The Sinhala Hindu New Year is the most widely celebrated traditional festival in Sri Lanka, that embraces almost all its people. (Since ‘Hindu’ in this phrase refers to ‘Tamil’, the recently conspicuous preference in the media for the name ‘Sinhala Tamil New Year’ is an appropriate and welcome development that will symbolize the reinforced national unity following the defeat of separatist terrorism.) The day is usually observed by the Sinhala Buddhists and the Hindu Tamils. In recent times, however, we have begun to see some Christians and Muslims too joining their Buddhist and Hindu compatriots in these celebrations. As it is held across the island it can be described as a true national festival. It is also basically a non-religious feast (non-religious, but not without an incidental religious element). The Buddhists go to their shrines, and the Hindus to their kovils to perform devotional activities during the astrologically determined nonagathe period (the time when the sun moves from Pisces to Aries on the zodiac before beginning the new year), which interval is considered unsuitable for any auspicious engagement. It is also usual for (at least some) Buddhists and Hindus to worship at each other’s temples, especially when these are within easy reach.

In view of these facts, we may safely say that the Sinhala Tamil New Year is the most inclusive national cultural event that brings the vast majority of Sri Lankans together.

On the other hand, the Sinhala Tamil New Year can be said to possess a religious character away from both the Buddhist and Hindu faiths in that it seems to revert to an ancient form of sun worship (that is obsolete today). For this reason the festival is often given the descriptive title ‘Surya mangalya’.

Obviously the Aluth Avurudda (Puththandu in Tamil) originated in an agrarian society which worshipped the sun as the source of life and fruitfulness. The new year dawns in the month of Bak (April) when the sun is directly above the island. There is a temple dedicated to the sun at Koggala in southern Sri Lanka.

In the Sinhalese calendar the month of Bak roughly coincides with April in the Gregorian system. The word ‘bak’ is considered to have derived from the Sanskrit ‘bhagya’ which translates as ‘fortunate’, ‘auspicious’ or ‘blessed’. Since it is the time that the harvest is gathered in, and nature itself is decked in vernal splendour, and also since it does prove a time of plenty, and a time of joy, luxury, and leisure, the name is appropriate.

This year the month of Bak is proving especially propitious for our country because the terrorism that engulfed it for three decades, and threatened its dismemberment is finally being brought to an end. However, this final stage of the government’s humanitarian campaign to free the innocent Tamil civilians held hostage by their erstwhile ‘liberators’ to save their own skin, has turned out to be as tense to us as the ‘sankranti’ (transit) of the sun from Pisces to Aries is to the sun god (no pun is intended) in the popular imagination!

Depending on whether the terrorists are completely annihilated or not, the coming year will be either the brightest or the bleakest in our country’s contemporary history. If the government’s now assured success against terrorism is somehow aborted through mounting ‘international’ pressure at this moment the whole country will be plunged back into the infernal abyss out of which it is just emerging; if the terrorists are given the coup de grace, on the other hand, we will have an unprecedented opportunity to initiate a long-term peaceful and democratic process that will preclude a recurrence of terrorism by, among other things, attracting the remaining LTTE rank and file for rebuilding our devastated home land.

The general feeling among the ordinary people of this country is that the ‘international community’ has not been supportive enough of Sri Lanka in its struggle against terrorism. The banning of the terror outfit in the West is seen as a mere face-saving device; it’s not that they want to extend their anti-terror fervour born out of 9/11 to unimportant countries like ours (‘unimportant’ here is equivalent to ‘of little economic or political value to the West). Hence the ease with which Tamil terror activists in Canada and UK, for example, are allowed to hold anti-Sri Lanka demonstrations, and to continue illegal fund raising notwithstanding the LTTE ban in those countries. The 13th April dastardly attack by Tamil terrorist hooligans on the Sri Lankan embassy in Oslo with total impunity (as it now appears) was so easy because of the Norwegian government’s (in)explicable failure to provide sufficient security for the embassy in spite of repeated requests by the Lankan authorities for special protection for the embassy in view of Tiger demonstrations in its vicinity. It is claimed by some that these so-called Western democracies, while disapproving of LTTE terrorism, are sympathetic to the ‘Tamil cause’. But what the West’s actual conduct reveals is that , as to terrorism, they don’t mind it if it doesn’t affect them, and that the Tamil cause or any other cause is acceptable to them, irrespective of its legitimacy or otherwise, as a pretext for exercising hegemony in a region where their presence is likely to be threatened by other contenders in the geopolitical arena.

Sri Lanka’s internal problem, which could have been sorted out by the Sri Lankans themselves but for foreign intervention, is being exploited by contending hegemonic powers for meeting their own political, economic and security concerns, in spite of the fact that already the entire population of some twenty million have been subjected to almost three decades of uninterrupted persecution at the hands of ruthless terror.

The threatened erosion of the Western domination of the world (apparent in such developments as the current economic downturn that has hit America and Europe particularly badly, growing opposition to the West among many nations across the world, West’s attempts at destabilizing certain sovereign states by its relentless pursuit of self-interest to the exclusion of any consideration for the legitimate concerns of other nations, the strengthening trend towards a shift of the global economic power centre away from the West to the East, and the emergence of countries like Brazil, China, India, and Russia as economic giants) seems to have given tiny Sri Lanka at least some partial respite from foreign meddling, leaving it to tackle its own internal problem with a degree of independence in the way it should be tackled. The government has almost completely succeeded in eliminating terrorism. However, the prospects of a final victory against the terrorists are at this moment getting dimmed; it looks as if we are going to be pipped at the post!

Already, various clichéd interpretations are being trotted out to discredit and discount the government’s success as a pyrrhic victory. They claim, among other things, that the Tigers will now go underground and will re-emerge with greater ferocity later, because the ‘Sinhala supremacist’ domination of the Mahinda Rajapakse administration will naturally baulk every effort to address the issues underlying ‘Tamil cause’ in a just manner.

Our experience is that the extremists, if any, will never have enough supporters among the ordinary Sinhala voters to enable them to come to power whatever the ignorant, inveterately anti- Sinhala Buddhist INGO intellectuals, or their local counterparts who have voluntarily alienated themselves from the true grass roots cultural ethos of the country, might say. If the JHU is seen to be pursuing the exclusive advantage of the majority community at the expense of minority rights on the basis of their being the majority, they will definitely be rejected by the voters.

Mr Mahinda Rajapakse is no putty in anybody’s hands; he is made of sterner stuff. He is proving himself an astute politician, especially in dealing with the terrorism problem. His pragmatic political sense has enabled him to forge a synergic alliance to successfully face the terrorist menace by drawing on a pool of anti-terror elements from different parties, encouraging the diffident among them on the one hand, and on the other, containing what could be seen as the zealotry of others. At the same time he is being constantly opposed by adversaries who seem mindless enough to be ready to let the LTTE survive if they can come to power; he is also assailed by pro-terror external pressure. Both forms of opposition he has so far successfully overcome. But he doesn’t seem to have given in to extremists, if any, among his coalition partners.

The military campaign that is hopefully drawing to a close has never been against the Tamils, but only against the Tiger terrorists. Some commentators, intentionally or unintentionally, try to obfuscate this fact. They talk about the obligation of the ‘victors’ to answer the concerns of the ‘vanquished’, falsely implying that the ‘vanquished’ are the ordinary Tamils with certain legitimate grievances. The truth is that the government is sincerely determined to defeat the LTTE, but not to attack the Tamil community. The war is actually waged on their behalf, in the name of all the peace-loving Sri Lankans who are against terrorism. Any success achieved in that struggle belongs to all the Sri Lankans, who, therefore are the true victors in this context. The vanquished are the terrorists who have rejected all peaceful means of resolving the crisis.

At this stage in the history of democratic rule in Sri Lanka since Independence there is an awareness and a recognition among ordinary Sinhalese and Tamils of the fact that our failure to fully implement certain parliament approved policies for resolving some legitimate Tamil grievances over the past half a century can and must be tackled through dialogue. This failure should not be blamed on one community alone. Both sides have been remiss in understanding and accommodating each other’s legitimate concerns. For resolving this situation the contribution of the fresh thinking young people of the country is vital, and I believe that they will prevail in the future.

In this country there are no problems that cannot be solved through peaceful democratic means except terrorism. If terrorists are amenable to peaceful negotiations, and abide by agreements reached, they cease to be terrorists; but when they resort to talks only as a ploy to regroup and rearm as the Tigers have been always doing, then Sri Lanka, like any other country affected by terrorism, has no alternative other than using force.

To falsely attribute a communal character to the government’s sincere and well-nigh successful mission to rid the country of Tiger terrorism will only further strengthen the unjustified anti-Sri Lanka world opinion created by the massive misinformation campaign carried out by the LTTE agents throughout the world, and facilitate harmful foreign interference in our internal affairs.

Communalism has no place in our country. Since Independence Sri Lanka has been ruled in turn by governments headed by the one or the other of the two main parties, the UNP and the SLFP, which are totally non-communal. The vast majority of the electorate, irrespective of ethnicity, are divided between these two parties at elections. Fortunately, both parties pursue similar policies in most matters.