So you thought Sinha Bahu was your ancestor, did you?

I was reading an article in the New York Times, earlier today about an impending book due out later this month, chronicling Mrs Obama’s (First Lady of the USA) ancestry. While she is generally referred to as African American, she can trace ancestry through all her 4 grandparents to Whites who lived in America, including slave owners.

Thanks to DNA testing, and gene testing it is now possible to trace our ancestry over generations, perhaps thousands of years. I understand that the ancestry of Native Americans, both in North and South America, trace their roots to twelve people who came of the Baring straits 10,000 years ago, and trace their roots to Africa. I look forward to the day I will be able to find out what a hotchpotch of an ancestry I may have.

More to the point, racial and caste based politics in Sri Lanka has become the bane of our inability to settle down as a nation, and wish to find some corner that we claim is ours or that we have some special claim on a racial blood line or to a particular religion. I look forward to the day, the extreme racists within our society be it Muslim,Tamil or Sinhala discover they have the least ancestry from the race they represent!! Wouldn’t that be something? They will then shut up, except for a couple of die hard odd balls who will blame it on a Western Plot to destroy their heritage!!

We have visionary leaders who can put our past behind us and move forward to build the nation undivided by petty differences that continue to prevent reconciliation and togetherness. We must give them the chance to lead us, instead of even giving a second hearing to the rabble rousers who use hate to divide. It is those same people who will in time, and I sincerely hope not soon enough be proved to be charlatans in disguise.

I am hopeful that once this technique is in widespread use we will embrace it and then realize we have been living in a false world of pettiness brought about by fear of losing identity that we never really had any control of in the first place. We have been living a myth a lie and that has created no end of problems and futile wars, which pitted one relative against another without our knowing. We can then embrace each other as members of the Human Race once and for all time!! Amen