Tamil, Sinhalese and Rajiva Wijesinha on Language
The Business For Peace Alliance forum was somewhat tame till a few Tamil gentleman got up to speak. There is great hope and opportunity, but there is still a lot of hurt and deprivation among the Tamil community. People usually don’t talk about it, but these guys did. Above is a YouTube of one gentlemen doing a test to see what languages people in the audience understood. And discussing the language issue thereupon, in Sinhala. At some point some Sinhalese gentlement in the back got up and started yelling at him to stop politicizing things. Then Secretary Rajiva Wijesinha (Ministry of Disaster Management, fittingly) got up to calm things down. Good show I thought, true, and everyone shook hands after.
I apologize for the rough cut in the video, I was running out of memory and I had to pause to swap cards later. Professor Wijesinha also goes on at greater length, which I’ll upload soon.
Thank you for uploading this. You have transitioned from blogger to reporter. More power to you. Did the guys yelling in the back shake hands with the Tamil gentleman?
Yes, they finally! Good on Indi to capture and post.
Yes they did, outside in the reception area.
Good that Indi was there to capture and post this.
hurt and deprivation among the Tamil community- True. I agree.
However,
why is the “hurt and deprivation among the Sinhala and Muslim community” such an unpopular subject ?
To date we are very careful in not talking about the impact of war amongst the sinhala and Muslim people. My guess is that lots of them died too. No doubt lots of mothers lost their sons, lots of wives without husbands and tons of children who can tell the world that their fathers will never return home. Many of them are as displaced as the Tamil people. Many lost their houes and property.
Who is going to talk about or do anything about them ? or is it just an unpopular topic or does not bring as much foreign exchange as the diaspora amongst sinhala and muslim communities are pathetic ?
Indi , deprivation and hurt in Sri Lanka are not based on an ethnicity. It is based on wealth and location. The Tamil community living outside Jaffna were not “hurt and deprived” . Similarly the sinhala and muslim communities living in the dry zone have lived with “hurt and deprivation” for generations.
Please do not think for a minute that I do not appreciate all that you are doing. I do and wish there were more people like you . But all I am saying is creating wealth and education in the comunities outside Colombo , Jaffna , Trinco and certainly in Monaragala is equally important.
Poverty is the only true divider in present Sri Lanka. Nothing else. Any educated Tamil , Muslim or Sinhala person can get a job in Colombo any day.
Ayla,
you should spearhead the reform of educational quotas which are currenty premised only on geography and governmental fiat. If poverty is the only real divider, then individual means-testing is the solution.
Nayagan,
I think you should get a better understanding of the education quoat system in Sri Lanka since I have seen several comments by you on the subject.
They give quoatas to districts based on education facilities not on langauge or ethinicity.
So Sinhala Majority districts like Hambantota ,Anuradhapura or Polonnaruwa gets some quotas as well as Tamil makotity Mannar,Vauniya,Mullutivu ,Trincomalee or Battical or Nuwaraeliya.
On the other hand you have to get hight marks in Districts like Colombo ,Gampaha,Jaffna,Galle ,Matara or Kandy.
So it is a qual opertunity offender.
that’s why i didn’t mention language or ethnicity.
the quotas are decided by a bureaucrat and divided by district. It is decided without any attempt to establish the individual neediness of a specific student. Affirmative action, whatever the criteria, is not a good long-term strategy for a plural democracy. The easiest way to transition from affirmative action to a truly meritocratic system is by making the criteria apply individually, rather than by district or any grouping greater than 1.
You are not your neighbor who is, in turn, not his/her neighbor. Why is a ‘equal opportunity offender’ policy, as you put it, desirable in any way?
quotas are evil and not necessary in any way. Everywhere I have encountered quotas, say for the honors track classes at my american high school, they have squeezed out the deserving and allowed the academically undisciplined to sit pretty and pad uni applications. In India, they allow S/Ts and SCs to take up positions in medical schools for which they would not otherwise qualify.
Oh my God!. You are misleading Nayagan. No wonder I have had the feeling that he has been coming from far left field! He and you and God knows how many are under the impression that the Government gives quotas to districts based on educational facilities. That fallible bureaucrats assess the educational facility situation in districts and allocate quotas and as such quota allocation is suspect.
Quotas are allocated to districts of Sri Lanka in proportion to their population. To ensure that all districts are proportionately represented in higher education. Districts like Colombo produce an abundance of good results due to being education resource rich. That’s why the cut off score has to be set high to cut down their uni entrant harvest to fit the quota. Under endowed/under developed districts produce a poorer academic harvest. So that’s why their cut off score has to be set low to extract enough uni entrants to fit the quota.
It never fails to surpise me how the term “my dear” occurs in the middle of heated arguments in Sri Lankan English.
Upload the rest.
@Ayla – I’m inclined to agree with you and suggest that its class based discrimination, rather than poverty or any other marker. Class (as in upper, middle, lower) radiates and is easily picked up by the uniform at the checkpoint or the saree behind the counter. Class explains why somebody like Sara (of CPA fame) can continue to do what he does, or why Tamil speaking old boys of leading schools can pissu-double at R&B, Buda Bar and H2O whilst their distant cousins from Vanni would hesitate to venture out of their Kotahena lodge to buy their bread each morning.
hmm, very interesting. I never thought of class.
Could education overcome class ? I know that it can overcome poverty. I most certainly like and agree with your examples but always thought of it more as wealth than class. Thought provoking.
“Only the educated are free.”
-Epictetus