If I remember rightly, Dr. Mahes Ladduwahetty of the Department of Zoology, University of Ceylon, ceased to be my colleague about 40 years ago. Even like me, she profited fully from the free undergraduate and postgraduate education generously provided for us by poor Mother Lanka. At the University Entrance Examination, I was chosen to do Medicine and she was chosen to do Zoology. How I now wish that I had read Zoology instead of Medicine at University. Man, Homo sapiens, is an animal; in fact "a naked ape" as Desmond Morris famously dubbed him. As such Zoology is the discipline that is best equipped to provide the truest scientific understanding of human behavior. Let us not forget that conflicts between human groups in our country (and elsewhere) are at bottom one aspect of animal behavior. One main reason why animals fight is to establish territorial rights. Another is to establish dominance in a social hierarchy.

Let us take heed of what Desmond Morris says in the opening paragraphs of his book The Naked Ape: "There are one hundred and ninety-three living species of monkeys and apes. One hundred and ninety-two of them are covered with hair. The exception is a naked ape self-named Homo sapiens… I am a zoologist and the naked ape is an animal… I refuse to avoid him any longer simply because some of his behavior patterns are rather complex and impressive. My excuse is that, in becoming so erudite, Homo sapiens has remained a naked ape nevertheless; in acquiring lofty new motives, he has lost none of the earthy old ones. This is frequently a cause of some embarrassment of him, but his old impulses have been with him for millions of years, his new ones only a few thousand at the most-and there is no hope of quickly shrugging off the accumulated genetic legacy of his whole evolutionary past"

Dr. ML is not only a zoologist; she is also a smart female mammal to boot. So having benefitted fully from the free education available in the predominantly Sinhala Buddhist environment she was born into, for the optimal socio-economic advancement of her own family, she emigrated to the United States of America where the Judeo - Christian culture flourishes. By recourse to a miraculous technological invention of Judeo - Christian culture, of late she has been trying patriotically to promote Sinhala Buddhist culture via e-mail. Biographical facts are relevant in judging what people say, because it is the relation between what they say and the how they behave that gives credibility to what they say.

In her latest e-mail missive published in The Island of 16th July Dr. ML charges me with "butting into an interesting and civilized debate" on the 13th amendment. Careful readers will notice that in her phrase I have just quoted, she has used the words "butting into" rather than "butting in" to describe my intervention in a debate which is a matter of great public interest. "Butting into" is something that animals with horns such as cows do. "Butting in" is something that human animals do when they join in an activity without being asked to. I have reason to believe that she has used the words "butting into" rather than "butting in" to describe my intervention in a public debate not because she is ignorant of proper English usage. The reason is that in her style of civilized debate she implicitly calls me "a cow"; sadly not even a sacred one! Fair enough. I must be able to take as good as I give.

In any case it is laughable for Dr. ML living in America to accuse me living in Sri Lanka of butting in in a matter which is not a private fight between the debaters. Only Dr. ML resents my intervention. Others know that I have been in the thick of this problem, ever since the 13th amendment was passed in 1987, when Dr. ML was safely in the US. In fact, I briefly fled my beloved country for dear life when the JVP consisting largely of rural youth killed 6577 people including Vijaya Kumaratunga in the aftermath of the Indo-Lanka agreement. I too received death threats.

Mr. Editor I have no desire to dialogue with a person who has chosen to live in an affluent society about matters in our poor harassed country. But let me just make one point of scientific interest. In one place in her patriotic outpouring she says that I have indulged in "silly talk" about tribal genes. Perceptive readers following this debate will not fail to note that what she calls "silly talk" is entirely in consonance with what Desmond Morris (an infinitely smarter zoologist than Dr. ML) means when he says that "… there is no hope of quickly shrugging off the accumulated genetic legacy of his whole evolutionary past" Indeed, that’s the problem with some highly educated tribal theorists. In her own piece Dr. ML admits that "the basic rural idiocy gene pool this nation was derived from may have ingrained survival value…" What we must realize, however, is that a behavior which was evolutionarily advantageous long long ago might be bad for survival today. For example, a sweet tooth i.e. liking sweet food very much, was useful for survival during our ancestral fruit eating era. Today it is bad because it leads to obesity, diabetes mellitus and infertility. As with a sweet tooth, so with narrow tribalism.