Clean Sri Lanka – By Oscar E V Fernando
Where every prospect pleases, man alone is vile-this was said by Bishop Heber of Calcutta when he visited Sri Lanka or Ceylon in 1825. It was in a hymn he wrote around that time and he goes on to say-the heathen in his blindness bows down to wood and stone.
There is a ring of imperialism and a tone of racism implied in these lines, but the impact of it on society then and now, when our country has been bashed forwards and back with incidents of racism-this must be viewed minus colored glasses as it shows how much more has to be cleaned up other than only dirt-dust-fallen leaves and polyethene bags.
This exercise will reveal loads of crap and dirt hidden under the carpet for a long period-long enough to drag the country down to bankruptcy as even the business world is aware of our nakedness and our vileness; to amplify this statement we can take the issue of Light Rail Transit Project with Japan to be read together with Auditor General’s report.
Other examples that may be cited are feet dragging on the implementation of Truth and Reconciliation committee report to resolve the ethnic issue-promises made to India on the thirteenth amendment to the constitution-pilgrimage to Geneva and pulling wool over the eyes and patching up matters till the next pilgrimage etcetera, are matters to be cleaned up for smooth running of the country and its economy.
Take the case of Muslims who are a part of the so called minority group and the mental torture given to a medical doctor of this group accusing him of abortions carried on woman of the majority group with the ghastly aim of reducing the proportion of majority in this country; this doctor was in remand jail till the case was heard and is now free; now again this move against Muslims had come to the fore with a monk arrested for repeating the same crime of ethnic vengeance.
Eruptions against minority groups go on regardless; it came to its lowest point when witnessing human beings tortured on tire pyres in the so-called Black July 83-a clear case of vileness at its lowest ebb?
Switch on the TV and you hear in several channels admonishments such as hatred will not cease with hatred-turn the other cheek when a person is slapped on one cheek-on listening to such inspired admonishments one has to conclude that in this country there are sufficient dogmas and religions to inspire-but-
-why and how come there seems a yawning gap between the vileness we encounter and the need to clean up the dirt; Yes, a mental clean up-that sounds a moral cleanup of the soul may be the ultimate need of the hour.
A clean up is needed when a situation gets polluted outside or within as stated above-and a situation outside self is pollution of air by uncontrolled effusion of carbon dioxide causing global warming with disastrous consequences to humans-other cases to follow up are pollution of water say by dumping rivers with factory refuse and raping of forests effecting rainfall-all these and noise pollution too.
In short all that is polluted needs cleaning up and until then our country will go on dragging itself as a Developing and not a developed country.
Oscar E V Fernando
January 2025
