3rd October 1999

Bitten by that 2000 bug

Most people have been bitten by the millennium bug. Come what may, they are hell-bent on welcoming January 2000, what they believe is the next millennium.

Let's face it. A millennium is a thousand and a millennium year is a thousand years. The year 2000 is the end of the second millennium and also the end of a century. The beginning of the third millennium, therefore, commences with the dawn of the year 2100.

C. Gaffoor
Wattala

Have there been more worms?

This refers to the news item, 'Female eye worm startles surgeon' (The Sunday Times, September 12) which states that it is the first time such a worm was found in a human eye. This may be incorrect, since there appear to have been other instances according to medical sources. Perhaps the Kandy General Hospital's eye unit might be able to give more information on this.

In the most recent instance, eye surgeons in Kandy removed a three-inch worm from the left eye of a retired teacher on August 17. A fortnight before surgery, the patient had complained of severe pain and swelling in the right eye. It is presumed the worm had been there first and then migrated to the left eye.

B.G. Wijesinghe.
Kadugannawa.

Doing his best to lead us from darkness

Madura Manage of Ja-Ela (Sunday Times of Sept.19) writes disparagingly about Ven Soma. But the fact remains that Ven Soma has caught the imagination of vast sections of the Buddhist public.

For instance, he has explained the corrupt practices that have taken hold of Buddhist philosophy and how some of these rituals are commercialised for private gain by some incumbent monks, devale nilames and kapuralas. Speaking the truth has invited the wrath of the high and mighty in government circles.

It is foolish of Mr Manage to tell Ven. Soma to point his finger at what Buddhists do in Thailand, Korea and Japan, without first putting one's own house in order!

Freedom of thought and speech is sacred to Buddhism and no death threats (fatwas) are directed at those who publish books critical of Buddhism or use the image of the Lord Buddha for commercial purposes. Mr. Manage is worried about the feeling of "350 million Muslims in the region" due to the sermons of Ven Soma. Should Mr. Manage try to promote Buddhism in any Muslim country, there is one place where he would be welcome, the closest jail in that country.

Sinhala Buddhists lost everything under 500 years of colonial rule. They have lost their sense of identity and patriotism. Sinhala politicians only messed up everything during the last 50 years because of their greed to capture power at any cost. Ven Soma is doing his best, I think, to lead us away from darkness.

J.L.R.De Silva
Kotte

Will we get a better deal in Sinhala?

A few months back "Mudliyar" wrote a number of articles in The Sunday Times on the subject of "Sinhala in Courts". The nub of these articles was that the introduction of the vernacular improved the quality of justice meted out by our courts. This commonly held view needs to be examined dispassionately.

From Mudliyar's own writing, it is apparent that all is not well with our legal system. In fact it is in crisis. The early enthusiasm for all things vernacular has now proved to be an irrational exuberance. With every passing year it is becoming evident that most of our post- independence policies have turned out to be costly mistakes.

There is no denying that a litigant would feel more comfortable when the proceedings of a trial are held in a language comprehensible to him. But feeling comfortable is not the same as receiving substantive justice. Justice in a legal sense is very much dependent on an advanced and progressive legal system and culture. It needed the genius of an evolving liberal culture to create concepts such as a judiciary which is independent from the executive and the idea of a trial by one's peers.

These concepts have today become the cornerstones of our liberty. They are obviously not creations of our cultural experiences. One wonders whether a legal system operating totally in the vernacular would have adopted these ideas in Sri Lanka at all.

It used to be said that in a rape case the evidence of a victim who is said to be of "bad character" is not credible. Bad character in our system runs the gamut from prostitutes working the streets of Colombo to a teenage girl seen sneaking into a cinema for a matinee with a boy friend.

This sexist and myopic legal fiction came under criticism in the late 1970s and soon the judges in developed countries began questioning this approach towards rape victims. But we, since the switch to the vernacular, have been drifting away from the mainstream and continue with our stick- in- the mud attitude towards these victims much to the delight of the rapist. This is just one example of the plight of courts operating in a language with limited integration with international trends. We are slow to change, the last to arrive and are mostly irrelevant.

One of the main reasons for the success of countries like Hong Kong and Singapore is their modern transparent legal system. The wisdom of the leaders of these countries is amply demonstrated by the affluence and the social peace achieved by them.

Do we get a better deal from our courts merely because they operate in the vernacular?

Courts that function in the vernacular do not necessarily equate with substantive Justice. The proceedings of the International Court of Justice may not be understood by a Swahili speaker in Africa. But that does not mean that the International Court of Justice adjudicating on a matter concerning him will necessarily do him an injustice. Equally, a village court operating in the vernacular is not always a fountain of justice.

Modern technology has made the obtaining of contemporaneous translations easy. At the same time new learning methods make it far easier to master a language. Reluctance or inability to master an international language should not be a reason to pose off as an advocate for native languages. Very often we are our own mental gaolers. The price we pay for our bigotry is evident in the state of our nation and legal system.

Another regrettable result of the use of the local languages has been the division of the legal profession on language lines. A Sinhala speaking lawyer will not be able to work in the north and vice versa. Our language zealots were indeed short sighted!

Most of our laws and indeed most laws in this world are European based. This is a reality as much as cars, aeroplanes and computers are part of life today.

These laws have now become universal and have come to be accepted by most countries with legal structures. For convenience and consistency these legal systems are practised in international languages. If we accept the laws but practice them in a vernacular language we can easily end up losing the spirit and thrust of the legal system. To use an analogy which could be easily understood - is there a single cricketer in Sri Lanka who asks the question "how is that" and receives the answer in Sinhala?

P.R.De Silva
Victoria
Australia

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