Confronting The Dogs Of Hate And Standing Up For Their Rights ! An Imperative For Minorities
Lukman Harees
“You fight for your rights when your rights are being denied. When the building is on fire, you don’t stand by and let the building burn down and say we’ll fight the fire another day.” - Richard Gilbert
Many have argued that the rise and institutionalisation of Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism in post-independent Sri Lanka bear much responsibility for today’s ethnic conflicts between the majority Sinhalese state and the minorities. Ironically, the competition among the Sinhala ruling classes, for acquiring state resources and political capital, has turned nationalism into the ruling ideology and the state ideology of Sri Lanka. Many commentators on Post-colonial Sri Lanka curiously had also commented on the ‘minority’ complex of the majority Sinhalese , according to Nira Wickramasinghe, an author in history (2006). She says that ‘the three Constitutions of post- independence Sri Lanka, helped demarcate and define a majority from within the citizens pitting them against non- Buddhists and non- Sinhala speaking minority communities…(placing) minorities in a somewhat dependent and subaltern’.situation’. Read More
