This week the country enters the year 2019 at a moment in time when our collective future is uncertain, shorn, as we are, of the certitude of stable governance and, threatened by dark forces from the past. Even as we transit from the old year to the new, we are reminded of past evils by the antics of some of our citizens.
In Mawanella last week, the nation was disturbed out of its festivities by an ugly incident of sacrilege. Several icons of Sakyamuni Gotama Buddha were found to have been damaged by acts of wilful vandalism. The authorities moved quickly and several suspected perpetrators are now in custody pending investigation.
The target of the vandalism is clearly the susceptibilities of the Buddhist community. This vandalism does not only target those who belong to Buddhism but also all those whose humanity appreciates the sacred and the spiritual irrespective of religious affiliation or denomination.
We, Sri Lankans, do not, and must not, limit our appreciation of spirituality solely to our subjective selves and that of our clan or community. A savant of colonial origin once wrote about this island as a land where “every prospect pleases … … … and only Man is vile..”.
While that may be a somewhat low colonial estimate of our island society, in our new post-colonial self-confidence, we look beyond our frailties and seek new human futures.
Our progress as an island society has not been without its major obstacles and lapses – due to our own political and social chicanery and, misgovernance. One of our failings over the post-colonial decades has been just that failure to acknowledge all of us, clustered as we are on this little island. Our togetherness has been too often denied and overlooked in favour of exclusive attitudes and a focus on self and selfish rivalry.
Even if the thirty years of inter-ethnic war ended a decade ago, the incidents in Mawanella last week serve to remind us that while the military contest ended – the social contestation and discord has not.
Earlier this year, the country experienced the worst inter-ethnic social violence in several years, the first under the Good Governance regime that was voted into power with precisely such concerns of ethnic conflict in people’s minds. The ethnic minorities had, through bitter experience, come to expect such inhuman treatment during the previous regime that openly solicited ethnic exclusivism and suspicion. Their expectations of the new regime were the opposite.
Of course, citizens are able to clearly differentiate between ethnic hostility stirred up by provocateurs under government auspices and acts of ethnic hostility that spontaneously break out from ad hoc situations and mass perceptions. Spontaneous actions cannot easily be prevented. They can only be brought under control after they break out.
The inter-ethnic social violence in Kandy earlier this year was brought under control with little too much delay to the liking of the victimised ethnic group. Many felt that the responding action should have come faster in Digana without the delays arising from social hesitation.
Likewise, the outbreak of vandalism in Mawanella last week was a social outburst not easily anticipated. But civic action combined with quick moves by the authorities helped stem tensions before they spilled over.
An attack on religious icons are usually seen as an attack on the religion to which these icons belong. But that is no more than an emphasis on the social and cultural affinities of the icons. Graven images, after all, are merely a likeness of the spiritual pulse, a tangible and material symbolising of the inner truths.
All Sri Lankan religions teach us this: in Buddhism, Islam, Christianity and Hinduism. We are taught that the physical image is only the outward manifestation of cosmic and spiritual forces, of the collective consciousness of our zeal and commitment. While damage to an icon certainly hurts sentiment, at the same time, we know that such sentiment is transitory and does not affect our faith and its glorious inspiration.
At the same time, those perpetrators must know that to prioritise physical damage to an idol is itself the prioritising of the graven image over the spirit. The focus on idols for vandalism, ultimately betrays a reliance on idols as well as a reliance on violence, both being in contravention of their own religiosity or philosophy.
Have not the institutionalised religions that we practise today, surely, transcended those early pulses of idol worship? After two and a half millennia of existence and piety, or, in the case of some religions, a millennia of thriving, surely the faithful have, today, begun transcending those early stages of piety that require rigid iconography and superstition.
In this second decade of the 21st Century, our island society must quickly learn to equip itself with all the capacities that will take us forward in material and spiritual progress and not be retarded by the anxieties and obfuscation of bygone eras. Our national unity must be based on such sound civilisational foundations and not on the crude pulses of baser human instincts.