Rizana’s travails

‘I am Sri Lanka’ is a powerful line. It is used in an advertisement for a mobile phone company, but it is something that can resonate deeply within anyone who identifies with this beautiful and bountiful land of ours. When you say ‘I am Sri Lanka’, you are saying that you identify with anything and everything that is Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan, made of, for and in Sri Lanka and you begin to see yourself in each and every individual who likewise identifies with such things.

The television commercial is, to my mind, far more effective than the print ads and hoardings. The ‘stills’ are somber and Mahela, Murali and others appear more like people who are about to face a match-fixing inquiry than patriots firmly committed to stand by nation and citizen, reach out to the needy, sacrifice life and limb etc.

Regaining Sri Lanka

‘I am Sri Lanka’ is something worth pondering about. If I am something, I would want to know who or what that is. If I am Sri Lanka, I must ask myself ‘What is Sri Lanka?’ I remember a program launched by the UNP in the brief period Ranil Wickremesinghe was in power as Prime Minister (2001-2004). It was called ‘Regaining Sri Lanka’. I asked myself what this was about and concluded the following.

‘To regain something, one has to have first lost it. One has to figure out what was lost in the first place. It is then that one can develop strategies of recovery.’ Ranil’s program was not about Sri Lanka. It had nothing to do with key components of what ‘Sri Lanka’ is. It had no reference or acknowledgment of history or heritage and indeed it’s signature projects were in direct contradiction of the tenets that had helped found a civilization and way of life.

Service provider

Similarly, when Mahela and others say ‘I am Sri Lanka’ and encourage all of us to consider ourselves as ‘Sri Lanka’, we need to think beyond the mobile telecommunications service provider and try to figure out what Sri Lanka is, what of it resides within us, what has been fractured or deformed and to gather and repair all that needs to be collected and healed to make us one with nation and one another, for a nation is both artifact and citizen, individual and collective.

It reminds me of a beautiful song by Nanda Malini, composed I believe by Dr Sunil Ariyaratne, Me jeevana ganga dharaye (‘In this life-river’). Consider the following lines:

Prarthanaavan pirunu love hinda, gee gayanaa mata prema karan

Yaabada asune hinda gee asana sahrdhayan hata prema karan...

(Love me (for) I sing to you from this world that is full of hope. Love he/she (compatriot) who sitting next to you, listens to my song....)

It is about looking out for one another. We have a population in excess of 20 million people. We cannot look out for all our fellow citizens. This is why we elect people to come up with plans and mechanisms to ensure the greater good of the majority. Still, this does not mean we should look the other way when our neighbour is in distress.

Saudi prison

This morning I received an email from someone I have never met. She was referring to the case of Rizana Nafeek, the young girl languishing on Death Row in a Saudi prison as I write. She spoke how someone had wondered why she, a Buddhist, should worry about a Muslim. She pointed out that President Mahinda Rajapaksa had said at Deepavali, ‘this country belongs to all of us’. She said, tellingly, ‘so many people do not seem to understand that us belongs to the country!’

Every citizen is an owner of this country and is owned by the country in return, if not by law then by tradition and the realities of the natural world, the order of the earth, so to say. We are indeed the keepers of our brothers and sisters just as we are kept by our brothers and sisters.

Arabic language

It is clear that Rizana Nafeek has got a raw deal. It is clear that even if we went strictly by Islamic Law, certain things are clearly out of order. There is negligence on the part of the mother which is wrong by all standards and in particular in terms of the edicts of Islamic law. There are, I am told, requirements pertaining to feeding babies. In certain countries breast-feeding is required by law and for two and a half years! Even convicted criminals are not executed if they have infants, since the babies have to be fed until they are two and a half years old.

The cause of death, as of now, is suffocation. It could be caused by choking or strangulation. Rizana was 17 at the time. Let’s assume that the parents of the infant did not know this. They did know that she had never handled an infant and never been trained to handle one either. They were taking an enormous risk in putting their child in her hands. All they have by way of proof right now is a confession, allegedly obtained under duress and in circumstances that are suspect, especially considering the fact that it was done in Arabic, a language she did not understand, and using an interpreter whose competence is questionable.

The judge has to consider only one thing at this point. He is being judged, as per his faith, by Allah. We have to consider only one thing. Have we done justice to our citizenship, to our fellow-citizen, our sister and daughter, our neighbour and friend, Rizana Nafeek, who is in distress and could be beheaded any moment?

Would you repeat, after Mahela and Murali or regardless of their statements, that you are, indeed, Sri Lanka? Would you object if Rizana echoed your words, saying ‘I am Sri Lanka!’?

I am not advocating anything here. Just wondering. I remember some other lines from that song:

Heta dina idivena pemin pirunu lova unun welandagena senahemu api mithure

Unun welandagena

Ekama ratak lesa, ekama deyak lesa naegee sitimu mithure...

Vaetee miyemu mithure

‘Let us smile and be content, friend, embracing one another in a world made of love which will be created tomorrow; let us rise, friend, as one nation, as one people; let us fall together, friend, and die (if necessary) as one.’

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