Ampara Fiasco; Need To Go Beyond The ‘Wandha Pethi’ Canard!
Lukman Harees
As Hitler and Goebbels proved, the facts don’t actually matter. People repeat them so often that we believe them. Welcome to the ‘Big Lie’ or “illusory truth”effect, a glitch in the human psyche that equates repetition with truth. Modern day politicians, hate peddlers and even marketers are masters of manipulating this particular cognitive bias—which perhaps we have become more familiar with lately. Repetition is what makes fake news work. It’s also a staple of political propaganda. The effect works because when people attempt to assess truth they rely on two things: whether the information jibes with their understanding, and whether it feels familiar. The first condition is logical: People compare new information with what they already know to be true and consider the credibility of both sources. But researchers have found that familiarity can trump rationality—so much so that hearing over and over again that a certain fact is wrong can have a paradoxical effect. It’s so familiar that it starts to feel right.
This is exactly the effect the majority Sinhala-Buddhist population has been subjected to specially in the Post war era, when many canards repeatedly and in quick succession were used to vilify, demonise and stigmatize the Muslims in the Post war context, as part of a well-orchestrated hate campaign against them accusing them of pursuing an anti-Sinhala-Buddhist agenda. Some of the unfounded and unsubstantiated canards which were propagated were – destroying their relics and heritage particularly in the East, Muslims forcibly converting innocent Buddhists, Muslims are imposing their Halal requirements on others – projected as a Trojan horse and a conspiracy against the country, Muslim expansionism – the rate of population growth of the Muslims have been exponential which is likely to overtake the Sinhalese in due course and that the Muslim businesses are using many ruses to make Sinhala women barren, thus harming the interests of the majority. These canards became the appetisers in many of the campaigns led by BBS and their sisters groups during the MR regime and they continue to be attractive memes and slogans even now, in the powerful social media specially the Facebook hate pages repeated over and over again using photos and pictures of killings, massacres and incidents from other contexts and other countries.
It was therefore not surprising that the canard of Muslim ‘conspiracy’ of using various means to make the Sinhala women barren to bring their numbers down through sweets and tablets and also by introducing contaminated gel in undergarments became very popular specially in the social media which were designed to create anti-Muslim animosity within the general Sinhala-Buddhist psyche. Many diehard hate peddlers such as Amitha, Saliya, Dan Prasad, and many rogue monks and organizations such as Mahason Balakaya and Sinhaley Bala Mandalaya relished and thrived in these memes and slogans in the recent past even consequent to Yahapalana coming to power. This so-called ‘Wandha Pethi’ canard came into renewed focus during the Ampara incident where the cashier in the affected Hotel was forced to say yes to the mob’s question whether the Hotel introduced such tablets to the food served to them. The cashier who did not understand Sinhala affirmed under duress. This canard was proven to be untrue by many leading gynaecologists in the country. Thankfully, concerted campaigns were launched to counteract these claims in the mainstream media; but then, if not this, another ruse to poison Sinhala Psyche will be used by vested interests.
It is therefore important to realize that although it will be useful to consult and quote expert opinion and credible sources to dispel these types of canards whenever they come out and propagated like in this case of ‘Wandha Pethi’ brought forth to justify the attack of Muslims in Ampara, and also demand action against the immediate offenders, it is also more important to look beyond these canards surrounding Ampara attacks. These are only ruses used by the bigger networks and movements not only designed to further bolster majoritarian and Sinhala-Buddhist supremacist thinking and attitudes, but by many other reactionary forces too which are hell-bent on introducing defeatist mentality into the ranks of Muslims making them think like second class citizens; perhaps helped by global Islamophobia. There was a recent post by a Tamil intellectuals in the North too, who expressed similar concern about the population growth of the Muslims in the N-E which may make them the most dominant ethnic group in those areas. Thus, to limit our vision to immediate incidents such as these canards or cat-paws such as BBS and their likes and our conversation and strategies to focus only on the symptoms will only lead to temporary patch-ups to say the least. These undercurrents go deep and pervasive and those masters who operate these puppets will have the last laugh if we miss the woods for the trees.
Further, it is also equally important for Muslims to look inwards, identify and rectify the misconceptions prevailing among the majority Sinhalese at the grass-root levels, which make them gullible enough to fall victims to many hate propaganda slogans however stupid and irrational they may be, which are barriers towards peace. There is a feeling among the Sinhalese that the Muslims are not indigenous enough and have become Muslims in Sri Lanka rather than Muslins of Sri Lanka through many practices and attire adopted within the last few decades. It will be useful to identity and tackle the underlying causes rather than merely dealing with only the symptoms in order to make the dream of a united Sri Lanka where all citizens irrespective of racial and religious differences can enjoy their rights enshrined in the Constitution, a reality. There is a problem in our hands: The goodwill and trust between the two communities have broken down and it need to be mended and rectified rather than applying balm and plasters. In doing so, it is important to look at the realities of the past.
