Gajalakshmi Paramasivam
24
September 2017
Higher
Post-war Development through e-learning
[Sri
Lankan authorities have admitted in a Dutch documentary that thousands of babies
born there were fraudulently sold for adoption abroad in the 1980s.] BBC World
News Report ‘Sri Lankan
baby trade: Minister admits illegal adoption trade’
One of the accusations made against the Tamil Tiger
leadership was their use of children in combat. One cannot use the same law to relate as to which
is right and which is wrong if the
structures / contexts in which the respective outcomes were born are different.
Common law could be applied only where the manifested outcomes happened through
Common structures. Until we know otherwise, we are entitled to taken them as
common if as per our knowledge the laws are applicable to both sides. Those who
claim to be Sinhala Nationalists are not therefore entitled to use Sri Lankan Common
Laws nor take remuneration through positions based on the Common Sri Lankan
structure. Recently I received Communication under the Subject matter:Take
Action against the Hunt for our War Heroes Bill aka the Enforced Disappearances
Bill
The BASIS / Law / Value of my response to this is
explained as follows on the basis of three Sri Lankans’ express views:
My response: Shivanthi Ranasinghe’s influence – goes
towards endorsing majority and hence protecting armed forces from outside
scrutiny. I looked at the message/suggestion and decided to stay away from it
because I follow the structured system to the extent I can without compromising
on the Truth I have experienced. Hence I could not have obliged Shivanthi
2.
Jayasinghe
(To my mind an Australian Sinhalese) – ‘What
is wrong with setting up The Office of Missing Persons? Don't you like the idea of Human Rights?
A decent society protected from criminal’
My response: – in terms of global communication
principles and values (Mr. J) has demonstrated lack of commitment to current
merit based system. Hence when I read his response to Shivanathi – I took it to
be on personal relationship between Shivanthi and himself where he was the
Senior. So he merely asks the question using other people’s theory
to keep his senior position
3.
'Rajeewa Jayaweera’
of Sri Lankan origin now living in London to Mr. Jayasinghe:
-
If there is nothing wrong, could you enlighten us, reasons for world’s two
greatest ‘defenders & offenders’ of Human Rights i.e. USA and UK besides
your adopted country Australia have not ratified the Convention? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Convention_for_the_Protection_of_All_Persons_from_Enforced_Disappearance
My response: To answer Rajeewa who has demonstrated
respect for my current work, through our common investment (Sri Lankan
Airlines) – Sri Lankans are to be taken as Sovereign until proven otherwise.
The armed officers fought their equals and had to use the principle
underpinning the conclusion ‘all is fair in Love & War’. The line was drawn
by the LTTE for it to be ‘free’ of common order. If under those circumstances
the soldiers had followed the common order – they would have had less energy to
protect themselves – leave alone kill the enemy. Unless Tamils who are free of
LTTE influence seek such lawful pathway – they would be defeated in the global
context. Sinhalese fear this defeat and hence this move. Likewise USA
& UK Governments to protect their soldiers. They don’t need to so
long as they do not claim ‘victory’ while in official positions. The mistake
the Rajapakse regime made was to claim victory despite knowledge of breaching
the common law and using the international system to list the LTTE as
Terrorists. By celebrating victory – they alienated themselves while taking
remuneration out of the Common Purse. Without the protection of Commonness,
these moves are all threats from that wider world in which Tamils now have
gained membership – through Politics as well as Public Administration. UK &
USA are leaders in that group. Sri Lanka is a junior. Sri Lankans on both sides
do not want to be juniors in the global common system. They would rather
be ‘free’ in their small world. That was the lesson learnt about Thunaivi – a
toddy-tapper village in Vaddukoddai who are being taken over by welfare
providers in the name of post-war development. They were considered a high risk
group during the war and rightly so. It does not take much to lead them to
emotional pathway – the one they are comfortable with and through which the
more distant person – however good s/he may be become the enemy – hence the
demotion to enemy status - as in sledging.
Common Laws help us to think along the same
structure, to give form to a problem and therefore the solution. The
discriminate mixing of expressions leads to chaotic waste by demoting knowledge
to Data/information.
There is a saying in Tamil that the pain of the
child complaining of lack of salt in his rice-soup and the pain of the child
complaining of lack of sugar in his milk are to be taken as Equal. In other
words, when cultural differences happen due to structural reasons, dfferent
orders in which money is shared, one cannot reliably relate one with the
other. A big part of Higher Post-war Development is happening through
e-learning.
That pathway
drew my attention recently to Groundviews article – ‘The Danger in Distorted Education:
Sri Lanka’s History Curriculum’ in which the author
whose article, to my mind, was born through the
milk-consumers’ pathway states:
[In June 2016, the Global
Education First Initiative (GEFI) convened a debate on the ‘Prevention of
Violent Extremism through Education’ at the UN in New York. At the event, Anusheh Bakht, a GEFI Youth Advocate,
observed that school curricula were often used as political tools to ‘perpetuate a certain belief
system to guide thinking’.]
In Sri
Lanka, Those who were involved in Baby Trade / Child labour in Kandy are
milk-consumers due to carrying the Royal Kandyan / Political Leadership genes,
whilst those who recruited children for combat were / are rice-soup consumers.
So long as these children were confined to their own areas – they were ‘saved’
from earning the curse of groups
outside their cultural boundaries. I learnt this lesson while serving the
Toddy-Tapper village of Thunaivi in Vaddukoddai District in Northern Sri Lanka
– which gave birth to the Political Declaration of Independence in 1976. Given
the caste-based discrimination that existed in Vaddukoddai at that time, the Senior castes who led the manifestation
of this declaration were in the ‘milk-drinkers’ group and the junior castes who
demonstrated brawn power took over the manifestation. The example that comes to
mind is the Hindu Legend of Churning the Ocean of Milk, in which Lord Shiva –
the Destroyer of Body-Consciousness consumed the Poison that came out first
during the churning and in which the Asuras (those driven by brawn-power) hijacked
the Nectar that came out after the poison was cleared. The Nectar came with
Lord Dhanvantari – the Lord of Ayurvedic Medicine – to my mind, the parallel of
Lessons Learnt in the war issue. It’s the closest to Natural cure.
If we
take the two sides as LTTE and the Sri Lankan
Government – then LTTE becomes the demon. When they are judged by Law
that was NOT followed by the Government, the Government becomes and abuser of
Power in the Court of Natural Justice. If we accept that both sides had their
demons and their gods, AND we have the parallel of Lord Shiva – the higher mind
that has transcended majority power – that mind swallows the poison
representing the common weaknesses – we have the Ayurvedic Medicine – the Common Natural Solution.
The alternative is to devolve twice – first to separate on ethnicity basis and
then again to separate the brawn and the brain so that we live in our own
separate worlds. In the above legend one of the Asurar/member of brawn community,
pretended to be Thevar / member of
divine community and took his turn to have a share of the nectar distributed by
Lord Vishnu in damsel form. The moment he completed the task – Lord Vishnu severed
this Asura Swarnabhanu’s head from the body and we have
two de facto planets – Rahu and Kethu in Astrology – a science in which both
Sinhalese and Tamils have invested. To my mind, they represent incomplete
worlds which think they are sovereign. So long as they operate individually –
they are harmless but not progressive. When one joins the other for Common
purpose – one must take the lower position as per the nature of that purpose.
Academics for example need to take the position of juniors when learning about
armed combat and Armed forces need to take the position of juniors when seeking
to be driven by knowledge based global participation.
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