Why must we never ever flag the issue?
View(s):The national flag and the national anthem have been more than a little in the news, of late.
First, there was the issue of the chief executive’s purported granting of permission for the national anthem to be sung in any national language – a storm in a tea cup already full of arsenic. That, as it turned out, was much ado about nothing. Or more precisely a misunderstanding or misreporting of the president’s motives and intention. And, thankfully, in the end, good sense prevailed. So now, dears, you might feel free enough to sing the national anthem in any of the national languages or all of the national languages or none of the national languages. As, if, and when the occasion demands – or doesn’t. Well, maybe not the last of these. As long as you don’t rouse up racist, chauvinistic, or nationalistic sentiments while doing so – or not. So there! (We don’t want to give rabble-rousing retards more column centimetres than this on that… so let’s allow that old hat to drop… shall we?)
Then, there was that kerfuffle week before last when a retarded bunch of rabble-rousers – do you doubt it? – stormed the gates of the Bastille. Or more prosaically the gates of the CIABOC a.k.a. the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption. As if their actions weren’t suspect enough, the distorted flags they brandished on the occasion added insult to injury. The rectangular stripes in orange and green, representing the two major minorities of the country, were singularly and significantly missing. And in the ensuing mêlée over accusations and allegations, countered by reasons and excuses and a rare apology, it was felt in some quarters that a song and dance had been made about nothing. But from other perspectives, feathers had been ruffled and feelings hurt. So much so that the authorities were quick to take up cudgels on behalf of the offended minority parties and their champions, if only at the behest of the powers that be, even to the extent of an official investigation into how these flags came to be thus denigrated and perversely displayed.
And now, here is your friendly innocent columnist adding coconut oil to post Mayday-waters. Why, I want to know, does a certain penta-coloured flag fly high above anything else at Independence Square? What, I would like to ask, is the rationale for the religious emblem of the majority philosophy dominating the one public place that all Sri Lankans – irrespective of everything so easily divides us – can claim as a piece of their own, a part of the whole, as far as national symbols go?
Now don’t read me wrong, fellow patriots and facile protestors against this gratuitous ‘treason’! I have no intention of fomenting communal riots or stirring up seditious feelings or any of that sort of rot. Why, heavens to hinayana! We have enough of that kind of thing slouching towards parliament and other places of revolt or revolution to be born… no, no. It is simply a genuine concern that what appear to be chauvinistic or majoritarian acts be put into perspective. This is no idle feline-killing curiosity, but an attempt to ask the question that a few other gadflies have had the gumption to ask already.
Why, in a nation where the masses comprise members of four major world faiths, does the flag of one community – one that is a majority, and one that embraces a religious philosophy – occupy pride of place in a square ostensibly erected to commemorate the equality before the world of all our native islanders? Should there be icons and emblems of other faiths in attendance at so public a memorial of liberty, independence, freedom, emancipation? Does the state have a good enough reason to let the status quo ensue and continue, other than that it is constitutionally obligated to safeguard the freedom and flourishing of this philosophical faith? Every citizen has the right to practise his or her religion in private; so why promote and promulgate one above all others in such a public way? Can successive governments justify or rationalise the fly-in-one’s-face pre-eminence of this object of evidently deep and meaningful veneration by invoking the pragmatic metier of “protecting majority interests” a.k.a. securing potentially election-winning voter bases?
Well, dears, the truth about this, pure and simple (although your old uncle who is crafting this piece knows only too well that with religion and politics, things are rarely pure and never simple) is quite interesting. Here it is, in a nutshell. Read it and weep… and also think:
Relief to know that this isn’t a blatant display of majoritarian chauvinism, as some finger pointers have been alleging for half a decade or so. Joy to realise that far from a flowering demand for something for Sinhala-Buddhism, it is in the nature of a gift from the fruit of Buddhist Theosophy. It is precisely what its plaque says it is: a public memento to commemorate the 125th anniversary of the Buddhist flag, proposed and erected at the behest of the Buddhist Theosophical Society of Sri Lanka, on Vesak in 2010.
Five years later, as the Vesak moon rose over Independence Square last weekend, I strolled along this most Sri Lankan of places – in principle, if not practice – and let the tranquillity of non-attachment bathe me in its gleams. The naive observer in me took in the moonlit scene in serene acceptance: a Buddhist flag fluttering above a Buddhist country. The pragmatist nodded in agreement that the arrangement was a necessary one, an unfurling of the high mizzen yardarm of majority rights to soothe the main masses of persons in our country. The strategist wondered whether there was any significance in the ratio of religious flags to republican flags (1:13) in the square, and the relative meaningfulness of 13 small flags competing for attention with a gargantuan singular. The subversive yearned for similar iconic representation for the other three major faiths – an idea which was subverted by the cynical homunculus in my own mind… no, let the square of the republic be free of religion!
Together with the late Deshabimanya Lakshman Kadirgamar – a Manipay-rooted, Hindu-born product of an Anglican alma mater: Trinity College, Kandy – I relish the joy, love, peace, and sense of transcendence that pervades virtually all places in Sri Lanka at Vesak. So much so that I still salute his stalwart efforts to have the UN adopt our thrice-blessed event as an official UN holiday. Even so, the secularist in me yearns for a more sterling approach to separating church from state; religious icons from republican emblems; private or personal philosophies from the spirit of the public square. Let us keep each other’s faiths as well as flaws and failings in mind as we mark the triad of realities that led to a liberation of an entirely different nature. Vesak, that all your celebrants and commemorators were as detached and democratic as the Enlightened One!