Learning the meaning of love and faith from Lewis Allen

Lewis Allen speaking at FACETS as the Guest of Honour 

– Pic by Kithsiri de Mel

By Suryamithra Vishwa

Lewis Allen, the international gem dealer, who lost his wife in the 21 April Easter Sunday terror attack in this country, showed Sri Lankans and the world the real meaning of forgiveness, love and faith when he re-visited Sri Lanka, four months later, as the Guest of Honour for the FACETS International Gem and Jewellery Exhibition.

His speech at the opening ceremony was a lesson for all Sri Lankans in the great courage it takes to have unconditional faith and love.

While fellow Sri Lankans, especially the armchair analysts, clothed permanently in pessimism and dry academic analysis far removed from the everyday interactions between the diverse ethnic and religious communities of this island, especially at district level in Sri Lanka, were dishing out various intriguing theories, highlighting temporary reactions such as the Muslim shop boycott, making it seem as if hate were dominantly and permanently to stay in Sri Lanka, a foreigner who is more familiar with rural Sri Lanka than some elite Sri Lankans, were having utmost faith that the unity between communities that he has witnessed first-hand in his many visits to Sri Lanka, will prevail.

His speech at the FACETS exhibition launched on 29 August this year gave life to the harmony between ethnic communities in Sri Lanka that is the norm that we witness every day. It is his words that should resonate in our hearts and not the words of some of our Sri Lankan ‘experts’ out to highlight, distort and portray to us and the world that we are enemies based on race and religion.

Let us keep in mind the words of Lewis Allen: “This country is going to come back stronger with more love and with more unity.” 

Let us listen to the rest of his words: “Ever since I’ve been coming to Sri Lanka all the different people, and languages and religions, all my friends, Sinhalese, Muslim, Tamil, they’ve all got along in perfect harmony. A part of the magic of Sri Lanka is that everyone can live together.”

This writer attests in full the experience of Lewis Allen as I live in rural Sri Lanka in the Central Province on the edge of the village of Polgolla, inhabited by Sinhalese. Although it is Polgolla that my premises technically fall to, I am located on the border of a large predominantly Muslim town; Madawala. The Sinhala village is quite self-sufficient but it is the large Muslim town that we all go to for shopping for more ‘luxury’ items. 

The largest grocery store in the Sinhala village is run by a jovial red-bearded Muslim gentleman and almost every evening this writer has to stay in a sometimes-long winding queue to buy the daily groceries. It is not seeming to separate people by ethnicity or religion to describe the simple act of buying groceries but for factual purposes almost all those daily queuing to buy goods from this Muslim shop are Sinhalese.

In speaking to several Sinhalese villagers, on the near empty state of this Muslim-owned grocery store shortly after the 21 April incident and the following three to four weeks, below is the response of one of the Sinhalese villagers: “Yes, we did not go to that shop. I know that Mudalali for 30 years as he has been part and parcel of this village trading community. But I also was very angry and I too did not shop there. For about three weeks we were hurt and angry but we slowly did realise that this innocent man is not responsible for the acts of nine madmen who do not know their own religion.” 

In her words, the not patronising of Muslim shops lasted in this village for maximum one month. This could be described even at a very elementary level of emotion analysis to be a basic reaction that any family member would indulge in if he or she is hurt or upset with a parent, a brother or sister or cousin. The hurt individual would not visit that home for a while and cease talking with them – until such time the heart thaws and the inter-connectedness of the human spirit once again thrives. 

It is this great human penchant that this writer witnesses daily, actually living between a Sinhala and Muslim village (as opposed to going there for some media interviews or turning up with a structured questionnaire).

Hence this writer is as hopeful as Lewis Allen is. It will merit us individually and as communities and as a nation if we reflect deeply on the words of Lewis Allen.

“The world has enough hate, and the world has enough war, and the world has enough division, but I think all we can learn from the attacks on Easter Sunday on 21 April is that if you fill your heart with love, then that conquers all the darkness in the world. After the tragedy I received many emails from relatives and friends asking, ‘How can people do this?’ ‘How can people have so much disregard for other lives?’ I also got so many emails filled with hate and anger, and some asked me, ‘How can you ever go back to Sri Lanka?’ My answer was that I love Sri Lanka and my family loves Sri Lanka, and that the world doesn’t need any more anger, the world does not need any more hate. The world needs more love. If the people responsible for the tragic events of Easter Sunday had more love in their lives, they would not have done this.”

In a day and age where academics and the media latch onto the negative aspects of human ethnic relations and thereby greatly fuel the division politicians crave for and initiate, they totally forget the great goodness humans are capable of. It is a wonderful idea for the cynical, jargon driven researchers who come up with complex repetitive theories (that say very little) to describe human actions but often stay glued to their university chairs, or frame their theories talking to other desk glued ‘experts’ to go and spend at least a year in a rural part of the country. If they do this they will understand clearly the difference between politically motivated violence, temporary human reaction as a result of the fraying of trust and the slow burning of fanaticism in the guise of religion.

But to have a human understanding that will not distort Sri Lanka’s co-existence between Sinhalese, Muslims and Tamils, one need to have at least half of the empathy and love of the kind that exists in the mind of Allen Lewis. The cloak of conceit and superiority that academic researchers and even journalists often wrap themselves in, will have to be disposed of, because conceit and superiority are among the ingredients that define fanaticism, not human wellbeing. 

The father of social science, French philosopher, Auguste Comte, was not driven by conceit and superiority when he came up with the theories of observation as applicable to humans. Although conceit and superiority are the hall mark of some of the sociologists in this country today, who think their own desk stagnated theories are the paragon of intellectual models, contrarily, it is virtues like altruism that drove Auguste Comte to come up with the empirical goals of the sociological method to understand scientifically the behaviour of humans.  Auguste Comte like many visionaries of his ilk, quite well knew that education without love is a dead thing which is why in keeping with his dedication to the virtue of altruism that he began conceptualising a ‘Religion of Humanity’ which unfortunately was not completed by the time of his death. It is the virtue of altruism and the belief in humanism that made Lewis Allen to construct a children’s hospital in Ratnapura, serving a dire need in that district. It is altruism that make him have hope and thankfulness when it seems there is little to be thankful for. Let us revert to his words:

“I think it’s a blessing that my son Jason is still here; he was sitting next to my wife Monique when the suicide bomber blew himself up at the Cinnamon Grand breakfast. I believe that the universe and the world has big plans for my son Jason, and kept him here because love conquers everything. As long as we treat people with love and respect then things like this will never happen.”

It would be a great thing for the words of this international gem dealer to be framed and hung in every primary, secondary school as well as universities of this country so such ideologies and attitudes are inculcated into our currently very pathetic ‘education’ system.

Let us end this then reminding ourselves that we did not pre-order our race or religion or social standing prior to our birth. If we stick to any of the organised religions that we were born into, because our parents carried that label, it is up to us to rise above the mere label, so that we live the true essence of the great love preached by visionaries such as Prophet Muhammad, the Gautama Buddha, Jesus Christ and the many other sages who throughout the ages have sought to transcend and transform the pettiness of living and dying into a higher and greater journey.

Let the love of Sri Lanka that is vibrant in the heart of Lewis Allen be so in our hearts too and may his sentiments echo in our minds, to remind us of our wonderful country and people and also what our human purpose in this life should be. His narration that is quoted below is related his wife’s happiness, thankfulness and gratitude, expressed before she died, that he has constructed the Ratnapura children’s hospital to house 13,000 children and his commitment to build yet another section on the third floor of the hospital, to house more children.

“And then on Sunday morning she went down for breakfast at the Cinnamon Grand. That was our favourite hotel and my wife loved the Sunday breakfast there, and before she left for breakfast she said again, ‘I’m so proud of you and your friends in Sri Lanka for helping to make this world a better place, and you’re going to build that third floor,’ and I said, ‘Yes Monique, I’m going to build the third floor, we’re going to do it.’ About a half hour later a suicide bomber walked into the breakfast and my whole life changed.

“But the blessing is that Jason was sitting next to my wife and he only suffered minor injuries. He’s here to help make this world a better place. And this country is going to come back stronger with more love and with more unity.

“Ever since I’ve been coming to Sri Lanka all the different people, and languages and religions, all my friends, Sinhalese, Muslim, Tamil, they’ve all got along in perfect harmony. A part of the magic of Sri Lanka is that everyone can live together. I have always loved this country. It has a big history and it has helped me spiritually as well as in my business life. My friends here opened their homes after the tragedy and helped me to have the ceremony for my wife. They also helped me take care of the children and get Jason out of the hospital. They were by my side the whole time at the hospital when I was looking for my wife and son. “Even yesterday when we were driving from the airport and I saw the lights on, and the traffic, and people working, I told my son Jason, ‘You see, life goes on, people get back to work. We’re all the same, all we want to do is provide for our families, take care of our loved ones and be happy and have a nice peaceful life.’ So God bless Sri Lanka and its people, and I’m sure that love and peace conquers everything.”