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Working towards unity in diversity

Within months, Lankan politics has changed almost beyond recognition. The increasing presence of this country's minority communities in the public arena leads to this evaluation. This development has to be warmly welcomed because a renewed discourse on minority rights, for instance, only enhances the quality of democratic governance.

Yesterday we welcomed the launching of talks between the SLMC and LTTE leadership and the emergent agreement between the parties on meeting Muslim interests in the North-East. Around the same time almost, the LTTE leadership had also spoken to a CWC delegation headed by Minister Armugam Thondaman. We learn that the CWC leadership had agreed to support the LTTE in its struggle to realise the right to self-determination of the Tamils, besides conferring on other issues.

The plantation workers of Indian origin, whose interests the CWC mainly represents, although of Dravidian origin, differ culturally and socially from the rest of Lanka's Tamil population. Their economic and material needs also differ by virtue of the fact that they have been working the plantations in the central hills over the decades and are geographically less mobile than the rest of the Tamil citizenry.

However, in consideration of the fact that the plantation workers of Indian origin enjoy a distinct cultural identity, the current political dialogue on meeting minority aspirations should take their special needs into consideration. The emerging political order may need to ensure that, as in the case of the Muslims, the plantation workers of Indian origin too enjoy a substantial degree of cultural autonomy. It wouldn't be in their interests to be lumped together with numerical stronger communities which evince some ethnic affinities.

The fast-breaking developments of the past few months should bring these issues into focus and enable us to fine-hone the state structure to accommodate these diverse but legitimate interests of disparate cultural groups. An inviolable parameter of such a discourse would, of course, be the geographical integrity and wholeness of the Lankan state.

It should be remembered that the granting of the right of self-determination to communities is perfectly in keeping with democratic ideals and is in no way suggestive of secession or the creation of ethnic enclaves.

The current political discourse centering on the granting of inalienable minority rights brings us back to recognising the importance of the principle: unity in diversity. When a state is organised on such a principle, all communities would be enabled to identify with that sate and declare it to be their single and only home.

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