Re Dr Mahes Laduwahetty’s comment (The Island of January 3) on my article in The Island of December 30, I must make some further clarifications. He refers to me as having the conviction that Sinhalese majoritarianism would never allow a minority member to be elected President. I have no such conviction. In the concluding paragraphs of my article Obama, Ideology, Racism (The Island of November 27), I pointed out that as the Sri Lankan state has valorized inequality and hierarchy, not equality, an Obama transcending the race divide is unthinkable here. That is the situation at present, but not for eternity. I asked, "Can this situation change," and replied "Of course it can …", after which I proceeded to give my reasons in the three concluding paragraphs.

I did not deal with "the entire race/ language/ caste equations" in India and Sri Lanka. My argument was that the political culture of India is more compatible than that of Sri Lanka with the political ideology of the Enlightenment, with its cardinal values of liberty, equality, and fraternity. That must have seemed an unlikely story to many Sri Lankans who are mindful of the horrendous injustices to which the Dalit untouchables are subjected in India. In my article India and the Enlightenment Ideology in the Island of December 15, I made clarifications about the Indian caste system emphasizing among other things the caste mobility that had prevailed in all periods of Indian history, unlike in traditional Sri Lanka, a factor making for compatibility with the Enlightenment ideology.

I believe – and so does a Sinhalese friend of mine from an underprivileged caste – that Dr ML is mistaken in thinking that caste is a non-issue politically among the Sinhalese today. In electing Premadasa President the Sinhalese certainly came a long way from the ‘thirties when the Battle of the Banian was waged, asserting the right of some underprivileged castes to cover their torsos, and the first half of the ‘sixties when C.P. de Silva couldn’t make it to the Premiership because he was a member of the Salagama caste. However, I and some others as well suspect that there were some special factors making Premadasa acceptable to the UNP elite as Presidential candidate at that time. Not the least important was the fact that his was a minuscule caste, which meant that he could not have established an enduring power base for his caste. The KSD castes, on the other hand, are not minuscule, and that is the main reason why I suspect that one of their members will not be readily acceptable to the dominant groups in our two major parties as Presidential candidate. This situation can change, as I acknowledged at the conclusion of my earlier reply to Dr ML (The Island of December 30).

The most important point made by Dr ML is that "Sinhala ethnicity/race consciousness has been stoked and kept alive these many decades by the ethnicity/race consciousness of the minorities…" It seems to be an a historical view that fails to take into account Sinhalese responsibility for exacerbated ethnicity/race consciousness in Sri Lanka. The Sinhalese have failed to come up with a national party that could be accepted unequivocally by the minorities as an authentic national party, after the manner of the Indian National Congress. Why? The answer is grotesque and persistent discrimination against the minorities. For over three decades after Independence the SL Muslim consensus was that our Tamils had been tragically mistaken in going in for Tamil ethnic parties. But finally the Muslims also came up with their ethnic party, the SLMC, which quickly became a significant factor in our national politics.

Perhaps we should view this problem in an international perspective. The world seems to be going through a process of retribalisation. Obama is reported to have said that the major problem of this century will be the problem of the Other. Eric Hobsbawm, a Marxist and an internationalist almost from the cradle, wrote some time ago that the only politics available today is the politics of identity, meaning a politics in which group interests predominate over everything else. The crucial question then becomes whether or not it is possible to have a politics of identity that at the same time transcends group interests. I believe that it is possible. I and some Muslim friends have been working for about a year towards the establishment of a Muslim website with that transcendence as the guiding idea.