Punctuated Equilibrium - (Opinion)

by Roy Ratnavel

Those with moderate interest in science probably remember the phrase “Punctuated Equilibrium” was used by Stephen Jay Gould, the gifted and well-known evolutionary biologist and paleontologists at Harvard — to describe how our world has evolved over several millenniums. Equilibrium would exist for a while only to have it disrupted by an event of one sort or another, which would then start the planet down the path to yet another new equilibrium.

It is the theory of evolution, which postulates that changes such as speciation can occur very quickly, with long periods of little change in between. For organisms, this means they must evolve or perish as the world around them changes. This is just as true for organizations as it is for organisms. And it is certainly true for our liberation struggle.

On the occasion of the first year anniversary of ‘May Massacre’ — the unwarranted deaths of many innocent Tamils, I would like to pay my tribute, and make comments on our ongoing actions in the context to this senseless tragedy. Given this somber anniversary, and the current era of ‘Tamil Patriotic’ correctness, some might find the following comments as unnecessary, perhaps even insensitive. I admit to them nonetheless. Philosophically, and with all due respect to them, it is typical of human nature; as we look to blame someone or something when things go bad.

There is no getting around the fact that the horrific events of year ago of our thirty years of freedom struggle has manifested as the greatest pain of our lifetimes for the global Tamil Diaspora and left us psychologically impaired. Words like “devastation”, “calamity” and “helplessness” fall short of describing this feeling.

After our monumental loss in May of last year, we tried to brush aside our grief while our loved ones are suffering so much more due to unspeakable horror and brutality inflicted on them by Sri Lanka. But at the same time our loss cannot be measured. We cannot ignore the voice inside each of us and from our people; we have to keep reminding ourselves that our pain, although different than that of those who are behind the barbed wire, is real.

Drawing on this, and hoping to somehow quite our sorrow, we in the Diaspora community began creating actions of both tangible and troubling in nature. In the history I’ve studied, such chaotic times have always resulted in irrational behaviour and lunacy, if not immediately, but definitely after the months and years pass. Chaotic situation abhors a vacuum — especially a leadership one, which is what often exists for years after such grave loss.

It seems today’s saturation of rhetoric, rapt by Diaspora politics and ravenous for material, requires a steady stream of Diaspora political novelty acts and antics. We are stuck on a wheel having the same argument over and over again. In that role, we are all united in a relationship of mutual loathing. This is not our fault. But neither is it a validation. I figured I would be remiss if I didn't write about this troubling trend.

I thought recent Diaspora election was a dusty relic of the old guard system manifested by synthetic hysteria. It was a silly conformist ritual full of fake revolting patriotic claims, tasteless campaign ads, and ostentatious spending. I see the appeal of it, but who needed one? A poorly conceived idea adumbrated by precedent; vapid, hollow charade, but fits neatly in a patriotic box. I am sure it greatly enjoyed an orgy of self-congratulation inside each respective cozy camp.

In this vein, I currently feel the same about our ‘homeland’ quest with the caveat that when the facts change I reserve the right to change my opinion. I take the view that when we do something that we know perfectly well is pointless, but we still do it — maybe out of sense of duty, or out of desperate hope, or whatever reason — then we can say “It is an exercise in futility.” By espousing such view I am sure I will be accused of ‘selling out’ or ‘working for’ some nefarious elements — but that would be a childish claim.

However, I am compelled to speak out on this issue. I believe there are many impostors currently presenting themselves under the guise of ‘patriotic label’ and taking Tamils for a ride and harming those who are in tremendous need in Sri Lanka — they are war wary and thoroughly exhausted. We cannot hold them hostages to our convictions however right we think our convictions are. I find it difficult right now to subscribe to ‘Tamil Eelam’ notion at the current moment. We have it in paper, but it is meaningless.

When we — the survivors of Sri Lankan tyranny left to find newer pastures around the globe, we never dreamed after all these years of our venerable struggle, the people we left behind would still feel afraid just because they are Tamils. We, the Diaspora more than anyone understand their fear is anchored in reality and we must confront it for what it is, rather than what it is not. As a son of such victim, I certainly understand the pain and suffering my people experienced as a result of injustice towards Tamils. Frankly, anyone who tries to diminish the cries of Tamils best look at his own motivations first.

Understandably many people of this background often saw almost any concessions to ‘the Sinhalese’ as a first step backward toward death of Tamils, a perception frequently reinforced by the infelicities of Sinhala oratory — especially the monks and Mahinda’s regime, to this day. Behind a facade of reasonableness, Sri Lanka has little interest in peace and reconciliation with Tamils, but has crated a fiction that Sri Lanka is a “democracy.” The Sri Lankan President knows durable peace will demote ‘Mahinda to a Minion’ of this dusty little postage stamp of a Third World country.

So many Tamils in Sri Lanka no longer feel safe to go about their business as Tamils, speak their mind freely as Tamils, and feel threatened because of who they are: Tamils. Against this backdrop, I understand the continuing frustration and the fear among Tamil Diaspora, especially considering the most terrible pogroms and atrocities in all the tortured history of Tamils. We had seen our people passively await the coming, and the savagery of Sri Lankan regime’ in May of last year — still suffering as victims and warriors behind the barbed wired camps.

As survivors of Sri Lanka brutality, we certainly know the similarity between old and modern expressions of anti-Tamil pogroms of Sri Lanka. But to conclude that a stratgey too wedded to pragmatism and compromise would in the end sacrifice our venerable principles would be prejudging, especially when we have not even given pragmatism and compromise a chance.

At the risk of sounding like a cockeyed optimist or a romantic fool, I pronounce that our venomous hatred for the Sri Lanka must end. There, I said it! We must replace it with a serious and dedicated effort to understand how to cohabit with Sinhalese; and explore ways and means of engaging them constructively to find solutions. After all, there are Sinhalese who genuinely believe Tamils have genuine grievances and deserve a better deal.

The West, at best has been indifferent on this score with its own agenda. A human tragedy in this scale evoked only silence by the West so far. If the value of a Tamil’s life is really that worthless, then the international community is not only worthy of admiration, but of contempt. The point is this, no matter how much we dislike it, Sri Lanka holds the keys to any solution at the moment, and therefore we need to engage it directly or indirectly. In the end, the Sinhalese and Tamils are the two who have to live together on that island and only they can resolve the issues; though outsiders like us can help.

How much interest, will the West afford us in the present state with the Tamil Diaspora hardly having any political or economic lobby? Is it possible that our past approaches and measures have been unsuccessful as much to the Sri Lanka’s reluctance and refusal to understand our genuine concerns and needs as much to our own unreasonableness and arrogance. Writing among us and to us; meeting among us; showing bravado among us has deprived our community, for long, of the sight of post 9/11 world order. The failure of Diaspora to see beyond the Tamil nationalism has comeback to haunt us. Waving flags and blocking roads is an example in which we lost sympathy right here in Canada.

I am somewhat shocked by our attempt to brand each other in the Diaspora community as  ‘traitors’ and go on a vendetta — especially when our people are suffering and look for a helping hand, to which we need cooperation and unification. Our approach must shift form a game of tit for tat and childish outbursts. We must take a refreshingly new approach. Can we try to make inroads into our own psyche and appeal to our own conscience and commonsense for a mutually satisfying settlement for our people?

For example, the recent election commercials were rich in rhetoric dialed up to a brand new level and had a repeated toxic theme of “non compromise” with Sri Lanka. Ironically politics is about ‘compromise.’ It seems capacity for compromise, and diversity of thought is no longer in our collective psyche. This reminded me of Solomon Asch experiment — don’t be logical and right. But fit in; as such herding behaviour.

I think there are people who are carrying the baggage of the past with the burden of extreme umbrage, and totally dead-set on ‘revenge’ than ‘reconciliation’ at the expense of people who are suffering in Sri Lanka. Tamils no longer can afford to be confined to such ghettos of false prophets and the cult of rip off artists’ barnacle of mediocrity — which by the way is innately irrational and hell-bent on polarizing people in an increasingly polarized landscape.

Our Tamil people who are there do not have the luxury to move out of that godforsaken country or the luxury of time for the Diaspora’s rancid rhetoric laced with righteousness. Instead they are faced with a thing called ‘reality’ and left with finding ways to live with the abusers. But our people in Sri Lanka has realized — given the current reality, that the benefit ‘for them’ could be attained through peaceful cooperative living — for the time being. We need to assist them with this.

I am afraid, in general, Diaspora action on balance is disconnected from this reality and still wanting blood — in my opinion, can only hurt those who we claim to fight for. What is delusional with this is the terminology itself — ‘Tamil Eelam’ — connotes the vitriolic hyperbole to which Tamils in Sri Lanka are constantly subjected to by the abusers. If we want a reasonable discussion on this we should not invite any rodeo clowns.

Any war is supposed to be a lesson. If it does not teach people anything, it means that the battles of that war were wasted as well as those people’s lives, which lost in battles. I think there are two lessons here:

First, loss in war means one thing to adults, something quite different to children. Adults know that loss is always permanent, often no more than a path to more confusion and heartache. Adults on the winning side may sound their barbaric yawps over the rooftop of the world, dance in the streets when the enemy surrenders but they never completely forget that the future likely holds other enemies, other battles, other conflicts. Adults, even the least reflective among them, have acquired this tragic sense of life.

Second, adults also know that propaganda can never be more than partially true. But children have no access to this wisdom as I found out from my 5-year old. Responsive, credulous and eager to believe, children are the natural targets of propaganda. They are glad to embrace the conventional wisdom. They actually believe official promises. To that end we’ve had an unbelievable box seat on human nature; that adults can also behave like children during confusion and under duress as we found out in the Diaspora circle after the dreadful day of May 19^th 2009.

Equilibrium that existed previously was punctuated by the events of last year; must take us down the path to yet another new equilibrium. We need to explore new avenues and new approaches to make this one count. I pine for the day when commonsense and pragmatism sees fit to make an appearance. Like the organisms, our struggle must evolve, or it will perish!

Einstein famously defined insanity as doing the same things over and over again, and expecting different results. The last twelve months are, I believe, crying out to us that a strategy based primarily on unrealistic, delusional, and fragmented leadership — rather than on long-term planning based on commonsense and pragmatism — is probably doomed.

Our freedom fighters would be rolling in their graves if they could know how horribly we acted since their demise toward the need of our people. Words written in headstones would carry their anxious-filled memes far beyond their demise. It takes hard work to expunge from our brains the ‘collective sludge’ Diaspora carries around — a lifetime project for us all.

We maybe optimists at heart, but our head knows that just ‘hope’ may not be enough. We can’t afford to lie under the cover of intellectual gulag and wait for the oblivion to come. I feel a visceral sense of dread for what lies ahead, is not opinion, but that age old safety device usually called a “gut feeling.” Beware of Trojan horses bearing gifts. This tragedy is still far from its final scenes.

roy_ratnavel@hotmail.com

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