Showing posts with label multicultural. Show all posts
Showing posts with label multicultural. Show all posts
Thursday 21 December 2023
Tuesday 9 April 2013
Why India is right on Sri Lanka
Unless Colombo treats its Tamil citizens with dignity and respect, New Delhi will continue to have limited options
Contemporary developments in India’s foreign policy are often based on perceptions and not facts, views divorced from reality and political advocacy based on make-believe. India’s approach to the Sri Lankan issue and the vote in the Human Rights Council (HRC) is a case in point. Variously described as a “new low” in our foreign policy and a departure from our principled stand of not supporting country-specific resolutions, this line of reasoning suggests that New Delhi should ignore and overrule regional sentiment, and refrain from meddling in the affairs of a small neighbour.
But first the perceptions. One, in 1956, Solomon West Ridgeway Dias (SWRD) Bandaranaike enacted the Sinhala-Only Act. Sections of the political class in New Delhi welcomed it as a consolidation of anti-imperialist sentiment. Years later, Tamils were reduced to second-class citizens and discrimination against them became systemic and entrenched. The anti-Tamil riots in Colombo following the killing of the Mayor of Jaffna, Alfred Duriappa, by a young Prabhakaran led to the rise of Tamil militancy.
Perception two. Most Sinhalese believe, with good reason, that Tamil militancy, rightly viewed by them as terrorism, would not have succeeded in tearing apart Sri Lanka’s social fabric but for support from across the Palk Straits. Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi sought course correction. He committed India to Sri Lanka’s unity and territorial integrity. This fundamental turnaround meant India would not support the break-up of Sri Lanka and would also cooperate in ending support for terrorism. There was, however, one caveat. The Tamil minority should be treated with dignity and as equal citizens of a multicultural, multiple-ethnic and multilingual Sri Lanka.
Resolution was minimalist
What the international community is questioning is not Colombo’s military operation against the LTTE or human rights violations but specific allegations of war crimes during the last 100 days of military operations. Visual documentation, including by triumphant victors on mobile phones has contributed to Sri Lanka’s discomfort. The U.S. resolution at the 19th session of the HRC in March 2012 was a minimalist attempt. It invited Sri Lanka to act on the recommendations of its own Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission. Even the assistance to be made available to Colombo would have been provided only with its consent. Instead, Colombo chose to prevaricate. With additional visual documentation being made available, the demand for accountability gained momentum. Having voted in favour of the resolution in March 2012, it was next to impossible for India to change its vote in March 2013, especially in the absence of any credible steps by Sri Lanka towards reconciliation and devolution.
It is both in India’s and Sri Lanka’s interest to get a full and final closure on these allegations. Not to do so will allow the wounds to fester.
Sovereignty has never succeeded in providing a cover against genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes and crimes against humanity. To suggest that India does not support country-specific resolutions is absurd. Even more, that we have a principled position on this. In any perceived clash between principle and national interest, it is invariably the latter that is invoked and reigns supreme. Following the anti-Tamil riots in Colombo in 1983, New Delhi mustered sufficient courage to spearhead a resolution against Sri Lanka in the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and the Protection of Minorities. We vote in favour of similar resolutions against Israel only because they deal with gross and systematic violations of human rights of Palestinian people in the occupied territories. We have never hesitated to take a position on country-specific resolutions whether on DPRK or Iran, whenever our national interest so demanded.
To dismiss popular sentiment in Tamil Nadu as the machinations of politicians is both a misreading of the situation and a recipe for disaster. Why should Sri Lanka not be held to account for not respecting understandings given bilaterally to India, such as those of April-May 2009?
13th Amendment
India can be against the LTTE but cannot afford to be against the Tamils. The problem both amongst the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka and large sections of the Tamil population in India, is that the LTTE successfully manipulated Tamil opinion by projecting itself as the only physical shield against Sinhala repression. We cannot wish away this sentiment. The only safeguard for the Tamils in Sri Lanka is delivery of the promised devolution based on the 13th Amendment.
Both the AIADMK and the DMK, along with the smaller parties in Tamil Nadu are on the same page on the Sri Lanka issue. The problem will continue to fester till Colombo has a genuine change of heart. Recent signals are anything but encouraging. Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa said on March 27, 2013: “Could we afford to have a provincial administration here, which pointed a gun at the national leadership at the drop of a hat? We don’t want to be at the mercy of scheming provincial administrations.” Let alone the 13th Amendment, the Defence Secretary seems to be suggesting the winding up of provincial councils altogether!
Notwithstanding assurances to India, the “Brothers” running Sri Lanka appear to have no intention to move on political reconciliation and devolution. This “majoritarianism” in total disregard of respecting and protecting the rights of minorities is a narrow and calibrated political strategy designed to safeguard Sinhalese parliamentary strength. The recent attacks on the Muslim trading community in the heart of Colombo by fanatic Sinhalese, allegedly led by Buddhist monks are manifestations of similar callous and cynical disregard for the rights of linguistic, religious and cultural minorities. India did the right thing by supporting the resolution on war crimes.
Exaggerated projections of Chinese inroads and influence are a bogey which many of our smaller neighbours periodically try on us. Apart from being practical, the Chinese are also hard headed. They will pursue economic and commercial opportunity irrespective of the way India votes. Support for Sri Lanka up to 2012 did not prevent them from looking for commercial projects there. Many Chinese successes have something to do with our own inability to deliver commercial projects on time.
Sri Lanka is not only India’s closest neighbour but in many respects, culturally and emotionally, closest to us as well. We need to reach out to Colombo and drive home the point that it takes two to tango. Relations between countries are assiduously built, step by step. Unless Colombo treats its Tamil citizens with dignity and respect, New Delhi will continue to have limited options. If New Delhi continues to base its choices on misplaced “perceptions” and does not effectively articulate the reasons for the choices so made, only brickbats will be in the offing.
(Hardeep S. Puri is India’s former Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York.)
Friday 10 August 2012
Suddenly, it’s all hail multiculturalism
One year after the London riots, the national mood has changed as Britain basks in the glory of the Olympic Games
This week, a year ago, London was burning as anger over the death of a black youth in a police shoot-out spiralled into one of the worst riots in England for a generation.
The violence prompted a torrent of incendiary comment about the impact of “laissez faire” multiculturalism on British values and Britain’s way of life. A year on, as London basks in the warm glow of the Olympic Games, with several immigrants bringing glory for Britain, the mood has swung to the other extreme. There is a mass outbreak of enthusiasm for multiculturalism, famously declared “dead” by the head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) not long ago. Suddenly it is seen as up there with other “unique” values that put the “Great” into Great Britain.
Athletes of foreign descent such as Mohamed “Mo” Farah, Jessica Ennis, Greg Rutherford, Tiffany Porter and Yamilé Aldama — once derided as “plastic Brits” — are being hailed as the new face of Britain’s “vibrant” racial and cultural diversity.
Ennis, daughter of a Jamaican immigrant, has been called “the nation’s new sweetheart,” and Mo Farah, who came to Britain as a nine-year-old refugee from war-ravaged Somalia, a “British legend.” Along with the Australia-born Rutherford, fondly referred to as a “ginger wizard,” they have been dubbed Britain’s “golden trio” for winning gold for their adopted country.
There is a sense that something profound has happened and, as The Times noted in a breathless editorial, “a new Britain is being born out of the best of the old Britain.”
“The prospectus that delivered the Olympics (to London) relied heavily on an account of a tolerant, multicultural Britain and it is as such that the success has followed, both inside the arenas and inside,” it said.
A year ago, Prime Minister David Cameron described Britain as a “broken society” suffering from “moral collapse” and suggested that “state culturalism” was the first step on the slippery slope to extremism. Today, he finds Britain an “inspirational country” that “makes people feel proud to be British.” He has spoken of the “awe-inspiring” performance of the multi-ethnic Team GB, and hailed London as the world’s most diverse city. A senior Conservative MP received a public dressing down for dismissing the opening Olympic ceremony as “multicultural crap.”
Many are mystified by the Prime Minister’s conversion and asking whether he is the same man who had warned that “passive tolerance” of multiculturalism was an invitation to extremism, and argued for a more “muscular” approach. “Frankly, we need a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and much more active, muscular liberalism,” he said at a security conference in Munich last year causing anger among immigrants back home.
Mr. Cameron’s new-found passion is simply a reflection of the national mood: he is saying what he believes people want to hear and will “connect” him to the masses. Partly that mood has been generated by the media, with newspapers making an extra effort to pick out “ethnic” faces to illustrate stories about the “wonderful” Olympic spirit that, among other things, has seen hundreds of Asian and African immigrants work as unpaid volunteers at the Games.
NEW CONVERTS
Even the notoriously xenophobic Sun is singing a refreshingly new tune. “Red, white, blue, black, brown, pink or purple — these Olympic Games have united us all,” it exulted in a report headed “Marvellous Modern Britain Unleashed Upon the World.” And, with the zeal of a new convert, added how the world had seen “the true colours of British greatness with champions of every hue — a mixed-race Yorkshire lass, a Muslim refugee and a ginger.”
“How can your heart not surge with pride when they win for Britain?” it asked.
At the rabidly anti-immigrant Daily Mail, it is a bit more hush-hush with the paper dressing up its celebration of Britain’s diversity as “conservative values in action.”
But it is celebration, nevertheless.
So, what does this sudden burst of love for multiculturalism signify? Is it an acknowledgment, finally, that in a country as diverse as Britain, multiculturalism alone can work, and a signal to the advocates of mono-culturalism to shut up shop?
An honest answer will be “no.” Sceptics warn against reading “too much” into what they believe is simply a passing phase — part of a general “feel-good” mood generated by the success of the Games and achievements of British athletes, especially those from ethnic groups. Those who know a thing or two about the fickle British temperament, mirroring its fickle weather, predict that “normal business” — i.e. moaning and carping — should resume once the Games get over this weekend.
The economy is getting worse by the day and cracks in the ruling Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition have widened while the country has been distracted by the Games.
“Just wait for the news to get out and see how quickly the euphoria evaporates,” warns an observer. But then who knows? The country may have changed this summer, and it could be the start of a deeper engagement with what the Sun andMail patronisingly used to dismiss as “multi-culti” Britain.
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