Communalism is as dangerous as corruption

Lionel WIJESIRI

“We reject all types of communalism, be it Sinhalese, Tamil or Muslim. We will not let any communal force raise its head in Sri Lanka,” President Mahinda Rajapaksa told Heads of media institutions at a breakfast meeting held at Temple Trees recently. He further said that his wish was to see all Sri Lankans living in peace and harmony after he eradicated terrorism from Sri Lanka.

This is not the first occasion President Mahinda Rajapaksa has criticized the communal forces. In January 2009, even before the country was liberated from the LTTE terror, while talking to the heads of media, he said that it was necessary to prevent communalism whether it came from the Tamils, Sinhalese or Muslims, as it posed a threat to the unity of the country.

“We must understand that all communities have equal rights as citizens of this country, and we must work to safeguard these rights,” he added.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa has often pointed out that there is an insidious impact of individuals, institutions and ideologies that distort our history, that thrive on spreading racial or religious prejudice and that incite people to violence. He has gone on record saying that there was no distinction between majority and minority communalism as both are equally dangerous to the country. Any right thinking citizen will understand the spirit of this statement.

Meanings

Seldom have socially important words become more confused and divested of their historic meaning than they are at present. Two centuries ago, it is often forgotten, 'democracy' was deprecated by monarchists and republicans alike as 'mob rule.' Today, democracy is hailed as 'representative rule,' an oxymoron that refers to little more than a republican oligarchy of the chosen few who ostensibly speak for the powerless many.

Communalism can have two meanings. In a positive sense it refers to the conscious identity shared by a group of people, based on their cultural heritage as expressed in language, religion, caste etc. In plural societies, ethnic identities were positively experienced and expressed. Positive communalism has been associated, by and large, with mutual respect for other identities in an environment where diversity is celebrated as the essential parts of a whole. This is what 'unity' has meant in our mixed villages and towns - the possibility of diversity in the context of a positively felt identity that offers stability and security.

Globalisation

In contrast, the negative sense of communalism, which is commonly practiced today, is based on an exclusive identity that denies respect for other identities and views unify as something that is achieved by subjugating others.

Paradoxically, instead of helping religious, linguistic and cultural identities to wither away, globalisation has hardened them and provoked ethnic conflict and communal violence.

Worse still, it has transformed positively experienced identify into negative identity. Identities have not withered away - what have withered away are the conditions under which diverse identities can together share a social space. Cultural survival has been reduced to meaning the removal of the other, the exclusion of the other, the death of the other.

Globalization creates social and economic vulnerability and insecurity as it homogenises cultures, conditions whose management the state assumes responsibility for.

When governments proclaim equality as a social ideal yet persist in development and modernisation programmes that result in inequality, each individual and group interprets its loss as someone else's gain, and interprets the other's gain as a result of its being well organized as a group - whether linguistic, religious or regional. Ethnic groupings have helped people to bargain with the state.

Economic survival becomes the issue. Because electoral politics and government intervention respond to ethnic groupings, economic issues become issues of cultural survival. If 'they' get jobs 'we' will be unemployed. If 'they' prosper, 'we' will be deprived. And the struggle for economic and cultural survival is experienced by all communities, not just the minorities or the marginalised.

Communalism

In Sri Lanka, there was a time not so long ago, when some Sinhala group saw Tamils and Muslims being pampered for votes. Tamils saw Sinhalese excluding them in new ways, and thought the state was encouraging such exclusion. It is this disease, nourished by cultural decay, growing inequality and the employment of ethnicity as the exclusive basis for gain and protection that turns communal feelings violent and destroys society. This is why communal violence is epidemic. But, while the 'poison' of communalism spreads under the pressure of insecurity and the power of chauvinist and fundamentalist doctrines, it is well to remember that it is spread by a minority in all communities. That powerful minority demands that the state accept its culture as dominant and that the other 'minorities' be forced to do likewise. The State is asked to confer special status on those belonging to the 'majority'. Of course, such privileges are conferred on a small group who, in any case, are privileged and have access to resources and opportunities provided by a modernising state and a capitalist economy.

Where will all these end? Are there any remedies?

Remedies:

I believe there are four angles to look at.

1. The remedy of constitutional safeguards to root out the chronic malaise of communalism will not have desired effect unless it is tackled by society itself.

2. Efforts should be made by the enlightened citizens to discourage the communal based forces from the social, political and electoral process in order to make these forces irrelevant. They are to be opposed not to be appeased.

3. Communal rousing, in whatever form, should be dealt strictly with new strategies.

4. To usher an era of social equity, the people of Sri Lanka should not mix religion and race with politics to attain the goal of common brotherhood for the unity and integrity of the nation.

We should never lose sight that Sri Lanka is a multiracial, multilingual and multi-religious society. There is a close relationship between ethnicity and religion as Buddhism being the major religion for the Sinhalese, while Islam and Hinduism are, respectively, the major religions of the Muslims and Tamils.

In view of this, any government in power needs to promote racial harmony. The second obligation of government in a plural society is to ensure that both public and private organizations are fair in their treatment of their clientele, regardless of their ethnicity, language, or religion.

The government also has a responsibility to ensure that minority rights are not endangered at any level. Racial/religious calamities pose the most serious threat to Sri Lanka’s survival.

Political instability from such tragedies would tear apart the social fabric. In a plural society, calamities are more likely to erupt when there is disharmony and lack of understanding and tolerance among the various groups. On this, we have our own share of experience during the last six decades.

Development

The present leaders have taken adequate measures to prevent communalism from undermining racial harmony not only by promoting economic development and providing the basic utilities amongst the minority segments. It is equally important to ensure religious harmony as conflicts between religious groups can be easily transformed into racial riots. The recent Dambulla incident is a close example.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa has urged that the followers of the different religions ... exercise moderation and tolerance, and do nothing to cause religious enmity or hatred and by separating religion from politics in order to establish working rules by which many faiths can accept fundamental differences between them, and coexist peacefully in Sri Lanka.

Now that President Rajapaksa has spoken again, all members of the Parliament must take the cue.

The government is fully equipped to take on the multiple tasks which are needed to preserve and promote multi-racial and multi-religious values. The higher-up authority must train its cadres in the values of a plural society and democracy. There is an in-depth need to train the existing and new members of political parties owning allegiance to democratic nationalism to take up the awareness and training programmes which are able to oppose the religious and racial hatred raising head in the society in the future.