Let us not sleepwalk towards catastrophe

• Published date: 25 May 2015
• Publication title: Daily Mirror

How could we disentangle the knot that we all helped to tighten?

resident Maithripala Sirisena recently said the policy of the new Government was both reconciliation among communities and development of physical resources.

Addressing the 6th commemoration in Matara on the dawn of peace through the defeat of separatism, the President emphasised that reconciliation and development should be considered as equally important requirements to overcome today's challenges and called upon all to unite to rebuild the country.

It is an appropriate comment because of all the urgent problems that have accumulated in the past five decades, the most painful seems to be that of ethnic relationship between the Sinhala and other minority communities in Sri Lanka.

No other question arouses such explosions of resentment, malice and mental agony.

It is generally agreed that the blame for the present situation cannot be laid at one community's door and that to a certain extent all of us are to be blamed. We have all had a hand in creating the deadlock that now confronts us.

The question to be asked then, should be how we could hope to disentangle the knot that we all helped to tighten.

It is beyond the comprehension of the writer to understand why some individuals and groups believe that different races cannot live within the bounds of a single country of their own free will and for the benefit of all.

Of course it is true that in recent history there has been a tendency towards the formation of ever smaller states but it does not prove that the trend is practicable.

The small and minuscule states that have appeared in the world map in recent times are too weak. They are doomed in all possible...