‘There was a country’ is Chinua Achabe’s personal
history of Biafra. It is a personal
story of a collective history, of a violent past that rolled into a political
present. It is a memoir. Historical account. Literature.
It is not an uncommon story.
The world is full of violence. There’s war.
There is insurrection. And the
‘collateral’. That’s how it is and how
it has been for centuries upon centuries, which of course is no reason not to
recoil in horror, not to object and not to seek ways of creating a better
world, a better country, better communities and less violent lifestyles.
We all have countries we’ve lived in, or countries
that were, let us say. Some of those
‘past tense places’ are remembered with nostalgia and some recollected with a
grudging gratitude for the present-countries we inhabit. We are never ecstatic
about where we are, what we do and who we are, even though we are not given to
lamenting these things 24/7.
So there are countries we love to inhabit and
countries which we are dying to leave.
One thing is certain, though. A
country without people is not a country but a colored piece in a map. Named or unnamed, it is not a country, not a
nation. And if a large number of people
find push more compelling than pull, then the countries they inhabit are in
danger of becoming pieces of land not deserving the tag ‘nation’, unworthy of
name.
A recent survey of youth conducted by an experienced
Sociologist has revealed that 50% of the young men and women in Sri Lanka want
to leave the country, for one reason or another. This is not unnatural. The young want to see the world. It’s a youthful urge that is not
country-specific. The young want to
explore; they are endowed with a thing called curiosity. And in these internet days where you can
access sights and sounds in the most faraway of places, it is natural to want
to find places that draw you and visit them to obtain better flavor.
The more disturbing statistic is that 30% of the youth
want to leave and not come back. That
number is valid across all identity categories.
In other words, it cannot be explained by referring to some ethnic or
religious angst. There could be common
economic factors that make people want to leave, but Sri Lanka is a middle
income country and even though fraught with disparities it is certainly not a
land without opportunity. It is,
moreover, a country in a post-conflict situation that has done far better than
most countries emerging from wars that dragged for decades.
‘Yearning for greener pastures’, then, does not
explain this urge, for there have always been and there always been pastures
that are greened in richer hue, not to mention that if Sri Lanka was green-less
for a quarter of a century, it is comparatively a veritable ‘nilla pirunu ratak’ today, lush in many
ways, give or take a few drought-ridden weeks or a few too-much-blue days of
rain.
Something is not right. Only those who don’t have a strong enough
hold on that thing called ‘belonging’ can say ‘want to go, don’t want to come
back’. The don’t-want-to-return thinking
implies a pull-push product that outweighs the tugs to home, family, parents
and land. That’s a kind of alienation in
aggregates that make ‘nation’ untenable, for although not everyone will leave,
those who remain are essentially not at peace with where they are, what they do
and most crucially, who they are.
There’s something seriously wrong here. Economic factors are only part of the
story. There must be, deep down, some
cultural unease at work. It is also
likely that there is widespread sense of displacement, internal displacement,
from nation, economy, political structures, family and home, and of course
self. It is a question of belonging and
meaningful citizenship. It requires
investigation.
Or else, someday, the Achabes of Sri Lanka will
write their own country-story. In the
past tense.
3 comments:
We are lacking just one thing. Hope.
'Hope', and the rapidly deteriorating 'rule of law'. Never have the laws of this land been so openly flouted by those in power and their associates.
Many of those who want to leave the country believe the Western world (to which they want to leave) have streets paved with gold. They don't know that you have to work hard as a wage slave, and if you start your own business, you have all kinds of rules and regulations that keep you from becoming a millionaire overnight or even in ten, twenty years. Many of the young people who have come to Australia, even those with double degrees have not been able to find jobs in their line of work and are working as cleaners.
So those who yearn to leave and not come back should leave Sri Lanka with their eyes open and understand that the grass on the other side is always greener.
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