National anthem should be the ‘National anthem’

National anthem of a country should represent its nationality, its originality and the characteristics that make it so special, apart and unique from other nations warranting it to be recognized and symbolized as a nation. Thus the national anthem of a country should be the rallying point of the nation and it certainly should not be a source of communal considerations in a country of different communities. After all it should be the national anthem and not a ‘communal anthem’ thus should eschew all communal considerations including demends to have it sung in different languages.

The problem Sri Lanka had for so long since independence, and what eventually manifested as an armed conflict costing many lives, collateral and years of opportunity to the nation, is our inability to integrate post colonial dichotomies in to a cohesive nation. This is mainly because the ‘minorities’ that were deliberately spawned by the colonial powers in their quest to rule this country by dividing its inhabitants, have been more powerful beyond their numbers and thus they found it more advantageous to remain as minorities pursuing colonial legacies resisting assimilation in to a new nation. This has been the stumbling block and the principle challenge since independence, against national integration of different ethnicities and creeds, in making a whole new nation with a new horizon.

There is a school of thought among us that ‘to blame the colonialists after 62 years of independence is an act of nit picking to hide our inability to rise up as a nation’. Such schools of thought should also take in to consideration that the period of colonial subjugation of this nation was 443 years and thus it would not be practical to wish away what was inculcated over four centuries in a matter of a few decades and hence such thinking should only be used as a gauge against the performance of our post colonial leaders and should not a determinant to condemn our 62 year national effort.

If we are to build up a cohesive nation it is necessary that we have a common national perspective and for that we should now evolve as we did in the past instead of persisting as communities as during the times of colonialism. We could cite enough instances from the history of this country how the leaders of ancient ‘Sinhaley’ accommodated different ethnicities and creeds to continuously enrich and strengthen the nation in the pre colonial times. Even after independence efforts have been made to accommodate different groups and in this regard incorporating the two stripes in to the national flag of independent Ceylon as against the original flag of ‘Sinhaley’ that was brought down by the British in 1948, could be cited as one such instance. But the fact about nation building is that it has to be accomplished with emphasis on our uniqueness and common aspirations instead of continuing to indulge in our differences. The national flag, though adjusted still remains one flag but the national anthem if sung in two different languages would not be the same.

An undeniable fact about Sri Lanka is that its uniqueness lies in the Sinhala people, their language and culture as against other groups that have made this country their home. Hence the national rallying point necessarily has to be Sinhala and it is the resistance to this reality by colonially adopted groups that has caused all this dissention and disunity in the post independence era leading to death, destruction and decay. Therefore the sooner these colonially adopted groups realize that even though it was possible under colonialism to be ‘preferred for disunity’, in nation building the motto has to be ‘united we stand and divided we perish’.

There however have been musings or rather criticism about this move to sing the national anthem only in Sinhala and such reservations have largely been entertained in Tamil Nadu and also by Tamil expatriates articulated through the likes of journalist DBS Jeyaraj. Their contention is that such moves will ‘alienate the Tamil community’ further but such contentions certainly sound hollow when viewed against the realities associated with the history of the conflict in Sri Lanka. Ever since this armed conflict began in the late 1970’s the Sri Lankan Government has been granting concessions of various nature calling them moves to ‘win back the Tamil community’. National status to Tamil language in 1978, DDC’s in 1982, Provincial Councils in 1987, Official status to Tamil in 1987, Union of Regions in 2000 and the recognition of homeland through a peace accord in 2002 are some of the carrots that were offered to invite the so called ‘alienated’ back to mainstream. But all such efforts failed to yield even a semblance of reconciliation and assimilation from the ‘alienated’ and instead strengthened their destructive separatist ideologies bringing the nation to the brink of bifurcation by the year 2005.

This situation, after a few years of stalemate brought a situation where President Rajapakse had to chose between ‘destroy or be destroyed’ plunging the country to a crucial war which the Sri Lankan forces managed to win. Thus this business of granting concessions to placate separatism is a dangerous game that has necessarily proved in the obverse from what was anticipated. Further the Tamil expatriate community and certain sections in the State of Tamil Nadu never wished a strong and cohesive nation in Sri Lanka because, the former has been exploiting Sri Lanka’s woes to live abroad while the latter entertained hopes of annexing Sri Lanka in to a Pan Tamil nation since the 1930’s.

Therefore, at this crucial hour Sri Lanka needs a strong leadership. Just as it was able to resist moves by the West to undermine the efforts to wipe out terrorism from the country one year ago it is equally important to resist the attempts made by various interests groups now to sabotage our efforts to build a strong and united nation.

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