|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Thursday, 18 November 2004 |
 |
|
 |
Features | |
| News Business Features Editorial Security Politics World Letters Sports Obituaries
|
Non-violence: an article of faith ... by Dr. Radhika Coomaraswamy Excerpts from the Gandhi Memorial Oration 2004, organised by the Sri Lanka-India Society Continued from Tuesday, November 16 All the approaches to violence I have cited above have relevance here. We have political, economic and social structures that are the root cause of violence with ethnic, class and regional grievances that keep driving our youth to take up arms in some form or another. We have the Fanon ideal dominant especially in parts of the North and East where heroic death and the warrior code continue to motivate people to accept violence as an important part of their struggle. We have narratives of suffering from every community and every class, my centre is doing some research into this and the stories are endless. I believe that very few individuals or families are really untouched by the violence we have suffered over the last thirty years. We have the dirty war syndrome where international networks of people, arms, crimes and terror play a part in our politics. Our society has been so militarized that violence is often the first option in dealing with any dispute whether in the family, the community or the State. Crime rates are skyrocketing, impunity is on the rise, as are political killings, and normal crimes. Despite the ceasefire there is an unease. Pradeep Jeganathan in an interesting article argues that for Sri Lankan Tamils, the anticipation of violence has become part of their identity. First there was anticipation of violence by Sinhala mobs or the Sri Lankan army so that one always kept a bag packed in case one had to go to a refugee camp, now the violence is by the Tamil groups themselves. In this context, I at least have a strong nostalgia for the Mahatma. In preparing for this lecture I poured over his speeches and his writings and tears came to my eyes. Once you live in a violent society the apostle of non-violence becomes even more precious. And in reading his work as a Sri Lankan Tamil I am now even more convinced that we lost our way when we made armed struggle the dominant means of fighting discrimination and oppression. Let me state my argument as controversial as it is. In making my case I would like to go through South Africa. As someone who has spent a great deal of my life fighting for certain causes, there is no doubt in mind that Sri Lankan Tamils have suffered a history of discrimination since independence. Not only was their language relegated to second class status, or their places in universities standardized or their demographies changed by State aided colonization, the Sri Lankan State could not even guarantee their basic physical security as ethnic riots became commonplace especially in the 1980s. However, the discrimination and oppression we suffered cannot even remotely be compared to the life of black people under apartheid in South Africa. Nevertheless, Nelson Mandela and the Black African leadership were imaginative enough to fashion a non-violent political practice that won the day, gaining them not only freedom but international moral authority as a humane and civilized society. Though we must blame the present crisis in Sri Lanka partly on the inability of the Sinhala polity to effectively share power and respect the autonomy and integrity of its Tamil population, we must also recognize that the Tamil political leadership also failed to imagine a non-violent politics that was relevant and effective in Sri Lanka. For a great part of its non-violent struggle the Tamil political leadership worked among the populations of the North and the East and then tried to broker power with Sinhalese political elites. At no time did they endeavour to reach out to the Sinhalese people to make them partners is their effort to gain recognition and freedom. Gandhi's strength was to make everyone a part of his struggle to be expansive, to be inclusive to win over the other including the enemy. Instead, the non-violent politics of the Tamil leadership was primarily aimed at civil disobedience in the North but engaging in realpolitik with Sinhalese leaders trying to broker one broken deal after another. We did not have the imagination to bring Gandhi's ideas to a fruition in the realistic context of Sri Lanka. The intransigence of successive Sri Lankan governments and the failure of the Tamil political imagination - a failure for which we are all responsible, has cost us dearly. July 1983 and the subsequent armed struggle has led to over 700,000 Tamils leaving the country leading to the speculation that the population of the Northern Province has actually halved. It is often stated that nearly 100,000 people have died over the course of the conflict. Jaffna which once boasted the second highest physical quality of life after Colombo now has one of the worst quality of life indices in the country. The medical realities in Northern and Eastern Provinces has been described in international NGO reports as being a medieval reality with the outbreak of once eradicated deceases and without basic infrastructure and amenities. The enormous social suffering cost to individual Tamils, Sinhalese and Muslims cannot be quantified but comes out in the tales and narratives of survivors. The suffering caused by this war is immense and widespread-practically no-one living in the North and East has been spared. Bomb explosions in the South have also brought untold misery to countless people who have their own tales and narratives. In some uncanny sense there is a similarity to all their tales though the perpetrators may differ. So much suffering and it will take years to record what has actually happened. Our society has been militarized and the social fabric broken in a nation where young men and even children have easy access to arms. Between roving militants, army deserters, child soldiers and a culture of violence the quality of life will never be the same. The enormous psychological damage done to our people has been borne out on a trauma needs assessment which states that counselling and psychiatric care is one of the urgent needs of the society where torture victims, wives of soldiers, war widows and ex-combatants continue to live one nightmare after another. The work of Daya Somasunderam, 'The Scarred Minds' is ample testament to the terrible toll that war takes on the human psyche. As a result of the armed struggle we have two militarized, exclusive and virulent monoethnic nationalism confronting each other. A struggle based on civil obedience based on an inclusive politics, on the other hand, would have necessarily shown the way for a democratic, pluralistic polity where everyone would have lived in freedom respecting the rights of others. As Sai Baba told a Sri Lankan Tamil politician, after this war Jaffna will be a desert with three candles. Mahatma Gandhi once said "an eye for an eye will make the whole world blind". When I hear many of my Tamil brethren justifying every act of violence, I realize, yes we are all blind now. If peace comes now how many of are people will be in the North and East to usher it and how many will have the economic, social and psychological wherewithal to fully enjoy it. When I made this case to a Tamil friend while writing this oration, he said but we have our self respect. It saddened me that Tamil self respect should rest on a bedrock of such violence, destruction and suffering. Yes the Mahatma was right, we are all blind now. However, let us not despair, the Mahatma would not have any of that. The ceasefire as uneasy as it is gives us new hopes, hopes of healing, hope of reconciliation, hopes of transformation, a hope of fashioning a new politics - if only old fears, suspicions and paranoias could stop Tamils from killing each other. If only we realize that there are other ways to solve conflict besides killing. Nevertheless there is some cause for optimism and even if there isn't I have decided to be optimistic. I feel we can try and make it work. Because in all my visits to countries of armed conflict or situations of violence, there is always the counterstory of courage, resilience and basic humanity. Now is the time to marshall those forces. Now is the time to bring forth our suppressed, humane energies. Concluded |
|
News | Business | Features
| Editorial | Security
Produced by Lake House |
