As with all government hospitals, they first wanted to record the
patient’s basic bio data. Fair enough. I provided the child’s name, age
and street address. For some reason, the form also asked for the
patient’s religion. Before I could say anything, the nurse in charge
wrote ‘Buddhist’.
Now, this was both incorrect and highly presumptuous. But
when I objected, it sparked off an argument. The formidable woman
insisted that with a ‘good Sinhalese surname’ like ours, we simply had
to be Buddhists!
When I said her assumption was wrong, she asked me with some
disdain: are you then a Christian? No again. Now she was beginning to be
get really irritated: who is this man who speaks fluent Sinhala, but is
neither Buddhist nor Christian?
I was not about to declare in public a matter I consider to be
intensely private: my religious faith. With the fellow public behind me
becoming impatient, and the public servant in front of me taking a
dogged stand, I retreated with a heavy heart. (I later paid a few
thousand rupees for the same course of vaccines at a private clinic,
where my religious faith or ethnicity was never questioned.)
I thought this was an isolated incident, and didn’t think further.
But a few months later, I ran into a similar situation at my area police
station. I’d gone to make a formal complaint about a serious matter
concerning personal safety, and once again, the process started with my
bio data. When it came to fixing labels, the woman constable recording
my statement categorised me as ‘Sinhalese Buddhist’ — without even
raising her head from the big book of complaints.
In case you are wondering, I bear
absolutely no tell-tale signs of belonging any faith: I don’t wear a
religious symbol as jewellery, or wrap pirith nool (pieces of
thread blessed by monks) on my wrist. I also carefully avoid sprinkling
my everyday speech with any religious phrases. Even my occasional
swearing is devoid of religious references. (An observant friend once
likened my colloquial speech to that of my favourite cartoon charter Tintin’s:
no harsh swear words, and only secular references.)
Must biology be destiny in the 21st Century? Blind chance of
birth placed me in a family of ethnic Sinhala parents who also happened
to be Buddhists. But these cosmic accidents don’t make me a Buddhist any
more than, say, I become a believing and practising Aquarian
simply because I was born in February. My brand loyalty to the randomly
assigned religion and star sign are about the same: zero.
Just so that I put all my cards on the table, I have not
practised any religion or belonged to any religious faith (with their
trappings of scripture, priests and places of worship) from my teen
years. That’s 30 years of uninterrupted secular humanism.
Indeed, ‘secular humanist’ is the only label that I proudly
wear in both public and private. But in the Sinhala Buddhist Republic of
Sri Lanka that my land of birth is turning into, various public
agencies find this ‘aberration’ either unsettling or unacceptable. My
self-exclusion on matters of faith makes me an instant misfit in many
state procedures. And yet, we are supposedly an open and democratic
society……and in theory at least, not a religious state.
But that matters little in practice. For example, I
recently gave evidence under oath in a court of law in a civil case. All
along, my lawyer advised me to just ‘pretend’ to be a Buddhist for that
solemn occasion. Apparently the system can’t handle ‘spiritually
neutral’ — my preferred (and very honest) answer when asked about my
faith.
I don’t see how and
why a citizen’s religious affiliation – or its complete absence – should
matter in the least when dispensing vaccines or justice in the modern
world. Is this not a residual habit from colonial times that no longer
serves a purpose? Actually, I find it worse than redundant; it’s plain
insulting.
Religion is not the only private matter that our governments love to
poke its clumsy and unwelcome noses into. Also falling into this
category: everyone’s sanitary habits, and sexual relations between
consenting adults.
For sure, what private individuals do in the privacy of their homes
can have some implications for the community, economy and national
statistics. In today’s highly inter-dependent and interlinked world, no
man or woman or nation is an island.
Despite this, there are at least three aspects of modern living where
choices must remain strictly and entirely personal: what we do in our
bed rooms, wash rooms and (metaphorical) shrine rooms. I, for one, will
resist all arms of the state and government, as well as self-appointed
guardians of our morals and values, from intruding into any of these
hallowed spaces of my free will and choice.
Especially when it comes to matters of faith – or its complete
avoidance – the Jackboot of government means absolutely nothing.
Well, at least until they perfect the Thought Police…
* * * * *
Explanation for non-Lankan readers:
The ethnic
mix and religious mix in Sri Lanka don’t coincide, making it (at
least for me!) a delightfully chaotic melting pot. While some Sinhalese
are Buddhist and some Tamils are Hindu in their choice of faith, that is
not to be assumed. Indeed, there are statistically significant numbers
of both Sinhalese and Tamils who are Christians (of various
denominations). While all our muslim friends are Islamic, there are also
some ethnic Sinhalese and Tamils who have converted to Islam. So one
has to be very careful in making generalisations, and it’s altogether
better to avoid them….