It's not about BBS !

Photo credit : http://www.nation.com.pk/

Under all the rhetoric of pro and anti Bodu Bala Sena blog posts, FB shares and comments, lies a fundamental problem which everyone seems to quite comfortably have chosen to forget. Sinhala Buddhists of this country have a fear. Fear of being becoming the minority of the country. Fear of, someday being outnumbered, lead and dictated terms by another ethnic group. A feeling of insecurity driven by both false and valid concerns raised by groups such as BBS.

To some progressives this would seem silly, and would simply argue that it is part of the process of evolving as a country. They would even go in to the extent of asking the question of “So what?”

For me it is a question of timing. We came out of an ethnic war just 4 years ago. The country is still recovering from a war mentality where all problems were looked in simple patriotic or unpatriotic viewpoints. Some of us were lucky enough to move on from that easily ; partly because we were largely unexposed to the reality of war.But the majority of this country is deliberately barred from moving pass that ideological barrier by the ruling regime so they can continue with their corruption and nepotism in the name of patriotism.

So I would disagree with the people who asks the question “So what?” simply because we are not matured yet as a country for that kind of “thinking”. Even the countries that we think are developed and some who call them secular has not addressed this issue 100% successfully.

For an example, In US the cause for insecurity has changed from Blacks to Chinese to Muslims and to Mexicans. In France there has been major debate and controversy over ban of Hijab. In Germany there has been growing protest over number of mosques been built.  In Burma there is a bloody ethnic conflict t that is going on among Buddhists and Muslims.

The reason that there cannot be a silver bullet solution is because tribalism is part of human nature. No country or society will be able to eradicate these doubts and fears entirely. BBS is just another form of the same fear. It is not something new, these kinds of fringe elements has always been part of the political system and they will continue to be.

So then what’s the big concern?

The concern is that our situation is more similar to Burma than US or France. In Burma the campaigns against Muslims has spread through internet and are spearheaded by group of monks called “969”. They started the campaign from urging the Buddhists to boycott Muslim run shops and services. Sounds familiar?

In a country where there is absolutely no intellectual discussion happening, where even the slightest suggestion of progressive reforms are met with unprecedented amount of negativity, slightest of provocation is enough for wide spread carnage.  We are still in the war mentality; even though the fear of getting dragged in to another war is there the false sense of patriotism is providing sense of invisibility to groups like BBS. There are signs of violence appearing which can quite quickly grow out of control.

Groups such as BBS can actually be a part of the conversation in any democracy. But the problem is without being part of the conversation they are becoming the conversation. Even the best of the intellectuals are succumbing to their strategy and being manipulated in to taking BBS as the discussion. When it should have been a discussion about reforming our education system, how to heal the wounds of war and how do we improve the Buddhist culture, we are arguing about BBS generated issues such as Halal.

The irony of the matter is that we can identify the petty politics of Tamilnadu where politicians use entirely unrelated matter of SL to rally people behind them in elections, yet however cannot see hidden political and trade agendas of keeping people away from speaking up against corruption.

So it is evident that at the heart of this noise made by BBS lies a real issue which has to be addressed with proper political, policy based, ideologically sound, and academically supported dialogue. Not in front of NOLIMIT or Fashion Bug, not in Facebook but in proper forums that are dedicated for intellectual discussions. Even BBS can come up with their arguments on how they want this country to change. Arguments can be varying from insane ideas such as deporting some ethnicity all together to subtle educational and constitutional reforms.

What we cannot no longer allow is the noise of the fringe few to overpower the voices of reason.