Looking to the Future

K S Sivakumaran

An article I read recently made me think afresh on certain factors. I sincerely hope that we reset our priorities for the better in the future development of us as well as the country.

Let me quote some excerpts from an article published in ‘The Hindu’ of Chennai for the benefit of readers who might have not read the article.

The writer (Justice Markandey Katju, a judge of Supreme Court of India) refers particularly to our giant neighbour India. But since our ancestors were from that subcontinent, we can also recapture our own origin in our country.

I believe that the writer belongs to an organisation called Kalidas - Ghalib Academy for Mutual understanding. In New Dilli (that’s how ‘Delhi’ should be pronounced, I understand.)

The writer begins his piece thus: “While North America is a country of new immigrants in which Europeans and others came over the last four centuries, India is a country of old immigrants. Its people came over the last 10,000 years or so. Probably 95 % of the people living I India today are descendants of immigrants who came mainly from the North-West and to a lesser extent from the North-East.”

The writer rightly says that “people migrate from uncomfortable areas to comfortable areas, for everyone wants to live in comfort.” If people from the north and east com to the south of Lanka, it is primarily because the wet zone make them live in comfort.

If those people are considered part of ‘Lankan Nation’, then it is foolhardy to suggest that they should go back to India. This is ironical, because, if we were to speak in terms of numbers, the majority of our people are immigrants. Aren’t they? Let that be.

Who were the original inhabitants of India, then? According to the writer referred to, they were ‘pre-Dravidian aborigines, whose descendants are speakers of the Munda Austric languages, living today in parts of (Jharkhand), Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Bengal, and so on” We learn from our chronicles that Vijaya (Vija in Oriya and Bengal languages) and his 700 rebels came over to Lanka by boat from Orissa!

Because India is a country of immigrants, there is tremendous diversity there. That is why the Indian Culture is rich. ‘Some have Caucasian features, some Mongoloid features, some Negroid features’, says the writer.

While there is a broader homogeneity in China for instance, in India it is diversity that adds colour enrichment.

Likewise in Lanka it is the diversity that builds up the ‘nation, you would agree.

The Indian writer has a pointer: “Given such great diversity (in India), if we wish to stay united it is essential that we have tolerance and equal respect for all communities and sects.”

He also points out another historical fact when he says that ‘the architect of modern India was the great Mughal emperor Akbar. He gave equal respect to people of all communities and appointed them to the highest offices on their merits irrespective of their religion, caste, and so on. Akbar was the greatest ruler the world has seen.”

Who knows, in the future in the changing world as in the U.S., Lanka too could follow suit in having a member of a minority community becoming the head of state accepted , loved and endorsed by a large number of Lankans.

May be I may not live to witness it. But I am sure that the younger generation of all communities in Lanka has a broad perspective in understanding the world than the diehards shrinking in ignorance of the present and unimaginative of the future and living only on the past.

Sometimes ignorance is bliss, true. But unwilling to learn from the past and practicing arrogance is almost suicidal for such people who believe that they are the chosen people to dominate and remain domineering.

One other thing I observed relevant from the article in question was in regard to industrialization. The vast and speedy modernization in South East Asia and the East like Japan and China and in fact in most countries in other parts of the world including the Maldives, from my point of view, is that we depend too much on feudal agricultural economy.

On this point writer Markandey Katju says:

“... If we wish to get respect in the world we must make India a highly industrialised and prosperous country. For this purpose, a powerful cultural struggle that is, a struggle in the realm of ideas must be waged by our patriotic and modern-minded intelligentsia.

This cultural struggle must be waged by combating feudal backward ideas, that is, casteism, communalism and superstitions, and replacing them with modern and scientific ideas among the masses.”

If we were to emerge as a leading nation in South Asia and even in South East Asia we have to think afresh driving away the mutual fears that pervade in different communities in the island. Accepted or not we are ONE and belong largely to one ethnic community. Perhaps DNA tests could convince us. I am hoping for a better future.

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