Sri Lanka: Racism only leads to racial isolation

Reconciliation should be included in the school curriculum as a subject. All our educational institutions should be reformed to prevent recurrence of an incident such as that which occurred in Jaffna. We must make English a compulsory subject in all our schools. It must become our link language for it is a world language.

by K Godage

( July 26, 2016, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Let us discuss the incident in Jaffna and related issues: A national disaster appears to have been narrowly averted thanks to the State defusing tension and not letting so-called nationalists/ racists repeat the horrible crime committed in July of 1983, when the government of President J R Jayewardene allowed criminals in his government to wreck havoc on innocent Tamil civilians for no crimes they had committed, following a cowardly attack by the LTTE on an army vehicle in the north killing thirteen soldiers — let us hope relative peace prevails for it was the Pogrom of 1983 that gave a huge impetus to the LTTE insurgency.

The VC and other officials of the Jaffna University must be asked to explain why they did not anticipate a situation such as what happened and why precautionary measures were not put in place, for this incident could have set fire to the whole country.

In a refreshing intervention President Sirisena has acknowledged that “the minorities have a problem, let us solve it if we want to live happily”, he has said. Are we not a multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-cultural society? Are the Sinhalese and Tamils not all of Indian sub-continental descent? Is it not only the language that separates us? Though the majority Sinhalese are Buddhists they also worship all the gods of the Hindus.

Kandyan dancers

I am reliably informed that the Sinhala students sought to celebrate Poson by erecting a Buddhist temple within the campus. I do hope that this is not true for that would be undoubtedly an unnecessary provocation; though our two religions are indeed connected in practice in this country, and the procession with the Kandyan dancers was only one small part of the celebration of Poson. It is being said that the participation of the Kandyan dancers was objected to, if this is true it is downright stupid, for many years we have had Tamil dancers doing the Kandyan dance at the Devale processions which are a part of the Kandy Esala Perahera.

The racial issue as such is not the cause, for has there not been hundreds of inter racial marriages over centuries and even some more recently during and after the War? Yes we are one people divided only by language? All our leaders other than for DS, Dudley, Sir John, Mrs B and her daughter Chandrika have gone immediately after assuming office to seek the blessing of the Hindu God Kandaswamy or the Kataragama God!

It is indeed discrimination and denial of opportunity for Tamil youth in particular, and also the upper caste Vellalas denying power to the Karawas and other low castes, till the LTTE took over that has been a cause of the problem. It was the Karawa community led by Prabhakaran that formed the LTTE (they were the only caste which had the finance because of their fisheries and their smuggling from India); they took power by assassinating no less than 28 Velelala Tamil leaders starting with mayor Duraiappa and ending with Lakshman Kadirgamar. Yes all of whom were Vellalas, the exploitation of the ‘other castes by the Velala and the fact that the Vellalas could not ‘deliver’ to the other Tamil people has been one of the causes of the problem.

To revert to the matter of Race, what after all is ‘Race’? My thoughts go back to Lakshman Kadirgamar, with whom I travelled many times when I was the Additional Secretary of the MFA; we met amongst others Douglas Hurd, Warren Christopher and the German Minister Fisher with whom we had official meetings, and when they asked LK “are you not a Tamil”, he would reply: “I am a Sri Lankan”. That was how that great man treated race. The issue of race is most definitely an issue.

Racial inequality and discrimination

It is, even today, as I write, causing violence and death in many parts of the world. Racial prejudice results mainly from racial inequality and discrimination, we created the problem with the Sinhala Only Act. We must now, sixty years on, ditch the past and move forward as President Sirisena has himself indicated. In this regard I need to flag an important fact namely that after Prime Minsters S W R D Bandaranaike and Dudley Senanayake, only Chandrika Kumaratunga, who made a sincere effort to reach out to the Tamil people to address their grievances.

That particular effort was killed off by some scum burning the tabled constitutional proposals on the floor of the House of Parliament.

Race has become political and an important factor in our country. President Sirisena seeks to address the issue in an intelligent manner. He said that all the educational institutions, including the universities and vocational training centres, should act as ‘reconciliation centres’ as well. But this is not enough. We should have programs to bring two communities together (and student groups, in particular) to socialise and get to know each other. Language has been a barrier and this we should address on an urgent basis.

Reconciliation should be included in the school curriculum as a subject. All our educational institutions should be reformed to prevent recurrence of an incident such as that which occurred in Jaffna. We must make English a compulsory subject in all our schools. It must become our link language for it is a world language. Racial isolation must be avoided at all costs for increased contact will reduce or eliminate prejudice. We must ensure that our children have values.

As for enhancing the worth of our children; let us ask the UK, the US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and India to provide teachers perhaps as the US did, under their Peace Corps programme some years ago. Learning three languages is no big deal for little children. In Belgium, children are taught to speak French, English and Dutch. In southern Europe most children have facilities in French, Italian and German. We must add value to our children and give them the ability to be employed anywhere in the emerging globalised world.

We, as an essentially Buddhist country where we claim to have Buddhist values, should have no problem in putting an end to racial prejudice and discrimination. Let us, as stated earlier, add value to our children and also unify our country in a meaningful way. I urge the government to bring legislation to put an end to political parties having any form of ethnic identity but be formed on the basis of common political, economic and social interests not on racial lines and put an end to Race Politics.

We must also make hate speech a non-bailable offence and racism must be wiped out. In conclusion I wish to flag an important victory for multiculturalism, the appointment of Sadiq Khan as the Mayor of London! Yes we also need assimilation not isolation. Race must with time fade into insignificance. As Lakshman Kadirgamar maintained we must all emerge as Sri Lankans!

( The writer is a retired diplomat of the Sri Lankan Mission)