Are we all Sinhala Buddhists, Sinhala Christians, Tamil Hindus, Tamil Christians, Moslems, Burghers, Borahs, Sindhis, Malays, Colombo Chetties….and everything else in between?
My eleven year old son Akarsha is a Middle School ( Lower Form) student at the school by the sea where they still nurture ‘men who are gentlemen’, a hard to find breed these days. The other day, he wanted to know ‘what’ he was – a Sri Lankan, I told him. That’s the beauty of S. Thomas College, Mount Lavinia. The boys are able to project their own unique identity into one of being Sri Lankan. Come all, all faiths, all ethnicities, all creeds and castes – the Thomian spirit rises above all and nurtures all to become Sri Lankans. My son studies in English but is in the Tamil class among Tamil boys - he goes to other classes for his bi-lingual lessons. He has friends from all communities, a result of that wonderful Thomian spirit. His friends are Tamil, Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, Moslem, Burgher and more. Their ethnicities or religious differences mean nothing to him, a Sinhala Christian. They are all Thomians. Friends. Nothing more, nothing less. The only ethnicity he knows is when his friend Jason Williams, a Tamil, brings tasty wade all the boys love to share.
When he asked me who or rather ‘what’ he was, it made me think. Ponder really, given the world view of today’s Sri Lanka ; a dangerous world of divided lines – of ethnicity and religion. What am I ? What are you? In the eyes of the larger world, the macro picture, I am happy to say I am a Sri Lankan but how many of us are? We live in strange and complex times when seeds of ethnic and religious animosity are sown in an explosive dance of death and destruction. Sri Lankans are strangely and strongly polarized today than ever before. By religion, thanks to politics that stur religious disharmony. By ethnicity thanks to politics that seeks to stroke ethnic strife.
I remember this e mail that floated around about a year ago – that recalled the happy Ceylon days when we were all content to watch the vel cart leave the Bambalapitiya kovil. We were happy to decorate our homes for Christmas and hang lanterns for Wesak. When everyone shared Ramazan feasts and kavun kokis at Avurudu. When everyone flocked to Galle Face Green on Sundays and went to Alerics for ice cream. No one thought less or more of others. One’s ethnicity or religion was not considered grounds to form and nurture grudges.
Yes, we have fought a long and bitter war that did break fragile ethnic harmony. Yes, we survived the riots of 1983. And beyond. I remember the man my husband I bumped into in Chennai. We were at this sari shop and discussing the prices in Sinhala. When a salesman came up to us and asked if we were Sri Lankans. We said we were and he told us, very matter-of-fact, about the sari shop he had in Colombo and lost in the 83 riots. He was now a Sri Lankan Tamil refugee living in Chennai. I felt shame creeping up my spine. I wanted to apologize to him but I couldn’t find the words.
I remember the border village child – a Sinhalese who lost his father in a brutal killing by the LTTE. I remember the kahata he had for morning, noon and night, his only meal. I remember meeting him on a lonely stretch of road in Welikande. I remember his face, with its childish acceptance of what had to be accepted. I remember my heart going out to him, a child, all alone, caught up in a vicious war he did not want.
I remember the tsunami victims of the east and the south, their wailings, their agony of losing everything they had. The tsunami had no respect for ethnic or religious divisions – it took everyone. But we survived. So where is our spirit of survival, our common thread that should bind us all together, the Sri Lankan spirit?
In Nazi Germany, at the end of World War II, Corrie ten Boom tells the story of meeting the SS officer who personally supervised the death of her sister at the Ravensbruck concentration camp. She recalls how the man, in repentance, offered his hand asking for forgiveness but she could not bring herself to take it. Until God told her I will supply the feeling if you are willing to extend the hand. She did and the rest is history. What Connie realized that day was that forgiveness heals the person doing the forgiving. Not the one receiving. I forgive you because I want to be healed of the pain you caused me. Holding a grudge only defiles the one holding it – it festers for a life time and causes immeasurable pain. It will only heal and set you free from bondage of unforgiveness when you forgive.
Like Corrie, the Jews forgave the Nazis for the pain and misery caused, the 6 million who perished in the gas chambers. Corrie and other Europeans and the Jews, then moved on.
In the normal order of things, you forgive. And move on. After a fight. After a divorce. After a death. After every human encounter of bitterness. If you nurture a grudge for years, for centuries like we are doing, holding the grudge against the west for colonizing us, it will only pollute us. It will fester and grow, causing the germ like a cancer, to grow deep and strong, defiling our soul to the very core. Like it has done now. Some among us harbor deeply rooted grudges against those of other faiths, other ethnicities – those ‘different’ from us. Their only ‘crime’ is to be born into an ethnicity they didn’t ask for. None of us did. God doesn’t give us a choice in the matter. And that is the God of the Christian, the Jew, the Moslem, the Hindu.
In today’s world of internet, web identities and the borderless world of technology, grudges don’t matter. Grand stories of unsurpassed ancient heritage don’t really matter. What matters is not how tall your grandfather or your ancestor was but how tall you are. How well you can understand what is going on the in the world and respond to it. Successfully. As a country, a people. Ask the Indians who have one of the world’s fastest growing economies (and yes, a glorious past too they are proud of but do not as a habit wear on their shoulder) or the Chinese who have a similar heritage but are economy savvy. They’ll tell you what counts in today’s world of shrinking economies, real time disasters and multi- national global entities, what matters, in the end, is how good you are.
And so, coming back to our Sri Lankan identity. It is only a common Sri Lankan identity that will help us throw out unwanted baggage and move on – in a spirit that overcomes wrongs that have been done to us, wrongs we have inflicted upon others. It is only when we stand shoulder to shoulder as Sri Lankans, brothers and sisters from the temple, the church, the kovil and the mosque that we can overcome. Change will come then and only then.
Ask President Obama.
