Of mosques and mice in masques
View(s):Last Sunday, we wrote that the events of Weliveriya in the week past would soon be forgotten. We were right, but for another reason. We essayed the suspicion that the tendency of Sri Lankans to be (what we like to call) “resilient” – adaptable, untouched, forgetful – would help us all to gloss over the blood red sand of Rathupaswela. The egregious attack on the mosque in Grandpass this week speeded up the process of the greater mass of our populace becoming blissfully oblivious at best or apathetic at least.
Again, dark forces among the powers that be (who else can make it happen with such studied and insolent impunity?) – or the powers that want to be (who else may have a hidden, perverse, diabolical vested interest in the recent happenings?) – surprised us ordinary citizens with their ability to razzle-dazzle. Drama, this theatrical high-jinks by day or night: riots, mob attacks, panic stations, accusations and counteraccusations, conspiracy theories, and those hoary clichés like ‘traitors’ and ‘international investigations’ and ‘death of democracy’ have become standard jargon in the sociopolitical sphere of Sri Lanka today.
But lest this sound like a politically motivated piece or some foolishly ambitious attempt to analyze the un-analyze-able, let us hasten to assure you it is not. More ink than is necessary has been spilled in trying to get to the bottom of the rotten-apple barrel, to out the lurking big cat among the pigeons. We all have our favourite villains, those usual suspects, and myriad pet theories about the true state of affairs in our island-nation and the rationale, rhyme, and reason thereof. These self-indulgent pastimes of a petty half-hour hurt us all more than they help… helping as a sort of defence mechanism or safety valve for a polity still recovering from the physical as well as psychological wounds of protracted terror and war; but hurting our collective ability to rise from the ashes of our dead selves into a happy, healthy, humane, productive society once again.
Our intention in these brief weekend thoughts is not so much to comfort the disturbed, but to disturb the comfortable. To challenge average citizens not to abdicate their rights; to teach them alternative ways to express their reservations; to socialize the dwindling few into a realistic, reasonable, and responsible way of engaging in dissent. If this exercise can be safe, sound, and strategic enough to capture and convert the dormant imagination of the unreached masses of middle class citizens who would be protesting if they knew why, how, when, where, and which/whose, the interruption to their repose of this midnight hour of our nation would not be in vain. Only time will tell.
The attack last Saturday
In the meantime, let us leave you with a triad of principles – tempered by sundry practical applications – in response to the emerging trends of this day and age. We do not expect a dreaded knock on the door at an unguarded hour, a summons to explain, or mysterious happenings to our instruments of communication. For these are still very much the privileges of free citizens in a civilized country that stands on its future image as much as its present reputation and past reality as one of the oldest democracies in the region.
Worldview underlies words and works. When armies open fire indiscriminately, we blame fallible men. When mosques are stoned, we point to movements working under cover of dark and secrecy. When dissenters, opposition, threats are systematically silenced, we admit the power of a ruthless machine; though we can hardly bring ourselves to admire it. When political leaders emerge from fiascos and imbroglios smelling of frangipani, we recognize that a monument is in the making. But underneath the thin veneer of sapience and sophistication, there is the bedrock of a man or a few unusual men with a similar mindset. The key to unlocking the men, movements, machines, and monuments in our way today – in the way of peace with justice – is to corner, challenge, critique, and question mindsets. Including our own.
Write a letter to the editor – or better still, the executive. Stand on the street corner. Rally at the Fort Railway Station like you did this week. Even if – and especially if – it will expose the truth about tactics like live ammo being used on unarmed crowds being the visible manifestation of thinking minds. Something dark this way comes. We need to shed more light on it. So question, question, question: the motivations and the machinations of strategic thinkers in hidden places.
Ideas outlive ideologies. History teaches us this lesson over and again. Luddites are dead and gnashing their teeth in the outer darkness, but the light bulb lives on. Communism is interred with the bones of socialists once grown fat on the labour and the lostness of their fellow human beings, while the sharing of property for the common good is as old as Christianity – or even older – and will survive Capitalism’s challenges. When surge after surge of nationalism, ultra-nationalism, and chauvinistic jingoistic militaristic patriotism has subsided, the subtle yet simple notions of one nation, inviolable unity based on love not law, Sri Lanka as a peaceful society un-policed by preening demagogues and petty tyrants, will still prevail.
Dissent expands – not contracts – democratic space. It really is a great pity – and a grand irony at that – that more despots and dictators have not stumbled upon this truth. If they had, the world would have been spared the likes of Tiananmen and Tahrir Squares.
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