Inclusive approach to all communities is in national interest

In contrast to intolerance in governance and towards others who are deemed to be outsiders that is increasingly being manifested in the world, Sri Lanka is taking a different path.

- BY JEHAN PERERA

It is adopting an inclusive approach to all communities that is in the national interest and is winning international support. The country’s recent conduct at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) is a case in point. Rather than forcing a vote that would have been divisive and that would have pitted Sri Lanka against the Western countries promoting the resolution, the government opted for cooperation over confrontation. By doing so it signaled to the international community that the country is not taking sides internationally and prefers engagement and dialogue to confrontation and defiance.

This choice is consistent with an evolving domestic policy of inclusion. There was a time when governments in Sri Lanka treated those from some minority communities as aliens and threats to the nation. This began at the dawn of Independence with the disenfranchisement of the Tamils of recent Indian origin (Malaiyaha Tamils) in 1948. Such early policy decisions set the country on a path of mistrust between communities and laid the foundations of a conflict that was both violent and prolonged. By contrast, the vision articulated by the present government in regard to the ethnic conflict is that every Sri Lankan citizen is equal and discrimination will not be permitted. The emphasis today is not on exclusion but on widening the national circle of belonging. The government is applying this policy across the board to other communities as well.