Sri Lankan Psyche – Our Short Attention Span
Lilani Jayatilaka
Some years ago while on a visit from abroad, my niece was entertained and perhaps a little shocked when she overheard comments broadcast over the loudspeaker from a nearby school.
It was the day of their annual sports meet and a teacher, obviously short-tempered, screamed into the microphone at some hapless students, “Magay yakaawe aussande epaa”. When translated into English, “Don’t rouse the devil in me” it loses colour and pith but in its original Sinhala form, her words and tone of voice, packed quite a punch.
Reading the newspapers today, I am reminded of the words of that teacher. It seems that it takes very little to raise the sleeping devil in the Sri Lankan psyche. Any hint of criticism directed at our fragile egos and we are ready and willing to take umbrage. Is this part of our Sri Lankan psyche? If so, it does us a disservice.
Some of these thoughts on the Sri Lankan psyche ran through my mind when I attended a seminar on Wednesday 12 December, on the all- but- forgotten Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) Report. Interestingly, I learned that there was a measure of dissatisfaction with the report among some hard—line Tamils in the North as much as there was among many Sinhalese in the South, though for different reasons. The Tamils feel that due to the narrowness of its scope, the report fails to address the root causes for the war of 30 years, a crucial and significant omission. The hard- line Sinhala stance is in line with that of the government, and this is not to re-revisit the events that took place in May 2009, but instead to assert its confidence in the armed forces, the acknowledged heroes of the nation who saved the day. Leave alone rooting among the debris for evidence of war crimes, such hard liners find themselves unable even to consider the relatively mild and non threatening recommendations of the LLRC. In the meanwhile, the government is in the unenviable position of having commissioned a report which is a veritable Pandora’s box in its hands.
For instance, Chapter 3 of the report focuses on how the war was conducted during those last crucial days, while among its many recommendations at the end of the report, the commission also emphasizes the need for an independent body to investigate the channel 4 videos, the killings of 5 teenage boys in Trincomalee, the murder of 23 Aid workers in Muttur and the people who went missing during the course of the war. Rumour has it, that these disappearances and killings could be connected to the echelons of power and privilege. What does a government do with a report it commissioned to stave off mounting international pressure, but which could prove to be a powder keg in its possession? What it has done so far has been exactly what previous governments too have done with embarrassing facts, and that is, to sit it out. This brings me to the second significant aspect of the Sri Lankan psyche – our short attention span. We flog an issue to death on the streets and in our homes as long as it is “hot hot” but a few months down the line, we forget about it and focus on the next sensation.
