The ‘Ugly’ Sri Lankan; Racism & Its Uglier Profile
“If you prick us, do we not bleed?
If you tickle us, do we not laugh?
If you poison us, do we not die?
And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?” ~Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice
If you tickle us, do we not laugh?
If you poison us, do we not die?
And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?” ~Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice
Wikipedia, the twenty first century’s ‘Bible’ of all things that matter, defines racism thus: “Racism is a product of the complex interaction in a given society of a race-based worldview with prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination…The ideology underlying racist practices often includes the idea that humans can be subdivided into distinct groups that are different in their social behavior and innate capacities and that can be ranked as inferior or superior”. It is an accurate description of this phenomenon that has elevated some communities to the pinnacle of glory; it has destroyed some helpless minorities and reduced them to hapless men and women meandering in the lost streets of civilization. While the concept of ‘race’ has bonded man with man of similar traditions, histories and traits, color of skin, lineage, language and culture, it has also destroyed fellow humans who did not belong to the same category of traits etc. The double-edged nature of race gave birth to its destructive propensities, its capacity to drive ordinary men and women to a frenzy of past grandeur, honor and pride. Things of the past are dead and only the unwise would indulge in the dead.
Race, ethnicity and racism have all been threads, some beautiful and others ugly and gross, that have been closely woven into the larger canvass of humanity. However much philosophers, thinkers, men and women of faith preach, pontificate about the divisions and disunity that race and racism cause, these divisions will continue until the end of time. A utopia in which all humanity is one single family without any separations and partitions will remain beautiful words in a dreamer’s poetry and fairy tales. What would replace and overpower such sublime notions of total harmony is racism and religious differences in whose name more blood has been shed, human lives have been sacrificed and bonds of friendship and kinships have been burst asunder. It is a brutal fact of life on earth.
Yet, man’s pursuit of a more perfect union with his fellow being has never ended; nor would it be retarded by those antagonists who prey on helpless majorities who rarely question sugar-coated venomous messages of the devil who appears in religious cloaks and robes. When these religious scoundrels and folk- heroes launch their bigoted communications, the core teachings and their transcendent wisdom are invariably desecrated and demolished. When coupled with the nagging needs of daily existence, in the case of the not-so-affluent and exceedingly vulgar wants in that of the wealthy, this corruption and contamination of the supreme message of all religions overwhelm the central pivotal need for a more perfect union among men and women.
It has been so in the West and it has been so in the East. Weapons of man have created such a drastic imbalance in the very thinking process of ordinary men and women, these very possessions of weapons are the defining factor in human relationships that have developed over centuries of existence. That malevolent march towards mutual destruction is as old as civilization and particularly in the context of the less wealthy nations, unmitigated slaughter and destruction of fellow men and women this cruel journey has taken hundreds of thousands of victims to their unmarked graves. And in that malefic malaise of human conflict, Sri Lanka has made her manifestly singular presence felt by the international community. During the horrific ethnic war between the two leading communities, Sinhalese and Tamils, excesses committed by both parties linger on as ghastly evidence of man’s inhumanity to man. Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE) and their comrades-in-arms on the one hand committed unspeakable crimes and death to the Sinhalese whose only sin was being at the wrong place at the wrong time. On the other hand, the Sinhalese majority living in the south of Vavuniya too are as guilty of ethnic cruelties committed on Tamils whose only sin was their ethnicity and the language they spoke.
