Are We Ready for Change?

Mobilizing people and inspiring youth activism to bring about change and a solution for the ongoing ethnic conflict, should it be done at a more individual level? or do we need to go one step further and gather in a team to bring about change? Was what a group of youth activist discussed yesterday (11 December) evening at a study circle session held in Colombo.

One of the activists who came up with the proposal that, we need to create a alternative direction for the youth to unit to bring about change in this country and to begin with this to have a group of like-minded people getting together working on a course of action to achieve change. The activist claimed that combating a wide range of challenges to bring about change should be done more in a coalition rather than tackling it individually.

Now there must be loads of questions bothering you, yes, you are right the activists were also talking about the risks, in other words one’s own weaknesses when being an activist of bringing about change no matter what you are fighting for. It can be treats to one’s own life, family and close friends, loved ones or even property, but how do we draw the line being a moderate person trying to combat all these challenges and still wanting to bring about change? Can we really do this?

The argument was that one of the advantages in having a group of people rather than your own self can be that, there would be the others to stand by any person of the group facing a particular treat. Say you organize a huge protest at the Lipton circus asking the government to stop war and go for peace talks, it catch the attention of the media and you make a huge voice, the next day you are been abducted by a white van and questioned for hours about your involvement with the so called terrorist and other extremist. At a situation like this you will feel very depressed, uneasy and etc, but if you know that there are another 10 to 15 people around you supporting you to continue to fight the cause, you know it will make you much comfortable than before right?

However is it going to be another revolutionary story like in the movie “Rang De Basanti”? for the people who have not heard about “Rang De Basanti”, it is a story about youth of India today – in the film both the 1930’s British India and the India today run parallel and intersect with each other at crucial points. As the film reaches its resolution the line between past and present blurs, as they become one in spirit. For those who haven’t seen this, you need to find it somehow and watch it. I was almost tearing when I first saw it and well I am not going to tell anything more about the film.

So is it going to be another revolutionary story like “Rang De Basanti”? The answer for this question is totally up to you to decide. Of all the things I have heard, seen and learnt so far is that you have to sacrifice certain things to achieve goals in life and in fact in the process of trying to bring about change, you might have to sacrifice lot of the things you like, love and want.

Take Mahatma Gandhi’s story for example, he was a non-violent person who brought about change in non-violent form of activism. However even he had to sacrifice lot of his likes, comforts, had to face lot of hardships, had to face violent reactions, etc. in his philosophy, which he openly proclaimed in 1906 he said “one should never respond to violence with violence” however he and his followers had to face violent responses by the British in their (India’s) struggle for a free nation. India lost a lot of lives in their fight against a free liberal nation and that was a sacrifice they had to make to make the Brits understand, that they were masters of another country, but not theirs. Despite all those sacrifices, Gandhi was not able to achieve what he wanted – one independent state, but instead two states, the Indian Union (Hindu) and Pakistan (Muslims).

Getting back to the topic, I would say that, we have seen different stories of which some had great endings and some didn’t, it’s time for us to make sure that the people of this country need to stand as one to what they believe is right and not what the political leaders want. Remember lot of people saying, if you want someone to be elected, whom you believe will do his/ her best, you vote that person and send the person to the parliament, but in case that he/she doesn’t meet the expectations of the voters; is there any system to pull him out from the parliament? This is something most of us have not thought of and have not lobbied for.

One government will come and say that we can win this war and don’t need to go for peace talks with the terrorist, and when the war goes for some time, celebrate victory and then another government comes in to power they say there is no point of a war lets have negotiations and then they go for a ceasefire. Whatever said and done MR’s Government is not the first government who said that the LTTE needs to be wiped out, even CBK’s Government said the same and they also did a bloody war for some time and its only after that when RW’s Government came in to power the country went in to a CFA. So you will never know whether the next Government, whoever it is going to be will go for a CFA? This is just a cycle rotating or rather being rotated to achieve personal gains.

One reason for this to happen is that the people of this country are very short-sighted. They think they can be satisfied in life if they can earn for the day, but not look at saving for their own future. So they support one Government to fight a war and the other to strike a CFA.

My generation, from the day we were born has never seen a Sri Lanka without a conflict. We have been living for more than 20 long years or rather two decades with this bloody war. So now we really do not care when a bomb in Wallawaya or Galle for that matter goes off, because now it has been a part of our lives. Who do we blame all this for? The Government in power? The opposition? Or our own selves? It’s time to find a solution for our own selves now before it is too late.

We need to mobilize our selves, be much more organized, find the third alternative if both the others (war and CFA) doesn’t work! We need to sacrifice some element of our lives in order to achieve what we want. Start the change from you, try to change the perception of the people whom you meet, work with and most importantly get together to fight for what we need and if we don’t act today, it will be too late to act tomorrow!

– Nooranie.

Nooranie is a fellow mutineer, a BB-ite and many other things. He blogs about similar themes in his personal blog. The views expressed here are his own.

The Role of “History” in the ethnic conflict

In our very first session of the Study Circle, Prof. Nirmal Dewasiri and Prof. Nira Wickramasinghe both attached to the University of Colombo tackled the issue of the role of history on the Ethnic Conflict.  

First, briefly, the take of Prof.Nirmal Dewasiri:

• All collective identities — nations, ethnicity, etc. — have certain notions of the past. A set of beliefs about their pass heritage. 
   
• You cannot therefore separate collective identities, which are in the present, from a particular past which can be actual or imaginary.
   
• A french thinker once said that “History doesn’t belong to the past, but to the community”. This doesn’t mean that history has nothing to with the past, but it is most relevant and important to the present.
   
• The way we perceive ‘other’ communities, therefore is shaped by our understanding and notions of history.

Secondly, again briefly some notes from Prof.Nira Wickramasinghe’s talk:

• The common understanding is that history is objective. Historian is considered objective and can accurately reconstruct the past.  In fact, complete objectivity is not possible. Even photographic representation is never exact or entirely accurate version of reality. 
   
• Historians focuses on a certain story of the past. They can focus on a time frame like say the 18th century, or a particular social group like peasants and they can take a very broad view or a micro-view. What the historian does is a reconstruction of the past, and the history that you read, is basically historian’s history.
   
• Even historians which appear objective, in fact are not. 
   
• The terms “history” and “nation” have always been coupled together. History as a discipline was born at the beginning of the nation state, because of the need for states to legitimize their existence.
   
• Our part of the world is no different.  Given the diversity we have, we should think of our societies of having multiple histories and give space for communities to express their histories and their pasts without giving prominence to one group over the other. 

Some excerpts of their comments are available on youtube here and here. InMutiny welcomes comments.

Ending the war, the last study circle summary

Once again the study circle convened on a Thursday afternoon. This time around emphasis was given to discussing as to what conditions would and should prevail if the current prevailing war was to end. There was an interesting array of opinions put forward by the enthusiastic participants, many claiming that the deeply entrenched animosities between the Sinhalese and Tamil would take even upto three generations to subside.

A point well made considering that bombs and bullets can kill terrorists/people (upto you to decide) but not ideas, this implied a possible continuation of attacks by isolated groups of individuals still espousing strong nationalist ideals even after the end of the war.

However it should be noted that there was also one participant who claimed that it would not take a significant period of time to bridge the differences between the Tamils and the Sinhalese if the L.T.T.E. was to be defeated. Another issue that was put forth to the participants by the host was regarding their general take on the ethnic conflict.

Unsurprisingly with the propounding of this specific subject, I witnessed a clear polarization in the group on the lines of people who believed that the prevailing war should be continued to bring about the eventual downfall of the L.T.T.E. and those who claimed that the continuing war was pointless, citing the loss of human life and the viscious cylce of violence and hatred that has ensnared the community with the intensification of the implementation of measures targeted at the Tamil community by the Sri Lankan government which many would consider draconian and the ubiquitious nature of terrorist attacks targeting civilians. Several other interesting talking points were articulated by certain memeber such as there being progressive elements within the L.T.T.E. who would possibly gain strength to voice their opinions and rebel against the tyranical regime of Vellupilai Prabhakaran if the military approach was to continue weakening the L.T.T.E. Some claimed that considering that already much progress has been made by Sri Lankan Armed Forces in relation to the capturing of previously L.T.T.E. held territory it would be “senseless” to halt the military approach which has the potential to defeat this group branded world over as a terrorist out fit.

With the conclusion of this discussion many of us painfully realized that it was impossible to conduct a war against the L.T.T.E. without victimizing the Tamil community and this in turn would prevent a majority of Tamils aligning behind the Rajapakshe government in their bid to defeat the L.T.T.E.

As you can see much was discussed during a period of 1 1/2 hours, but most importantly the discussion was carried out by youth themselves who put forward broad based principal arguments based on facts but also contributed in terms of their personal experiences with the ramifications of the ongoing conflict.

Yohan Senarath
Editor, inmutiny