Nittewa

Let's start talking about non-election-related things.

This is something I've been wondering about for quite some time now. Sittingnut (I think) brought this up during one of his ceaseless arguments with one of the trolls (Just give it up man! No point wasting your time going down to their level. That goes for you too Ashanthi).

A lot of the trolls we here have gotten used to like our ol' pal Dextr, j5, Jini and now Kesbewa and T4011, are most probably Sri Lankans who live abroad. Most of them I would assume to be Sinhala and also probably Buddhist considering the kind of things they say here. Taking the places where Sri Lankans generally move to, they probably live in Australia, England, Canada or the US. We know Dextr lives in Australia.

Any Sinhala Buddhist living in a foreign country would be a part of the minority community there. Sinhala Buddhists in Sri Lanka have come to take for granted the fact that they are a majority and do not even bother to think of what it would feel like to be a minority community. But for the large numbers of Sinhalese living abraod I would assume the realities of being a minority community, and being treated as one, would have sunk in.

And we know how minority communities are treated in those countries. Perhaps they are not openly discriminated againt like we find in Sri Lanka, but there's just a thin veil of tolerance covering deep rooted anti-immigrant sentiment.

I can't even pretend to know what it feels like to be a minority as I have never been one so I will not attempt to articulate what it feels like to be one. But what I say about Sinhalese learning about the other side of the story comes from many conversations with friends who have lived abroad for many years.

From my interactions with them, particularly a few members of my family, it is very clear that even though they do not face any direct discrimination, they have very understood what it feels like to be a minortiy in someone else's country. Upon their return to Sri Lanka many of them have begun to put themselves into the shoes of a Tamil person who belongs to a minority community in their own country. But it's only possible if the person who is living abroad is open actively investigating the dynamics of minority mentality. I'm not saying write an academic paper on it. Just sit back and think about what it feels like to be a minority.

As we have found with our trolls and with groups like SPUR, many of these people are not even aware of the fact that they are minorities living amidst a people who don't really like them too much. They don't see their minority status as an opportunity to (to a certain degree) put themselves in the shoes of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka.

Dextr for one is unable to grasp his situation. He is living the life of a beggar in a country that doesn't really like immigrants when he could live a good life here in Sri Lanka. I would expect him to explore the socio-political dynamics that have made him a beggar in Australia, but apparently like many Sinhalese living abroad, he fails to come to terms with his minority status. In this particular case perhaps he just lacks the analytical skills to explore his context.

A Sinhalese living Australia, or England, or the US, or in Canada or anywhere should be able to identify what it means to be completely powerless politically, what it means to accept the fact that a person from your community will never have significant political power, what it means to be treated like you're a disease, what it feels like to be pulled over all the time, what it feels like to be an utomatic suspect whenever something goes wrong, to be tolerated and left alone yet never really liked and accepted.

I would expect these people to have some kind of sympathy for the life that the Tamil people of Sri Lanka have been subjected to for the past 49 years, (Yes it's 50 years since 1956 next year) but the sad truth is many of them don't. They remain minority-hating, Sinhala racist bigots. Though they move thousands of miles away, and change their socio-econo-political context completely, the I'm-a-majortiy-so-f***-you mentality never leaves them.

The Sri Lankan diaspora have such potential to be a part of the solution, instead they insist on making themselves a part of the problem.

Sad.

posted by Morquendi @  7:10 AM   || 15 opinion/s ||