ABDF

Sunday, June 1, 2008

Hi everybody!

First, I want to let you know that things have been quiet and calm this past week.  In fact when I went down to Kattankudy two days ago I even saw Tamil women walking the streets, presumably to do their shopping. 

Today, however, a Muslim trader was found dead in Kallady, which is very close to Batti town.  Apparently he had been hacked to death then dumped.  This makes everyone nervous again, not to mention perpetuates the shortages at the shops, as the traders who supply them all hale from Kattankudy.  So no one knows what’s going to happen.

I will be out of this for a bit, however.  Tomorrow night I take the train to Colombo, as I have mentioned before.  I think I will be there almost a week, and I plan on returning next weekend.

As I mentioned, I saw Tamil women shopping in Kattankudy a couple of days ago.  You might wonder how I could tell they were Tamil.  Really, it’s all in the clothes.

Muslim women mostly wear Punjabis, which are those baggy pant and long tunic combinations.  They almost never wear Western clothes.  Also, part of the Punjabi ensemble is a long flowing scarf.  Muslim women cover their heads while in public, especially in Muslim areas.  They often use the Punjabi scarf for this, although the hijab is most common.  This is the headscarf we in the West are most familiar with; a square piece of material is folded into a triangle and draped over the head, leaving the face exposed, and two corners are pinned under the chin while the third corner covers the back of the neck. In the past it was uncommon for women in Kattankudy to wear full face covering with only a slit for the eyes. With the community feeling increasingly under siege in the past few years, many have become stricter in this manner, and so now you see women, particularly young girls, wearing such all-black head coverings. I even noticed an increase in this since I was here last year. Even more rare (but you see it) are women wearing a thin piece of material over this head covering, which allows the woman to see out, but even the eyes are obscured to everyone else.

I once had a discussion with Aneesha about the head scarf, as it makes me very uncomfortable.  I won’t go into all the ins and outs of our talk, but I will say that, as liberal and open-minded as she is, she sees the hijab differently than we do in the West, although she does think covering the face is over doing it. She says, and Marliya, Izzadeen’s wife later confirmed this, that she feels more comfortable in public with her head covered.  Certainly at home, both go cover-less, even in front of infidel company like myself.  In this way, she sees it more as a matter of personal choice.  However, when I pointed out that no Muslim women go about in Kattankudy with their head uncovered because they are worried what the community will feel about it, especially the men, it ceases to be a choice.  She really didn’t have an answer for this, except to say that in the West we don’t approve of topless women in public, and so women don’t go out topless.  What is the difference, she asks? 

She has a point, but I personally believe that there is a difference between conventional notions of propriety, even if those notions once had religious backing, and the outright dictates of religious law.  Plus women may not walk around topless in the West, but they have a huge number of options from which to choose; far more than the Muslim women in Kattankudy.

To tell the truth, the hijab doesn’t really bother me.  It’s the full face coverings that do.  Normal human interaction involves seeing the face and its expressions.  Face covering hinder this, to the disadvantage of both parties.  I mean, we like to know who it is we’re dealing with, and if you can’t see the face, you can’t be sure.  Plus, I personally know most Muslim women rip these coverings off as soon as they leave Kattankudy town limits; I’ve seen them do it.  This tells me that their personal choice is not to cover up.  And that’s why it bothers me. 

And sometimes there is a certain amount of hypocrisy involved.  An example: when I was last in Colombo, I stayed in a hotel before moving to the Ministry building.  One day I looked out my third story window and saw a Muslim couple standing on the sidewalk below me.  She was completely covered, except for the eyes, in flowing black.  He was wearing shorts, a t-shirt, hip sunglasses, and smoking a cigarette.  Now, if he was making her cover up for religious reasons, shouldn’t he also have been more “traditionally” and modestly attired?  Why does he get to wear cool clothing while she had to sweat under all black? And why was he smoking? Admittedly, you don’t get this level of hypocrisy in Kattankudy, but you see my point.

By contrast, Tamil women almost never cover their heads on a normal basis.  They do frequently wear Punjabis, as they are convenient for certain things, such as riding a bicycle.  And the scarf is handy for when you do need to cover up, such as in the hot sun, or entering certain temples.  Perhaps most common among Tamil women is the sari, with which we are all familiar.  The exceptions to this are Christians, who almost always wear Western clothes; blouses and long skirts.  Western attire is seldom worn by Hindu women.

So that’s how you tell: Muslim women inevitably cover their heads and wear Punjabis, Hindu Tamils wear Punjabis with head uncovered, and also saris; Muslim women never wear saris. Christian Tamils wear Western clothes; Hindu women rarely do, and Muslim women almost never.

There is a similar distinction in men’s clothing.  The sarong is the standard male attire, although I say this with qualifications.  Nowadays Hindu Tamil men only really wear sarongs around the house while relaxing; only the very poorest of Hindu men wear sarongs out to work.  For work, Hindu Tamil men wear Western style slacks and shirts.  Christian men do the same, except it’s rare for them to wear sarongs at home; they tend to dress Western there too.  Generally speaking, Muslim men wear sarongs almost all the time, at home, at work, on the streets, and so on.  The exception would be those with professional jobs which require Western dress, or those with a modern outlook, like my friend Izzadeen.  Muslim men frequently wear small white skull caps.  There’s also a color dimension to all this as well.  Muslim men’s clothes tend to be white or of very light colors whereas Tamil men prefer vivid colors, especially rich blues.  Mustaches are extremely common among Hindus and Christians, while many Muslim men also wear beards.

As you can see, the dress cues aren’t that difficult to pick up, and so it becomes easy to automatically know who belongs to which group.  The only trick is when you’re in an office type setting where the men are required to wear slacks and shirts (women are normally allowed to wear their ethnic dress).

Since we’re on the subject of telling who is what, we might as well discuss names.  Names make it super easy.  Muslim names come straight out of the Middle East: Aziz, Aneesha, Farouk, Farrah, etc.  You do get Mohammed’s, although not as often as you do in other Muslim cultures.  Christians almost always have Western first names and Tamil last names.  I know a Christina, Stanley, Cyril, John, and Mary.  These originated during the colonial period when converts took Christian names. Hindus have long multi-syllabic names, which in daily use they shorten to just the first syllable or two.  A couple examples: Siva for Sivanasen, Sothi for Sothilingam, Shathan for Shivashanthan and Murali for Muralitharan. 

To us Westerners, such distinctions seem quaint and interesting, but for the most part unimportant.  Historically we have mixed and matched such things as clothes and names.  But here names and clothes reflect religious identity.  In the West religion is seen as something of a personal choice, not a marker of ethnicity.  I mean, look at Roman Catholics in the US; you’ve got black Catholics from the South, Latino Catholics, Mediterranean (Italian, Spanish, etc) Catholics, Northern European (Irish, for example) Catholics and even some from the Middle East and Asia.  Yet we consider all these to be different ethnic groups.  Whereas Catholics and Protestants from Germany we think of as being of the same ethnic group.

It’s the opposite here.  Here religion IS ethnicity.  Despite the fact that Muslims and Tamils speak the same language and write with the same script, even though they (by and large) eat the same foods, wear similar clothing, watch the same TV and listen to the same music, physically look the same, and even though they’ve lived intermingled for almost 1,400 years, they still define themselves and each other as different, mostly due to religion.  This division even extends, although to a much lesser degree, to the Christians and Hindus.  Now you or I, when we come here, we look at this and say: “But they’re all Tamil.  They belong to the same culture; it’s just that some happen to be Muslim, some Hindu, and some Christian.”   But that’s how a Westerner would look at it; they see it very differently, although there is frequent talk about how all here are brothers.  But the brotherhood is very weak and, as I described last time, quickly breaks down.

At the same time, everyone has friends of all three groups, and to a one people look greatly astonished when I ask if they or others would make or reject friends based on religion.

So it’s entirely possible that the guys who killed and dumped the Muslim trader earlier today have Muslim friends, and yet apparently don’t make the connection between the Muslim man they murdered and their own personal Muslim friends.  Of course it’s also possible that these murderers, who are a minority here I assure you, don’t have personal Muslim friends, and maybe that’s the problem.  Either way, it’s that combination of groupthink and anger that causes conflict.  The vast majority of individuals from all groups here would be horrified at the thought of torturing or murdering anyone, either from their own group or one of the others. Mob mentality, I tell you: it’s an awful thing.

Before any of us start to think how much more enlightened we are in the West, let’s just remember our very recent history and our current prejudices.  We in the West may be more intellectually aware of these issues, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into more enlightened action.  The so-called “lizard brain” sometimes takes over. We are not superior to the folks here on the east coast of Sri Lanka. Look into yourself, and think about the last time you thought about “those damn (insert ethnic or religious or national group here).”  Of course a big difference might be that you may not like “them,” but that doesn’t mean you’re gonna go out to torture and/or kill one. At least I hope not.

Perhaps because he’s the most philosophical of all my friends, Izzadeen is the only one who has truly been able to rise above the religious divisions here.  Let me be precise: I have plenty of other friends who could care less about the religion of others on a day-to-day basis, but when the crap hits the fan they tend to fall into the us/them mentality of fear.  In contrast, Izzadeen is the only one who puts his thoughts into action and when trouble arises, he firmly thinks in terms of “we.” He believes very deeply, much more deeply than anyone else, that everyone here is Tamil (in the general sense), and that religion is an accident of birth, not a definition of ethnic identity.  This is why his belief in unshakable, even when atrocities are committed against his fellow Muslims.  So he has dedicated his life, and almost lost it on several occasions, to make everyone else understand this.  It’s an uphill battle to say the least.  I find it inspiring, though.

xoxoxoxoxoxo

B.