It
was past 11 pm when the conference at a community hall in Kattankudy
ended. The last three speakers were restricted to two minutes each, much
to their discomfiture, as some of them had traveled as far as from Colombo and
Matara to be present. One of them had even prepared a forty minute
presentation which had to be whittled down to enable the conference to end
before the witching hour of midnight. According to the local organisers
the conference was the first ever inter-religious one to be held in the Muslim
town of Kattankudy in the east of the country.
The
conference in Kattankudy took place in the context of the continuing
inter-religious and ethnic tensions following the Easter Sunday attacks that
claimed the lives of over 250 persons and targeted Christian churches and
luxury hotels. There is concern once again about the possibility of
similar incidents as crucial presidential elections approach. Apart from
the taking of innocent lives, such attacks can also be made to influence the
course of the elections. Issues of ethnic and religious nationalism,
national security and the importance of strong leadership to deal with
terrorism will take centre stage.
The
inter-religious conference in Kattankudy followed an exchange visit organized
by the National Peace Council that involved members of inter-religious committees
set up in 22 districts in the country as civil society formations with organic
links to the larger community. The main area of the exchange was
the volatile Eastern Province in which each of the three main communities is
almost equally represented with consequent rivalries and tensions. The
choice of Kattankudy for the conference was especially significant as it was
the hometown of the leader of the now-banned National Thowheed Jamaat, Zahran
Hashim, who led the suicide bombers on Easter Sunday.
TWO
LEVELS
As
the conference was to share experiences it was scheduled from 6-9 pm at the
conclusion of the exchange visit, where the members of inter religious
committees from the other districts met with fishing communities, women headed
households, families of missing persons, among others. However, there were two factors that delayed the conference which
the organisers from Colombo had not foreseen. The first was the need of
the participants from Kattankudy to take a prayer break shortly after the
conference began, in which they went to a nearby mosque. Getting the more
than hundred participants back into their seats after the prayer break took up
some time.
Second,
a further delay arose over the issue of musical accompaniment to the peace songs
of Jayatilaka Bandara of Saadu Janaravaya. There were some from
Kattankudy who were apprehensive that the controversy over whether music should
accompany the songs would derail the harmony of the inter religious
conference. However, the intervention of Abdullah Alim, a moulavi from
Puttalam, was useful in resolving the problem. He said that Saadu
Janaravaya was not the music of a rock band, but more akin to the sweetness of
a rose that is accompanied by thorns. The songs and music of Jayatilaka
Bandara thereafter provided a welcome interlude to the many speeches that
followed.
The
bigger source of delay was the interest of the more than 20 speakers to add a
few minutes each to their allocated time which eventually added
up. However, despite the delays, the conference was useful in
helping the participants to break down the preconceived notions they had of one
another. The Muslim participants saw the quality of the Buddhist
monks present who believed in the promotion of inter-religious
harmony. They saw them as so very different to the nationalist
monks whom they have encountered either in media reports or in violent
confrontations and who see the Muslims as a threat to Buddhism and to the
Sinhala nation in Sri Lanka. The Buddhist monks who attended the
conference spoke in term of the Buddhism that upholds loving kindness and
universal values.
Even
as civil society was creating unity in Kattankudy among the local
communities drawn from different parts of the country, in the capital city of
Colombo another group of civil society organisations from the March 12 Movement
were engaged in a unique exercise to bring together 12 presidential candidates
on to one common platform before the people. This was on account of the
trust that those who led this civil society initiative, most notably Rohana
Hettiarachchi of PAFFREL have gained, through long years of independent
election observation that has mobilized tens of thousands of ordinary citizens
to uphold the need for free and fair elections.
FUTURE
HOPE
At
the present time there is a large measure of disillusionment among the people
with the political parties and politicians in general. The hopes for good
governance, anti-corruption and economic development that were raised high
during the last presidential and general elections of 2015 have not come to
fruition in the manner that was expected. Today those who were once
accused of corruption are campaigning as if they were innocent, and those who
pledged to bring about anti-corruption measures have themselves been tarnished
by corruption. Economic growth rates today are less than during most of the war
period.
The
situation is so bad that even religious prelates have called for a strongman of
the nature of Hitler to redeem the nation. It is in this unhappy
situation that civil society has emerged as an institution that has the
confidence and credibility to bring together the those who are divided by
communal sentiment and by party politics on to one common platform, at the
grassroots levels and also nationally. The 12 presidential candidates who
appeared on the common platform set up for them by civil society included two
of the three main presidential candidates, Sajith Premadasa of the UNP and
Anura Kumara Dissanayake of the JVP.
At
the debate the candidates were presented with questions prepared in advance by
the organisers after consultations with a wide swathe of civil society.
The answers they gave on the public stage gives hope in the future of Sri
Lanka. Where inter-ethnic and inter-religious relations were concerned,
both the two main presidential candidates gave answers on similar lines that
eschewed narrow nationalism and embraced the plurality of Sri Lankan
society. Several of the first time candidates, most notably former
army commander General Mahesh Senanayake spoke likewise in terms of addressing
the national question. Faced with the more than 3000-strong multi ethnic
and multi religious audience at the Sugathadasa Stadium the missing presidential
candidate, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, might not have wished to disagree.
