{"id":70797,"date":"2017-10-18T20:06:53","date_gmt":"2017-10-19T02:06:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=70797"},"modified":"2017-10-18T12:31:49","modified_gmt":"2017-10-18T19:31:49","slug":"the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dominance-of-the-stubborn-minority","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/10\/18\/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dominance-of-the-stubborn-minority\/","title":{"rendered":"The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dominance of the Stubborn Minority"},"content":{"rendered":"

R Chandrasoma<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

\u2018It suffices for an intransigent minority \u2013a certain type of intransigent minorities – to reach a minutely small level, say three or four percent of the total population, for the entire population to have to submit to their preferences. Further, an optical illusion comes with the dominance of the minority: a naive observer would be under the impression that the choices and preferences are those of the majority\u2019. This quotation \u2013 singularly apposite in the context of what is happening in Sri Lanka \u2013 is extracted from the writings of the Sociologist N N Taleb. He sees this phenomenon as double-edged in that such dominance of the stubborn minority may result in the fixation of an idea or the promotion of a programme that benefits all in the long term. Far more often this \u2018dominance of the stubborn minority\u2019 is a harmful anomaly that forces society to move in directions that promote instability and fissiparity. Before we expatiate on the dire situation in Sri Lanka, let us note that minority truculence is a world-wide problem. Islamists form only a very tiny part of the global population but no one can deny that they have destabilized the world and are a real threat to the long-term stability of civilized existence.<\/p>\n

In Sri Lanka the Tamils were a fringe group with no great political clout prior to the advent of the European conquerors. The latter soon realized that the active, Industrious and politically servile Tamils could be used as a counterweight to the historic patriotism of the native Sinhalese – and flagrantly promoted Tamil interests as a counterweight to blunt the yearnings of the patriotic and disquieted Sinhala people. The Tamils \u2013 an expansive race \u2013 had moved in large numbers to the Sinhala-speaking areas and were poised to replace the lethargic Sinhala natives at the time when the historic retreat of Colonialism occurred after World War II. Had this not happened, the Sinhala natives would have become an \u2018under-caste\u2019 in a Pan-Tamil society. Note that the first stirrings of dissent in the immediate pre-war years were by \u2018communists\u2019 and \u2018socialists\u2019 \u2013 Sinhala nationalism had no hold while the dominant Tamils shouted from the roof-tops that they would never be under a Sinhala ruler-ship in any post-colonial administration.<\/p>\n

There is no need to detail the confused happenings that followed the \u2018granting\u2019 of independence. The Tamils resolutely refused to acknowledge the brute fact that Sri Lanka was a creation of the Sinhala people and that the Tamils represented an intrusion of the historic forces determined to erase the uniqueness and success of Sri Lanka as a Sinhala-Buddhist Nation. Let us put aside for a moment the history and achievement of the Sinhala Nation. The Tamils are currently sitting pretty \u2013 with Presidents and Prime Ministers of our country and legions of others in foreign parts\u00a0 abjectly apologetic about the \u2018wrongs\u2019 done to the Tamils. The \u2018wrongs\u2019 done by the mass-killer Prabhakaran are ignored while the retaliatory action by a patriotic leader is seen by a phony New Leadership as a racially motivated attack on a besieged minority.<\/p>\n

Large numbers of Tamils are found distributed across the World and in a Darwinian sense this race represents a highly successful sub-species of the human kind. Why, then, are the President and \u00a0the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka indulging in orgies of \u2018mea culpa\u2019 vis-\u00e0-vis the \u2018National Question\u2019? It is a National Disaster when these two leaders of our country genuflect before a minority that spurns healthy co-existence and treats the separation \u2013 territorial and cultural \u2013 of the races as the only viable political option. Currently, the biggest threat to our country is not the obvious enemy but a leadership that finds the wishes and hopes of the true indigenes obstructive and at variance with their own philosophy of \u00a0survival through subservience.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

R Chandrasoma \u2018It suffices for an intransigent minority \u2013a certain type of intransigent minorities – to reach a minutely small level, say three or four percent of the total population, for the entire population to have to submit to their preferences. Further, an optical illusion comes with the dominance of the minority: a naive observer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-r-chandrasoma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70797\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}