Let's be a little considerate people!

I was going to write just another one of those useless random posts today because, if not for any other reason, I haven't written anything for some time now. But at the last moment I thought I'd actually write something useful instead of showering you with my posts with such dry humor. This is not exactly something I wrote either; rather it is a very appropriate and timely article written by one of our fellow Sinhala bloggers who calls himself 'Pitastharaya-2'.

This is the link to the original article, and I urge all of you guys and girls to head over there and take a couple of minutes to read it. And spread the word as much as possible - put it as a FB status, Tweet it or even do the same I'm doing here. I'm sure you'll agree it's a worthy cause.

For you people out there who doesn't read Sinhala, I'll try to loosely translate it, just the gist of it. And I'll try to keep it as short as possible so as to not destroy it's meaning and show my ineptness at translating.

Behavior of many thousands of visitors from South to the North of late, particularly to Jaffna, has been very concerning and painful to the Tamils who are living there. For example the wells in Kovil areas are considered to be sacred by the Tamils, hence they do not use them for acts such as washing or bathing. However, most of the Sinhalese are not aware of this, hence they've been doing these thing of late. Also, if you walk in front of a Kovil you are expected to walk in such a way so that your right hand side will always be facing the Kovil. This too is something most of the Sinhalese are not aware of - despite it being a custom in Buddhist Temples - this and have been violating. Also, some of the military officials in those areas have been asking favors from the Tamil residents of these areas whether they could provide accommodation for few days for the said officials' relatives / friends who will visit North.

Personally I didn't know many of these things either, and I do believe that if those people who travel there were aware, they would have been more considerate of the feelings of the Tamils too. So, the best we can do is to spread awareness and cause less heartache to those people as well as do something really meaningful to the unity between the two races. These might seem insignificant, but in truth these small things are what lead to bigger conflicts. If we could get so outraged because some random artist had a Buddha statue in one of his music videos, Tamils over there certainly have a right to get outraged too. It's only lucky they haven't - at least not yet. So let's be a little considerate people.

Please spread the word!

I'm a racist. Are you not?

Whacko came up with two very interesting, not to mention controversial posts recently. This and this. You can tell that just by looking at the shitload of comments he got. Still getting. Well I'm not trying to get as much comments, not trying to come up with my own controversial post just for the sake of it, but just wanted to add my two cents to this interesting conversation, or debate if you want to call it that.

Getting back to the topic.

Are you a racist? I think I am. And I also think we all are. I assume that someone is a racist if that someone is a homo sapien, just as I assume that someone is a liar if the said someone is a homo sapien. It's inherent in us. It's built into us. That's the way we are.

Take a minute and take a good hard look at humans. I mean not literally, don't stare at the chick in front of your desk at work, but think about humans. Ever since we were created by god, or since the mother nature turned the little black apes in to us - pick the one you like - we always wanted to divide ourselves into groups didn't we? As much as we are a social breed, we want to be social in groups. From the beginning of time, or rather the beginning of humans we divided ourselves into as much groups as we could. First we were hunters, but there were males and females. Females collected things like berries and stuff, took care of children and probably even decorated their caves with flowers that existed some thousands of years ago, while men went on and did the more macho and masculine stuff like hunting. It's a different story that women, instead of us men hunt more these days, that they even hunt us men down. Then we started cultivating, and more groups started to pop up, there were hunters, the new farmers and what not. They divided themselves into groups based on their geographical locations mostly. The group on the other side of the river had the right to their land and nobody from this side would enter their territory. And vice versa. There was our land and then there was their land. Our food, their food. We and they. You get the drift, I think.

What I want to say is, though they might not have clashed with each other all the time, this feeling, this concept of 'us', which was built into us was there all the time. By the last 'us' in the previous sentence I meant the humankind. See my point?

With time we evolved, or became civilized so to speak. But the concept of ours and theirs always remained. Today, we have found new ways in which we can divide ourselves into. We're Asians, Westerners or Aussies though some people put them - who are in the far east corner of the world - in the Westerners category which defies all logic. Then again there are not corners in a globe so maybe they do have a point. We divide into whites and blacks, not to mention browns and yellows and whatever else. We are Sri Lankans, Indians, Americans or Eskimos. When it comes to Sri Lanka, such a small island and such a small population, how many groups do we have? Up country Kandyans are categorized as big heads, while the wily old southerners are not to be trusted. Then comes the race. We are Sinhalese, we are Tamils, we are Muslims and we are many more. Even if you take us Sinhalese, don't we divide us into casts, and treat differently? I know people give much less importance to it by the day, but it still exists. Don't believe me? Take a look at marriage proposal column in a Sunday newspaper. And I didn't even mention the religions.

What I meant to say is, it is in our nature to divide ourselves into groups as much as we can. We feel comfortable that way. The thought that we belong somewhere is always comforting. Now I'm getting to my point. To divide us into groups, we need something to be based on. We are white, black or brown because of our color. We are Asians or Westerners depending on our geographical location. Same goes with countries. Then races. Though, it is a bit confusing what a race is. Certainly there are some biological differences in each race, I think that has something to do with breeding within that race for centuries though I'm not qualified nor knowledgeable to explain that any further. But I think you do agree, that Sinhalese differ from Tamils, Muslims and Jews or Japs. Then, there are some other differences that goes with races which are purely, the word is adjustable, I think. If a white boy born to American parents was raised by a Tamil family in Sri Lanka, he would be a Tamil in all sense except for the color of his skin, wouldn't he? The same goes with adopted Sinhalese children in Western countries. Remember that girl who perform exceptionally well in Australian Idol, who was born to Sri Lankan parents but was raised in Aussie? When someone introduced her as Sri Lankan, she objected and said that she was an Aussie. And she was damn right!

Now, after we divide ourselves and put us into groups, we do have a sense of belonging and a sense of ours don't we? We love our mothers the most. Our fathers, sons, daughters, brothers and sisters. Exception is the spouse. But the thing is, we do love our group, and nobody says it's wrong. The problems starts when while we love, care and treat ours the best we can, we start to treat theirs a bit, say, not so well. There in lies the problem, but it is also the human nature if not the nature of all things alive. It is not necessarily the right thing, but that is how things are!

Let's talk about Whacko's arguments a bit. When you summarise what he has to say, he says that Tamils and Muslims in Sri Lanka are being treated differently, and that is to say less favorably compared to the Sinhalese. I beg to differ. It must have been the case, and yes it does exist to a certain extent today, but not as much.

There is one thing I want to differentiate between here. That is, the way in which each race is treated by the constitution and the way in which we treat each other individually. My whole point of this post narrows down to the fact that while the former can be addressed, should be addressed and is being addressed, with the latter we are all a bit helpless and it is up to us individuals to correct that. Now, a while ago NB came up with a good post about the privileges Muslims enjoy in Sri Lanka. It is a pretty long list and to be frank pretty accurate as well. They do enjoy all that and some more. And so do the Tamils in Sri Lanka. In short, the constitution of Sri Lanka has given minorities enough privileges to enjoy and enough power as well in my opinion. Here I do not want to get into a verbal battle about should we go to talks with the LTTE, because while we should treat Tamils with much respect and equality, TERRORISTS should be crushed. And that is what LTTE is. So if you want to argue on that, save it.

Then, while that remains such, the way we treat the members of each race in a personal level does have some racism involved. I said this in the comments section of a post by Whacko, but let me state it here again. Say you're the CEO of a company and that you are in the process of recruiting someone. After many interviews you select two guys, or girls for that matter who have exactly the same qualifications. They are both excellent, but you need to chose only one of them. If one of them was a Sinhalese and the other was a Muslim or a Tamil, who would you choose? If I'd be frank, I'd choose the Sinhalese guy. Now before jumping the gun on me, sit back and think for a minute. Who would you chose? As far as I know, only an alien would be totally unbiased given the situation. What I'm trying to say is we try to treat our side better than their side, almost always. When it comes to friends and family nobody gives two hoots, but when it comes to race, cast or color of the skin things differ. But, the things is, it goes both ways. Not just the Sinhalese treat their kind that way, so do the Muslims and Tamils. Sinhalese hold monopolies in so many industries/businesses in Sri Lanka and they do discriminate others to a certain extent. But how many businesses are there in Sri Lanka that Muslims and Tamils hold monopolies over? So many right? And if you are not being naive, you will have to agree with me that there is discrimination by them as well. When Sinhalese gather together and talk about Muslims, they might talk ill about them, but wouldn't the Muslims and Tamils also do the same?

But the world is not as bad as it seems. What is important is, despite differences, and inherent hate between our races we still manged to live rather peacefully. I want to talk about the place where my home is. It's in Kandy and in my hometown there is a very large Muslim population. I'm not exactly sure about the statistics, but it is close to 50-50. And almost all the shops belong to the Muslims. But we never ever had any kind of conflict there, in fact we do go along quite well. I do have a lot of Muslim friends, and they are being invited to our home every Sinhala New Year day. And we are invited to their homes for their new year. Muslims support us a lot when we organize "Dansala" for Wesak and Poson poya days, and one time the richest Muslim Mudalali made the largest contribution to our Dansala. Not to mention the chicks we tried to dig from each other's race.

The bottom line is, there was always some friction between different races that are in Paradise, there is now, and there will always be as far as we remain humans. But as long as we manage not to go as far as kill each other, which I'm sure we won't bother starting again, things will be fine.

The world is not as bad a place as it seems folks...