The Politics Of Fear In Sri Lanka: Allowing Demagogues To Manipulate The Electorate!
“
No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.” – Edmund Burke
During a recent TV Quiz show, a Muslim girl named Shukra Munawwar from Galle won not only two million rupees, but the hearts of millions too. The popular show attracted much social media traction. Innumerable social media in Sinhala not only complimented her for her superb knowledge in history and her command of the Sinhala language, she was also admired for bringing hope in an otherwise gloomy political environment tarred by racism. This is only a token reflection of the level of goodwill and the thirst for peaceful co-existence usually prevalent at the grass root levels in the South. How did this frank aspiration to live in harmony as was seen for more than centuries, became submerged in a cesspit of mistrust and hatred, in Post-Independence Sri Lanka? Why did the usually tolerant people of Sri Lanka allow barbaric anti-Tamil pogrom in 1983 to happen? How did a well-orchestrated hate campaign against the Muslims start off after the end of the war in 2009, the tempo of which increased after the much condemned Easter Sunday attacks in 2019 and who stood to gain by the latter? The people who have the effrontery to rule us, those who vie for power, who call themselves our government, understand the a basic fact of human nature- fear of the ‘Other’. They exploit it, and they cultivate it. And use it to their advantage.