Indian editor on the Sri Lankan situation and the LTTE

Etymology of “Sen-kada-gala”

Since it is the independence week, I thought I’d write something about the history of Sri Lanka and its folklore. This is about Senkadagala, the last Sri lankan kingdom.

It was no coincidence that the Sinhalese kings chose Kandy or “Senkadagala” as their kingdom. It all has to do with the etymology of the name “Sen-kada-gala”. This is a tale in folklore that I gathered from my visits.

In the earlier times, there was a craftsman who went into the jungle in search of ingredients. Suddenly,  he saw an Elephant chasing him. He ran as fast and as far as he could and climbed upon a rock. The elephant who was chasing him, suddenly changed course and ran in the opposite direction. As the man was contemplating this amazing event, he saw a rabbit being chased by a Fox, the rabbit came to the rock and the Fox started running back to where it came from. The craftsman saw this and reported this to the king. The king thought that this was a great location to establish his capital: the rock where enemy forces are broken to pieces “Sen- kada- gala”.

The senkadagala remained the last bastion of the Sri lankan kingdom, withstanding sieges by all of the colonials. Until internal strife led to its downfall and subsequent surrender of whole of Sri Lanka.

Towards lasting peace

Is peace such a complicated issue? The Sri Lankan situation seems so complex that there are times when I thought that the whole exercise of hoping for lasting peace was futile. Especially in the latter half of the 90s, the LTTE were practicing such acts of provocation and polarization. This cast a shadow on any attempts to build peace among communities. But now that the LTTE influence is diminishing, there is hope for real peace and reconciliation.

For me, I think peace is not a goal in itself, it is the development of human relations through pursuing justice and integrity. To think of peace in such a way, simplifies the issue so that even a layman can grasp it.

By justice I don’t mean settling the score, it is about forgiveness and reconciliation. Just like Nelson Mandela’s “Truth and reconciliation” movement. It is also about respecting others and their viewpoints. If justice prevails, So can the roots of lasting peace take hold.

Integrity is another critical aspect of achieving lasting peace. The corruption that is rampant in Sri lankan day to day life causes such disenchantment in the ordinary citizens, that they lose hope in their government. So steps should be taken to abolish corruption through a transparent monitoring body with the due power to take action.

I sincerely think that if each of us is dedicated enough towards this goal, achieving peace is not so complex after all.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
-Margaret Mead

Shared futures

My work in the Inter Cultural Dialogue project kicked off with a training program held at the NYSC , Maharagama. The five day residential workshop was something that I had to strain to push into my schedule. But I found that it was an investment that was worthwhile. Not only did I get to meet so many new friends, I also grew as a person through the whole experience. As with any journey, we started off by introducing ourselves. of course we had met briefly prior to this, but not been able to associate with each other on such a level. What we did at the start was to draw a poster depicting our appearance, interests, core beliefs and what we expected from the inter cultural dialogue programme. This helped us to unleash our creativity and each of us learnt a lot about the others, as well as ourselves during this activity.
The next step was to setup a shared code of ethics so that we would never lose sight of our objectives and wander off course. The consensus was to keep it simple and realistic rather than being too dramatic or losing sight of the objectives laid out by the British Council. We ended the day on a high note with a team building activity and discussion about the team dynamics and how a typical team goes through forming, storming, norming and performing. I particularly noticed how polite and helpful the team members were and how they worked as a cohesive unit to complete the team task.
Even though the training progamme ended in the evening, we found some time to get together and play cricket in the diminishing sunlight. As we retired to bed, I was feeling delighted about my new found friends and excited about what we could achieve in the coming year.
All through the first three days of the program, we took part in discussions about the current issues facing the youth in sri lanka and particularly cultural issues that we are going to focus on. It was very interesting to see how different cultures have different perceptions about the same issues. However it was clear that all of the cultures are in concert when it comes to the core beliefs and values. We would have to address these core beliefs and values in order to create a dialogue between the cultures.
For me personally, it was a new experience to share ideas with people from different backgrounds and even though we had our disagreements, we always respected each other and were willing to listen to each other’s point of view. Something that I think our politicians could improve a lot on. Invariably, some of the perceptions that I had before with regards to human rights and other issues have changed and hopefully I have grown to become a better person for the community and my country. I definitely felt a changed person when I left the NYSC on Sunday. Hopefully all of us did.
In the second part of our program, we focused on how to achieve our goals through different methods of dialoguing, like the fish bowl, where only the people sitting in the middle have the opportunity to add into conversation. Also the talking stick and other means of dialoguing were introduced. We had a lot of fun doing physical activities as well.
Our final activity was to agree on a set of projects that we hope to achieve in the coming year, so we brainstormed and came up with 5 projects which everyone agreed upon. These include sport events, short film festivals, workshops etc.
The coming year will be an exciting time and hopefully we as a group can make a positive impact on our community and the country as a whole.

The project web page:The project web page