Isn’t religion the opium of the masses?

April 6, 2013, 7:00 pm


Buddhist monks taking part in a demonstrtion

Kumar David

Averting an outbreak of full-blown anti-Muslim violence, or to be more precise, preventing the present lunacy from spreading is of the utmost importance. The first step is understanding what is driving this menace. When pogroms erupt the first alleged culprit is rivalry between traders; business jealousy. The anti-Tamil riots of 1956 and 1958 were attributed to Tamil businesses and shops getting too big a grip in Pettah etc, and Tamils cornering a disproportionate share of juicy perches in the public service. There was resentment in the Sinhala petty-bourgeois and middle classes who instigated the mobs. OK, I concede that this accounts for the events in part.

Drawing upon this experience, many have attributed similar causes to the recent spread of anti-Muslim intolerance in sections of the Sinhala-Buddhist (SB) community. True, only a minority of Sinhala-Buddhists have been drawn in, but no, I do not agree that it is a tiny minority; I am shaken to see the mood more prevalent than many were prepared to concede. Some analysts attribute the ire to competition among traders, commercial jealousy, and resentment of Muslim identity oriented habits and attire. I concede this adds fuel to the fire once kindled, but these are only an "also" factor. I do not agree that the conventional explanation is the authentic driver; not the root cause. Today’s happenings are not an anti-Muslim rerun of the 1950s.

This time the prime cause is located not in the socio-economic, but in the political domain. The Sinhala-Tamil conflict that came into the open via SWRD-racism was preceded by decades of smouldering ethnic resentment in the later years of colonial rule and the first post-independence decade. Remember 50:50, the relegation of Upcountry Tamils to servitude, and effervescent communal chatter in petty-bourgeois society and middle class drawing rooms. Nothing resembling this has been incubating against the Muslim community this time. If anything, the opposite is true; Sinhalese have extolled their anti-LTTE stance in the war and congratulated Muslims for distancing themselves from the "Tamil speaking people" concept much loved of the Tigers.

This conflict is manufactured and ignited in the political domain. It is not an excrescence of organic social and political developments but a partly intentional, partly subliminal, strategy. I do not want to be misunderstood; I am not suggesting that since it is politically, not socio-economically rooted, anti-Muslim extremism is superficial and will quickly blow over, or that there is no risk of the country going up in flames. On the contrary, for reasons I will explain, the situation is dynamite and political conditions are such that even a manufactured outbreak of violence can do untold damage. Rather, I am only delineating a more precise understanding of the process itself.

So what’s behind it?

To grasp causation, let us ask what needs to be done if the fires are to be extinguished. What are the steps to be taken to put a stop to the insanity? Three essential tasks, none of which will get done, come to mind. First, Sinhala-Buddhist (SB) opinion, especially in the petty-bourgeois and subaltern classes, must stand up and confront the extremists; second, the state must exert its full weight and authority to eliminate this threat to the fabric of society; and third Muslim politicos must break with the government and weaken it to a point where it fears for its parliamentary stability. The first is not likely for reasons of recent history as I will explain, the second is out of the question since topmost government leaders have aligned, encouraged, and given their imprimatur to the instigators, and the third is unlikely since Muslim politicos, including the SLMC from top to bottom, are obsessed with greed, loot and sinecures. They may be compelled to surrender their privileges and venality, but only after the community gets hit by a freight train.

The obliteration of the LTTE was an epochal event in the history of Sri Lanka, the acme of Rajapakse’s triumph, the regime’s Dutugemanu moment. Nevertheless it is amazing how swiftly things change in modern times; ballads of Dutugemanu are still sung, but Rajapakse’s moment passed quickly. In modern times society is networked and complex – economy, class, ethnicity and polity. Dutugemanu was monarch and natural autocrat; Rajapakse still struggles to turn war victory into autocracy by defeating modern democratic polity. Autocracy did make progress in the three years after May 2009, but ran into economic and political roadblocks thereaqfter. Internationally too everything is tightly coupled; a king two millennia ago had little to worry about human-rights lobbies or American global power, but Rajapakse has been brought to his knees, maybe one knee only so far, by a nexus of internal and external happenings.

Muslims pay the price of the regime needing a new enemy, a dragon to slay before its core constituency, a replacement for the vanquished tiger. Here lies the truth of Gothabhaya mounting the BSS rostrum, encouraging its "good work", Yes, "good work" igniting Fashion Bug shopping malls!

It is not the regime alone that needs mobs, the mobs need psychological catharsis; there is interdependence and symbiosis. After defeating the Tamils, Sinhala-Buddhist Mahavamsa ideology needed new spaces. Religious extremism is as false and addictive an opiate as racism; of one hemlock we have partaken to the full, we now raise a second poisoned chalice to our lips. It is an intermingling of two needs; the political needs of a government sliding to economic and political disarray and the emotional and ideological needs of addicts of an ethno-religious opiate. The sibling’s political needs explain why the police stand paralysed when the regime’s core constituency runs amok before its eyes; the extremists, for their part, have cathartic emotional urges to fulfil. This confluence, this merging, constitutes the foundation of anti-Muslim mobilisation.

There is a rational element to the terror suffered by bearers of Mahavamsa consciousness, to whom Lanka is the pristine land of Sinhala Buddhism, much as the Resurrection is the cardinal article of the Christian faith. Panic about alleged Muslim concupiscence is a demographic nightmare. Muslims now number 9% but multiply faster; their women presumed more fertile, their men’s virility superior to the competition. Within a generation their proportion could rise to 20% and that would be a wholly different ballgame. Recall that charming old ballad that strikes terror into every heathen heart and sinew: "The sons of the Prophet are Mighty and Bold, and quite unaccustomed to fear, etc"

I have attempted to explain why the first and second imperatives for overcoming the local renditions of the mad monk Rasputin are non-starters. This seems pessimistic, but don’t shoot the messenger, I did not craft the message, and pessimistic is not hopeless.

Muslim politicos and the

supreme sell-out

A harlot is one who sells her (or his, in the age of sexual equality) body. How much finer is a poor woman who sells herself to feed hungry children, than the harlotry of politicians selling-out the nation for sacks of rupees and ministerial perks? Rajapakse needed parliamentary votes to enact the Eighteenth Amendment; the SLMC was the counter party to the deal. It joined the jaded old tarts of UNP cross-overs and the Dead Left to push another nail into democracy’s coffin. Having sown the wind Muslim ministers and UPFA parliamentarians are reaping the whirlwind. They dare not quit, because I reckon, the Administration has files thick with details of roguery, enough to stand them in the dock and hang them from trees.

If the community is hit by a freight train of BSS-JHU violence, and the regime continues to pussyfoot, as it must to shield its core constituency, the position of Muslim politicos in government becomes untenable. In the meantime there is this grotesque example of a regime whose Defence Secretary commends the exertions of the BSS, while half a dozen Muslims hold down Cabinet and Junior Minister sinecures in the same government! Greed, venality and cowardice of its politicians has rendered the community hapless, leaderless and exposed as never before in the last one hundred years.

In the meantime the great unknown is the rapport between President and Defence Secretary in the present imbroglio. Does President approve of DS mounting the BSS platform? Are they playing violin and cello in the same orchestra. Or is there a rift? Either way the consequences are far reaching. If they are working in cahoots it is the end of the SLFP and UPFA. A fascist turn by the siblings will rip the SLFP asunder and perhaps herald Chandrika’s return to the mainstream. If they are at odds new political formations will emerge - but Gotha will not be able to carry the military. If the brothers are united, the union of SB extremists, president and chief of military is a peril eventually inviting Indian and international intervention. Yes, the stakes are high if constitutional democracy is formally annulled in Lanka.

The Islamic countries

No moral concerns or pleas for good sense will impact this government; only if its own security or advantages are imperilled will it react. This is the ace in the hands of the Islamic nations on whose goodwill the regime depends. Not China, the Middle East holds the whip. Anger the ME and domestic helpers come home thick and fast, and 60% ($6 billion) of Lanka’s current account earnings dry up. There will be rioting in the streets and civil commotion in the countryside when the economy winds down. Someone asked me "Why are these dummies playing with fire, why suicidal irrationality?" My answer is that the government is not fully in control; it is buffeted and blown by its own chauvinist base. I spoke of the Mephistophelean contract between regime and extremists; each serving a need of the other, but neither is in control of events either.

The Islamic countries are unlikely to play hardball unless Muslim parties quit government and demand intercession. Politicos may be forced out when the community is hit by the freight train, since this seems likely, in a perverse kind of way things are not hopeless.

 island.lk