation to the Sinhala society and its type of Buddhism. “Nikayas”, as different “Sects” in Heenayana monkdom, were sponsored and patronised by a caste based trader community, ever since the “King” was made absent and the Shyamopali Siyam Nikaya restricted itself to the Kandyan Govigama nobility in 1764.

Amarapura Nikaya was established in 1803 by low country traders who funded a Salagama monk, Ambagahapitiye Gnanawimala thero, to make a sea voyage to Burma and return with higher ordination. Thereafter Karawa and Durawa monks were sponsored to travel to Burma for higher ordination, also by Southern traders and landed proprietors. Ramanya Maha Nikaya was later formed by another Salagama monk obtaining higher ordination, from Ramanna land in Burma in 1863.

All this keeps a feudal tag on Buddhists, with temples run by caste based monks and the trader community opting to assist their own “Buddhist taste” of the caste. To date the Vahumpura caste, making a significant presence in trade and commerce, proudly claim they are a strictly Buddhist caste. All of it in a half grown capitalist society leaves values, attitudes and social relations with rural land ownerships also intact, basically with a functioning feudal mindset, though living in a market economy.

The Old ‘Left’ and orthodoxy

The strength of the old Sama Samaja movement (LSSP) was therefore seen in how it challenged this feudal orthodoxy in an evolving urban life. The pioneering Sama Samaja leadership openly challenged the then existing Buddhist acceptance of Sinhala social relations on feudal structures from late 1920′s. It was thus able to dictate terms politically, in a well entrenched Welfare State, much different to the present day society. With that urban influence on “welfarism”, the 1953 August 12 “Hartal” was perhaps the last of its socio political engineering and the first mass action which challenged social tradition. Within a day, it forced the UNP government of Dudley Senanayake to fold up and take refuge in a British warship – HMS NewFoundland – anchored in the Colombo harbour.

The 1953 August Hartal brought out 02 fundamental issues. The first was the fact that political power lies centralised in Colombo. The rural polity has no decisive impact on State power and is only a passive “vote bloc”. Yet they become important in changing governments, with their Sinhala Buddhist feudal life, intact.

The second was that the Sama Samaja movement had no influence outside the Western Province and was to a lesser extent in the adjacent sub urban areas along the coast stretching North and South of Colombo and inland into the Kelaniya valley, towards Sabaragamuwa. It was evident therefore, the LSSP ideology could not challenge traditional rural life and therefore would not form an elected government on its own, for long years to come.

This led to a political faction within the LSSP that in its 1954 Conference proposed a change of strategy. They called for a “worker – peasant national government”, to address the majority rural voter, instead of living isolated and stubborn with its urban workers’ led anti capitalist politics. Having lost at the Conference, some like L.W Panditha, Samarawickrama and K.P Silva joined the Communist Party that was politically closer to their resolution. Thereafter Henry Peiris is said to have influenced political thinking in forming the nationalist MEP, which won the 1956 general elections, led by Bandaranayake.

Revival of Heenayana dominance

With Sama Samaja influence restricted to the urban minority and shrinking, this new nationalist alliance played alternate to the UNP with the type of Sinhala nationalism, that saw a Sinhala Buddhist revival with State patronage. Sinhala State capitalism of this newly revived Sinhala business and trader community, which depended on the Soviet bloc countries, justified the “progressive” nature of this new Sinhala nationalism.

SLFP politics thus defined the cultural potency of the Sinhala business and trader community in post independent Ceylon, that was geared to take total control of the market. This Sinhala business and trader community, perceived Tamil and Muslim business communities as strong competitors and sought State patronage for their own expansion and capture of markets. Sri Lanka thus came to be politico culturally defined as the “land of the Sinhalese” and of “Gauthama Buddha”.

The market component of Sinhala Buddhist radicalisation was amply demonstrated in the pogrom against Tamil people in July 1983. Industries Minister Cyril Mathew was in charge of the Sinhala campaign by then and represented a Sinhala Buddhist community that has specific business interests in society. In 1983 July, Tamil businesses from street corner eateries and groceries to cinema halls and big and established businesses like ‘KG Industries’, were all targeted after prior identifying. The UNP government of the day, used it politically to signal its readiness to allow violence, as answer to Tamil political grievances, that was also radicalising.

Heenayana negativism on social living

With the absence of the Sama Samaja ideology as an alternate platform that in pre independent and early post war period provided an alternate socio political ideology, this Sinhala business and trader dominance with increasing centralised State power once again provided space for Heenayana Buddhism to mould Southern social ideology. Emergence of a Sinhala Buddhist ideology based on historical rights as the superior social force in the island, structured a new and militant Sinhala political thinking (Chinthanaya) that helped decide politics, in the South. This gave legitimacy to Heenayana Buddhism as practised in the South with Buddhist monks emerging to assert themselves as a prominent social factor, embedding religion with politics.

The logical base of this Sinhala Buddhist thinking, though different to the philosophical preachings on “life and thereafter”, by Lord Buddha, stood on the broad Buddhist argument that greed and selfishness, passion and lust in a secular world of happiness and joy, leads to an extension of life in an unending cycle, which is a misery. To attain emancipation according to Heenayana interpretation which is different to Mahayana, “man” has to discipline life to dissociate from all such secular fixations, at the end of which “He” (Buddhism is a macho religion) could attain “nirvana” the sublime conclusion to life’s miserable journey.

A very individualistic and subdued approach to life, this denied the necessity to search for new knowledge in making life, a satisfying social experience. It contradicted the human necessity of seeking comfortable life and working towards such comfort. This explains why Buddhism lacks an enjoyable cultural aspect in social  life, unlike Hinduism and Catholicism, or even Islamism. Introvert in its approach to life, culturally very much subdued, Heenayana Buddhism has left the Sinhala society without a rich tradition of song and dance, of art and sculpture and a culture of entertainment.

Coming of age with neo liberalism

Heenayana religious acceptance turned into individualism and a piously subdued life, the Sinhala mindset with no alternate thinking, was well seasoned to go roller skating with the neo liberal economy, introduced as the “Open Economy” from 1978, under the UNP government of JRJ. The open economy that took away all State controls on imports and exports, introduced a consumer pattern based on heavy competition for economic survival.

Opening of the economy sparked off an economic growth during the first years, that redesigned and redefined competition within a commercially expanding society. Commercialism, running on trade commissions, is very much competitive in a society that lacks both actual socio economic growth and new capital generation. Individuals and individual families, giving up on the traditional “extended family” was demanded adherence to consumer competition, for “choice” in living.

The new consumerist life, settled with home based entertainment and captive social dialogue through TV and FM channels. New and colourful communication brought both simple and soapy entertainment, mixed with controlled and edited political discussion and selected news, to the uprooted and isolated “man” held captive in the house. The fall of the film industry with all its other factors weighing in, is also due to this “locking in” of families to the new high paced lifestyle that allows no free time and social leisure. Within this neo liberal economy, socialising became restricted to seldom and carefully planned “family affairs”, not affordable to the majority in society.

In-house entertainment and FM-TV based communication thus controls the mindset of this new man, living within this highly competitive neo liberal economy. The new media phenomenon is programmed for profits, keeps an “atomised” collection of people fixed on light, a-political, contentless entertainment, all through day and night.

Accepting fate as Buddhists

The lonely, stressed out consumerist home life, especially among the middle class, is now driving people into a new religious trend, that evolves with the urban business and trader community in luxury “Ashrams” with “celebrity monks”. They preach the same Heenayana Buddhist ideology with the same individual approach to life, albeit with a more commercialised spin. This allows the Sinhala business and trader community to weigh heavily on this Sinhala regime that has Heenayana Buddhism providing the base for its official State ideology that talks proud in defeating Tamil separatism.

It has a dual social face. The urbanised middle class adopts the Heenayana tradition as their “Great Escape” from a heavily consumerised, high paced lifestyle, they would not move out from, in real life. The duality lies in being more Buddhist as escapists and more politically Sinhala to gain a bigger market share in a stagnant economy.

In more rural society, it is the strength of the Sinhala State, politicised to the grass roots, sponsored by the Sinhala business and trader community that holds power. Controlled from Colombo by a very centralised authority, akin to their Buddhist Kings, this system goes well, though with grumbling on day to day living, both in urban and rural life. This is no collective issue, for individualism that accepts life as fate, defined according to Heenayana Buddhism.

Will such an individualised, introvert society that lacks alternate thinking, have reason to challenge this regime ? Will it see political issues as common and collective issues that need to be answered on a social platform ? Not that soon for sure, more in the absence of a politically intelligent Opposition.

• Political Opposition in a Nihilistic Sinhala Society: Responses and clarifications
• Aiding and abetting to kill plurality in ‘patriotic’ Sri Lanka
• The transformation of Buddhism in Sri Lanka
• Sri Lanka: the waning of Liberalism?
• Politics of Sinhala Nationalism: Underpinning of the UPFA Victory and Undermining of the Sri Lankan Nationhood

© TechNation

As Sri Lanka eases away from the emergency and security phase to a growth and development phase, there is a wonderful opportunity for us to create a balance between growth and the beauty of its nature and people – in fact pacing and sequencing the growth by being thoughtful, planning well not for now, but for the next one hundred years – will be prudent to recreate the pearl of the orient.   Yet, the force against this kind of restraint and balance is great as the world marches to the drum of ‘growth is great’. We have put too much stock on the notion that growth will help everyone, except, what we see is that the rich usually get richer, unless there are carefully planned social, educational, health care and environmental systems in place backed up by an exceptional process for justice to serve and protect every citizen.  This may bring about a kind of a social equality for all balancing with nature.

Yet we know that everything hinges on economics.  The world is dictated by the economic value of GDP where the combined value of paid work and what we produce complemented by growth is the measure ingrained into our heads from the beginning of our conscious journey in modern life.   As such, we are emotionally attached to the concept of growth.

I encounter this regularly as a business consultant when a CEO tells the management team at a strategic planning meeting; “This year we had a turnover of 10 million dollars, so lets make it 12 million in the next year”.   I realize this is often a number plucked from the sky for the sake of growth.  One year later I am called in to solve the problem of turnover of employees as they walk out the door in protest of not having a work-life balance and too much stress.  Investigations by talking to all levels lead me right back to the CEO’s growth proclamation.

Economics and Assumptions

The key assumption in economics is – we grow or we languish.   Yes, in many cases for survival, whether it is a country or a business, growth is needed, but my contention is that it has become so mindless where growth is the mantra at any cost, even if it will eventually bite you back.

This happens as leaders are not mindful of the co-dependencies that exist with everything we say and do.   The CEO asking for a 2 million dollar increase in turnover may see the market potential to grow, but often ignores the nitty-gritty of the organization, especially the people at the lowest levels who have to carry the burden.  In the name of efficiency, the organization does not invest in more machinery and people, so the growth happens at the expense of existing people’s well being, family life and health and we wonder why they are walking out.

So, there are limits to growth when we bring the human element into this equation.   Extend this to the country, to nature and our planet and we know well enough, there cannot be limitless growth, as it means polluting more, cutting trees, clearing forests and hurting people that hinder the very sustenance for all beings.

Just like the employees need the sustenance through nourishment, rest and rejuvenation our earth needs it too.  We cannot keep taking and taking from either without a breakdown.

Interestingly, this growth has happened only in the last 500 years or about 8 generations of over 125,000 generations that has inhabited the earth, and it is a result of a separation of our mind and matter – ala Descarte the French philosopher.   We have kept nature and the human spirit separate from material growth and prosperity, forgetting that the very container for all this is mother earth.

We can see the physical evidence of this decay on our earth through melting of polar ice caps, desertification, drying lakes and weather changes all around us.  Yet, like the typical CEO who cannot understand why people are so unhappy, our attachment to the growth ideology keeps us blinkered and carrying on.  We are so attached to this growth ideology, as soon as someone questions it they are attacked with a vengeance.

Sane Minds Prevail

Luckily for us and especially for our future generations, there is growing body of people who are courageously questioning the growth mantra and looking at new paradigms.   Could there be such a thing called a ‘no growth’ economy ?.

Peter Victor of York University in Ontario, Canada (author of book Managing Without Growth – www.managingwithoutgrowth.com ) is exploring this along with many others.  Victor has created a computer model replicating the Canadian economy.  He combined and adjusted the various elements such as productivity, consumption, the population up and down and found that he could find a steady state through a combination of reducing the work week, taxing the rich and for carbon without hurting the standard of living.   We just need to release our emotional attachment with the growth ideology to explore new possibilities.

In the 1960s Rachel Carson in her book Silent Spring reawakened people to the perils of mindless growth that it inspired the Club of Rome – a group of industrialists, scholars, diplomats and professionals.  They teamed up with Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) systems thinker Dennis Meadows to create a computer model which showed clearly that we may have short term prosperity with limitless growth, but with nature going against us, resources will become scarce, prices will skyrocket collapsing the world economy.  Published in 1972 the book Limits to Growth became a global best seller and scared the world only to wake the mainstream economics fraternity to resist.  Supported by big business, they attacked the book and the findings with a vengeance calling them ‘alarmists’ and questioning their ‘pseudo-science’.   The economists argued that business would adjust to nature’s realities by changing materials they used and the way they did business when the time comes and the system should not be interfered with.  So the growth mantra continues unabated.

Spiritual Growth ?

As a person inquiring into marrying the material world and spirituality, influenced by both science and philosophy such as Buddhism, I have realized that these battles run deep as ideologies clash.

Economists have laid their stake religiously on the primacy of growth.  They are emotionally attached to this through an indoctrination supported through logic and mathematics, albeit with a lot if assumptions about values and human behavior.  As such, resistance to change is understandable as people fear that “no growth” will hit their standard of living and their pockets.  Of course there are the vested interests of big business working with academia to resist new thinking as their markets will shrink if people move away from consumerism.  So, there are great dilemmas.

This battle is also rife between the oil interests coupled with climate change naysayers vs. climate change activists, as it is with the pharmaceutical industry supported western medical establishment against alternative health supporters.

It is the same ideological clash, but there is a lot at stake either way.

My inquiry is, how do we change this and create a better balance?.

For that we have to focus on the individual, as it all begins with personal responsibility.

I often wonder how a person can compartmentalize away information based on what we learn or is happening in front of us.  For instance, we all know that trees give us oxygen for our sustenance, but we continue to support economic principles that allow for forests to be mowed down in the interest of growth.   There is also no economic value given to the oxygen we breathe, but for a cut tree there is value.

How can a person, who maybe a parent knowingly allow for an action that may jeopardize his child’s future well-being?.

How can an executive of an oil company whose job is to scuttle the climate change activist’s work to negotiate a reduction of carbon emissions at a global climate meeting have a conversation with his children about their future on this earth?.

Deep down many of these people maybe torn between what they see and what they have to put up with in order to eke out a living or to support their lifestyle.

If its ideology that has trapped people in these dilemmas and ideology that keeps them going, we need to question ideology after all we humans create these in the first place.  Maybe it is too late to deal with adults on this.  Maybe we have to start by educating the young about developing their minds to a level where they do not have to depend on one ideology, but to become inquiring, question and find a balance, based on a set of values that espouse respect to the very earth that gives us our life and to each other as fellow beings sharing this planet.

In my inquiry and practice, I research ancient and modern philosophies and find Buddha’s teachings to be both rational and logical to find a path to a better balance.   His message was to never take anything he said at face value and for us to question, explore for ourselves, learn and decide.  In fact, it honors the human mind and gives us the responsibility.

Buddha’s philosophy is anchored on a concept of “dependent arising” which is a denial of permanent and eternal substance, a law or an ultimate structure, but also an explanation of how human experience comes to be.  Everything changes but is interconnected and interdependent.

The cornerstone of the practice is mindfulness through meditation and with this inward journey to witness the world as it evolves.

Through my practice, I am seeing a link between the world of matter and the human spirit.  Consciousness is dependently arisen and is experienced through our senses.   We can condition ourselves to be attached to an ideology to numb certain parts to deal with the current realities, so we become blind to the consequences of our actions, even if it hurts the earth and people around us.

When we realize there is no permanence, like the ideologies we cling to, our behaviors will change as we will become open to the consequences.   So, the oil man will become conscious of the industry’s impact on his children and theirs and may begin to address the dilemma.

As I said, all this can be traumatic to an adult unless, he or she is ready to start this journey.

The New Generation

In the meantime, let us concentrate on the new generation in order to help them to continue their inquiring minds to grow, learn about the way the world works, but be confident and keep questioning fearlessly.  Teach them that ideologies are man-made concepts, not cast in stone and if certain ideologies hurt this earth and its people, make them violent and ill have the courage to question and change, as nothing is permanent.

We need to teach them young to be reflective, meditate, do yoga to find the balance between mind and body and build their self esteem by engaging in martial arts to learn to move to the edge and back with skill and balance.  That will give them the courage to face new challenges they are bound to encounter in a world where mother earth’s balance has been disturbed already.  They will also make informed decisions on the kinds of professions they will get into and may stay away from areas that do harm to people and this earth.

So, it is time we seriously start to inquire into this growth ideology that we are so attached to.  Maybe we will then seek a new economics that will help us to live in a peaceful co-existence with people and nature around us.   Sri Lanka can lead the way, as we have the chance now.

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We began by discussing the pregnant title of his memoirs, Rendering Unto Ceasar, placing it in Biblical context (from Matthew 22:21) and going on to explore why Bradman embraced Buddhism when he was around 18.

We then discussed the Tamil pogrom of 1983, where the then President made Bradman the first Commissioner General of Essential Services (CGES). I asked Bradman how it felt like to work on humanitarian aid and relief within a government, and indeed a President, widely known in later years to have condoned the violence. We also spoke about another bloody chapter in Sri Lanka’s history, the violence in the late 80s with the JVP uprising. At a time when Sri Lanka’s human rights record was significantly blemished, Bradman was appointed Presidential Advisor on International Relations. I asked him to compare his defence of the Premadasa administration versus the defence of the incumbent government, and recent allegations of gross human rights abuse, by those in and close to power now.

In light of the above, I asked Bradman to comment on the 81st comment in an interview conducted by Marianne David and published in the blog of DBS Jeyaraj on occasion of his 80th birthday. The comment noted, ““ Being a close associate to seven past leaders he was equally or more responsible for mistakes made by them.”

We spoke about his latest book, Kalutara, a look at the district of his birth and early childhood, written after the death of his wife. I ask him what led to the book, how he went about the research for it, and importantly, the complex ethnic and identity relations he found in this district alone.

After more compelling discussion on the issues above, the interview ends with a question to Bradman on whether he thinks it is possible to recreate the commitment and work ethic his life is an example of, or whether he is a product of a by-gone era.

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