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High

This is a time when most Sri Lankans are 'high' - not on alcohol or any other chemical, but on the sheer emotional satisfaction of celebrating community.

Aluth Avurudu, Pudu Varudam, as it is called in the languages of those millions of Sri Lankans observing it, is the most celebrated festival in the country. When the Tamil and Sinhala people jointly celebrate, that celebration becomes a powerful embodiment of the holistic, integrated community that the Sri Lankan population can be.

The 13th and 14th of April, the month of Bak, or Chithrai, becomes an annual moment of communal activity that embraces the broadest cultural community. In a multi-cultural society such as ours, of course, this is still not totally inclusive, because most Muslims and many Christians, especially the Burgher Christians, do not, themselves, celebrate the festival. Even so, at least some of them may join their Hindu and Buddhist fellow Sri Lankans in their celebrations.

As long as our society recognises and upholds the celebration of those special events and times of Muslims and Christians, and those cultural specificities of the Burghers and other cultural minority groups, Sri Lankans of all communities will not feel excluded. As long as this multi-cultural dimension is retained and all groups feel equally free to practise their faiths and customs, celebrations can be held with the confidence that others do not envy nor grudge the festivities nor feel that they do not belong to the larger nation. People will feel free to celebrate as well as not to celebrate.

To many, the traditional New Year celebration is a most precious time of reaffirmation of family ties, community relations, and a sense of historic continuity so vital for any society's inner strength and equilibrium. To others, it is a welcome respite from the daily grind, and from the gloom of poverty.

It is a time of being 'high' with the joy, even if momentary, of social well-being and togetherness.

This year, the 'high' is all the more intense with a whole year's progress towards national peace and stability now behind us. While the hiccups are there, in terms of the occasional incident on the frontlines, it will be the hope and wish of the New Year revellers that the atmosphere of stability that has evolved over the past several months will be allowed to further mature.

This can only happen if the culturally inclusive spirit of the New Year festival is strengthened and allowed to be inscribed in the nation's body politic as well: in the form of power-sharing and the strict guarantee of community rights and identity.

While wishing all Sri Lankans a Happy New Year, we hope that the next Aluth Avurudu, Pudu Varudam, will see us all even closer together in the spirit of equality, dignity and the flowering of a plurality of ethnic identities and cultural centres.

Test

The military intervention in Iraq is now taking that tortured country to some point of fundamental transition. Even as the old order crumbles, the world community watches keenly for a sign of things to come.

The Western powers that undertook this intervention, even without the full sanction of the international community, now face the test of the bona fides and altruism of their intentions.

Even if no 'weapons of mass destruction' are found in significant numbers, the United States and the United Kingdom may well win the gratitude of the world community with the speed with which they carefully help the Iraqi people construct a new foundation of democracy and socio-economic self-sufficiency that will empower that nation to attain new heights. A critical dimension of this self-sufficiency will be the Iraqi people's democratic control over their own natural resources.

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