Let’s work with PM to pulverise racism

It’s up to us stupid, not Ranil! 

February 6, 2016, 7:37 pm

Enjoy, but stick together till racism is buried

by Kumar David

One swallow does not a summer make, but then a swallow is a swallow (no pun intended). At last the PM lashed out in Parliament on 28 January; he should have done it long ago but one has to be thankful that he did take a stand. Will he keep it up? Indications are encouraging; Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara Thero and Yoshitha Rajapaksa are cooling their backsides in the lock up (for a week or two at least), Wasim Thajudeen’s murders may soon be arrested. The national anthem was performed in Tamil at the formal Independence Day celebrations for the first time in 66 years. The PM says he will stand by Lanka’s commitments to the UNHRC (implied, notwithstanding President Sirisena’s contortions).

Now don’t get me wrong! Neither a PM nor anyone in any country can, single-handed, rout racism or fascism. That task, dear friends, is the duty of you and me and all of us. And who is this ‘us’? Democrats, liberals, militant leftists with an ember or two still burning in their belly, working or middle-class, or dammit even true bourgeois? There is little that Ranil or his great-grandmother can do to save us from misfortune worse than hell, unless we the people stand up and fight. Protecting freedoms is incumbent on the people themselves – I guess Thomas Jefferson and other quotable guys said all this centuries ago. The more jaded, the truer!

There are two reasons why this has more than a platitudinous ring at this conjuncture; one is to do with generations of racism, bigotry, chauvinism, call it what you will, in Lanka; the second is how steadfast the military’s loyalty to constitution and supremacy of the civilian is, and how sincere its commitment to human rights. These two matters need carefully reflection.

Racism has come a circle

Racism has come a full circle in the last two and a half generations and the opportunity is now ripe to smash it once and for all. This is not 1947-48 when the upcountry Tamils were ground into the dust, nor 1958 or 1965 when spineless prime ministers reneged on the B-C and Dudly-Chelva Pacts, nor is it Emergency `58, nor 1983 nor 1987. There was also the other watershed in 2009 when Tamil separatism was wiped out and mass Sinhala psychology relaxed.

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