Sri Lanka Needs to Ban Sectarian Politics and Identity Based Electoral Constituencies

Lamentably, despite the best efforts by our post independent leaders to form identity neutral political parties, like the united national party, SLFP, CP, LSSP etc, there are other political parties that have fanned the flames of identity politics by establishing political parties based on race and language.

These self-fish power hungry politicians succeeded in dominating the political conversation with divisive agenda, that even those other parties that began their journey as a united polity, also unwittingly joined the “divide and rule” bug that got first mooted by our colonial masters who made sure that our island which had previously quite happily co-existed with all communities, was mired in social divisions.

It is relevant to remember the facts from history that we as a nation lived in harmony with our minority communities, so much so, that the predominantly sinhala majority had accepted a Tamil brother in law of the previous Sinhala King, whose queen hailed from South India, was crowned as our last king. Race relations were excellent, including with the Muslims who were also protected and feted, but the BRITS introduced some cooked up history about DUTUGEMUNU and ELARA (who by the way, according architect and historian Ashley De Vos) is an AFGHAN and not a CHOLA sub king, as the cooked up history books that are still studied in secondary schools brainwash us to believe. According to Ashley, ELARA was an Afghan Buddhist who came to Sri Lanka those days and so with twisted history many other hate creating stories were built up in the text books, including favoritism towards the minorities and exclusion of the majority who did not convert to Christianity (that included Tamil Hindus, Muslims and Sinhalese Buddhists) and so the entire post independence saga of having race card and caste based politics have ruined us.

Sectarian P0LITICS, is a very practiced art by the WEST , who destabilized the SOVIET UNION by promoting Ethno IDENTITY POLITICS to create divisions based on ethnic, linguistic and religious lines ..and that is still practiced today in the middle east, where the sunni and shite have been divided in Iraq…still raging in Pakistan, and all over Africa, and the former Soviet Union. Remember EAST TIMOR…someone..(likely a foreign intelligence operative) got a crazy bigot to go open fire inside a mosque and a church in two separate incidents, and blew wide open a religious conflict and ultimately the division and separation of EAST TIMOR from Indonesia and the oil and gas resources were the main reason for that intervention.

Similarly in Sri Lanka, sadly , we are still mired in race card politics, where political parties are allowed to be formed under RACE-RELIGION AND LANGUAGE (SLMC, TNA, JHU) and the schools are also divided and segregated into racial, linguistic and religious lines (Christian College, Buddhist Ladies College, Muslim Ladies College, Hindu College etc.) and even the sporting clubs are segregated (Moors Club, Tamil Union, BRC, SSC etc.) and we still carry on blindly perpetuating these dumb sectarian minded practices.

Even the political parties nominate candidates for election constituencies based on ethnicity, religion and caste. (A muslim for Colombo Central, a Karawa Catholic for Moratuwa, a Durawa Buddhist for Matara, a Govigama Buddhist for Belliatte, a Hindu Tamil for Jaffna etc. etc.), and so they go round canvassing votes also fanning the flames of hatred and prejudiced viewpoints, and so the divisions are perpetuated on a daily basis, and we fail to see the root cause for this. Time to BAN political parties based on race, religion, language and caste.

The Sri Lanka Muslim Congress, (SLMC) the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) and the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) are all new entrants to the political landscape, all three were formed within the past thirty years, with the JHU being the most recent entrant, and the SLMC the product of Ashraff in the nineties, and all of them blatantly practice sectarian politics. Even the older political parties, like the UNP and SLFP, also practice it in their nomination process, where they deliberately pick candidates to be fielded for constituencies based on ethnicity, language, religion and caste. So these politicians go round canvassing votes stirring up hatred and lowest form of “identity based politics” and so the society is constantly mired in divisive debates and finger pointing.

Time for Sri Lanka to wake up and realize that our minds are getting poisoned and manipulated by these self serving sectarian interests groups, and their presence is also being cunningly exploited by outside forces to keep our island constantly mired in conflict and this unrest helps the agenda of outsiders, and ruins the future of our children. Time to wake up and look at how Africa and even some parts of the Middle East has realized the folly of race, language, religion based politics, and banned them for good.

By Chris Dharmakirti

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