Duty and privilege

Prime Minister D M Jayaratne has announced that a special investigation is being carried out into an alleged assault on Parliamentarians at Alaveddi, brought to the attention of the House as a matter of privilege by TNA MP R Sampanthan.

This is a grave matter indeed. The fundamental bedrock of Parliamentary Democracy is the right of elected members to freedom from harassment.

Parliamentary privilege was introduced in order to protect members of the legislature from being obstructed in carrying out their duties.

The investigation is to be welcomed as timely indeed. Not merely because of the gravity of interference with parliamentary privilege, but because the MPs were representatives of specifically Tamil electorates.

The Tamil people need to be assured of their safety and security and that of their democratic rights and freedoms. This means that they must be assured that their democratically elected representatives will be protected.

Tamil MPs

It is incumbent on the authorities to prove that we are no longer living under the rule that saw the killing of Tamil MPs A Thiagarajah, A Amirthalingam, Sam Thambimuttu, V Yogasangari, A Thangadurai, Neelan Thiruchelvam and Lakshman Kadirgamar.

The country is now trying to recover from a debilitating civil conflict which lasted nigh on three decades, longer if one counts from the murder of Jaffna Mayor Alfred Duraiappah.

The process of national reconciliation has only just started and it will be decades before all the wounds of war disappear.

The work done by the Army and other agencies in clearing mines has been stupendous in the face of limited resources. The process of resettlement of internally displaced persons is well under way in tandem with the mine-clearing programme.

The new language policy, which seeks to iron out differences through better communication in all three of the national languages, is slowly getting up steam. But these measures are by themselves insufficient.

Outstanding examples

The majority needs to go that extra mile to assure the minorities of their equality within Sri Lanka’s society and polity. In this, we could take a leaf from the book of our old imperial overlord, Britain.

A century ago, two second-generation immigrant Jewish brothers, Sidney and Harold Abrahams had to struggle against the anti-Semitism of the British establishment. Both of them were Olympic athletes, the latter (whose life was depicted in the film ‘Chariots of Fire’) won a Gold medal.

Sidney Abrahams rose to be Chief Justice of Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) and Guyana (then British Guiana). Harold became chairman of the British Amateur Athletics Association.

More recently, two other second-generation immigrant Jewish brothers, David and Ed Miliband found far less difficulty in rising up through the establishment. They faced each other in a competition to become leader of the Labour Party - Ed winning.

There is no doubt that all four of these outstanding examples of British Jewry considered themselves British first and Jewish second. It was this spirit that Britain depended upon in building itself into a nation.

The Marxist theoretician Hector Abhayawardena has always emphasised that Sri Lanka is not yet a ‘nation’ in the sense that Britain or France or the USA are. Part of the task facing this country is the integration of citizens in a ‘Sri Lankan’ identity.

Majority community

The Global Sri Lankan diaspora is predominantly Tamil and Sinhalese (except for Australia, where Burghers are in the majority). Sri Lankan Tamils constitute the majority of the Tamil diaspora.

Tamils of Sri Lankan origin in the diaspora do not, by and large’ identify themselves as Sri Lankans. Interestingly however, they do differentiate themselves from Indian Tamils, referring to their origin as ‘Eelam’.

‘Eelam’, as has been pointed out in these columns before, is merely another name for this island. So the Tamil diaspora identifies itself as part of this island but not part of this island at the same time.

If this contradiction is to be resolved, it is not merely up to the Tamil diaspora to change its way of thinking and its self-identification. It is up to the Sri Lankan state and to the majority community to build upon the resources of our own Tamil Abrahams and Milibands.

Two outstanding examples of Sri Lankan Tamils who considered themselves Sri Lankans more than Tamil were the Marxist politician V Karalasingham and the SLFP parliamentarian Lakshman Kadirgamar.

Great future

They were and are not alone, for there is a galaxy of Sri Lankans out there who belong to the minorities and yet do consider themselves very much a part and parcel of Sri Lanka. The paternalist, exclusionist attitude expressed by General Sarath Fonseka, that ‘this country belongs to the Sinhalese but there are minority communities and we treat them like our people’, just will not do.

Rather, it is incumbent on the authorities and the majority community to pursue the goal of inclusion expressed in the words of President Mahinda Rajapaksa to Veronique Queffelec of the French journal ‘Entreprendre’ (quoted in the Sunday Observer):

‘This country belongs to us all. I shall pursue my efforts to unite all the people of our country, whether they live here or somewhere else.

If we’re all united we have a great future. If we leave divisions dominate us, we shall never reach our true potential.

We already have 30 years of conflicts and divisions behind us. We now have to ensure sustainable peace and harmony for all Sri Lankans.’