Why are you burning their shops?' I asked the woman in the mob.
She replied, 'Don't you know? Last night 13 of our boys were killed in the north.'
'Were those soldiers killed by these Tamils here in Colombo?' I asked.
She shot back, 'Are you a Sinhalese or a Tamil?'
I said, 'I am a Sri Lankan.'
In so responding, I was doing more than dissociating myself from the frenzied actions of the mob. I was expressing my belief that Sri Lanka's future as a united country is bleak unless its Sinhalese, Tamil and Muslim peoples can transcend their ethnic identities and find a common identity as Sri Lankans.
But there was a hollowness also in what I said. For while I asserted my Sri Lankan identity to the mob, I was aware that I was a Sinhalese, and proud to belong to the island republic. I had lived for many years in the United States as a student without ever having felt a sense of belonging. I belonged to Sri Lanka, the pearl-shaped island in the Indian Ocean. But young Tamil guerrillas with the backing of a foreign power had brought my country to the point of division. So while my rational mind said, 'I am a Sri Lankan and must not make any distinction between its peoples', my emotions argued otherwise.
How did the inhabitants of Sri Lanka, calling themselves Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims, come to believe that 'our people' did not comprise all of the people living on the island? How was it that compassion and decency could be withheld so callously from those who did not 'belong'? History furnishes just a clue.
On his deathbed, the Sinhalese believe, the Buddha bestowed upon the Lion (Sinha) race the duty of preserving his teaching upon their island. Thus, in terms of this myth, every non-Sinhalese in Sri Lanka is an outsider.
Especially so are the Tamils who, living in large numbers in South India, invaded and settled down on the island as far back as Sri Lankan history goes.
But the Tamil grievance goes further. Having emerged relatively better off than the Sinhalese from four centuries of oppressive colonial rule, they suddenly found themselves to be a politically impotent minority facing, in parliament, an ethnic majority who sought to right historical wrongs. From the viewpoint of the victim this constitutes discrimination. Within three decades of independence, parliamentary protest had escalated to a violent protest which speedily brutalized and internationalized itself.
And so we Sinhalese and Tamils have fought each other and hated each other. We did not have the wisdom to see in our own ethnic division the divisiveness of the caste system in India against which the Buddha launched his great struggle: 'Not by birth does one become a brahmin or untouchable but by conduct. ' If only we had the courage to acknowledge the parallels and stress our common humanity! We would be so much richer, spiritually and materially. No one likes to admit to racism and other universally condemned evils.
Governments and individuals rationalize and try to find non-racist explanations for the positions they take. Nor do we like it when others point out our failings to us. Being honest requires courage and encouragement, because honesty can leave us vulnerable. But in Panchgani, India, the gentle spirit of honesty and encouragement that permeated a Moral Re-Armament conference overcame my defences and enabled me to turn the searchlight inwards. And there I spoke aloud for the first time about my secret conflict.
Since that day, the burden of pretence has left me and I am so much stronger. And that day also I made several new friends, but one especially a Tamil from South India who had developed a deep anger against the Sinhalese. A month later I was his guest in his native state of Tamil Nadu, which is feared and hated by the Sinhalese as the launching-pad of Tamil invasions of their island. The hospitality I received amazed me and filled me with the hope of a new future different from the past.
As human beings, seemingly separate, alone and afraid, we need desperately to belong. But we usually think that belonging to some group (whether family or nation) must mean excluding others. Need this be so?
Perhaps it is so in a material world. If I were to support not only my own family but also other families with my salary, then my family would have less to live on. Material things, when given away, become less, not more. However such is not the case with spiritual things. Love, friendship and ideas when given away are strengthened all around and return multiplied.
And 'belonging' is a state of mind. So why should I limit my sense of belonging to Sri Lanka (or more specifically the Sinhalese) and not belong to the Tamils or to the United States where I have spent most of my adult years? Oh yes, I can list a catalogue of reasons why I belong to one people and not to another, but satisfaction eludes me. Perhaps it is because I have more than just a sense that we 'live and move and have our being' in a spiritual universe and not simply a material one, that human beings are not discrete entities separated from one another, and that God is the family to which we all belong.
by JEHAN PERERA, Associate Director for Development Education at the Sarvodaya Shramadana movement, Colombo.
