May 11, 2013, 6:18 pm

Gamini Gunawardane’s response to US Ambassador Sison in the Sunday Island of May 5 contains the following sentences which seem to me to be of enormous importance: "I had the opportunity of dealing with a communal conflict between the Sinhalese and Muslims of Galle which was recurring almost annually in the late 70s and it was put down for good in 1981. This is still holding since. This was not due to ‘reconciliation’ but due to the Police on behalf of the government being able to hold back the majority community and show through impartial action to dispel their perception that the government was partial towards the minority which was the perceived reason for them to take the law into their hands."

The above seems to me of enormous importance for two reasons, the first of which is that it shows up the Sinhalese reluctance to face up to our ethnic problems. According to GG Sinhalese-Muslim communal conflict was almost an annual occurrence in the late 70s until 1981. Precisely at that time I was an official in the Foreign Ministry complaining that I was being subjected to anti- Muslim discrimination. None of my colleagues took that seriously – apart of course for the Tamils. Later in 1987-88 I was again subjected to grotesque discrimination but only one of my Sinhalese colleagues was prepared to recognize that it was indeed anti-Muslim discrimination.

After leaving the Ministry in 1988 I prepared a paper on my case. Only two of the Sinhalese intellectuals, namely the late Regi Siriwardene and Rajiva Wijesinha, recognized that it was a case of anti-Muslim discrimination. For the rest, it was a case of injustice which could be explained away in terms of ninety nine possible reasons, but never in terms of race or ethnicity. From 1989 to 1994 I wrote several articles in the Lanka Guardian, and again in the Weekend Express from 1998 to 2000, on the anti-Muslim violence that recurred every year from 1975 to 2002, but in every case media wisdom held that it was a case of fracas between thugs with no race or ethnic dimension to it at all, at all, at all.

I have come to believe that a refusal to face up to the facts among the Sinhalese power elite is one of the major reasons why we have mucked up our ethnic relations so horrendously. First we had a thirty-year war and now we have a major Muslim problem on our hands. The refusal to face up to facts had to have tragic consequences. In his book Exploring Confrontation, published in 1994, Michael Roberts wrote prophetically as follows: "Two conversations in the course of the 1970s deepened my despondency and brought home the fact that most Sinhalese were living in a fool’s paradise. Circa 1974, in visiting a Sinhalese friend on the way back from Colombo, I was treated to a range of chauvinistic, neo-fascist views, largely directed at the ‘Muslims’ (Moors), by this articulate and politically active individual, Saba as I shall call him. After that, the ride back to Peradeniya was in a state of profound depression."

The second reason why GG’s statement has enormous importance is that it calls attention to the need for practical action in dealing with ethnic problems, but practical action based on a proper understanding of the problem. In Galle he understood the problem to be a misperception on the part of the Sinhalese majority that the Muslim minority was being given privileged treatment. He corrected that misperception and took practical action on that basis. The good relations that he established hold to this day. A full account of what he accomplished in Galle could be very instructive in the situation we are confronting today.

Izeth Hussain

Izethhussain@gmail.com

island.lk