Even those who vehemently advocate a military solution to the terrorist problem, agree that the permanent solution to our long-standing ethnic conflict has to be political. We have to agree on a polity that will accommodate all ethnic communities in the country as citizens of equal standing in law and in fact. A number of such solutions have been proposed and almost all of them take their inspiration from the early or late history of the country.

Interpreting history

It is generally accepted that the future of a nation or race cannot be meaningful without a strong connection to the past; that the road forward must be in line with the road behind. In that continuity, however, the nexus between the past, present and the future is not as simple as it appears at first sight. The flow of history is replete with twists and turns rapids and falls, calms and currents. Even where the flow of history has been relatively smooth, large-scale changes have occurred in very short time periods, particularly in recent times; a good example is modern Japan, and perhaps closer home, Singapore.

Even in the life of an individual the connections between the stages of growth from childhood through adolescence to adulthood are very complex, defying strict logical analysis. If the adult of tomorrow could be unimaginably different from the child of today, how much more with regard to communities as wholes, with a multiplicity of factors operating within them over millennia.

Hence the interpretation of history, understanding the present in terms of the past is a very daunting task, fraught with many pitfalls. Invariably, the complexities of historical processes, filtered through the tints of socio –economic, political, ideological and other "glasses", compounded often by lacuna and inaccuracies in data, admit of multiple interpretations, none of which can claim to be the only true one. Just to cite one example from our recent history, the liberalisation of the economy by President J.R.Jayewardene in 1977 will be seen as boon or bane depending on which side of the political/ideological divide the observer stands.

The philosopher Berkeley’s dictum esse est percipi (to be is to be perceived) seems to be especially applicable to history. The belief that lessons from history can help avoid blunders regarding the future has to contend with the problematique of interpretation.

The two main parties to the ethnic conflict, the Sinhalese and Tamils, especially the more fundamentalist groups within them, have attempted to justify their political standpoints, particularly in respect of territorial claims, by appeals to history. But it will be evident from the above that the debate is bound to remain inconclusive. Neither party will be convinced by the arguments of the other. And as such, if both parties remain locked in an unbreakable bind the result will be a debilitating, costly stalemate without issue, which is the status quaestionis (the state of the matter) today. (April 2009)

The "Age-ing" of History

But history itself, specially, in its modern vicissitudes, offers a way out of the dilemma, (if we are willing to take it), by signaling its own declining relevance vis a vis the present. It is now possible to conceive of an "age-ing" of history which permits of a release of the present from the tight embrace of the past, like aging parents letting go of their children come of age, and permitting them to be different; or to change the metaphor, the doppler effect of accelerating socio-cultural change increasing the distance between successive forward-moving waves.

The crucial point is that the accelerating pace of change, both local and global, is loosening more and more the links with the past; the resemblances between the future and the past become less and less as the connection between them becomes more and more weak

From the Future to the Present

A conclusion of far-reaching consequence from this phenomenon is that history will be less and less helpful in understanding the present, and still less in divining the future. This can be observed in a more familiar way in the generation gap between parents and children (youth). Today parents find it so difficult to understand their teenage sons and daughters because the socio-cultural milieu has significantly changed within 20/25 years, so much so that they (parents and youth) seem to inhabit two different worlds between which communication is very problematic.

In days gone by, when the pace of change was slow, experience of the past provided useful clues to future decision-making, because the future would not be very different from the past. But not so today, when a period as short as ten years could bring about a very new scenario in any particular field, de-valuing the usefulness of past experience; in other words, contemporary problems can be dealt with effectively only on their own terms with tools and mechanisms which match their nature in scope and complexity

Given the fast –moving flow of history, this requires, not so much a return to the past as an imaginative leap into the future. It is strange but true that decision-making today will be effective and fruitful in proportion to our ability to look at the present from the vantage point of the future. Building a new airport at Hambantota or elsewhere, for example, planners will have to envision/imagine the nature of air travel 15 to 20 years hence, rather than opt for a bigger Katunayake. That might be a tough nut to crack even for aviation specialists. This situation is unique to our day and age. It is an exercise as difficult as it is unfamiliar. Hence, understandably, we still have recourse to the familiar (past) in dealing with contemporary problems, but at the cost of positive results, or worse, complicating the problem further. New wine cannot be put into old wine-skins.

Crying Need: A vision of the future

There is no evidence in this country at all of fresh thinking which takes into account all the complexities of Sri Lankan society today in its unique mix of social, cultural and religious elements, in various proportions, impacted strongly by influences from the West, in a population geography which defies clear demarcations; no evidence of an imaginative leap into the future in an attempt to discern the lineaments of a modern and post-modern Sri Lanka of the 21st century — a Sri Lanka as a polity in which all the races and religions feel equally at home, with or without homelands; a Sri Lanka anchored in democracy, human rights and the fundamental freedoms, all of which are in the forefront of modern social consciousness; a Sri Lanka which has taken, with discernment , the best of the West in the Arts and Sciences, without losing her cultural identity. Where there is no vision the people perish.