Reconciliation: Grand Hopes or Simple Steps

In politics, there is the grand language and the simple words.

- BY RAJAN PHILIPS

As they say in North America, you don’t need a $20-word or $50-word where a simple $5-world will do. There is also the formal and the functional. People of different categories can functionally get along without always needing formal arrangements involving constitutional structures and rights declarations.The latter are necessary and needed to protect the weak from the bullies, especially from the bullying instruments of the state, or for protecting a small country from a Trump state. In the society at large, people can get along in their daily lives in spite of differences between them, provided they are left alone without busybody interferences.

There have been too many busybody interferences in Sri Lanka in all the years after independence, so much so they exploded into violence that took a toll on everyone for as many as many as 26 (1983-2009) years. The fight was over grand language matters selective claims of history, sovereignty assertions and self-determination counters, and territorial litigations - you name it. The lives of ordinary people, even those living in their isolated corners and communicating in the simple words of life, were turned upside down. Ironically in their name and as often in the name of 'future generations yet unborn' - to recall the old political rhetoric always in full flight. The current American antiabortionists would have loved this deference to unborn babies.