‘Moderate’ is a convenient garb for the pernicious ~ Malinda Words

In the year 2019, sometime in the month of May a chance investigation threw up a name: Shanthilal Silva. Dr Silva, attached to the Peradeniya Teaching Hospital. Although not an Obstetrician and Gynecologist, he was known to be one because he had performed caesarian sections and delivered babies. The name was thrown up, but no one picked it up.

Now this Dr Silva, capitalizing on lax oversight at the hospital and of course able to cash cheques on account of superiors who got him to ‘cover’ when they went to earn a buck or two doing private practice, enjoyed his work. He liked to cut up expecting mothers. Mothers and of course the fathers of the children they delivered were extremely grateful to Dr Silva. After all, he ensured they could take healthy infants home.

At one point something hit the fan. The ‘good’ doctor apparently had some skeletons in his cupboard which spilled out. Women ‘treated’ by Dr Silva suddenly remembered. Some claimed that they didn’t have babies after this doctor performed Caesarian Sections on them. Did he fiddle with their tubes, they asked themselves and others. Was he some kind of communalist (because all these people who claimed victimization happened to belong to some other community), they asked themselves and others.

Immediately the big-name watchdog nations on human rights (never mind their sorry track record on this subject) got the wind up. They issue statements (politely) demanding that the Sri Lankan government provide speedy justice and reparation to the victims of this unfolding tragedy. Minister Mangala Samaraweera issues a 10 page statement against enemies of peaceful coexistence. He gaily indulges in essentialist terminology vilifying all Sinhalese and all Buddhists, especially the bhikkus. The US Ambassador immediately visits ‘victims’. There are howls of horror from ‘Civil Society’ especially women’s rights outfits. Demonstrations are held in Colombo by Born Against Democrats, Candlelight Ladies and Funded Voices at Lipton’s Circus. The UNHRC boss powwows with representatives of big-name nations to draft yet another resolution against Sri Lanka which Mangala and others of his ilk are itching to champion and endorse.

Alright. None of the above happened. And neither were such revelations preceded by the bombing of churches and hotels by a group claiming to be the purest and only true adherents to the doctrine of the Buddha.

We don’t have to listen to the not-so-veiled threats of ex Governor of the Eastern Province, Mahamood Hizbullah to understand that there is a real and abiding danger of a kind of terrorism this country did not know before Easter Sunday. And yet, the noises made in English, in and out of the media (mainstream and social) are almost exclusively directed at the majority community, the Sinhala Buddhists.

We know what happened. A large number of Sinhala women (close to 800) who complained about Dr Shafi (who is not, contrary to reports, a gynecologist and obstetrician) have been vilified. People have asked why only some 60 odd of them have agreed to submit themselves to examination, never mind that concern is one thing and anxieties about probes and related publicity are two different things. Pregnancy, childbirth and the ability to deliver are extremely personal matters which are surprisingly ignored in the relevant discourse.

An academic, attached to an English Department in a state university no less, asks ‘where did all these women turn up from?’

And we know what didn’t happen. We haven’t had a single Muslim woman ‘treated’ by Dr Shafi coming forward to say ‘I too was unable to conceive following the C-Section done by him’. Note that this doctor operated (!) in areas where there is a sizable Muslim population.

We know what is unlikely to happen too. Many have pooh-poohed allegations against Dr Shafi. Many of this ‘many’ were reluctant to pooh-pooh allegations against the Sri Lankan security forces during the last stages of operations against the LTTE. Innocent until proven guilty is a selectively applicable thing, apparently. Anyway, if they are so convinced, could they do the following: if they are of child-bearing age and inclination or have wives, daughters and friends who are, would they, by way of putting money where their mouths are, name themselves and say ‘Dr Shafi is my first choice medical practitioner in this regard!’?

Today we have many lecturers on coexistence, harmony, reconciliation, peace and such things, just as there were when the LTTE played ‘Poor relation of the ISIS’. Terrorists have no religion, we are told. Don’t conflate Muslims with the Jihaadists, we are told. Don’t alienate Muslims. Don’t isolate them. We are told.

I am in agreement with all of the above, in general. Isolation and alienation would, as argued, most certainly play into the hands of the extremists. There’s no doubt that we have to deal with the terrorists as they ought to be dealt with, from processes and structures that feed ideology and facilitate recruitment to detecting and dismantling operations. With respect to ‘processes’ anything that isolates and alienates the relevant community will be an obstacle. Perhaps the error is in exaggerating the possibility of the latter and pretending that isolation and alienation can only be inflicted and not chosen. In any event (and this is a generous reading), we have seen a lot of this exaggeration which has in fact snowballed into two things: a) a crass generalization and vilification of the majority community, and b) scandalous silence on all other factors including the threat at hand and the relevant complicities of the Hizbullahs of the Muslim community, apart from the odd and token reference.

It is a script that we’ve read before. It is a film we saw during the nineties and the early part of this century. And those who wrote and read and play it out call themselves or would have us believe they are ‘moderates’.

I firmly believe that there are some who are in fact ‘moderate’. Vilification of an entire community, in this case the Sinhala Buddhists, is probably not THEIR intention. Neither would they advocate the alienation and isolation that could result and indeed seems to be the outcome preference of their fellow travelers. In fact I believe the majority of the moderates are, well, moderate. I am not talking about them but those moderates who give a bad name to moderation.

What’s their beef, though? Who are they, though? Among them are people who are neither Sinhalese nor Buddhists. Among them are people who for whatever reason believe and worry that the ‘Sinhala Buddhist community’ is the preserve of those opposed to the current government led by the United National Party. In other words, they are politically inclined to support or are affiliated with that party. Among them are people who talk of a multi-ethnic, multi-religious Sri Lanka while carefully avoiding numbers and percentages and of course brushing aside history and heritage. They talk about a Sri Lankan identity in public, but fervently affirm their ethnic or religious identities in private. Many are wont to believe (although they won’t say it) that Sri Lanka is Colombo and vice versa, and assume (without saying it) that the affairs of the country should be managed by the English-speaking, Anglicized and relatively wealthy class.

Many of them consciously or unconsciously are ashamed of their own skin and DNA traces, talk about how great things were under the Europeans (never mind ethnic-cleansing, genocide, extraction of resources and the fact that the ‘great works’ were funded by taxing the people and through their underpaid labor), and find the vilification of Sinhala Buddhists a means to self-isolation and self-alienation that makes them ladies and gentlemen. They would shop, to put it a bit crudely, in the high end department stores like Odel (for instance) but would not be caught dead at Uptown Kandy in case (to use oft used derogatory epithets) ‘gode’ or yako’ rubs off on them. There are also among them people who do not belong to this class, people who are Sinhalese and Buddhists, who can’t afford high-end consumerism but want to be ‘posh’ and therefore do the costless thing of mimicking the ‘posh’, namely taking up the vilifying chant. They would be sneered at by the ‘Real Deal’ in private, but they won’t know it.

They rant and rave against isolation and alienation, but in fact isolate and alienate. Caricature is their watchword. And this is why those like Rev Gnanasara and outfits like the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) are ‘heaven-sent’ to them. Such individuals and outfits, however rejected they may be by Buddhists, are used as proxies for that community. No caveats. No specifics. Totalizing, instead. Generalizing instead. Caricatured. And that’s ‘moderation’ and ‘moderates’ for you, ladies and gentlemen. Part of the problem. Sri Lanka must rise up, but to do that Sri Lanka must wise-up to these fake-moderates for they endanger everyone. That’s fundamental.

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