Part I of this article published on Monday (30)

We have to face the question of whom Sri Lanka belongs to — the few, the many or all – together with certain allied and ancillary questions. For instance, is diversity a danger or a resource? We have, as Sir Arthur C Clarke said, perhaps the greatest biological diversity and cultural diversity compressed in a smallest possible space— which makes for richness and beauty, but also for conflict because we have not been able to reconcile these diversities. Societies as different as the United States of America and Singapore, diversity is regarded as a rich resource. It is like the colors of a palette: the more colors that are available to you, the better it is for the artist. But diversity is seen with apprehension in some quarters in Sri Lanka. This is the mindset that we have to overcome, because diversity provides opportunity. Every community brings something to the table that is Sri Lanka. It is obvious that this is the only country in the world in which the Sinhala language is spoken and it should be indubitable that the Sinhalese must have a country, this country for their own. I believe that if we had lost the war, no Sinhalese anywhere in the world would have been able to walk with his or her head held high. But when we correctly say that "Sri Lanka is the country of the Sinhalese", as we must, it does not mean that Sri Lanka must be regarded as the country only of the Sinhalese while the others are "visitors" or "guests", " tenants" or "lodgers". Sri Lanka is the only country for the Sinhalese and of the Sinhalese but it does not belong only to the Sinhalese and cannot be "ruled" only by the Sinhalese. Sri Lanka belongs to the Sinhalese, to the Tamils, to the Muslims, to the Malays, to the Burghers, to the men and the women, all of whom are citizens of Sri Lanka. And it does so equally. The diversity of the Sri Lanka population is a most precious "natural" resource because the minorities not only enrich our cultural mix, but also provide the connecting link between Sri Lanka and the world. This is not understood. As I said, Sinhalese is spoken by a large collectivity only on this island. Theravada Buddhism does not have any echo in the sub-continent— you have to look further afield to South East Asia for co-religionists. Ceylon or the Island of Sri Lanka as a receptacle or Theravada Buddhism is a very important and unalterable structural factor of our civilization, arguably constituting, in overlap or amalgam with the Sinhala language, its central and specific or defining core. Now, the very fact that the Sinhalese and the Buddhists or the Sinhala Buddhists are an overwhelming majority of the country should provide a sense of security because this is not a demographic that will be altered. Centuries of colonialism and millennia of invasions have not altered this fact. While of course everything is subject to change in the long term, there is no need to be apprehensive about the erosion or extinction of what is a solid, demographic and civilizational majority. That automatically guarantees certain preponderance in terms of civilization, culture and ethos. But what it does not require — and this is the mistake we have made — is the translation and transposition of a natural demographic and cultural preponderance into political and constitutional primacy, pre-eminence and hegemony, because once you do that, you depart from the principle of equality of citizenship, of equal rights and the principle of merit based on open competition. Thus the minorities become second class citizens whether you intend it or not.

I do not see why, when you go into a police station, you have to enter your ethnicity and your religion. We may say, "Okay, you have to enter your ethnicity because there was civil war which was drawn for the most part from a particular community". That is now over. I really do not see why you have to enter your religion— but this is what happens in Sri Lanka today. These are the anomalies that have to be addressed and eliminated. Diversity, as I said, has to be understood as a rich resource because whether it is the Hindus, the Muslims or the Christians, these are the communities that have some kind of links, some overlaps with the world outside. So together, and enjoying equal rights as citizens, the Sinhala Buddhists and the minorities can have the best of both worlds; can strengthen Sri Lankan identity with one functioning almost as a citadel or a castle, and the others functioning as the bridges between the cultural "core" or "heartland" and the rest of the world.

Instead what you have today is an absence of comprehension and communication. For quite some time now, we have had a dominant discourse which can be understood only within the boundaries of the Sinhala Buddhist heartland and is lost in translation when it travels, moves. The moment you try to address the Tamil people, the Muslim people, the Christians or the world, it does not sound right because there is no sensitivity to other ways of thinking, other cultures, other civilizations and other outlooks even on this small island!

We must also decide whether a Sri Lanka identity can be constructed by looking exclusively inwards or exclusively outwards, or by a two directional approach. I would say that we need an inner–outer approach; indeed a multi-vector, multidirectional approach, looking within while simultaneously reaching out to all corners of the world. For too long we have had a kind of a cultural involution and narcissism where we are not only justifiably proud of our country and our civilization achievements, but tend to exalt them to the point that we lose all perspective. There is no appreciation or achievement of other cultures. There is the repeated incantation that we are the best; everything good flowed from us; we do not need to learn anything from outside and should resist "outside influences". We are self referential, and refuse to subscribe to, evaluate ourselves by or be evaluated by universal values, norms and standards. The sad thing is nobody believes our claims, except ourselves; nobody buys into our logic or plays our game.

The world cannot understand us and we cannot understand the world. We neither care about being understood by the world nor that we are ourselves unable to understand the world. It is a dialogue of the deaf: the outside world cannot comprehend what we are saying and we cannot comprehend what it –including our neighbors and allies– is trying to say to us. For instance we have not de-coded – as if there were anything esoteric to "de-code"—the dynamics of the Obama visit to China or the Manmohan Singh visit to the USA and the implications for us of both. We have not registered the growing congruency (rightly or wrongly) of the positions of Obama’s USA, and Russia and China, on Iran’s nuclear program. When communication breaks down we yell from the rooftops about international conspiracies! It is not that there aren’t international moves against us – not every criticism or adversarial move is a conspiracy—but these ‘conspiracies’ must be understood within the overall crisis of our external relations, and that crisis is primarily one of cross-cultural comprehension, communication, and representation.

We see this in the field of human rights which I am especially acquainted with, due to my last job. We have this strange discourse: "how dare you criticize us on human rights issues because we grow up worshiping our parents from the time we were little and you do not; instead you call your parents by their first name. So how dare you accuse us culturally superior and therefore ethically superior beings, of human rights violations?" This is some notion of intrinsic cultural superiority which nobody in the world will grant us. Human rights are universal because the human condition, the fact of our common, shared humanity, is universal! We are all human beings before we are Sinhalese, Buddhists or Sri Lankans! That must be grasped. So, the invocation of our 2,500 year old culture, civilization and history and our "homegrown" version of human rights simply will not do. I am glad that I never took that kind of stand in Geneva. If we did, Sri Lanka would not have got a 29-12 majority in its favor. No wonder we lost 63-0 in the European parliamentary vote in Brussels and had a 421-1 vote when Resolution 711, critical of us on the IDP issue, was moved in the US House of Representatives in early November! This blinkered or blind self-exaltation is not going to help us advance as a unified Lanka, into the 21st Century.