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| Sunday, 12 May 2002 |
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Editor, Sunday Observer. E-mail: [email protected] Snail mail : Sunday Observer, 35, D.R.Wijewardana Mawatha, Colombo, Sri Lanka. Telephone : 94 1 429239 / 331181 Fax : 94 1 429230 Motherhood Cash registers have been ringing merrily these past weeks as that most ancient and primeval of gendered identities, Motherhood, is celebrated. Today is the day: Mother's Day. Some may prefer the collective 'Mothers' Day'. In a society where collective identities are so sacred as to have generated suicidal, fratricidal and matricidal war, mothers too have long been acting collectively. The first Mothers' Front was in Jaffna - formed in response to the tragedy of dead, missing or incarcerated sons and daughters. They, in the 1970s and 1980s, were the first victims of violent political struggles that spanned the decades and have not fully ended still. Then, as the political violence spread South, there grew, in response to human atrocity on an even bigger scale, a more vigorous Mothers' Front as an ethnic community that perpetrated violence on another community itself suffered the same repressive onslaught. Just as much as the women of Sri Lanka have borne the brunt of the economic workload, in plantation, garment factory and West Asian domestic labour, so has Sri Lankan motherhood borne the weight of becoming the final resistance to repression and violence. Even Presidents wilted and sought counter-rituals in the face of the cosmic force of the Mothers as they met violence and repression with lamentation and curse. What is commercially celebrated, however, is far from that harsh, earthy reality. The trinkets, the glamour and the tamashas cannot, however, beat the singular power, the far more potent fascination of the passion of mothers awakened, mothers in action. But the tinsel does help: at least in prompting fatherhood in an annual ritual of appreciation of its feminine counterpart. What mothers may seek - indeed are seeking - is a recognition all year round of not only their roles as mothers but also their value as equal members of human society; a belated acknowledgement of the sheer potency of their societal contribution and their sovereignty over their bodies and selves. Palestine The Israeli siege on Palestinian President Yasser Arafat may have ended, but both Palestinians and Israelis remain under siege in the midst of the highest level of violence in Palestine-Israel since the Yom Kippur war. If the Zionist regime in Tel-Aviv thought that it had won some reprieve from international pressure to end it occupation of Palestinian territory, the latest suicide bombing has driven home the brutal realities of war and conquest. As long as the spirit of the Palestinian people is un-cowed, so long will the conquerors feel the fire and the terror of their desperate resistance. It is regrettable that more violence is necessary to prove the point that further occupation and fiercer repression will not solve a problem caused by a previous occupation and repression. Israel and the Israelis will have to learn the hard, bitter way. It is not enough to push beyond already occupied territory, further into the shelters and settlements of those dispossessed of territory and to then withdraw again, as if that is all that is needed for peace. What is needed for peace is a complete withdrawal from all occupied territory. Israel represents a great civilization and is also the cradle of the great Judeo-Christian spiritual tradition. It is to be hoped that the terrors of a popular resistance will not cloud hearts and minds in the Holy Land and divert attention away from the urgent tasks of justice and peace-making. |
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