If the Constitution were to be revised...:

No race, religion , language in the vocabulary of politics

by Dr. Fazal MAHMOOD

The strength of a chain lies in the strength of its weakest link. The weakest link in Sri Lanka is the racial and religious minority groups.

For a country that is finding its feet economically, socially and culturally, the unity of its people as a whole is vital to progress. For strife and discord in a household invariably lead to a breakdown in a family. So it is with Sri Lanka.

There is considerable fear and suspicion now among religious and racial minority groups that they will be discriminated against in the sphere of employment, education and other opportunities, for no more reason than that they speak a different tongue or worship in a different temple.

The way to erase such forebodings from the minds of minority groups and to marshal the human resources of the entire nation is to write into the Constitution specific safeguards. The safeguards necessary should not only refer to the fundamental rights of individuals but also to politicians and political parties. Religious, linguistic and racial issues should be prohibited from being made the subject of politics or of political party manifestos. Such a clause must also debar politicians from making such issues the plank of their political platform. A developing nation such as ours where unemployment and social inequality are the order, it only requires a spark of emotion to ignite the inflammable racial and religious haystack.

It is one of history’s we have yet to learn. Hitler was able to rouse a dormant nation and unleash the horror of war and racial tyranny because of poverty and unemployment in Germany. Man, denied of the necessities of life easily turns to an animal. It is then that the acid enters in his soul. Prosperity ennobles one’s character; poverty and squalor bring out one’s baser instincts. The fact that any emotional appeal finds mass support among the poor and less fortunate flows from this reasoning.

The Constitution, whether revised or rewritten should restrict the settlement of religious, linguistic and racial questions to an all-party basis and that, too, unanimously. Political parties today decide such questions by the mere count of heads. What goes into Statute becomes nullified with every change of Government. This would not be so if national issues such as race, religion and language are settled on an all-party basis.

Democracy, as some wit remarked, `is not only a counting of heads but also the counting of heads within limits.’ Countries like Pakistan under the late Ayub Khan and Egypt under the late Gamal Nasser have made vast strides economically and socially for this reason. For in these countries, democracy had been channelled to decide on the larger issues affecting the community. Freedom unblinkered to a developing community such as ours is the freedom of the wild ass. Politicians aware of it, have romped into victory by confusing the backward masses with racial and religious cries.

We have the classic example of Britain, the cradle of parliamentary democracy. When faced with the problem of coloured emigrants and the riots at Notting Hill, the constituent parties of Parliament, at that time, unanimously agreed to refrain from making it an issue at the Parliamentary elections that followed immediately after. A similar agreement was also reached during the by-election following the resignation of Profumo.

In an affluent society a man’s race and religion are of little or no importance. Had it not been so, John F. Kennedy, a Catholic, would not have become the President of the United States, however, brilliant a man. The U.S. with its preponderant majority of Protestants was also a country with ample and equal opportunities. Religious differences, therefore, had no meaning.

Here, in Sri Lanka, political success whether of individuals or of parties had depended by and large on the size of the sop offered to the communal Cerberus. Neither the sovereignty of Parliament nor the ideals democracy is being best served if writs are to be tossed into the rag heap with every change of Government.

With adequate and detailed safeguards expunging religion, language and race from the vocabulary of party politics and politicians lies our only chance of building a nation. Rather let all our political parties get together and forge on the anvils of common consent a strong and abiding link that would stand the ravages of racial, religious and linguistic discord for all time.