identity, part 1.

γνῶθι σεαυτόν read the entrance to the temple of Delphi. Know thyself. Politics, like all social activities must stem from our understanding of ourselves and our groupings. (i dislike like the word 'tribe'. It artificially associates a perfectly simple idea: that man has alliances, allegiances and groups, with the word tribe that has no meaning to most of us. The imagery is all wrong.) Who am I? What is Sri Lanka? Who do I identify myself with? More importantly, who don't i identify myself with? Whose arse am i blowing smoke up when I say that every man is my brother? All this confusion, and i haven't even read Kripke yet. [interrupting this ramble for an announcement: If anyone, i say anyone has a copy of Saul Kripke's 'Naming and Necessity', please share]

A year go I was in the midst of a heated debate with a close friend when she spat out the line at me: "You're not even really Sri Lankan;" The unsaid portion of her sentence, of course:"... you have no right to have an opinion of it". I don't discuss anything with her anymore. I hear statements like this often around me, and know that some regard their identity as a delicate, almost-spiritual state, constantly under threat; it needs to be guarded against change, against impurity, and most of all against analysis. Stripping off the pink fluffy bloomers of mysticism and looking hard at what we call 'ourselves' is bound to scare anyone who hasn't already spent quiet desperate moments struggling to know who they are and whether there is anything to attach worth to in themselves.

Today i am defiant. 'The State of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka recognises me as a citizen,' I say. 'Your small minded reductionist opinion doesn't fucking count. The idea that Sri Lanka's questions should only be addressed by someone who has spent no part of his life outside the country, or that this country can only represented by the mean, median or majority citizen or just someone who only has such and such opinions is an idea i wish to vomit out of my consciousness like the poisoned meal it is. Sri Lanka should celebrate it's extremities as much as the the huddled masses in the middle of the bell curve. It's the guy on TV in the saffron robe telling us that Sri Lanka is the same as Sinhala, the vacuous radio show host affecting an American accent so far from its shore, its the tuition teacher, the bus driver, the CEO in the back seat of his silver Jaguar, the effeminate playwright; all of them, both recognisable, indigenous and not.

Establishing a national identity is the artificial exercises of finding the lowest common denominator for a diverse group of people while carefully avoiding the stance that people are just people universally. Nation-states are human constructs, so are the identities that go with them. I am a Sri Lankan by one virtue alone: that I am a citizen of this republic. Definitions that attempt to limit this are both contrived and inaccurate. Must I support the cricket team also? Like our tea? Feel some diffused love for the square area of the country or my fellow citizens? Should I discriminate in favour of them always or in certain situations? Do i need to feel Sri Lankan, or is it enough if i just feel like I'm being screwed by the government? If I have a stake in this country and its future as the vessel of my aspirations and happiness, is that not sufficient motivation for me to act to better it? Do i need to be patriotic too? Should I gush?

[Pause for real life, loans work and baths, more later.]