We have lived side by side for so long but never thought to sit down and chat honestly and openly. Let me 1st acknowledge and get this out of the way. You belong to a proud and ancient nation. You deserve an incredible amount of credit for holding out on your own in this tiny island. Doing a great job of preserving and maintaining your heritage as you should. And you have every right to maintain a Sinhala Buddhist state if you so choose. I genuinely mean that.
But, I do have a very big problem when you continue to urge your state to violently occupy my Tamil nation that lies to the north and east of yours.
I am sure both of our ancestors were savages. They lived in a constantly feudalistic society. They had kings ruling over them. At the whim and fancy of these kings they made wars. They stole each other’s land. And at other times, they married across to prevent wars.
Then the colonialists came. Not surprisingly they also had kings and queens. They were not interested in our petty differences. They decided to stay and steal everything our lands had to offer. Your kings fought back and so did mine. But to no avail. Both of our ancestors grudgingly tolerated the colonialists: one after the other.
At the 1st sign that the last colonialist was going to leave, our ancestors saw each other as the “other”. Decided to revert to same old savage ways. It first started out in subtle and subdued ways. The colonialist handed the whole island to your ancestors, instead of giving both of our ancestors their own rule as it was when they 1st took it over.
My ancestors were forced to trade colonialist yet again.
This time there were no kings. We did have educated folks, behaving as if they were the kings. Unlike our neighbor, India, our ancestors did not pay a heavy price for their independence. We rode India’s coattails to freedom. There was little appreciation for the responsibility that came with governing. While Indians understood their diversity made them better, your ancestors were busy trying to define everyone as one. The Burmese understood diversity and signed the Panglong agreement. Under various pretenses, your ancestors kept usurping and centralizing the state power. Then, started dispensing that state power in such a way to make their mono ethnic hold permanent: To work in your favor. All through this, many of you remained silent. This new state had no regard for such niceties as consent of all people to be governed. No desire for an accommodative and shared political space that recognized our distinctiveness. It is not that it did not include the diversity in its character, it purposefully excluded it. When my recent ancestors opposed it, the state violently asserted and defined itself as Sinhala Buddhist. We were back to the old savage ways in full throttle. This brings us to the inherently violent nature of your state: It is your state because it only represents you as it claims and behaves so.
Ever since coming into existence, your state has consistently and overwhelmingly relied on violence. Even your people were not spared its wrath. You kept coming up with excuses about “besieged” people acting out irrationally: a majority with a minority complex. Nothing actually changed. There were not even signs of change. 80’s came. 90’s came. New century came. Violence escalated. Then 2009 came. In an ultimate display of its propensity for violence, your state committed untold atrocities on my people. I know you refuse to believe this. You want to believe there is some conspiracy to make you look bad. We are back to scoring points over each other: who started it and who killed more. Your side or my side.
With the recent UN resolution, besieged irrationality theories will make the rounds again. You will justify not doing what is right by point out what you perceive to be wrong. You will avoid talking about restructuring the violent state. You won't insist that State be accountable to every people. Not just your people. We will hear that the problem lies with the Tamils, the Muslims, the “others”. Your continued silence gives consent to this perpetually violent state.
My people ran out of nonviolence in the face of state violence. My people lost out to greater violence when resisted violently. We now are in a new phase. Many of my people are outside the reach of your violent state. Your state’s reliance in violence is no use against them. Your state need to learn a new skill and need to learn it soon. But, this time break your silence and ask it to learn the skill of genuine dialoging.
