The first anniversary of the Easter Bombings is a time for reflection. We cannot have much action these days, holed down deep in the bowels of our single and singular homes. Since April 21 last year, much water has passed under the bridge. Today, we are left with a civilisational threat posed to our very sense of humanity, in a broad understanding of what Divya Dwivedi and Shaj Mohan call the “time of the human, the uncanny animal.” Yet, I am left with an uncanny sense that it is business as usual in Sri Lanka.
After the Easter Bombings, life seemed to stand still; the country was in a state of shock, we were in near lockdown for more than weeks; we left our homes gingerly, looking over our shoulders; worse, we faced a rapid spike in anti-Muslim rhetoric, culminating in riots, looting and murder.
Families of those who died in the terrible bombings will remember this day last year with renewed grief and horror. As a country, we have offered nothing to them, no solace, no answers, nothing of a sense of justice. To the Muslim community, which was targeted mercilessly in the ensuing days, we have only renewed anti-Muslim hate speech and an uncritical media. We have had two different governments overseeing the accelerating trends of Sinhala Buddhist chauvinism and see no halt to this rising trend. We see majoritarian tendencies riding high at every turn. Barely 10 years after the conclusion to the civil war, we as a country have not learnt any lessons.
Sri Lankan military officials stand guard in front of the St. Anthony’s Shrine, Kochchikade church after an explosion in Colombo, Sri Lanka April 21, 2019. Photo: Reuters/Dinuka Liyanawatte
Today, locked down again, but this time as a country, not divided into bombers and victims, Muslims and the rest of the world, not saddled with battling the question of a non-existent niqab problem, COVID-19 could have brought us together, even if not socially and politically, at least imaginatively and affectively. The scare, the threat and the effort to build a sense of humanity, even a sense of community, the sense that we are in this together, could have taken hold of us, could have helped build bridges, empathise, look out for each other.
As the truth of COVID-19 dawned on us, what it could mean to us, we as a country were overwhelmed by a deep sense of insecurity. Economic, political and social insecurities underline the lockdown, even as people by and large obeyed, saluted the medical sector, went into quarantine and self-isolation. While the middle classes receded into their homes, not unwillingly, but not without apprehension, nor with any sense of certainty, there were others, like the garment workers, who actually had to take to the streets, for they were left stranded, far away from home, without wages, without food, without dwellings.
Workers, the homeless, urban daily waged workers, agricultural workers and fishing communities, industrial workers in garment factories, tea plantation workers, migrant workers – women and men, are in an economic lockdown, left destitute by the arrogance of power, their employers. Franklyn Amerasinghe’s request for an employers’ bailout crystallises the sentiments of the industrial managerial class born of power and arrogance and a sense of entitlement. The threat of an economic slump seems very very real, and is already rearing its ugly head. We may face the most difficult period not during the COVID-19 crisis, but in its aftermath.
Despite the cataclysmic changes brought on by tragedies like the Easter bombings, or COVID-19, there are underlying continuities, like elections for one. We also see greater empowerment of the military establishment, following the institutionalising of the calamities and responses to it. We have other accompanying continuities, counting one’s friends and foes, “us” and the Muslim. This has persisted unrelentingly and blatantly into COVID-19 days, leaving us with a greater apprehension of what awaits us in the coming days, post COVID-19, when we all may be compelled to face an economic lockdown and social and political uncertainty.
As Dwivedi and Mohan stress, we as humans are invested in a sense of the forsaken, this moment and each of us precious, yet forsaken. With that thought of contemplation of memory, the passage of time, and this critical moment of our living, we remember all those who died last April in the bombings. In that, I want to see how we may go on into other moments of our lives, and recount the words of the poet.
The season’s come to a close,
We are about to go,
In this halfway resting place,
You looked after us well.
(From the poem ‘Halal’ by Fazeel Kariapper)
Sivamohan Sumathy is attached to the Department of English, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka.