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| Thursday, 1 January 2004 |
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Let mothers return by Lorna Wright
Men and women. Sri Lankans. - It was magnificent. It was simple, everything that pleases the eye. Discipline and rhythm in the divisions marching in, arrival of the Commander, arrival of the President, the 21 gun salute, the Magul Bera, the presentation of President's Colour to Naval and the Maritime Academy. The Divisions cheer the flag with the whispers of history, the National Anthem. Witnessing and appreciating such perfection with so much a background of balance, proportion and taste, conformity was an act of faith in the dual involvement of man and spirit in Sri Lanka.
The march past, the cultural display, arms shaping the music, simple. It all soared to heights of uncommon grace. The ceremonial sunset made one hark back to childhood days tieing a knot on your handkerchief and making a wish as the sunset. "Peace in this Paradise Isle". Chandrika, looked majestic. In fact her stature and poise beautifully great. She stood with authority in silence. Total silence and the band played Danno Budunge, Abide with me, Amazing Grace and Sunset. There was not a discordant note, which would have violated her personal standards. In that enormous silence with no political eddies of turbulence around purpling the air. A WOMAN who looked good and I am sure felt good watching an unremitting crusade to let youthful goodness shine through. The Naval Cadets made Mothers proud of their sons. However, what was not on parade and everyone did not witness was the choked eloquence of the human grief of thousands of women - Mothers, North, South, East, and West. Madam President they struggle not with life and death questions about meaning and purpose and values. In their day-to-day lives, just how to feed the children. How to survive. Experienced women of the Memory of Mother Foundation are nudging Presidential politics, prayerfully close to something that really matters to women. Family values. Mother values. The Sri Lankan family, it could be Sinhala, Tamil, Muslim or mixed.
The internal dissonance, the half-finished peace process being obstructed and the nation is being distracted from shaping new goals. The women suffer. Driven by economic and money complexities - the langauge of the markets, Men at the helm of the governance issues forget the basic and social endorsed identity of Mother in each ethnic group. The Women suffer. Men with whirlwind minds centered on money and paying heed to only political imperatives of the day are giving in to an overdeveloped sense of social status. Women suffer. There is a Resurgence of Hope. No. It is more than that, more than rising expectations, more than a gingerly sense of optimism. Peace is real. Women cannot suffer any more. These women mostly widows in desperation get attached to a man. Tamil women Sinhala soldier, Tamil man Muslim women, Muslim women Sinhala soldier in order to feed their children. Pregnant. The man leaves. Another man. Pregnant. He leaves, another and another. She lives with a mixed heritage of children under her roof. Consistently faced with two basic inadequacies in the Sri Lankan development process in this country, one is a governance issue. There are accomplished elders academics - civil servants at national level, conversant with current development thinking and parlance, the numbers small. But those born in 1950 and caught up educationwise in the Sinhala only cry of 1956, with not a book in Sinhala to read, are today at the sub-national level at the administrative level manning the districts. They are sent to AIT, IRRI, APDC for training and considered minions, but in fact they are much closer to our national reality and needs. The two levels have polarised to the detriment of the nation, unfortunately. The more disastrous is the issue of woman in the country. Studies, surveys, reflection and 'Empowering Women' is a poor borrowing from the developed countries. Methods used in the West during their transition from agricultural to industrial societies. Endemic individualism. Completely forgetting their special responsibilities as women opposed to men. The Eastern societies will not accept women as an alienated species. Revered social movements have sharpened cultures and values in these societies. They took the shape of religious institutions and want women to be an integral part of wisdom and action at the family level. Buddhist - 'Gedera Budun Amma'. Christian - Mother Queen of the Family. Hindu - 'Griha Lakshami' Queen of the Home. Islam - Man's paradise lies at the feet of his Mother. The migrant workers phenomenon in Sri Lanka does not value womanhood as being a role to be wife, mother, guide and unifier of family. The western ideological nuances have reduced womanhood to an economic object. The bread-winner. Donor agencies radicals, academics and intellectuals reduce everything to money. Oblivious of the misery yesterday and today, a minimum of two hundred coffins arrive from the Middle-East with remains of hapless women, every year while thousands of families have disintegrated. Young daughters 14 years, 16 years without mother and there is no protection from alcoholic fathers. Incest. Empowerment and human rights perpetuates the traditional role of women as cooks, housekeepers outside their family - female labour easy to handle vulnerable to emotional dictates and abuse. Textbook Feminism has too little of real life. Most 750,000 housemaids abroad, 70 per cent mothers, are compelled to travel, the domestic labour road for ME households fraught with shame. Send the soms for reconstruction work in Iraq, Afghanistan. Basic skills trained 1.5 million dropouts idle. Results just out of 347,354 Youth only 41.47 per cent passed the O/L, 58.53 per cent failed, of 198,500 who sat A/L 49.5 per cent passed, 50.4 per cent failed, only 1.03 per cent get into University 98.97 per cent cannot. What will all this youth do? Large number of skills training institutes are now underutilised - Maggona, Don Bosco, Diyagala Boys Town, Nazareth etc. Maintenance jobs available schools, hospitals, public buildings would benefit. Help the mothers come back from this macho male hierarchical money compulsion circuit and elevate womanhood. Needed a more localised, not anglicised conscientisation process to uphold the motherhood of women. As a unifier in the family with knowledge of consumer goods, not a mere unintelligent user of consumer goods. MOM Foundation's effort is not to eulogise and preserve the Feminism of the East, but to promote a new eastern feminist order that elevates womanhood with equal rights and opportunities for all women. Empowerment not as 'baby manufactory' but the unifier with consumer knowledge in the family, waste control, recycling, indigenous food a clay hearth kitchen to cook in. |
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