Please reconsider this

Our National Anthem is a most evocative and inspiring song of praise to our beloved Sri Lanka. Its phraseology, melody, and music are almost overpowering; and to hear it sung together in a large group is an exhilarating and ennobling experience. Almost everyone sings it with passion.

I am from a generation that was educated in racially mixed schools and that “Dear Eternal Place” – The University of Ceylon, Peradeniya. Rama, a close friend of mine from Nelliyadi Central College tells me of singing it in Tamil at the beginning of assembly and at all other school functions. He adds that it was sung with emotion, pride, and honour. Must It now be necessary to deny Tamil citizens the privilege of praising our motherland in song, in their mother tongue; especially when the convictions, aspirations, and devotion expressed are identical to those of the Sinhala original. The ban on singing the Anthem in Tamil was imposed in the heat of annoyance, after the Diaspora Tamils in the U.K. despicably prevented the then President Mahinda Rajapakse from addressing the Oxford Union – by invitation. It is time to fall back on the ancient wisdom that hatred can only be overcome by love.

In ‘kaalaama suthra’ the Buddha tells us of the importance of intelligent inquiry before deciding on any issue. The passion and patriotism that our Anthem evokes in us is entirely because we understand it and are in harmony with the sentiments contained in those elegant verses. That is also why the Tamils are inspired by the Anthem in Tamil and sing it with emotion.

What the opponents of singing it in Tamil advocates is to force Tamils to recite it and even mispronounce words without understanding it. What good will that do? It would become a drudgery and people could refrain from singing it altogether. Or worse; compose a song for themselves with different sentiments. In these divisive times, when there are clear indications of certain forces hell-bent on widening the rift; isn’t it a short-sighted and reckless move to exclude the National Anthem from being sung in Tamil – Particularly after it had been sung in that language for a long time? Logic, magnanimity, and the spirit of Dhamma demand that the majority community encourages the continuity of this practice at national events.

There is nothing in the constitution against the Anthem being accurately translated in word and spirit and set to the same music being sung in Tamil. It is on record that Ananda Samarakoon who composed the Anthem had no objections to the Tamil version translated by Pandith M. Nallathamby and sung in Tamil.

Tamil is an official language. The Anthem has been translated and sung in Tamil soon after it was adopted by the government. In the past five years it was sung in Tamil at the end of national celebrations. The majestic music is the same as in the Sinhala original. The voices of the choir were as sweet. Knowing that the sentiments and invocations were the same as in Sinhala – I found it a moving experience. How unjust and immoral it is, to now prevent singing it in Tamil? Can such a stark volte-face ever be the way to reconciliation?

The ban on the Anthem in Tamil amounts to playing into the hands of the Tamil political partisans that do not want reconciliation. Only then can they continue to lord it over the ordinary un-empowered Tamil multitudes, segregated from the ranks of leadership by poverty and cast distinctions that yet prevail in the North and East. The same perceptive friend from Nelliyadi once remarked that the ethnic discord may not have arisen; if in the 30s and 40s monks learnt Tamil and preached the Buddha’s words in the North and East. We must agree. They did not heed Buddha’s command to the first missionary monks, the sixty of them – ‘Travel forth, O bhikkus to spread the Dhamma for the welfare and wellbeing of the masses, with compassion for the Earth.’

What is important are the ideals, sentiments, and hopes that are being sung and everyone’s resolve and commitment to achieve those – Not the language in which they are sung. We hope that sound reason and wisdom shall prevail and this stirring and majestic homage to Sri Lanka would be sung in both Sinhala and Tamil at the forthcoming Independence Day ceremony.

Ananda Wanasinghe