Here’s a challenge: name a country that is mono-ethnic,
mono-religious and monolithic in terms of political beliefs. There are none. In Sri Lanka we have Sinhalese, Tamils,
Muslims, Burghers and other communities.
Some are Buddhists, some are Hindus, some are Christians of various
denominations, and some are Muslims.
There are atheists other than Buddhists and there are those who do not
belong to any of the aforementioned religious communities. So yes, we are ‘multi-ethnic’ and
‘multi-religious’.
Does this mean that the fact should be enshrined in
a Constitution? Not necessarily.
One
does not state the obvious in such documents.
One does not say, for example, ‘Sri Lanka is an island’, ‘there are men
and women living in Sri Lanka’ or ‘Sri Lanka has a population stratified along
multiple lines such as class, gender, caste, affiliation to the ruling party’
etc.
However, if one is fanatical about
‘fact’ and proposes a multiethnic and/or multi-religious interjection, then the
numbers and percentages should be included too, just for purposes of
clarity. Multi-ethnic and
multi-religious without percentage-note can after all imply a population
equally divided into various ethnic and religious communities. That’s misleading and mischievous.
The above is mere preamble to the issue that is to
be discussed: the issue of multiple systems of law in a single country. It appears that people have been more
fascinated by the trivial (for example, the national flag and associated
politics, and whether or not there should be constitutional provision for the
national anthem to be sung in multiple languages). Flag and anthems did not share birthdays with
the emergence of a coherent state (whenever you want to date that particular
birthing).
Laws also change, but a
coherent, consistent corpus of rules and regulations governing all public
engagements in the main is a non-negotiable for political stability and social
well-being.
It is the absence that is
problematic and it is the abuse of the relevant lacuna that makes for and
exacerbates inter-communal tension.
In these days of ‘reconciliation’ we see some
disturbing trends. First, there is the
fascination with the blame game. Thrown
in the totally out of proportion and scandalously selective efforts to pick and
choose which parties to name, shame, incarcerate and more, yields not
reconciliation but further entrenchment of antipathies. Then there is, again in the name of
reconciliation, a tendency to sweep under the carpet various chauvinistic moves
by extreme elements in particular communities, either by deliberate squashing
of news (censorship by authorities plus self-censorship by well-meaning media
personnel) or downright spin. ‘Wilpattu’
comes to mind and more recently, ‘Madawala’.
So we have ‘reconciliation’ now? No.
What we have is one kind of extremism ‘untouched’ [මුස්ලිම්
අන්තවාදය
නොසැලී
පෙරට -- Muslim extremism (and even fundamentalism)
ever forward undeterred] and another kind [let’s say ‘Sinhala Extremism’] going
underground. This is the argument that
anti-Sinhala, anti-Buddhist commentators often use when explaining/justifying
Tamil extremism/terrorism, isn’t it? Now
what if some Sinhala extremists wrote to Muslim teachers in schools where the
majority of students are Sinhalese saying ‘leave right now!’? Wouldn’t the same people who rant and rave
against ‘Sinhala Buddhist extremism’ and who are conspicuously silent on
Wilpattu and Madawala call for the මඩුවලිගේ
(maduvaligaya or the stingray
tail)? Wouldn’t the argument be ‘this is
scuttling reconciliation and must be nipped at the bud!’?
What has all this got to do with the notion ‘one
country, one law’ though?
Everything.
In short those who
make the ‘multi-ethnic, multi-religious’ claim must also endorse the notion of equality
before the law. If you have different
rules for different people, you don’t get ‘equality’ do you?
Identity assertion in culture-specific ways
is all fine and indeed should be encouraged and celebrated. No one says ‘don’t fast on Fridays’ or ‘don’t
observe sil on Poya). What is pertinent is
the classic limitation of freedom: ends where the other person’s nose
begins. That limiting point has to be
agreed upon and scripted into the rule book.
This is why countries have both the freedom of association and also an
overarching corpus of laws. You can have
you club and club rules but these never supersede state and the law.
In other words we cannot have reconciliation that
means anything if we have different systems of law for different
communities. If Thesavalamai Law is
accepted, as is Sharia (or some diluted form of it) and also Kandyan law,
what’s to stop any random gathering of people (say, undergraduates who justify
ragging by calling it ‘subculture’) demanding that they be governed only by
rules they make for themselves? They can
all say ‘these are customs’ so let us be protected by the premises on which
customary laws have been enacted.
A few years ago, C.V. Vigneswaran (then Justice),
delivering the inaugural Kanthiah Sivanantham Memorial Oration vociferously
defended the Thesawalamai law and even argued, following Dr H.W. Thambiah that
it protects non-Tamils who purchase property in the Northern Province. If such laws help strengthen
community-integrity and if community-integrity is held sacrosanct by the
champions of multi-ethnic-multi-religious in the reconciliation mafia (shall we
call it?), then a case could be made for the entire country to be covered by
the Thesawalamai law with respect to preemption in property acquisition. Similarly, we can theoretically envisage a
country that is governed by Sharia. That
however, should come from agreement obtained through available democratic
means.
Of course the argument to defer to laws based on
cultural specificity, the much-celebrated customary laws, will not be wished
away. However there is celebration of
specificity and there is the abuse of specificity, for example treating it as a
refuge or an alibi to get away with much mischief. Being multi-ethnic and multi-religious does
not mean we live in tightly contained ethnic or religious enclaves. We don’t, period. We live in a capitalist system. It’s all about ‘free markets’ officially
(only some can both demand and supply and therefore have an undisputed
comparative edge when it comes to determining price, for instance). Identity-barriers are unceremoniously pushed
aside by the operations of markets.
If inter-community harmony is what is desired then
most certainly sensitivity to what’s held sacrosanct by each community is
important. On the other hand, you cannot
demand sensitivity in the name of reconciliation and that hide behind
sensitivity when you go around chopping other people’s noses so you can more
room to throw your arms around more 'freely'.
If, for
example, fundamental rights pertaining to the notion of equality are
contradicted by the ‘customary laws’ of a particular community, what do you
do? Do you say ‘let’s ignore it because
we want to affirm religious and ethnic cultural specificity’? Are you saying ‘equal rights for people of
all communities is fine, but equal right for women vis-à-vis men takes us to
no-no territory’?
These are no doubt sensitive issues. They need to be debated and not shoved into
footnote or, worse, ignored. Right now
are in Ignorance Land. That’s a convenience.
It doesn’t yield reconciliation but produces and exacerbates antipathy
and downright idiocy.
In the end if it is all about forging a common
national identity (‘common’, remember the word and say it again and again,
‘common, common, common’) then we have to revisit specificity and difference on
all counts and obtain a commonality for the overall ‘common’ rule book: The
Law. If we are too embarrassed or
nervous or downright wimpy about it, then let’s drop this whole multi-ethnic,
multi-religious circus. We either do
that or we become serious about it. Otherwise
we are playing lowest-common-denominator politics and that’s hardly celebratory
when you consider what’s being talked about is national integration,
reconciliation, peace and wellbeing for everyone now and forevermore!
Malinda
Seneviratne is a freelance writer. Email: malindasenevi@gmail.com.
Twitter: malindasene. This article was first published in the Daily Mirror (June 2, 2016).
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