Focus

Are we a nation of mushrooms?

Recent events in Sri Lanka have brought to mind, most forcibly, the old colloquialism that speaks most eloquently of people living in ignorance, comparing them to mushrooms which are “kept in the dark and fed bull...t.”

While that colloquialism comes down heavily on the crass side of the scale of expression, I do think it conveys the status quo in Sri Lanka quite appropriately.

The demonization of all things “Western” for instance (while aping and replicating the most crass and crude of North American popular culture) is symptomatic of what is happening around us and which is basically a really negative reality smacking of racism and xenophobia.

Sri Lanka used to have probably the most cosmopolitan attitudes in the entire Asian region, probably as a result of many of our young people leaving the country in search of academic achievement in other parts of the world and, most important, returning to give of their skills and knowledge to their homeland.  Today, what I find fascinating is that the vast majority of my (middle-class) generation have their children and, more so their grand-children, domiciled in the European, American or Australasian continents. 

Yes, this is the wider diaspora of the middle-class English-educated Sri Lankan population, going beyond the much spoken of and narrower Tamil diaspora which owes its spread across the globe to an even more negative factor – consistent violence against it as an identifiable group.

What is driving this attitude which, to all practical purposes has become national policy is a denigration of everything that might have a base in Euro-American culture, going back to early European history and beyond.

What is also most disturbing is the other side of this coin: the acceptance of the kind of conduct that is totally anathema to those subscribing to such concepts as human rights and the rule of law, both of which have been pushed inexorably into the corner of “alien” and/or “Western” concepts.  For instance the extra-judicial executions of those allegedly guilty of murder, rape and other violent crimes by the police or persons unknown are increasingly met with a nudge-nudge, wink-wink response by steadily increasing numbers of the general population.

Judge and jury

That the state or its agents playing judge, jury and executioner, no matter what the circumstances, is totally unacceptable in a nation paying even lip service to concepts such as anyone being innocent until proven guilty seems to escape the hordes of born-again patriots that are emerging like mushrooms after a shower of rain as they seemed to so easily in my childhood.

That a predilection for ending a sentence with several exclamation marks is taken to be proof of erudition is yet another new “Sri Lankanism” that defies Fowler, Zinsser and all those who wrote the textbooks on the use of English in non-fiction and indicated what should be excluded from a decently-constructed piece in the English language.

I have a distinct recollection of some clown with a very limited knowledge of basic chemistry who claimed that he had the solution to Sri Lanka’s unaffordable dependence on fossil fuels.  He claimed that, using hydrogen technology, he could run vehicles on water, pure and simple.  He was not only lauded as some new saviour of Sri Lanka but was presented with some kind of Saviour’s Certificate by, if I remember right, the Prime Minister of the country, with all the attendant fanfare and media publicity. 

Shortly thereafter I believe Kumar David in the Island newspaper, in simple terms that only the truly expert can use, effectively exposed all of this for the load of B.S (that term again!) that it was but (Surprise! Surprise!) no one appeared to take any notice.

After all the froth and bubble had subsided, yet another associated story emerged.  The “genius” who was acknowledged by those on high of being capable of turning water vapour into propulsive power had used the publicity that the powers-that-be had enveloped him in to dupe some affluent mudalali into parting with a considerable sum of money which he proceeded to decamp with!  I don’t know whether this story had a happy ending for the duped one – recovery of the fraudulently extracted cash – or the miscreant – getting away with the “con.”  All I know is that a blatantly fraudulent claim had the seal of approval placed on it by the authorities, despite basic scientific information to the contrary and some poor sucker was set up to be “taken” by a fairly amateurish con artist!

If there is a moral to the episode related above, it is that ‘seals of approval’ provided to charlatans and even common-or-garden criminals is, ultimately, at the expense of the national purse.  And I haven’t even begun to mention pyramid schemes and the larger financial scandals.

Any criticism of anything such as the foregoing constitutes pure, simple and unmerited, unpatriotic criticism of the paradise that is Sri Lanka as far as our new horde of zealots is concerned.

Something else.  I wish our self-appointed national heroes would pay attention to a Sri Lankan and international reality: invidious comparisons involving Sri Lanka mean one thing in loud, clear and unequivocal terms —  those making such criticisms do so because they believe that the present mess that is Sri Lanka where among other things, stoning people to death as happened a few days ago is taken as kosher, does not have to be the future for all of us.

Better future

We can and should aspire to a future that is, in fact, superior to that prevailing in many of the Western democracies with whom the invidious comparisons are made.  In fact, within my lifetime, I do recall when Sri Lanka, or “Ceylon” as it was then, was the beacon of liberty and democracy in Asia.

Xenophobia, racism and talk of a “master race,” even in a homogenous sense is nothing but unadulterated rubbish.  Sri Lanka contains a heterogeneous entity of people separated by issues not unlike those confronting many people in many parts of the world.  We can and must learn from the errors made by others, to build a civil society without violence where extra-judicial executions, burning of the homes of those suspected of crimes, no matter how heinous, stoning to death, harassment, and killing of those who dare to dissent are treated as absolutely beyond the pale.  This should not be debatable.  Not by anyone.

To try to create a society based purely on the belief of one individual or group, no matter how intellectually well-endowed, is nothing but a formula for disaster.  As one of my immediate ancestors never tired of telling me, “It is only fools who learn in the school of experience.”  Sri Lanka’s new legions of experts on everything on the face of the (Sri Lankan) earth need to be told to take their racism, xenophobia and “master race” theories and bury them so that none of that execrable mess will ever see the light of day again.