SL: ARMY CHIEF AND THE SINHALESE!!!

Sarath Fonseka and the Sinhalese...................Izeth Hussain
Army Commander Sarath Fonseka has provoked a storm of criticism with some of his recent statements, notably the following which had appeared in a Canadian magazine, "I strongly believe that this country belongs to the Sinhalese but there are minority communities and we treat them like our people….. We being the majority of the country, 75%, we will never give in and we have the right to protect this country … They can live in this country with us. But they must not try to, under the pretext of being a minority, demand undue things." (National Post of September 23). Notable also was the following, "In any democratic country the majority should rule the country. This country will be ruled by the Sinhalese community which is the majority representing 74% of the population." (Daily News of July 19).

I cannot join in the storm of criticism because my own responses to the above statements have been complex, ranging from strong and enthusiastic approval to strong disapproval to alarm. My first reaction of strong support - which in truth made me want to shout "Bravo, Sarath, bravo" – was evoked by his claim that this country belongs to the majority Sinhalese, and so on. It is surely the kind of claim that is made by the members of majorities in nation states right round the globe. Maybe he has made his point bluntly and rather crudely, but we must remember that he is a soldier and not a politician and as such has a preference for reality over rhetoric, and so wants to see that his words get to target just as bullets do. Why blackguard him for that?

Sometimes politicians are also quite frank that their country belongs to the majority and so on. I recall a television interview given by Archbishop Makarios of Cyprus sometime in the first half of the ‘sixties, in which he said that after all the negotiations the Turkish Cypriot minority must ultimately accept what the Greek Cypriot majority is prepared to give them. I remember being annoyed by that statement, but on reflection I came to the conclusion that that astute statesman merely wanted people to face reality.

It is pertinent to recall also a conversation that I had some years ago with a Church of Sri Lanka clergyman, in which we touched on the subject of Christian clergymen who had enlightened views on our ethnic relations. He cited the names of Bishop Lakdasa de Mel and Harold de Soysa from his Church, and I pointed out to him that he was obviously forgetting the late Bishop Lakshman Wickremesinghe. To my surprise he replied that "even Lakshman" used to hold that ultimately the minorities must accept what the Sinhalese majority is willing to give them. No one in his right mind has ever believed that Bishop Lakshman was a communalist, or racist, or chauvinist, or anything of that sort. Sarath Fonseka’s position is I believe not essentially different from that of the Bishop.

The problem of course arises when the majority holds – as majorities always do – that the minorities are given fair and equal treatment and the minority perception is the opposite. There is today a way of resolving this problem. It is to apply the criterion of the human rights norms established in the UN Declarations and Covenants on the subject. We can take it that all Sri Lankans agree that those norms should apply in Sri Lanka. But our racists and fascists are fiercely resistant to the idea that Sri Lanka is answerable to the international community on observance of those norms. I don’t know Sarath Fonseka’s position on this.

Before proceeding to my next point I must raise a question about one of the statements quoted above, "In any democratic country the majority should rule the country." It is of course true that under any democratic dispensation the majority ethnic group gets power over the minorities. But is SF aware of the terrible dangers of majoritarian democracy? I quote from Michael Ignatieff’s Oxford Amnesty lecture of 2001, "Where democracy means self-determination for the ethnic majority, ethnic cleansing and massacre of minorities as a method of state consolidation usually accompany it." I want the reader to note well the word "usually".

I come now to the strong disapproval that has been roused in me by a detail in SF’s statements. He states that "there are minority communities and we treat them like our people". I wouldn’t know where to begin and where to stop in refuting that statement. I have plenty of appropriate material on discrimination against the minorities right here at my elbow, but on second thoughts I would refrain from using any of it. No useful purpose will be served.

I will now state why SF’s statements have caused alarm in me. Taken together they reek of Sinhala triumphalism, the evident reason for which is that our troops are on the verge of finishing off with Mr. V. Prabhakaran. That triumphalism bodes ill for the future. I have in mind the implications of the victim syndrome. For centuries, until 1956, our Buddhists saw themselves as victims because some of the non-Buddhists had been given favoured treatment at their expense. The situation was reversed thereafter and gradually the Tamils became the victims. After 1983 the LTTE fought back, evidently with strong Tamil backing, and by stages the Sinhalese again became victims. Every offer of devolution was contemptuously rejected, and the response to Ranil Wickremesinghe’s inordinate accommodativeness was the LTTE offer of the ISGA, which was surely meant to humiliate the Sinhalese. Now the armed forces have got the upper hand, and the Tamils are about to become victims once again. If the note of Sinhala triumphalism struck by so important a personage as the Army Commander prevails, we can take it that ethnic reconciliation and harmony are still far away.

SF’s statements have the merit of drawing attention to the fact that the nation-state privileges the dominant ethnic group. But that can easily lead to racism, which can prove to be problematic in many and dangerous ways. SF says that he strongly believes that this country belongs to the Sinhalese. But who are the Sinhalese? It is known that most of the so-called low country castes – namely the Karawe, the Salagama, and the Durawe – came to Sri Lanka from South India after 1505. It becomes arguable that the Sri Lankan Tamils are more truly sons of the Sri Lankan soil than those Sinhalese because they were established here for a far longer period.

We must also bear in mind that the Portuguese encouraged a class of settlers or casados through marriages of Portuguese and local women. Some married Dutch and British residents and came to constitute the Burgher and Eurasian communities. Kumari Jayawardena writes in her fine work of scholarship Erasure of the Euro-Asian, "Other casado descendants maintained their local identity by marrying Sinhalese, but kept Portuguese names and over time were ‘deemed’ to be Sinhalese. This may partially account for the large number of Sinhalese with Portuguese names, even today. Contrary to the belief that all Sinhalese who took on Portuguese names did so in order to be baptized, and thereafter get jobs or to avoid taxes, many Sinhalese were, more likely, the descendants of casados." It becomes arguable that our Tamils are more indigenous to Sri Lankan soil than the Sinhalese with Portuguese names.

I have no quarrel at all with SF when he says that this country belongs to the Sinhalese. My point is that it also belongs to our Tamils, our Muslims, and other ethnic minorities. It is only through recognition of that fact – the fact of Sri Lankan multi-ethnicity – that we can ever come to have a Sri Lanka that is worth having.

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