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go through Masumantiran –
Masumanthiran MP
November 27, 2012 was a busy day for the Sri Lankan government. Government agents banned routine rituals at temples across the north and east, attacked and arrested university students for peaceful gatherings, broke into girls’ dormitories, beat up newspaper editors, vandalized vehicles of members of parliament, tortured political prisoners, injured a journalist and several university media students, patrolled cemeteries, and took time out to patrol private properties to extinguish lamps lit for Karthiaai Vilakkeedu, the Hindu festival of lights.
What could have prompted such drastic measures? On November 27, 2012, a single light.
This year, the religious festival of Karthiaai Vilakkeedu and the Tamil commemoration day of Maaveerar Naal both fall on November 27. Both festivals are traditionally marked by lighting lamps. The Karthiaai (Karthikai) lamps symbolize peace and harmony and mark the full moon climax of the festival of lights.
this Mavillar The Nar Lantern is held to honour the Tamils who died in the war and symbolically marks the day of the first Tamil casualty. Both annual events are non-violent. This year both events were suppressed with force or violence.
Both festivals were convicted for being associated with lights, while Maaveerar Naal was convicted for being associated with Tamil TigersUnder these excuses, the government decided that the event of the day, the lighting of the lamps, was unacceptable.
National Law
The Constitution provides for the fundamental right of all Sri Lankans to freedom of thought, conscience and religion (Article 10), as well as freedom of expression, assembly, association and movement, and in particular freedom to “manifest his religion or belief, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, in worship, observance, practice or teaching” (Article 14(1)(e)). Therefore, prohibiting the ancient Tamil Hindu tradition requires a higher standard than symbolophobia.
To ban the age-old Tamil Hindu tradition of lighting lamps for Karthiaai Vilakkeedu, the Constitution needs to be rewritten.
The government attempted to legally justify the November 27 action, but based on a faulty interpretation. The government relied on restrictions on fundamental rights of expression, peaceful assembly and association as provided for in Article 15, specifically that these rights can be legally restricted to preserve racial and religious harmony. On the face of it, it is clear that such restrictions cannot be used to restrict non-exclusive, non-violent and non-confrontational religious activities. Religious harmony cannot be protected by suppressing religion.
The full realization of the right to peacefully practise one’s religion is a fundamental necessity for religious harmony. Indeed, Article 14(1)(e), which protects the right to profess one’s religion, is not subject to legal limitations relating to racial and religious harmony. Rather, it is subject to more general limitations under Article 15(7), which includes giving priority to “the interests of national security, public order and the protection of public health or morals, or to ensure due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others, or to meet the justifiable requirements of the general welfare in a democratic society”. The government, in particular, called for a broad interpretation of the general welfare clause to justify its action.
The same provisions that justify the religious practice of lamp lighting also justify the cultural practice of lamp lighting, so the above restrictions do not apply. Article 14(1)(e) provides that every citizen “has the right, either alone or in community with others, to enjoy and promote his own culture and to use his own language”. Similarly, racial harmony cannot be achieved if people are prohibited from commemorating their lost loved ones on the basis of their race or ethnicity. Even if these fallen family members were soldiers in a separatist movement, their enduring identity after death is still primarily one of race and family.
It is important to remember that the conflict itself is divided along similar demographic lines. The cultural practice of honouring the dead by lighting lamps cannot legitimately be described as a threat to national security and the government must resort to the same general welfare provision in Article 15(7) to which Article 14(1)(e) on cultural expression is indeed subject.
Repression is self-destruction
The question is whether the lighting of lamps in the tradition of these two festivals is consistent with the “justifiable requirements of the general welfare in a democratic society”, whether from a legal or other point of view. (Since Karthiaai Vilakkeedu is criminalized only because of its connection with lamps, the real question is whether it applies to Maaveerar Naal.)
This question can be answered in theory and demonstrated in practice. Without the “thought police” of an Orwellian dystopia, everyone enjoys a de facto right to remember what they want. An organic extension of this memory is commemoration. If a community or culture has a collective memory, then this will be reflected in their collective desire to express those memories. Such expression may threaten those who are uncomfortable with the past and the impact these memories may have on the future.
In the context of modern Sri Lanka, certain memories are repressed because of the fear that they will lead people back to the causes that were previously repressed. The tragic irony is that the act of repression erases painful memories from the past and roots them firmly in the present. We can never forget the past, but repression also means that we can never escape it.
Suppressing memory and commemoration is akin to ordering someone not to think about something. The order and its every reiteration generates the very thoughts the order seeks to exclude! Likewise, every time memories of past political realities are suppressed, they are simply transferred from the public to the private imagination, where they can neither be examined nor measured, only stirred.
Furthermore, if violence is used to suppress the memory of violence, then that memory is not only internalized, it is also renewed. It is no longer confined to the past. In this way, every time the government uses violence inappropriately, as they did on November 27, 2012, they replace the scars with new ones.
Both hands
In 2008, the government built a war memorial in Pudumatalam. It was said to be designed similarly to Maaveerar Naal, to honour fallen soldiers, but in a grander and more lasting way. The massive government memorial features a soldier in uniform holding a gun in his right hand and the Sri Lankan flag in his left. As an enduring symbol of the civil war, the image is disturbing.
The open conflict may be over, but the current battle for national identity cannot be won with a gun in one hand and a flag in the other.
If Sri Lanka has bought peace with violence, only to maintain it with more violence, then perhaps what Sri Lanka has bought is not peace, but only a temporary stop. The government is at a crossroads. If Sri Lanka is to achieve a better destination than we remember, the government must take its finger off the trigger and stick the gun empty.
No matter who we are, we cannot deny our dead. We should not forget their mistakes, grievances, triumphs, failures and sacrifices. Instead, we should cherish for ourselves the hope they had for us: a better, brighter future for Sri Lanka.
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