Many reasons are given for the difficulties in resolving the Sri Lankan Ethnic issue. The Emeritus Professor of the Department of sociology, Hunter College, New York offers a fresh point of view. He points out to the ‘want of proportionality’ as the cause for the...

In May 2009, the thirty year war within the country was decisively concluded. The rebels lost territory, their leaders along with many combatants are dead, had surrendered or, are unaccounted for. There had been and there continues to be persistent allegations of serious human rights violations during the last phase of the war by various concerned people.

The Presidential elections are over; the next significant event will be the parliamentary elections the results of which will foretell the course of Sri Lankan future. It is essential to consolidate the victory of the forces that came together to reinforce democracy, to prune the powers of the Executive in order to remove the authoritarian moves that the system had hitherto permitted. To successfully implement these changes, it cannot come only through parliamentary decisions or judicial verdicts.

At long last, when the Provincial Council in the North is set up, a semblance of uniformity in the administration of the Sri Lankan profile can be said to be completed. What has yet to be convincingly understood is the need for the indoctrination into this divided nation of the concept of pluralism, as a worthy strategy to be adopted.

This is a mind boggling poser. If the question whether there is an ethnic problem in Sri Lanka is posed to the minorities and sections of the majority, the response will be an unequivocal ‘yes’. If the ‘others’, excluded from the above groups are asked they will look askance and say that this question has ceased to have any relevance since the end of the war when the Tamil terrorists were trounced on May 19, 2009.

It is a little over three years since we eliminated Prabhakaran and the whole country was rejoicing over the end of the war. He Past? A spurious sense of freedom and security exists in a set up where the healing and reconciliation process within the war locked areas and even in the rest of the country has not gathered the momentum expected at the conclusion of the war.

The present government must keep in focus that it was elected primarily for its agenda to promote good governance practices of which national reconciliation was and is an important component. Sri Lanka having emerged from a 30 year war is compelled to take effective steps to resolve the issues that brought about the conflict, the non -resolution of which led to the protracted war between the State and the minority communities.

A state of flux; a continuous drifting in and out of crisis situations; this has been the regrettable fate of Sri Lanka throughout the post independent period. Sri Lanka was just beginning to come to grips with UNHRC Resolution when the country moved bang into the Dambulla confrontational stand between Temple and Mosque, and with Kovil on the fringe, stirring up the majoritarian stand- off with the minorities.