Editorial

Three religious ceremonies and a traditional new year roll out within a few weeks of each other, peacefully and joyfully, despite detractors who say this island nation is engulfed in racial and religious disharmony. Only the negative aspects of inter-communal and inter-religious differences from time to time hit the headlines and are reported to human rights councils, not the general goodwill that exists among communities nor the many efforts at bridge building where there have been tensions.

So many countries around the world face racial and religious tensions, prejudices and intolerance. In the United States, it’s the Blacks, Hispanics and Asians versus the ‘red-necks’. Europe is battling with Islamophobia and the influx of refugees from around the world where they themselves have started wars. Even in India, the Hindutva agenda has over a hundred million Muslims uneasy.

In the midst of this trend, some recognise the changing world. In the United Kingdom, King Charles III has asked that religious leaders from non-Christian faiths be invited for his coronation next month — what is essentially a Christian religious ceremony that includes the anointing with holy oil, which is an integral part of such an age-old ceremony, formally inducting a new British monarch. However, that sacred ceremony within the bigger ceremony will not be televised. Masters at pomp and pageantry, it’s a fine balancing act of keeping to Christian traditions and facing the modern world.

The new King’s invitation to inter-faith leaders (which includes Sri Lanka’s Head Monk at the London Buddhist Vihara) is said to have ruffled a few orthodox feathers, but the Archbishop of Canterbury has denied there is any tension between Buckingham Palace and the Church of England over the presence of other religious leaders saying the UK has become “infinitely more diverse” since the 1953 coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. In majority Hindu India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi just last week launched an international Buddhist conference saying India has given the world Buddha not yuddha (war). In the United Arab Emirates, a melting pot of races and religions, there is even a Minister for Tolerance.

Despite much of this public posturing, undercurrents continue. Take the case of a trouble-maker Tamil Nadu legislator who went to the Indian Parliament and complained that the Sri Lanka Navy has erected a Buddhist temple (it was a shrine room for the naval detachment) in Kachchativu and called for the Indian Government to take over the islet forgetting that the Buddha was India’s greatest son, after all.

Next week, Buddhists around the world celebrate Vesak 2567. Many countries that demand Sri Lanka to be secular (when it already is) do not even recognise the occasion even though there are an estimated 400 million Buddhists around the world and many more that follow the Buddha’s teachings. Moreover, Buddhism is recognised by the United Nations as a world religion. Vesak celebrations in Sri Lanka have been muted during the past few years due to COVID-19, power cuts, food shortages and bad weather. A revival of festivities is on the cards.

Unfortunately, the involvement of some Buddhist monks in mundane political affairs sticks out like a sore thumb. The election of a monk recently as chairman of a political party exposes the desperation of the party to exploit religion for political purposes. Monks in Parliament and student monks mouthing political slogans and jumping over police barricades with their robes in disarray do no favours to the optics for the religion, nor justice to Sri Lanka priding itself as being the repository of the Buddha’s teachings in their pristine form.

Towards a meaningful labour day

International Workers Day, or May Day, falls tomorrow with the Government and some workers’ unions in a face-off over strike action that threatens to cripple the nation’s economic well-being.

Sri Lanka’s labour movement has long been hijacked by political parties, as has almost every field of human activity. Almost all major political parties have their own trade union wing and those that are strictly of the workers, by the workers, for the workers, like the Ceylon Mercantile Union (CMU) have lost their place. The mode of collective bargaining and settlement of employment disputes through negotiation which was the hallmark of trade union action of yesteryear has given way to unions that have forgotten that fine art and lack the skill and guile needed for it. Getting on to the road for strike action, which is supposed to be the last resort, has often become the first resort to win demands.

The demand by political parties and alliances to stage May Day rallies tomorrow displays the politicisation of the worker movement and is an exercise in flexing party muscle and showcasing their mass support and less to do with worker rights. The very banner of the working class — “workers of the world unite” — has been discarded for political agendas splitting the working class movement along party lines rather than standing as a common front.

A vast majority of members of professional unions like the teachers’ unions or the medical officers’ union (GMOA) are silent card-carrying lambs allowing themselves to be led by a vociferous few office-bearers. Issues like pay increases are popular camouflage to bait the general membership to toe the line. A classic example is the case of the GMOA’s then leadership which while demanding better salaries opposed private medical universities and went on a crusade to promote the ban on chemical fertiliser when scientists pleaded that the move would be suicidal to agriculture, as it turned out to be.

The clash of views between the Government and some trade unions still agitating, is in essence, the Government wanting to reset the collapsed economy and portray Sri Lanka as one where there is political stability for crucial foreign investments while the unions marching to a different drum. The larger issue to come, i.e. privatisation of State-Owned Enterprises, which may see workers losing their jobs, is an issue for the future.

May Day in Sri Lanka is not complete without a thought for the workers abroad toiling far from home and sending back their hard-earned pay packet so that those living at home can have a better life, and the country can pay for its import bills. To just spare a thought maybe not enough. The Government must invest more in them and their welfare in faraway, sometimes inhospitable places, and reward them in every which way it can.