Restoration of National Unity

First published in the SATMAG supplement of The Island on15th March 2008

The top-priority need of the hour is the restoration of national unity. The unity of the country developed fault lines before Independence mainly due to the imperial manipulation of communal relations through the infamous ‘divide and rule’ policy. The membership of the comprador class was shared by the different communities. In this situation the minorities stood to gain: for one thing, the ethnic representation within the comprador class did not numerically correspond to the actual racial composition of the general Sri Lankan population, the ‘communal balance’ that the privileged class represented being always prejudicial to the majority Sinhalese; for another, if there was any challenge to imperial rule, it had to be associated with the Sinhalese for it to be treated as such; it was they who always tried to defend the country against invaders both before and after the seizure of Kandy by the British through intrigue in 1815; they constituted the majority race with which the Sri Lankan polity was essentially identified, and hence the Sinhalese were always the colonialists’ potential enemy.

Having said this however, I must hasten to add that the imperialist patronage of the minorities benefited only the few members of those communities who belonged to the elite. The dispossessed of all communities, the overwhelming majority of the country’s population, suffered equally under the alien rule.

In an unequal contest between the imperial masters and the native sons of the soil held down by force the minorities, in the interest of self-preservation, sided with the former in most cases, and won special favour. Although the inclusion in the comprador elite ensured equal status and privileges for the members the minorities were ‘more equal’ than the majority. This, however, did not cause any rift among the members of this class, because they formed a distinct community by themselves, mostly Christian in religion, and English speaking, and European in manners, in a word, westernized; there was little room for any conflict among them; they preferred to disown their own native cultural roots. They served their imperial masters as a more or less homogeneous pack of collaborators, while enjoying privileges such as plum government jobs, lucrative business opportunities, wealth in various forms, scholarships for their progeny in English universities, and so on.

Though this class was a small minority in relation to the rest of the native population, it held great power, generally of oppression, over the latter. The overwhelming majority of the population consisting of the common Sinhalese, Tamils, and Muslims were generally left to live a dehumanized life of abject poverty and deprivation, an extreme instance of which is concretely presented in ‘The Village in the Jungle’ (1913) written by an unusually sympathetic British civil servant, Leonard Woolf. They lived in communal peace and harmony, as they had done in earlier times under local rulers. Just as community of interests, and free access to prosperity united the members of the elite coming from a diversity of racial backgrounds, so did the common misery of the dispossessed majority keep them bound together.

The alien rule forced on the people created artificial divisions. The divisive influence of the favouritism extended to the minority communities by the British rulers, and the corresponding discriminatory treatment of the majority community in spheres in which the rulers and the ruled in time came into close contact by way of participating in the exercise of power percolated down to the larger segment of the population in a more insidious way. The latent divisions thus induced between the majority Sinhalese and the minorities were exacerbated when opportunities for people participation in the political control of the country gradually increased as a result of successive reforms won from the colonial government through popular agitation. However, these changes, such as the Manning Reforms of the early 1920’s, the universal franchise under the Donoughmore Constitution a decade later, etc moved the ‘communal balance’ in the Legislature towards greater fairness and rationality in electoral representation, which effectively meant a greater share of power for the majority Sinhalese. This in turn entailed a dismantling of the privileged status of the minorities, a long overdue readjustment of the legitimate rights and privileges that should be available without let or hindrance to all the citizens of the country irrespective of their ethnicity. In fine, we could say that the Sinhalese were restored to their due position of ascendancy in the legislature as a result of the progressive reforms (for example, the substitution of communal representation with territorial representation, the introduction of universal suffrage, and the eventual grant of Dominion status, etc) the Sinhalese got something more, and the minorities something less than before, which only meant a restoration of a measure of justice to all communities.

But some among the Tamil elite were not ready to accept this normalization of communal balance in the legislature. They petitioned without success to their colonial masters demanding that they be allocated an equal number of seats with the Sinhalese. They seemed to consider themselves superior to the Sinhalese in race, culture, intellectual capacity and whatnot, and feared domination by them. However, the majority of the more enlightened politicians then in the legislature, both Sinhalese and Tamil, resisted these unjust racist demands by toeing a non-communal line when the question of accepting constitutional reforms granting independence was debated in 1943. They pleaded for mutual trust, understanding and unity between the majority and the minorities; they urged that the members of all communities should think of themselves not as Sinhalese or Tamils, but as Ceylonese sharing equal rights and privileges.

Mr D.S.Senanayake who gave leadership to the non-racist representatives from all communities succeeded in achieving near unanimity in the State Council in passing the White Paper on the Soulbury Constitution (that conferred Dominion status i.e. independence on Ceylon). Mr Senanayake countered racism by adhering to democratic principles, and by being consistently free from it himself. He did not approve of the Sinhala Maha Sabha of Mr S.W.R.D.Bandaranaike (1937) because of its communal basis, however predictable a reaction it probably was to the then emerging Tamil racism, like the recent advent of the Jathika Hela Urumaya in response to the common failure of the established national parties to deal with the growing disaffection of the minorities, mostly instigated by ambitious politicians, and the proliferation of minority communal parties.

The past one century of ever increasing communal bias in politics has significantly decelerated our country’s development, and devastated it through mindless violence, wanton destruction of life and property, and the attendant human misery. Opportunistic politicians of all communities, instead of uniting to work for the common good of all have been steadily withdrawing into xenophobic isolation from each other for the pursuit of parochial ends. The emergence of Tamil concerns about alleged Sinhala racism earlier in the last century, the formation of the Sinhala Maha Sabha in 1937 in reaction to Tamil agitation, the creation of the Ilankei Tamil Arasu Kachchi (Sri Lanka Tamil State Party) spuriously called the Federal Party in English, the call for Muslim autonomy fifty years ago as recently claimed by a Muslim politico (probably he was referring to the Muslim League which joined the UNP when political parties were formed in preparation for the parliamentary system of government that was to be introduced with independence), the founding of various other minority parties with communal names and agendas have marked stages in the regressive slide into deeper communal disunity. By now we have had enough experience to realize that this tribalistic method of settling the communal issue is definitely a contradiction and a non-starter.

That national unity is unrealizable through confrontation between the majority and the minorities is now obvious to all. Yet there are no signs that this is being appreciated by politicians. It seems that they fear the prospect of going out of business when there is communal peace and harmony. They flourish in conflict situations, and therefore relish every opportunity available to enjoy that desire. They create conflicts where there is none.

Strictly speaking there is no ‘ethnic’ problem in Sri Lanka. One cannot think of any special privileges that the Sinhalese enjoy as the majority or any particular disadvantages that the minorities are subjected to because of their ethnicity. If some individuals complain that they are treated like second class citizens, this is a feeling common to many irrespective of ethnicity, for there is, in practice, class discrimination to a certain extent; but such inequity is due not to ethnic prejudice, but to disparities in the distribution of wealth. Most problems that the minorities face plague the majority, too. Such problems as communication difficulties that members of minorities sometimes experience, e.g. the absence of Tamil language name boards in a majority Sinhala area or the non-availability of Tamil speaking officers in a government office are ephemeral issues associated with an inefficient administrative system, rather than a policy of deliberate racial discrimination, and can be easily resolved by a reformed civil service.

Migrant populations, especially those with a coloured skin, in the white dominated developed countries sometimes experience racist prejudice at the hands of a few native individuals. Yet the governments and the vast majority of the people of those countries do not subscribe to racist ideologies. There is strict rule of law in those countries. For the most part the minorities are free from discrimination. Good governance in those countries generally counters any lurking racial prejudice that could rear its head occasionally.

In Sri Lanka many of us, the ordinary citizens, suffer harassment because of the absence of good governance. Just take the well publicized unsavoury incidents that took place in several government hospitals recently. The child abduction case at Kalubowila, the rape and murder of a young female garment factory employee at Negambo, the death of a little girl bitten by a snake at Ragama, the hospitalization of a trainee nurse due to an injection that a specialist doctor administered to her as a punishment for some lapse on her part, and a rash of clinical misadventures in a number of other hospitals due to rank ignorance or utter negligence…are some of these. Neither the trade unionists representing the health workers, nor the relevant health authorities have yet shown any appreciable concern to compensate the victims or to get the wrong doers punished. I have here referred only to what happened in some of our hospitals recently. The situation in other spheres of public service is not any better. We are all victims of this kind of maladministration. This is a problem that all communities must make a collective effort to put right.

The surest way towards facilitating a settlement of the present ethnic unrest in the political sphere is to re-establish a state of national unity, create an efficient public service and good governance, and bring about economic development ensuring equitable distribution of wealth among all citizens. Most of all, our political leaders must be democratic, and must eschew narrow, tribalistic slogans and the mindsets that they represent, and unite the population as one nation (something the bulk of the ordinary people have virtually done already).

What is necessary is not a rewriting of history, but a rereading of it. Let us analyze the available evidence dispassionately, and understand what really happened, and why. The past is a fait accompli; we cannot put the clock back, but we can learn lessons from the past. If some of our national leaders behaved in a racist manner and others in a more enlightened way, let’s understand the circumstances that led them to such conduct and forgive them or praise them as appropriate, and be determined to emulate the example of the worthy, but be careful not to repeat the errors of the misled.

The principal error that our predecessors committed was communalizing politics by creating communal parties. Such parties only succeed in dividing a polity. Division unnecessarily saps the energy of the country. Like the minorities the majority has problems. Few, if any, of these are due to etnicity. Neither the majority nor the minorities can solve their problems by themselves without mutual help. The minorities and the majority must pool their resources, instead of pitting themselves against each other in order to solve their common problems. There are only common problems, because the welfare of the one is the welfare of the other.

This is the peaceful way of settling our problems. All of us Sri Lankans, common inheritors of the great Indian cultural traditions of sympathetic understanding, tolerance, accommodation, nonviolence, peacefulness, and cosmopolitanism (for which we are sometimes derided as ‘docile’ by foreigners) will thus be able to create a brilliant future for our children.

Rohana R. Wasala