The ‘Murali spirit’ for national harmony

Amidst the corpus of literature on Muttaih Muraliatharan’s exploits on cricket fields, the attention of the Third Eye was focused on a statement attributed to Muralitharan by all the public newspapers. That is, Murali’s view on that controversial subject, ‘the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka’ and Murali has made it very clear that ‘There is no ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka and it was the politicians who have created all this’. This is a telling statement from a Tamil who is born and bread and then thrust into world fame essentially by the Southern Sinhala ambience and hence Muralitharan, of all the people, should know what he says best.

However, what is more convincing than his statement is he achieved this unparallel feat in cricket, living and playing among the majority community. By scaling the highest level in an international sport, Murali, by that deed has proved to the whole world that this discrimination of Tamils by the Sinhalese is a myth propagated by those with questionable agendas. All his coaches have been Sinhalese and his mentor, almost all his teammates too have all been Sinhalese. He is like a Tamil flower that has blossomed with Sinhala fertilizer. Not a bad combination after all.

Attempts were however made back in 1990s when Muralitharan’s bowling talents came to the fore to make Murali another item of propaganda for the ‘Tamil cause’. But with Murali continuing to play his game backed by his Sinhala brethren to the hilt, such attempts naturally fizzled out, unable to find their feet. There was also this talk by some racial minded Tamil expatriates about the ‘Sri Lankan team getting nowhere if not for the only Tamil in the team’.

People with such sick minds should look at the larger picture. There are 65 million Tamils in Tamil Nadu and how many of them are playing for the Indian Cricket team and have any of them ever achieved the level of performance Muralitharan has achieved? Muralitharan belongs to that Indian Tamil breed and the Indian Tamil population in Sri Lanka is not even 1/100th of what it is in Tamil Nadu.

That makes Murali’s feat all that significant for ethnic harmony in Sri Lanka. Whatever the reason that make the Tamils click in the Lankan set up it certainly cannot be the ‘discrimination’ by the majority. There was a time back in the 1970s where every Sinhala village had a thriving boutique called the Demala kade.

When SJV Chelvanayagam made that statement in 1949 (soon after independence) at Fort YMMA, declaring that “It is better for us Tamils to have our own state rather than live at the ‘benevolence’ of the Sinhalese” he had made it very clear that, however well the Sinhalese would treat us, we should be determined to have our own State. He was only waiting for a ruse to start his campaign.

Exclusive superiority

Hitler’s belief in the exclusive superiority of the Aryan race gave rise to Nazism that eventually led him to war that engulfed him. Similarly it is the belief of superiority in the Tamil race by SJVC and Amirthalingam that led their followers to a war that finally engulfed them and their community.

The birth of communal politics in Ceylon was when Ponnambalam Arunachalam formed the Tamil Congress in 1923 with his colleagues of the ‘Jaffna league’. As a prelude to this, a year ago, he had resigned from the Presidency of the Ceylon National Congress over his disagreement with Sinhala leaders on regional representation in place of communal representation, that was in practice up to then. From that point, the Tamil community was led by racial politicians who could not come out of the Tamil mentality and think like Sri Lankans.

The lesson from Murali is he never believed in racial overtones and instead he put his talents to the test, time and again, until he was rewarded for practice and perfection. He evinced that feeling that he was always a Sri Lankan first before all other considerations, and that I believe is his virtue in obtaining everybody’s cooperation to reach the goals he finally achieved.

Now, right at this moment, there is some clamour from some quarters to grant a ‘political solution’ to the Tamil community and by this they mean to decimate certain powers from the centre and empower the regional political offices with such powers. If that ever takes place it would be an invitation for regionalism and racialism espoused by Amirthalingams and an equally sad betrayal of Muralitharans who have lived outside the North and have prospered.

Such a decimating scheme will only empower the regional politician and as for the ordinary citizen, he will find himself confined to a certain area with regard to his options. Thus if such a ‘solution’ is ever implemented that will make the Northerner who suffered under Prabhakaran for decades constrained under an elected political boss who thinks more Tamil than Sri Lankan. So this empowerment is just a way of restricting the ordinary citizen and bloating the regional politician.

Barack Obama conquered America because he thought as an American, instead of a Kenyan migrant. Muralitharan conquered Sri Lanka cricket because he thought first as a Sri Lankan. Therefore, in the guise of ‘empowering’ certain regions and communities, we should not make people think ‘regional’ and ‘communal’, thereby killing the ‘Murali spirit’ that is so essential for national harmony.

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