Myths of purity

essay response to a lecture on ethnicity by Tudor Silva, professor of sociology at the University of Peradeniya

The question of ethnicity is a tough one. According to our talk today, ethnicity is comprised of one or more of these: shared history, culture or blood, although the last one is more heavily debated, apparently. And I would agree that if you use blood as an identifying factor, it begins to blur the lines of race, as well as history. For shared blood to be relevant, you need to go back into history and discover a common lineage. And I would suspect that if someone found two separate ethnic groups that, for example, became a single group of which they are a part of now, there might even be a split in the contemporary group to mirror the historical division.

Here, clean up that racial impurity.

Why is it that we constantly look to the past for our identities? Why is the future so inadequate in providing us with definition that we must "go back" to a time or history that is more "pure"? Why is a return to "the way things were" better than the way things are now? And why do we search in the past for present identities in time of crisis? It seems that when "bad" change comes, we tend to flee from it; stop it; try to suppress it in any way possible. It's what the Buddhist monks were facing when they wrote the Mahavamsa. It's what we all do. But, and I think Prof. Sudharshan would agree with me, these identities are all constructed: there's nothing that's ever "pure." Racial purity is a myth, as is ethnic, linguistic or religious purity. The present is constantly shaped by the the people who are living within it. The past too, influences the present, but only after it has been filtered through the contemporary lenses of the present people.

Contemporary Sri Lanka is not, I believe, in a post-ethnic state. This is a difficult thing for me to judge. I've been here for just over three weeks, and I've barely lived with my Sinhalese-Buddhist host family long enough to be comfortable with them. They're still reserved around me, and I around them. Seeing as they are my main source of interaction with locals, I cannot really use my experiences with them to contribute to empirical evidence. The only time we ever talked about ethnic differences was when I asked whether or not it was okay to lick my fingers while I was eating. My ammaa explained that licking your fingers was something kids do. It's not impolite, but merely unrefined. Those weren't her words, but that's what I interpreted what she was telling me. Then she added, as an afterthought, that Muslims lick their fingers. It wasn't said with any condemnation, but she was, in essence, comparing the cultural habits of Muslims to the manners of children.

Though they may not be as in a post-ethnic state, I believe that there are, perhaps, movements that can be made towards conflict resolution. The issue of solutions was fresh on my mind as I listened to Professor Hallisey's lecture on Buddhism in Sri Lanka. So when he talked about an early Buddhist monk who gave a sermon in two languages, and how being cosmopolitan was valued in early Buddhism, as were connections that were local, trans-local and historical, it jumped out at me. Here was a way that Sinhalese Buddhists could use the past for their present identity, but in a more inclusive way that both valued and upheld historical tradition. Because we all know how much better things used to be, back in the day.