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| Sunday, 19 February 2006 |
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Negotiators, please save the Tamils By H.L.D. Mahindapala Excerpts from address made by the writer at the World Alliance for Peace in Sri Lanka (WAPS) and National joint Comitte & Sansadya conference on Genva Negotiations, implementing the Electoral mandate. Australian Prime Minister John Howard concluded his address to the National Press Club on Australia Day with the following words: "So today let us indeed celebrate out diversity. But we should also affirm the sentiment that propelled our nation to Federation 105 years ago: one people, one destiny." Imagine for a moment President Mahinda Rajapakse telling Reuters and AFP: "We expect the minorities to master the common language of Sinhalese and we will help them to do so. We want them to learn about our history and heritage. And we expect each unique individual who join our national journey to enrich it with loyalty and patriotism." Imagine for a moment the ruckus that the NGOlogists would have created if President Rajapakse even hinted at "dominant cultural pattern" of Sinhala-Buddhism. The majority in Sri Lanka has been either bamboozled or bludgeoned into silence by the anti-Sinhala-Buddhist lobbies. This is a different concept from the "silent majority" which has connotations of possessing power and waiting it to be exercised at the appropriate time. No other majority in any other country has been pushed into an impotent corner as the Sinhala community. Any Sinhala leader expressing the thoughts of John Howard, Tony Blair, Bush's Christian values, or a French De Gaulle (Vive la France!) will be shouted down by the vociferous minority. The vociferous and aggressive minority, aided and abetted by a pliant and uncritical media, have hijacked the public discourse to silence the majority as if the Sinhalese are not entitled to rights. The majority community seeking to express their aspirations, their rights, their place in the national history are denigrated as "chauvinists", racists", "supremacists", "extremists", etc. "Majoritarianism" is a pejorative term used exclusively to condemn the Sinhala majority. They have no right to claim to a "dominant cultural pattern" which, as stated by John Howard, is the norm in the any politically diverse society. But "minoritarianism", even if it is authoritarian, oppressive and excessively inhuman, has been elevated to a sacred level by those who proclaim from roof tops to be human rights activists. The anti-Sinhala-Buddhist school led by Prof. S. J. Tambiah of Harvard has become the standard reference for his acolytes running in the rat race to advance their careers in the groves of academe. The only right conceded to the majority is the right to remain silent - a silence that can be broken only if they are prepared to give into the outrageous demands of only one minority disregarding fairness to all the other communities. Unlike the English, French or Australian majorities - to take only three leading examples from Western models of liberalism - the Sinhala majority has moved in the opposite direction to grant space for the minorities never contemplated by Blair or Howard. The current Western position was articulated eloquently by John Howard. He states: "We've moved on from a time when multiculturalism, in the words of historian Gregory. The minorities are given the right to co-exist as long as they do not disturb the universe of the dominant culture. Minorities challenging this trend face a severe backlash and even crackdowns by the Judeo-christian majorities. The Tamils, for instance, circulated in the early eighties a paper claiming that they were the original inhabitants of Australia. They came out with the concoction that they received Captain Cook when he first landed in Philip Bay with offerings of poomalai, thosai and vadai. But today none of the Tamils have raised one single whisper against the White-dominated government of Australia reducing them to second-class citizens.It can be asserted without fear of contradiction that on any comparative scale the Sri Lankan democracy has given the minorities a place far superior to those prevailing in the liberal Western democracies. The existence of a democratic framework in Sri Lanka, however flawed it may be, the prevalence of the rule of law which makes our judiciary the last refuge for all disaffected individuals and groups, however tardy and fallible it may be, the pluralism which gives the right to Tamil politicians tied to a banned terrorist group dance their political kavadi in the well of the House to their hearts content, the freedom as seen in the highly excitable and the vibrant media, the life, liberty and happiness pursued by those living in its tolerant and liberal culture as opposed to the oppression, fear and persecution ruling the minority culture, the right to dissent in the Sinhala-Buddhist culture which is risk near to death in the minority culture are some of the few highlights of the Sinhala-Buddhist culture of which the majority can be proud of. At any level, there is no moral equivalence between the majority culture and the minority culture in Sri Lanka. The US Under-Secretary of State, Nelson Burns, hit the nail on the head when he said that there is no moral equivalence between the south and the north. But according to our local pundits in the NGOs it is the elected government that delivers free education from the kindergarten to the university, free health services, social services, housing, roads etc, within a democratic framework that is a "failed state". But an unelected fascist regime delivering human carcasses from the production line of its killing machine is rated as a "successful state". This neighboring minority regime run by a war criminal, according to the Amnesty International, is glamorized even by certain sections of the misguided media as the most efficient administration. Please remember, Mussolini's regime too was hailed as a model of efficiency for running the trains on time. But at what cost to human lives? Emerging trends, particularly the resistance of the disillusioned Tamils, reveal that the dictatorship of a minority within a minority can survive only if the liberal world continues to recognize and legitimize the denial of the basic human rights to the Tamil people. Despite the death threats passed on dissident Tamils there are courageous Tamils who are yearning to join and co-exist in the main democratic stream. One indispensable step for the nation to regain peace is to strengthen the hands of Tamils aspiring to join the democratic stream. The past experiences of mankind have confirmed that negotiations with dictatorships cannot be trusted as they operate outside national and international laws. The time has come for peace negotiators to invite and involve the Tamils in the democratic stream to save not only peace but the Tamils who face a grim future under the dictatorship of the LTTE. |
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