Colombo Files

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.                     

“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”, Voltaire’s words rang hallow last Friday across Colombo, as the country watched in horror the death of your husband, another promising politician, another voice silenced. Just minutes before, he appeared on a Sinhala TV programme, in his usual charismatic way, articulating in broken but powerful Sinhala, about the tragedy that Jaffna had become. His parting words were heavy with emotion for his people. As I was sharing his comments with my husband, himself a lawyer, over breakfast, the TV announced that Raviraj had been shot. I had watched him alive one minute and the next, he was shot, I was watching the scene of the shooting. My mind was still coming to grips with his gestures and words and then, his death. I had to steer myself to accept the inevitable – that in such a tragic-mockery of a nation in which we live, nothing, absolutely nothing, warrants surprise.

By now, you would know that your husband was a man not just Tamils but the Sinhalese liked – not merely because he could hold fort in usually lop sided Sinhala political talk shows but because, he was one of the few who could build – and hold a bridge between the two communities. Do not wait for leaders, do it alone, person to person, said Mother Theresa. Everything Raviraj stood for as a politician, embodied this. He took the issues head on.

[More than five thousand people comprising Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims from all walks of life participated in the funeral procession bearing placards written ‘SHAME’ in Sinhalese, Tamil and English, on Nov 13, 2006 - TamilNet Photo]

He chose to stand up and be counted. As a human rights activist, he went beyond Tamil rights alone, championing the rights of other minorities. We saw that side of him when he along with other TNA MPs expressed their stand against the dreaded Anti- Conversion Bill. We saw that side of him when he shared with a delegation from the National Christian Fellowship of Sri Lanka (NCFSL) the Christian values instilled in him by the school he attended in Jaffna. He was always there for the Christians – when the churches were attacked, pastors were beaten up, he would assure the Christian community and its leaders his support and commitment to minority rights.

He understood the tragedy that can overcome a nation when a few extremists who tragically assume they represent the majority, are given pride of place. He understood that in this day and age, everyone’s opinion counted…he realized, unlike most politicians in Sri Lanka today, that the world was no longer a place where the majority could rule the minorities or that the minorities were expected to be grateful for the tolerance of the majority.

He saw the global perspectives and could understand them, in a way most shallow, mediocre politicians whose oyster was not the world but the backwaters of their electorate, could not. He was truly a man of the moment who understood and tried to articulate that unless as a nation we came together, we would perish.

On the day your husband was shot, I found myself gazing at the school photograph of my eight year old son. My husband and I are bringing him up as a Sri Lankan – our hope, our prayer is that he and his generation would succeed in rising above ethnic and religious differences that have been the bane of this nation. No one understood better the dangers of playing politics with race and religion, than Lee Kwan Yew, who went on to create a strong, vibrant country in which race and religion played no role in nation-building. A lesson we have yet to learn.

The photograph captures my son and other Sinhalese boys, sitting happy amidst their Tamil, Moslem and Burgher class mates ; the students of Form 02 E of S. Thomas’ College do not see nor care to know ethnic and religious differences. The school by the sea is indeed a wonderful place for a child to grow up in and experience the truly multi-religious, multi-ethnic society of ours, as I am sure Bishop’s College where you teach and where your daughter attends, is.

If only more schools were like that, we would truly be able to call ourselves a plural society in practice. My son’s class symbolizes the kind of society your husband gave his life for – one in which Sinhalese, Tamils, Burghers, Moslems, despite being different in ethnicity and religion, can come together as one.

That was the opinion he expressed, the one that got him the gunman’s bullet. They hated the stand he took, the words he uttered, the opinions he expressed. He not only challenged the fallacies of the extremists but he often times made mockery, justifiably too, of them.

As you would know, the majority of the Sinhalese don’t even think twice about getting along fine with those of other communities. The extremists may fool some of the people some of the time but as the saying goes, not all the people, all the time. If it must take a few narrow-minded, insecure fanatics whose view of the world is that of the well, to make you or other Tamils think otherwise, you would know by now that it is a joke in bad taste, a stinking left over from decades past.

The hundreds of Sinhalese who paid tribute to your husband’s bier would bear testimony to that.

As a wife and a mother myself, I know your world has collapsed right now – losing your husband, your children their father. But rise you must, eventually, from the ashes. Not just for the sake of your children and yourself, but also for the hundreds of voiceless Lankans, many starving physically, emotionally, spiritually in the north but others starving of righteousness and justice in the south.

Sasikala, take heart. The legacy of your husband lives on in their hearts, forever alive. The story you will share about him with your grandchildren will be a legend, of valour and courage. It’s better to have lived a full, meaningful but short life than a long one without achievements worthy of a lifetime.

There are many such empty vessels among us today – they may live long and tell fancy stories but their contribution to the nation, to the people have been little or nothing. In a country where a lot of noise is not always the right one simply by default, your husband’s voice had something to say. It still reverberates across the plains of Jaffna, across the hearts of those who loved him not because of what he was but what he believed in.

When the bier of the assassinated US President Abraham Lincoln passed by, an African American woman set free by Lincoln’s abolition of slavery, pointed out the President’s bier to her little daughter. “There goes the man who set you free, who gave his life for your freedom”. Let those words reverberate once again through the streets of Jaffna as Raviraj comes home for a final good-bye.