Compassion and reconciliation

Monday 28th September, 2020

Much-respected surgeon, Prof. A. H. Sheriffdeen, has given the errant members of Sri Lanka’s medical fraternity a rap on the knuckles over an unpardonable delay on the part of the Lady Ridgeway Children’s Hospital (LRH), where a 10-year-old child with a ruptured appendix did not receive emergency surgical care. Prof. Sheriffdeen’s letter to the President of the College of Surgeons of Sri Lanka, published in The Island, on Saturday (26), is tantamount to a refresher course on medical ethics for the Sri Lankan doctors who have among them some shirkers. He has pointed out how surgeons in days of yore placed duty before self and worked tirelessly day and night to save lives.

One can only hope that Prof. Sheriffdeen’s missive will have the desired impact on the errant doctors concerned, and they will mend their ways. Doctors’ trade unions that pontificate to politicians on accountability, etc., owe an explanation, and the LRH ought to conduct an investigation. We, however, hasten to add that the aforesaid unfortunate incident should not cast all the doctors at the LRH in a poor light; most of them work really hard and have even gone out of their way to save children’s lives by launching the Little Hearts project. Let them be commended for their good work. Each and every profession has its share of bad eggs, and nobody should shield them.

One of our readers in New Zealand has, in a letter published on the opposite page today, praised Prof. Sheriffdeen for having performed an emergency operation to save the life of the mother of one of his colleagues. It is an inspiring story about a successful effort by a group consisting of the members of the Tamil, Sinhala and Muslim communities to save a precious life. All of them were driven by the milk of human kindness, which alone can help the country’s reconciliation efforts reach fruition.

Reconciliation continues to elude us thanks to the self-serving politicians who make use of ethno-religious and other divisions among Sri Lankans to create block votes for them. However, let us not discuss the actions of the unspeakable. Suffice it to say that they are the real enemies of reconciliation.

‘Reconciliation’ has also become a multi-billion-dollar industry. Many outfits have sprung and taken upon themselves the task of ushering in reconciliation, which they have turned into a lucrative business with some foreign governments known for their ulterior motives showering funds on them. During the last couple of decades, we have seen quite a few conferences at five-star hotels and workshops elsewhere to promote reconciliation, but communal tensions prevail and, at times, find expression in violent clashes.

An ounce of the milk of human kindness, we reckon, is more useful and effective than all the dollars, pounds, etc., in the world put together as far as reconciliation is concerned. People should come together and do what is good for one another if true reconciliation is to be achieved.

A few moons ago, we based an editorial comment about national reconciliation on a slogan written on a trishaw—Sinhale, Demale, Marakkale tsunami wele ekama wale—which roughly rendered into English means ‘when the tsunami disaster struck, members of the Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim communities were buried together’. All the organisations that launch expensive campaigns to promote reconciliation have failed to send out a powerful message like the aforesaid one, which is also a counter to the ideology of an association calling itself Sinhale.

The present situation where national reconciliation is seemingly unattainable has come about because those who are really capable of helping achieve it have been left out.

True reconciliation will become a reality only if people care for one another regardless of their ethnicities, religions, etc. Good deeds like Prof. Sheriffdeen’s go a long way in helping achieve that goal.