|
|
 |
 |
 |
| Thursday, 4 November 2004 |
 |
|
 |
Features | |
| News Business Features Editorial Security Politics World Letters Sports Obituaries
|
When the mind and heart are fettered by rituals Talking of national integration I'm reminded of a tete-a-tete with someone who uttered a conditional assurance of the untold happiness one would experience in Jaffna, provided he or she was a Hindu. He even recalled how not a day would pass without some festival or the other in the numerous kovils over there. Noted as we are to be a nation of ritual lovers where the mistaken identity of religiosity over spirituality is common occurrence, the divides are evergrowing making national integration a seemingly unreachable endeavour. Institutionalizing the human spirit into ritualistic practices consolidates what is already a spirit -flesh dichotomy. What adorns the flesh, be it beard, robe or cassock, is not a matter of the spirit. The greater the pronouncement of such externalities, the lesser the chances of social integration as mutual suspicion follows such outward paraphernalia. The days of understanding such regalia in the light of tolerance and mutual respect are no more. Those were the days that are now obscure, as modernization and 'stateization' gave way to segmentation and distinct group identity. The broader national identity has ceased to be - a sort of getting back to tribalism. In fact modern nationalism is old hat in new helmet. The inter-tribal conflicts of ancient times have today taken on an inter-ethnic, communal and religious colouring giving rise to consolidation of primordial identities - the only difference being complexities and differences that give rise to heterogeneity are far greater than in the time of primordial societies - of class, power, religion, race, ethnicity and what not. That's as far as integration goes in an intensely subverted society through its multifarious divisions. Asking for integration against all such backdrop is to ask moonlight from the sun. Getting back to my kickstart, rituals in fact are as far as appeasing the flock goes and perhaps entails the increase in club membership, depending on the luring factor. The spirit, then, is above the sensory plane which Buddhist Abidhamma, Islamic Sufism and Christian spirituality is all about - an evolution of the mind the education of which is sadly lacking in the school curricular - of course for reasons obvious. By way of recent emergence is Sufism in Sri Lanka's eastern coast - home to large numbers of Muslims. We all know what befell Moulavi Refai who dared into such life-risking adventure. The resistance he encountered was so severe that mayhem was the end result. The allegation against him was that he was preaching Hinduism. Partly true, for Sufism has much to do with not only Hinduism, but Christianity, Buddhism and all others as well, for its universal appeal and heavy concentration on the spirit or 'Ruh' in Arabic, which is most distasteful to the palate of religiosity. All religious leaders captured the human spirit. Islam's great saints were all celebrated Sufis. Truth was their discovery. Labelled religion was consequential to man's fiddling of 'truth' to keep going a world of agonizing divisions craftily initiated by the world's economic powers. |
|
News | Business | Features
| Editorial | Security
Produced by Lake House |
