Reflection

The disappearance of “Modesty” from the Sri Lankan Dictionary

Not so long ago I found a reference to a schoolmate of mine in a local newspaper calling him a “brilliant ruggerite” of the school that we both attended during our secondary education.

Now, while my short-term memory is of a quality that befits my advancing years, my long term memory would not have played the kind of trick on me that would have erased this friend and his achievements from that memory bank.  This was particularly so since there were a number of truly ‘brilliant ruggerites’ at this time in our old school’s history among whose number I certainly did not recall  this particular individual. 

However, I did remember that my friend had more than made his mark in public life in Sri Lanka over the years.  Anyway, I phoned around our mutual friends and acquaintances for confirmation/contradiction of the ‘fact’ that had appeared in the sports column of the English-language newspaper concerned. 

Not to put a fine point on it, my question was laughed out of court and it was suggested that our colleague had certainly not been “brilliant” in the sport concerned and that no one remembered him representing so much as his “house” at rugby!

The reason that I recount this particular little fable is because it is symptomatic of the kind of overstatement and exaggeration that is the norm, rather than the exception in Sri Lankan discourse today.  This is the old (Joseph) McCarthyite strategy of taking inconsequential, random samples and making sweeping generalisations based on them, except that in the Sri Lankan case they are sycophantic rather than condemnatory. 

Check-list

In this particular case, I didn’t see any immediate or direct advantage accruing to the person seeking to boost my friend’s ego.  It seemed that it was  the result of a culture of sycophancy that, particularly when it concerned someone of public eminence, required that some flattering comment be inserted irrespective of whether it had any basis in fact or not.

What also prompts my diatribe is the reading of a slim volume by that eminent jurist, Christie Weeramantry, titled A Call For National Reawakening which consists, primarily, of a check-list of national shortcomings that we need to do something about if we are to survive as a civil and civilised society and a practicing democracy.  While the lack of modesty in the current Sri Lankan civil discourse is alluded to, Justice Weeramantry does not deal with this as the major problem I perceive it to be.

To me, this is the other face of the coin of servility and unabashed abasement that he refers to at some length in his little gem of a book.  However, I believe it is deserving of separate and more extensive attention because it is a significant part of the inferiority complex which appears to have become a collective national affliction in 21st Century, Sri Lanka.

The matter of overstatement and racial boastfulness is particularly dangerous when it influences matters of history on which many of the xenophobes base their theories of racial superiority and hegemony.  Suddenly, the Tamils of the northern and eastern littoral are inferior because they were allegedly “imported” into the island during Portuguese and Dutch times to supply plantation labour. 

The fact that there were no coffee, tea, rubber or coconut plantations in Sri Lanka prior to British times is conveniently pushed off the historical table and all of this arrant nonsense is made into an unholy mallung and propagated as some kind of Gospel by those interested in some mythical racial superiority. 

That some of these unprincipled bigots have parroted their way to some form of post-graduate qualification gives their utterances the sheen of inviolability and makes them, in peculiarly Sri Lankan fashion, “intellectuals” whose message of hate is not to be disputed by any one without the prefix “Dr” or some other suffix, irrespective of where they were obtained and under what circumstances!

Deserves attention

However, the fact that they have made a profession and a seemingly very lucrative profession at that, of this hate-mongering is certainly deserving of attention and exposure.

What is truly sinister about this state of affairs is the fact that they and their storm troopers have succeeded in silencing those who have sought to disprove their pseudo-historical prattle, in some instances driving them away from the land of their birth.  This is not only the foundation for propagating the theories of racial superiority that Adolf Hitler so effectively spread over so much of Europe and other parts of the world but provides the building blocks for the edifice of hate that will provide the final launching pad for the destruction of what is left of Sri Lanka’s culture and civilisation. 

It seems that we have learned nothing from our own “Emergency ’58,” “Black July” of 1983 or that we have chosen a collective amnesia towards similar events which promise truly deadly consequences.

The thin end of this wedge of racial superiority is the exaggeration of ‘positive’ attributes of individuals, groups and so-called ‘races.’  Any attempt at contesting extravagant claims made by these propagandists is immediately met with defensive screams that these are attempts to glorify foreign people and concepts, and dilute anything bearing the brand of purity that our bigots have affixed to their ‘flavour of the week.’

Perhaps, the basic approach in dealing with these intolerant hordes should be one of deflection rather than attack against their message of hate and denigration.  Providing this demented clan with the opportunity of ‘defending’ their racist concepts does, in fact, provide them with the opportunity of achieving the posture of the aggrieved, something that they have (successfully) done over the years that they have practised this twisted brand of “patriotism.” 

Bringing into the discussion the fact that every culture and civilisation has something to contribute to the Sri Lankan future, be it artistic, scientific, technological, spiritual or in any other field is an extremely hard argument to refute.  It is hard to refute because it bears the ring of absolute truth.  And that is what is so necessary: that hard, clear, irrefutable facts are constantly advanced in order to deal with these apostles of irrationality, deceit and cruelty.

This is the battle that needs to be joined and the war that needs to be waged successfully if this nation is to emerge as a place of decency, justice and civility where all its residents can live without fear and without bending the vassal knee to anyone who considers themselves ‘superior’ in some twisted way.