A small-minded big brother out of control

In 1986, Asiaweek ran a story about Sri Lanka.  The piece was dressed with a photograph of Lalith Athulathmudali getting off a helicopter and being helped to the ground by a foreign pilot.  The picture complemented the story.  Not long afterwards, an Indian newspaper called ‘The Hindu’ carried a front page article based on the photograph, screaming that Sri Lanka was employing foreign merceneries to kill innocent Tamil civilians. 

Twenty five years later, small-minded, pea-brained, big brother is still out of control, it seems to me.   On August 16, 2011, this same paper too pot shots with its editorial pea-shooter at Sri Lanka’s Defence Secretary. Gotabaya Rajapaksa.  The title was a scream: ‘A brother out of control’. 

‘Two years after defeating the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and eliminating it as a military entity, Sri Lanka is still struggling to emerge from the woods on some important fronts,’ the Hindu tells us somberly.  Sixty years after India became a nation courtesy the invader, unable to unshackle itself from the invader-given name, India is struggling to acquire the basic intelligence to even acknowledge the trees in the thick woods of impoverishment, illiteracy, inhumanity towards and ill-treatment of it numerous subaltern communities, racism, religious fundamentalism etc.  It still doesn’t know whether it is coming or going on Kashmir.  That’s fine.  Ignorance is not a crime.  Arrogance, however is a bit thick.   

India, The Hindu says, is ‘concerned’ that only ‘nominal steps’ have been taken ‘to put in place a progressive political framework to address Tamil grievances’, and this concern, horror of horrors (!), should be noted, it is implied, because India (supposedly a friend of Sri Lanka) ‘stood by the military effort against the LTTE.  Now had The Hindu mentioned how India gave refuge to, offered logistical support, armed and trained terrorists and intervened to save the LTTE from certain defeat in 1987, thereby prolonging the conflict and facilitating unnecessary deaths to the tune of tens of thousands, these sentiments might not sound as hollow.

The Hindu then salutes the mischievous and indeed immoral posturing of rogue televisions stations such as Channel 4, with no mention whatsoever of the bunkum they dish out and of course nothing on the crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Indian military in Kashmir, Punjab and elsewhere which are not allegations made by dubious sources with absolutely no substantiation, but established fact.

The Editor of The Hindu, in his/her arrogance inserts a UN stamp to a largely cock-and-bull story put together by an ignorant, arrogant, politically compromised panel lacking in integrity.  The report mentioned was NOT an UN report, as The Hindu claims, but a hodge-podge of rubbish compiled by some people appointed by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon to advise him on Sri Lanka.  As the Defence Secretary recently pointed out, the ‘very reliable sources’ referred to in the report didn’t even know his name.  It is indeed pitiful that The Hindu should give respectability to such sloth and ignorance, but then again, being slothful and ignorant him/herself, the sophomoric tendencies of the Editor of The Hindu is understandable.

The Hindu is upset by what is taken as ‘intemperate remarks against Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalitha’ allegedly made by the Defence Secretary.  Gotabhaya had merely stated that if the lady really loves Sri Lankan Tamils as she claims she does (and The Hindu ought to do a piece about how Sri Lankan Tamil IDPs are treated in Tamil Nadu – it is certainly not with love, kindness, fraternal embrace and such), then she should make sure that Indian fishermen don’t encroach on Sri Lankan waters and thereby deny Sri Lankan Tamil fishermen from engaging in their livelihood, an exercise that the LTTE (thanks largely to India) had denied them by launching a debilitating war. 

That’s not vituperation; it’s common sense!  The Hindu seems to think that Jayalalith is some kind of apolitical human rights activists.  Perhaps The Hindu really has no clue about politics, politicians and political culture and is ignorant of Jayalalitha’s chauvinistic and anti-Sri Lankan posturing.  Sri Lanka does not owe Jayalalitha any favours apart from conferring common courtesies.  We are not required to salute her when she talks rubbish.

The Hindu is upset that Gotabhaya had rubbished the 13^th Amendment.  Yes, the Sri Lankan Government was ‘involved’ in the drafting of the 13^th Amendment.  Those who surrender have to sign the terms of surrender and in this sense is party to the surrender agreement.  Sri Lanaka wasn’t ‘involved’ in India arming and training terrorists, or in violating national airspace to drop goodies to the LTTE.  The Hindu knows all this.

The ‘sensitivity’ or otherwise of political solutions is serious stuff for The Hindu.  Well, it’s our business Mr/Ms Editor.  For the record, your country has not been at all sensitive to agreements made on Kashmir, has it? 

The Hindu finds it ‘outrageous’ that Gotabhaya had wryly commented that the British woman who claimed that soldiers had raped women, was herself not raped.  I find it outrageous that The Hindu didn’t do a background check (and it’s all on the internet by the way, video-footage and all) on the lady, who was not just fronting for the LTTE in Britain and in other parts of Europe, but in fact had undergone weapons training in the Wanni. 

Let’s get back to the 13^th Amendment and constitutional reform.  It’s our business, first and foremost. The 13^th was illegal, it was imposed by Rajiv Gandhi arm-twisting the then president, J.R.Jayewardena and accompanied by a brag by this Indian thug who was later assassinated by the very people his mother fed, armed and trained: ‘what we will see is the Bhutanization of Sri Lanka’.  And India is a ‘friendly nation’, did the Editor say? 

The Hindu wants the President to take to task his brother for statements made.  Well, someone should take The Hindu to task for 5^th grade journalism.  Will someone do it?  Nah!  Arrogance and ignorance seem to be the occupational diseases of the Indian political leadership, diplomatic corps and mainstream media.  Pea-brains and small-mindedness seem to be necessary qualifications for those who make the numbers in the relevant institutions.    ‘Out of control’, finally and sadly, seems to be ‘business as usual’. 

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On Designer Riots and Designer Wars

The Central Environmental Authority, as part of celebrating its 30^th anniversary, held a seminar at the ‘Water’s Edge’ on Thursday, August 18, 2011.  During the discussion, a man called Elmore Alles, who described himself as a ‘naturalist’, observed that the recent upheavals in London could be described as ‘Designer Looting’. 

Although a certain randomness was inscribed on the violence by the use of the descriptive ‘riot’, it is clear that at worst it was an exploding of deep seated frustrations.  ‘Riots’ are small wars and if randomness refers to meaningless, destructive, violence that is illegal and morally repugnant, then what happened in London is essentially the same as the USA and Britain invading Iraq, the sanctioning of crimes against humanity in Libya and the continuing massacre of innocents in Afghanistan and Pakistan.  Even the ‘adventures in democracy’ in the whole of Latin America and Caribbean, South East Asia and the Middle East can be called ‘Designer Riots’. 

A friend of mine from the Yaksha clan and a meticulous compiler of facts who understands that riot-designers prefer to be hidden from the public eye, emailed me a short story about riots.  It’s almost 450 years old.  The year is 1677.  This is his note:

‘Lord treasurer Thomas Osborne, 1st Duke of Leeds, 1st Earl of Danby, etc., under Kings Charles II and William III of England, arranged the marriage between the Duke of York’s eldest daughter Mary and the Protestant William of Orange. Not wanting to depend on cash from Catholic France, and needing concrete support not available from public opinion, Danby wondered in 1677, whether ‘a small insurrection’ might not be desirable as an excuse for obtaining money and arms for the government.’

That was in 1677.  A few days ago I heard about a film called ‘The New American Century’.  This Massimo Mazzucco’s film follows his ‘Inganno Globale’ (Global Deceit), the 2006 effort which presented all the major inconsistencies pertaining to the official 9/11 story, indicating that the ‘spark’ necessary for the ‘Designer Wars’ on Iraq and Afghanistan was in fact an inside job.  ‘The New America Century’ is said to present ‘the historical, philosophical, economic and political background -- some of which is practically unknown to the general public -- that seems to support such accusation by the 9/11 Truth Movement’.

Every major war in US history was based on a complete fraud and that’s admitted by insiders themselves.  A hundred years ago the first film theaters in the US were used to broadcast propaganda to rile the American people into the Spanish-American War.  Not too long ago, white papers of the oil company Unocal called for the creation of a pipeline through Afghanistan.  The invasion of Afghanistan is fulfilling this need. 

The designers are not interested in democracy or peace.  They are not interested in ousting regional or eliminating thugs or vanquishing terrorism.  It is about profit.  If tyranny serves profiteering, tyranny is left alone. The same goes for monarchies, military juntas and other authoritarian systems.  It’s all about whose tyrant so and so is. 

We had our own designer war not too long ago.  That war was designer-made by a big neighbor.  Some say it was to punish the then president for being a loyal Yes-Man of Uncle Sam, so much so that he earned the sobriquet ‘Yankee Dickey’.  On the other hand the said big neighbor, in 1991, genuflected before the IMF, taking the wrong path that the small neighbor had taken 13 years previously.  More pertinent, probably, was the separatist fervor gaining momentum in the southern part of that big country.  It was time to design a deflection.  Money, guns and expertise were loaned to make sure that the small neighbor burned.  It burned for 30 years and in the process burnt the designer too. 

London was a riot.  A riot of design, as the naturalist claimed.  Not new, ladies and gentlemen, no.  The history of the modern world is about designer wars, it can be claimed.  And like all crimes, it is useful to ask, ‘who benefitted the most and how’ and you will get the identity of the designer. 

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A soft finger touch about caressing

There are times when I wonder if tenderness can be measured or even described.  This morning the words of an old verse that spoke of motherhood and appreciations thereof came to me.  It spoke of the impossibility of ever completely recounting the trials and tribulations that a mother has to suffer and live through from the day she gives birth to a child.  It articulates veneration in recognition of what she gave and gives and the impossibility and expresses appreciation of the impossibility of assessing magnitude. 

Tenderness, we all know, is not the preserve of motherhood or parenthood.  Each tenderness has signature and each is experienced in particular ways by recipient; there is difference in loving and difference is receiving love.  Different people caress differently. 

The other day I saw a bowling contest between the evergreen Muttiah Muralitharan and Graeme Swann, who has inherited the ‘Top Spinner’ title after the former’s retirement.  It was to see who could first knock a 50p coin off the top of an empty glass carefully balanced on top of cricket stumps.  Knocking wickets it tough enough, but these two had to dislodge the coin without knocking the glass off the stumps.  On the fourth or fifth attempt, Murali pitched one outside the off stump, got it to turn in and shave the edge of the coin, dropping it without disturbing glass or stumps.  That’s caressing of a rare kind. 

There is certainly skill but certainty is rarely claimed.  There is luck and there’s the element of probability.  It is possible for an unknown person to turn his or her arm and get the 50p to fall on the first try, but if it was about who would make it drop 10 times first, then I would bet that both Murali and Swann would get it done and have to wait hours and hours for that random spinner to make it up to 10. 

The point is that tenderness is seldom gene-bound.  It is something we encounter and learn, something whose dimensions and degrees we hone through experience and conscious practice.  It is not something that we can avoid because we are all birthed by delicate hands and nursed and nourished with love regardless of the physical, emotional and social circumstances of those who tend to us. 

The spinner has to grip the ball hard to make to dance off the wicket.  The accomplished batsman has to use soft hands sometimes to work it through the gaps.  Life is like that.  We grip, we release; we make things turn, we caress.  It is perhaps in the thinking and not the act that softness is required.  When we get emotional, we grip too hard or let it all slip through our fingers.  When we strike the correct balance between thought and feeling, we are better able to decide how much grip is necessary and how soft the release should be. 

Life is about encounter. It is about touching.  And there are countless ways to touch, to make things drop as required but doing so without disarranging the furniture or wrecking lives.   I remember the admonishment of elders, especially my parents.  I remember them when I feign strictness with my children (they are accomplished in the matter of seeing through it all, though).  I remember the punishments meted out by teachers for acts of transgression I cannot remember.  I remember being angry and confused and being confused further at the kindness that followed not long thereafter, and most of all the realization years later that it was all softness-made. 

Caress, for decades, was a word I associated with fingertips and skin.  I felt breeze and heard soft music from beyond tree-line and the ever moving edge between today and tomorrow when I heard or thought of that word.  That word was and is synonym for love in all its forms.  

Caress

Not finger on skin,

lip on lip

and other felt things

made for quivering and sigh.

no,

it is a heartbeat blend

the twirl of thought with thought

word on word

phrase within phrase

and a comforting

that defies distance,

outlasts togetherness.

Caress is memory of my mother from the earliest days I remember, being carried to the doctor to taking me from one teacher to another, temple to temple, book to book, place to place.  I cannot begin to describe her suffering nor ever complete her story.  Years ago, when moments of disagreement stretched to months and years of distance and distancing I wondered what happened to that much celebrated thing called kiri suwanda, the mother’s milk fragrance.  Today, it caresses nostril and heartstring, memory and tear and strangely, does not provoke regret.  That perhaps is the insurance she obtained for me, just by giving and giving. Tenderly.  That’s caressing that will and should remain mentioned-in-passing but never defined or described in full.   Touches without seeming to touch. 

[Courtesy Daily News, August 18, 2011] 

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You can only be a nationalist if you are green

‘Green’ is a political colour in Sri Lanka and has been for many decades.  It got perverted by the modernist intervention in agriculture which gave us mono crop cultures, high value crops, chemical inputs and in these and other ways poisoned our soils, crippled diversity and enslaved an entire sector of the economy to the whims and fancies of poison peddlers and machinery manufacturers. 

The modernist ‘moment’ is indeed a moment, when you consider the wide span of known history.  Resident in this moment is a kind of destruction that surpasses in magnitude the total errors of the long millennia that came before.  It is a moment defined by the word ‘over’; over-exploitation, over-reaction, over-consumption and other ‘overs’ that have sent not only over-zealous but everyone and everything overboard.  Almost. 

And now the experts on development are telling us, ‘hey, it’s all wrong, THIS and THAT are what you should be doing!’ where the THIS and THAT were what we were once told is unscientific, inefficient and keeps us underdeveloped.  That which we were coerced into abandoning is now being recycled back to us as some new found formula by the same peddlers of misinformation batting for big time buck-makers.  Now we are told to go green, in a different sense. 

If there’s any lesson in any of these processes, it is to exercise intellect and vigilance and complement such circumspection with unrelenting collective engagement with the pundits and their backers.  In this case, it is time that we went green on our terms, by drawing from the vast wealth of knowledge bequeathed to us in word, artifact and example by our ancestors and resident in treatise, cultural sensibility and custom. 

These are days of nationalism.  Chest-beating, we-vanquished-terrorism, kind of nationalism.  A proud nationalism that is ready to defy the world’s big-name thugs in order to protect the victory secured at great cost and after 30 long years of being held to ransom by terrorism.  Nationalism, however, is not only about meeting external threat.  One cannot be nationalist in part.  There is an internal and internalized enemy, far more pernicious and resilient than the pussy cat in tiger skin that was effectively eliminated in the battle field.  It is about acquired bad habits in all things, especially in how we engage with things pertaining to the earth, her creatures and resources. 

We’ve been quite treacherous as a people and a nation to these things, consciously or unconsciously.  Part of it can be attributed to the inevitable slave-mentality that is produced by five centuries of colonial rule and continuing subjugation in indirect form since independence.  There are things we cannot control, but there are things we can.  It is in this sense that greening, or determining to be more aware of the world around us, what we do to it and how our engagements can become wholesome, less destructive and directed towards correcting flaw that we can be more meaningful in our patriotism.

There are flag waving, anthem singing, satyagrahee patriots.  And there are those who in their every act resist the lies pertaining to appropriate understanding of earth.  Karl Polyani named ‘land’ as one of three ‘fictitious commodities’ (the others being labour and money), but the fiction lay not only in the fact that it is not a ‘discrete product’ due to inherent and sovereign dynamic but in the relation that the human being has to it.  This is the fiction that the true nationalist recognized and rebels again, in thought, word and deed. 

It is in this context that I salute the Central Environmental Authority for instituting a mechanism to reward such green patriots on the occasion of its 30^th anniversary.  At a time when it is imperative that the world factors in environmental costs, it is important that those enterprises marked by conscious, sustained and effective initiatives in this respect are rewarded. 

The ‘National Green Awards’, I am told, seeks to recognize industries, local government authorities, public and private institutions and schools that are ‘green’ in thinking, practice and in outcomes produced.  This initiative, I hope, will help create a consciousness among consumer and producer regarding the importance of ‘being green’ with a view to making ‘greenness’ a sought-after brand attribute.  We must move consciously towards a future where the green value of a brand defines the potential of a brand to survive in a competitive environment. 

We’ve spat on the earth and in doing so, desecrated the work of our ancestors.  This is the time for remorse and a conscious effort to redeem ourselves.  Sadly, it comes not as a choice but an imperative.  Not just for our ancestors, but ourselves and the generations we spawn collectively.  And for the butterfly whose flight path enchants, the call of the koha, the well that was never meant to go dry, earth-turning at ploughing and then again at threshing time, calamities that are natural and not precipitated by greed, arrogance and ignorance, a bird call at twilight and freedom from the fear of contracting yet unnamed diseases. 

There’s a question that every chest-beating nationalist should first answer: are you green or are you not?  A ‘green’ response necessitates a particular kind of being and becoming.  A negative response calls for giving the chest a break. 

[Courtesy Daily News, August 18, 2011]

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On the ‘free’ and ‘lance’ of freelancing

My little girl Dayadi ('Affection-giver') who will soon be 8 years old, has figured me out completely; just as any 8 year old of any father, I suppose.  This morning she told me she had figured out why I don’t have any time. 

‘You don’t need a lot of time for your work; you need time for other people’s work,’ she said. 

‘How do you know?’ I asked

‘I have heard you speaking on the phone.  You are always telling people “hari, hari, karala dennam” (ok, I’ll do it).’

Got me thinking.  She is correct.  My problem, perhaps, is that I don’t know where ‘my’ ends and ‘someone else’s’ begins.  This, I figured is the problem of freelance writers.   Perhaps it is the same for others who work on a freelance basis, I don’t know. 

The problem with this freelance business, for me at least, is the ‘free’ part of it.  I am lanced by the free.  In two ways.  First, people think that being freelance means one is free or has enormous amounts of time with very little to do with it.  My little girl is correct.  It’s doesn’t take too long to do what I usually do.   An hour or a little more for each article I write to this paper, and about the same time for what I write elsewhere.  There is some time spent on relevant research, but these are internet days and that doesn’t take too long. 

The up side of freelancing, to me at least, is that it gives me a lot of time to just be.  I like to sleep, for instance.   Read too.  Visit friends and family.  Be with my family.  All this is the value that I save and the compensation for the scandalous return on investment in this business of writing on a freelance basis to newspapers. 

The other down side of freelancing is that so many people cotton on to the freeness of the ‘free’ part and call me asking me to do this and that.  These are the calls to which I respond ‘karala dennam’, that line whose regularity was not missed by my little girl.  There are so many that my freedom to just be, to sleep, read and be with my family is severely curtailed. 

And then there is the other meaning of ‘free’.  Things done in the national interest are done free.  When I am thanked, I tell people to thank C.W.W. Kannangara for giving me the opportunity to benefit from free education.  There are debts I owe that I can never repay.  ‘No charge’ for friends. ‘No charge’ for deserving causes.  As for the rest, un-corporated and ignorant of market rates, I generally brush aside price query with ‘whatever you think is ok’.  Some are actually apologetic and say ‘this is worth much more, but this is what I can afford’. 

Some exploit, and when I cotton on to the exploitation, I duly avoid.  In most cases though ignorance, stupidity and an awareness of the impermanence of things makes it possible for me to say that I am an unemployed graduate or else an under-employed one.  

As my sister once said, ‘it is not that you are sacrificing anything or being generous; this is a conscious choice you’ve made’.  Yes, I can’t make a virtue out of it.  Not complaining.  Just saying.

It is not easy being a freelancer.  I should take up farming or something.  Full time.  I might have more time for my little girl.  She certainly deserves it, for all the love and caring. 

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On giving the Grease Devils their due

Among the few JVP posters of the eighties I could identify with was one pertaining to the law.  It was something along the following lines: ‘paalakayini, thopilama thope neethi kadanavaanam, evata avanatha veemata api soodaanam netha!’ Addressed to the rulers, it expressed the view that if the rulers themselves break the rules, then there is no compulsion on the part of the ruled to submit to them. 

There are certain things about the concept of law and order that are timeless.  Of course there are no perfect justice systems and there are no legal systems without loopholes.  There is, then, in addition to clever criminality a political economy of justice.  Still, there is a lot of rhetoric.  I remember a song from Nanda Malini’s at-the-time popular album ‘Pawana’ (The Wind) about justice.  Referring to a man incarcerated for having assaulted a rapist to save the victim, Sunil Ariyaratne pens the following lines:

Thulaava gena neth yuga benda redi kadakin

Neethiye yuwathiya vejabei ada nidukin

This can be translated as ‘The lady of the law, blindfolded though she is, lords over without concern’.  It goes on to say that she stabs men like the one referred to with her sharp sword and vows to kill her instantly for this unpardonable crime. 

The law is supposed to be impartial but countless poems and articles have been written about the blindness-interpretation of this symbol of justice.  Partially blind, in every sense of the word, is what is implied. 

Long years of being besieged by terrorism had made law and justice take proverbial back seats. Special legislation scripted into the justice system numerous caveats that allowed the state to go around the general rules pertaining to the exercise of authority.  The elimination of the terrorist threat has now made it possible for these extraordinary mechanisms to be relaxed in their application.  There is now talk of removing them altogether.  This is good. 

The end of the LTTE did not mean the end of criminality.  These days we hear of a strange creature called the Grease Yaka (Devil) doing the rounds and citizens taking the law into their own hands to deal with people suspected to have violated the law or are thought to be planning to transgress.  The Police has correctly informed the public that being vigilant does not confer any right to prosecute and punish outside the judicial system.  On the other hand, it must be noted that this taking-things-into-our-own-hands trend can very well be a product of the ineffectiveness of the relevant authorities.  Moreover, both the criminality and the counter-transgression can be arguably justified by the numerous lapses of errant element among the rulers. 

They say that not only should justice be done, it must seem to be done.  The principle of proportionate treatment and also that of equality before the law must always be affirmed.  Any sloth or perceived deliberateness in blurring relevant articles can and will be taken as license for anyone to blur and thumb nose at the law. 

Sri Lanka’s judicial system has had its black days, courtesy politicians and law-makers.  It has on occasion shot itself in the proverbial foot.  It has had bad days and forgettable days, but has not, by and large, disgraced itself.    It is nevertheless under a cloud and that cloud has many cloud-makers as fathers, from law-makers, law-enforcers, judges and lawyers to a largely quiescent citizenry. 

The Grease Yaka is not some mentally challenged psychopath or random delinquent with time on his hands, energy to expend and violence to expiate from system.  The Grease Yaka is a slimy creature that prowls all branches of the state, is an honorary member of the corporate world and has the incredible advantage of taking on the garb of Mr or Ms Ordinary Citizen. 

It is easy to pass the buck on the law-maker or the law-enforcer. It is dangerous to assume one is law-maker and enforcer of course, but being responsible about such things include the need to adhere to established procedure, despite its possible flaws, ever agitating for improvement.  The JVP line is valid, but only when all vestiges of decency and efficacy in the instituted mechanism have perished. 

We have seen the principle of equality being blatantly violated, now and before, the difference being only in the matter of degree.  Proportionality has been violated too.  Politicians, law-enforcers, judges, lawyers and citizens have all gone overboard on occasion.  An individual is not a front and demanding decency from most quarters does not necessarily obtain it.  For the most part, the flawed can get away by pointing flaw in the pointer.  This is all the more reason why the pointer needs to correct flaw even as he/she objects to each and every flaw detected in both system and relevant state actor. 

We can’t afford to spread grease all over ourselves and expect an un-greased system to fall from the sky by way of thanks.  We cannot and should not, as citizens, take the law into our hands except under extreme conditions such as those which make insurrection not just legitimate but unavoidable.  We can and should point out error, name names if and when we can substantiate that kind of name-calling. 

It is not easy being a responsible citizen.  It is easy not to be responsible in a largely irresponsible society for one can easily fade into the crowd.  All the more reason why one should resist such temptation. 

[Courtesy Daily News, August 16, 2011]

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Have you heard of the Hokandara Wala (Pit)?

This morning (Sunday, August 14, 2011), on my way to Malabe in a threewheeler, I stopped for breakfast at a wayside boutique in Hokandara.  A few stringhoppers with a white potato curry and sambol was downed in a few minutes.  Then a cup of plain tea.   The opposite side of the road was as pastoral as an urbanizing landscape could be.  Paddy fields and through them a newly tarred road that must have been little more than a guru paara not too long ago.  Tree-line at the far end and above it all dawn yielding to the more insistent warmth of the rising sun.  Made for reflection.

At the back of my mind were thoughts of the long day ahead of me with multiple writing assignments and all kinds of deadlines, a function to attend in the evening and children to worry about.  It was balm and I soaked it all in.  Until Upul, my friend and three-wheel driver began to speak.

‘This is the infamous Hokandara Wala (pit),’ he said.  I had forgotten.  He related how over 50 people were shot and dumped right there, on the other side of the road. 

‘There was a family living in a house behind that clump of trees,’ he continued.  ‘The father, mother and their daughter were all killed.  They sent an iron rod through the girl’s vagina’. 

Who killed them and why, I asked. 

‘The police.  The JVP had tried to blow up a moving police truck.  They had failed.  The police rounded up everyone who happened to be around, including a fishmonger and killed them all.  It helped propel Chandrika Kumaratunga to power a few years later.  The skeletal remains were splashed across the newspapers during that election campaign.’

As we proceeded to Malabe, Upul told me other stories.  How all the young men went into hiding.  How one person, forced to pour kerosene and set fire to himself, did so but embraced the two gun-wielding men who had ordered self-assassination, dragging them to death in a classic case of dittadhamma vedaniya retribution or transgressions punished in the then-and-there. 

Who perpetrated these crimes against humanity? Who turned law-protectors into genocidal maniacs?  Where are the commissions of inquiry?  Why weren’t there calls for ‘independent international investigations’?  Were they not yet born, those who bandy around a sword called R2P (Responsibility to Protect)? 

Years ago, in 1987 March to be precise, a set of final year students dragged some second year students of the Arts Faculty, University of Peradeniya, to a room in Jayatilleka Hall.  At that time, Arts students who opted to read for a special degree, were forced to be ‘freshers’ twice; once when they entered the Dumbara Campus in Polgolla and again when they came to Peradeniya following the General Arts Qualifying Examination.  This lot didn’t care much for seniority and were not shy about taking issue with seniors on ideological as well as moral issues.  They were marked for ‘re-ragging’. 

The final year students tried to claim moral high ground, saying they were being generous and would give the juniors the right to express themselves.  My friend Sisira Premashantha, a star athlete who hailed from Nattandiya, now no more, said something that answers the above questions that came to mind this morning as I re-visited the UNP-JVP bheeshanaya of 1988-1990.

‘When I came to university I thought this was a place where the truth triumphed.  Now I know better.  It’s not the truth that wins.  It’s power.’ 

Twenty five years later, almost, I can do no better than quote the radical Fr. James Carney, better known as Padre Gaudalupe who ministered to the rebels during the civil war in Hondurus and is reported to have been tortured and thrown to his death from a helicopter in 1983 on the orders of General Gustavo Alvarez Martínez, was awarded the Legion of Merit by President Ronal Reagan , ``for promoting democracy in Honduras and whose portrait hangs in the Alumni Hall of Fame of the notorious School of the Americas:

‘One decides to fight tyranny; it is unfair to expect one to deliver victory!’ 

[Courtesy Daily News, August 15, 2011]

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On Sara Nics’ simplistic delve into South Asia ‘complexities’

Sara Nics is a new member of the South Asia Wired team. That’s how Radio Netherlands Worldwide profiles her.   The nutshell-version adds that Sara, ‘as a multi-media journalist, Sara has reported from the frosty forests of the Great North Woods, the hallowed halls of Oxford, the sewage strewn footpaths of Kenya's Kibera, the cold waters of the Gulf of Maine, and the green hills of Uganda’.  Sara is supposed to be ‘happy to explore the complexities of South Asia’!
  

‘What a privileged region we are,’ I muttered to myself.  ‘So undeserving,’ I added. 

I don’t know when Sara Nics began trying to unravel South Asian complexities, but her piece about media freedom in Sri Lanka does indicate that the person-blurb is spot on with respect to at least one element: she is ‘new’. 

Who does this wide-eyed radio journalist pick to interview on the subject of media freedom but the man who has harmed media rights advocacy the most, Sunanda Deshapriya.  His long association with the Free Media Movement (FMM) and happy status as the go-to-guy on all issues pertaining to media rights, gave him profile, yes, but what Nics is clearly clueless about the man.

Deshapriya is a known rogue, who was hoofed out of the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) for pilfering funds (the CPA, itself under a cloud for shady financial operations called it ‘lack of clarity’ but doesn’t have the guts to come out and tell the public what was meant by the term).   I don’t want to repeat what I’ve already said about his shady operations concerning money, especially but not limited to his adventures in the FMM.  He was not fleeing repression or death-threats, he was running away from a possible jail term. Simple.  Clearly this Sara Nics doesn’t believe in homework. 

Deshapriya true to form turns necessity into virtue.  He pumps Nics with a fairytale and she purchases.  That’s what ‘new’ does, I suppose.  He tells Nics, ‘I am apolitical’ and she believes him.  He was never apolitical.  He was always political.  He was politically aligned with the LTTE, ever ready to whitewash its crimes against humanity and to secure any and every kind of positional advantage vis-à-vis the Government of Sri Lanka within his capacity.  He was no journalist; he was and still is a propagandist for terrorists and their lackeys.  The next time Sara Nics meets him, she could ask him who killed his driver and how come this ‘journalist’ got tongue-tied in naming names. 

Deshapriya makes Nics understand that his stories are not really full of flesh and blood because ‘(he is) a marked person’ who doesn’t want to associate with anyone openly and doesn’t want others getting into trouble.  He is marked, yes.  For theft.  He cannot get flesh and blood stories, because he’s always been skeletal and half-baked in his reportage.   He tells Nics that 70 journalists have fled the country.  Now that’s rubbish.  From where did he get this number?  If they’ve fled, they can stand up and say ‘yes, I fled for such and such a reason,’ can’t they?  There are no names mentioned because there aren’t that many. Lying only makes it difficult for any person who may have a legitimate reason to fear for his or her life to sound believable.   

Deshapriya tosses the number 34 at Nics and she catches neatly. That’s ‘the number of journalists killed in Sri Lanka’.  Why can’t Deshapriya name them? After all, they won’t be ‘harmed’ would them?  

Nics quotes someone called Fred Carver, ‘Campaign Director’ of some dubious outfit called ‘Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice’.  This Carver person says that many Sri Lankan journalists self-censor.  Correct.  So does the BBC, didn’t he know?  And Channel 4.  It’s called ‘manufacturing’. 

There’s no such thing, Sara, called absolute media freedom.  We don’t live in Media Paradise, not here and not in England or Switzerland.  There’s always work to be done and those who have integrity and commitment keep working.  The work is only made harder when jackasses spout palpable rubbish and the naïve lap it all up. 

Carver wants there to be avenues for Sri Lankan journalists to apply for asylum.  That’s good.  There will be all kinds of people claiming to be journalists and claiming persecution.  If the relevant authorities in asylum-giving countries are anything like Sara Nics, they’ll get a free ticked to what they believe are greener pastures.  It is not a nice thing to prey on naiveté of course, but Sara Nics and her ilk are hardly babes in the woods. If they want to play sucker, so be it. 

I want Sara Nics to become ‘old’ but history shows that Deshapriya is an ace at squeezing wide-eyed journalistic oranges from the West to their last naïve drop. 

Sara Nics wants to explore the complexities of South Asia.  South Asia will not have any trouble in exploring her. She’s not complex at all.  She’s quite simple, really. 

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David Cameron, Ruffian Britain and the loss of the moral compass

It seems that people in Britain are not safe.  The people in general are not safe from a ruffian government in the pocked of corporate ruffians.  Ruffian rebels are not safe from a ruffian police and a ruffian judiciary.  The general citizens as well as private and public property are not safe from the ruffian rebels as well as a ruffian insurance sector.  And no one’s safe from a ruffian media that paints rebel as ruffian and a ‘surprised’ ruffian government as saintly benefactors of a citizenry that has suffered so many shocks it is not surprised by anything any longer. 

Failed state, did I hear someone say?  Did someone invoke the Articles of Association of the ruffians who talk of R2P (Responsibility to Protect)?  Maybe I heard wrong, but I didn’t read wrong an email query I received from a friend: ‘Can we send arms to London rebel fighters and provide air cover with fighter jets  as they are fighting for good cause - as the UK government is the most corrupt government on Planet Earth?’ 

Well, that’s a bit unfair.  Britain is certainly better than Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, I am sure all sensible people will agree.  My friend, however, had a strong case:

'Phone hacking, cash for favors, legislators taking bribes from newspapers, police taking bribes from the media,  media and TV channels in the pay of terrorist outfits, legislators harnessing votes and funds from terrorist for elections, police taking bribes from terrorist not to give protection for head of states who visit on invitation from reputed universities, legislators telling barefaced lies to go to war and affect regime change, crimes against humanity in Iraq, Libya and other countries, all a quiescent media and public!’

The call was for regime change for the safety of the decent folk in that country and for the immediate formation of a ‘Rebels’ Council’ which would be funded and armed.  Now some might call it over-reacting, but considering the kinds of ‘reactions’ we’ve seen from places like London, Paris and Washington, I must confess that there is an element of ‘appropriateness’ in these proposals.

The Metropolitan Police were not taken by surprise, William Bowles (‘Things Fall Apart’) informs us, quoting a Ministry of Defence report (‘The DCDC Global Strategic Trends Programme 2007-2036): ‘The middle classes could become a revolutionary class, taking the role envisaged for the proletariat by Marx. The globalization of labour markets and reducing levels of national welfare provision and employment could reduce peoples’ attachment to particular states. The growing gap between themselves and a small number of highly visible super-rich individuals might fuel disillusion with meritocracy, while the growing urban under-classes are likely to pose an increasing threat to social order and stability, as the burden of acquired debt and the failure of pension provision begins to bite. Faced by these twin challenges, the world’s middle-classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest.’ 

Bowles describes the ‘ruffians’ in more eloquent terms.  ‘Underclass,’ the preferred media term and that of the regime, he says, is that segment ‘the state has buried away, out of sight–out of mind on ‘sink estates’ or trapped and invisible in the poorest neighborhoods of our cities’.   He points out that the ‘ruffians’ are the kids of a third of the population that makes up ‘surplus to capitalist requirement’ and notes ‘big chunks of the middle class are being forced back whence they came from, the working class’. 

What is Britain 2011 if not bad policing, racism, persecution of minorities and immigrants, mass unemployment, rampant deprivation, austerity for the ‘surplus’ and perpetuation and consolidation of wealth and power (as David Harvey puts it in ‘Feral Capitalism hits the street’) for the only real minority, the bourgeoisie?  It is a country where politicians cheat on expenses, bankers plunder the public, and hedge fund operators and private equity operators loot shamelessly, he points out. 

If indeed, Britian is ‘[the] political economy of mass dispossession, of predatory practices to the point of daylight robbery, particularly of the poor and the vulnerable, the unsophisticated and the legally unprotected, has become the order of the day’ that Harvey claims it is (and there’s no reason to believe that this distinguished professor of the City University of New York is fibbing), then R2P makes sense.  Arming rebels makes sense. Regime change makes sense.  

Nathaniel Tapley in an open letter to Cameron’s parents, humourous and at the same time deadly in accusation, lays it out without frills.  He lists Cameron’s corrupt friends and the kind of rioting they’ve engaged in (white collar of course).  Without justifying or playing down the violence of the looters, Tapley expresses shock at how the guardians of morality behave.  Speaking of the legislators, he mentions cash-for-questions, cash-for-access, insider trading and other hanky-panky that happens out of Parliament and which self-righteous media outfits like BBC and Channel 4 shove in the not-see files.   He asks Cameron’s parents, ‘Can they really, as 650 people who have shown themselves to be venal pygmies, moral dwarves at every opportunity over the last 20 years, bleat at others about ‘criminality’; [that is] those who decided that when they broke the rules (the rules they themselves set) they, on the whole wouldn’t face the consequences of their actions?’

I am not sure if Cameron’s parents are to blame, but I can’t blame the man for asking, ‘Why did you never take the time to teach your child basic morality?’ 

This is why it is funny that David Cameron, Prime Minister (honourable) has actually lamented about the loss of moral compass, the decline of civility and the sad deterioration of family values and discipline among errant youths.  A short while ago someone re-posting a poem written in honour of the late Lakshman Kadirgamar on the 6^th anniversary of his death, noted, ‘It is ironic that the 'international community'(sic) that was mute when he was killed, is calling incessantly for 'independent' inquiries when his killer was killed!’

It was not the rebels (‘ruffians’ if you prefer, David) who have problems with morality, civility and values.  They may err, but then again, those who make a living out of erring can’t really point fingers. 

It is not that David Cameron lost his moral compass. He could not, for he never had one to begin with, or in the case of Britain, it lost that piece of technology several centuries ago. 

 

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There’s pussy-footing galore around the TNA ‘ultimatum’

The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) gave the Government a deadline to respond to three specific issues: (1) The structure of governance (2) The division of subjects and functions between the centre and the devolved units and (3) Fiscal and financial powers.  The Government refused, point blank, claiming that solutions for a decades long problem cannot be found in 10 days. 

I believe that the TNA was not out of order in setting a deadline.  After all, these are issues that were raised long before this deadline was set and moreover have been articulated one way or another by various Tamil representatives (armed and otherwise) for years and years, decades upon decades.  Successive governments, perhaps eyeing the Tamil vote, have pussy-footed around these issues, balking at commitment one way or another and in this and other ways giving an unintended fillip to Tamil communalism that harps on non-existent grievances and aspirations that are politically unfeasible.  

The TNA is without doubt the political heir to the Eelam project blueprinted by rank chauvinists and racists such as S.J.V. Chelvanayakam and G.G. Ponnambalam and blood-marked by the terrorism of Velupillai Prabhakaran.  This does not mean that the TNA can’t ask questions or demand responses, especially when the Government invites it to discussions on issues pertaining to Tamils.  In this sense, it is silly to say that the TNA ought to have chosen a better time to make such demands, for example during Chandrika Kumaratunga’s tenure when ‘there was a relative (greater?) strategic balance’ as Dayan Jayatilleka argues (‘Breaking the deadlock; avoiding a breakdown’, Daily Mirror, August 9, 2011). 

There is a thing called ‘appropriate political moment’, yes, but that does not mean there are auspicious and inauspicious times to ask questions or that the questions themselves are somehow invalid if the time’s not right.  After saying that the TNA is the weaker negotiating partner, Dayan uses the word ‘deadlock’.  If there is the imbalance he rightfully claims there is, then there’s no deadlock.  The stronger party can say ‘stuff it’.  It has, by the way.  Still, the questions remain ‘on the table’ so to speak, as they have for decades. 

Dayan says that ‘reconciliation’ should be incremental.  That’s logical.  In fact ‘incremental’ was the original strategy of the Eelamists; Chelvanayakam said for example, ‘A little now, more later’.  Dayan seems to conflate ‘reconciliation’ with ‘Eelam-end’, knowingly or unknowingly.  Indeed, the rest of the article is a virtual blueprint to get to this ‘end’. 

He points out that war-end can result in major constitutional change, but that this is not always necessitated.  Sri Lanka doesn’t need major constitutional change, he claims. Well, that’s his opinion, but if democracy, good governance, insulation of the people from politician etc., are important, then we do need major constitutional reform.  Only someone who is ok with constitutional dictatorship or constitutional feudalism (the terms applicable to various post-1978 regimes) could argue otherwise.   

Having fixed the ‘as is’ of the constitution, it is logical to demand full implementation.  Dayan does this and adds for good measure that the vanquishing of the LTTE had made this possible. Correct.  The problem is that he is focusing on the 13^th Amendment to the constitution, an illegal piece of legislation authored to sort out misnamed and misarticulated grievances, and moreover almost of lynchpin significance to the furtherance of the separatist project.  Interestingly, many argued that its ‘full implementation’ was the one and only way of undermining the LTTE, but that’s an aside as far as this article is concerned.

Perhaps aware of the problematic circumstances of its birthing, Dayan weaves a neat argument for the implementation of the 13^th Amendment.  This is what he says:

‘Our history is not solely that which is purely indigenous. It is the product of the interaction of the external and the internal; the synthesis of the dialectical interaction of us and the other. No provision of Sri Lanka’s Constitution should be repudiated on the basis that it was not wholly indigenous, any more than electoral democracy, the multiparty system, the legal system and much of our democratic rights and structures should be swept aside because they are of external provenance.’

He is absolutely right here.  On the other hand, it does not follow that all things externally wrought should be embraced uncritically or as being ‘good’.  If it works, yes, but if it does not and if it further exacerbates existing problems, then no.  The dialectics of interaction involves on occasion, contestation and resistance.  Circumstances change.  Back in 1987, a weak government that was unpopular had no option by to let the dialectic interaction dissolve into abject surrender.  This is 2011. The circumstances are different and Sri Lanka, as a nation, can not only resist but revisit a blunder and make necessary corrections. Dayan won’t dare displease his Indian masters by saying all this, hiding behind vague terms such as ‘dialectic interaction’ and ‘geopolitical reality’ instead of saying aloud ‘Indian thuggery’.  That’s his prerogative but he can’t expect the entire country to purchase such shameless servility of the intellect. 

Dayan introduces a caveat (‘any modifications in one or another direction must be balanced and mutually agreed upon compromises’) and a warning (‘any opening up of fundamental questions, of the sort contained in the TNA’s triple query, at this stage, can lead to the kind of unravelling that was prefigured by the Supreme Court decision on the merger’).  The first is logical, in terms of the process of constitutional amendment, and the second is just fear-mongering.

Ignored in the lengthy piece are the legitimacy of the TNA’s query and the scandalous refusal of the Government to question the basis of the query.  The questions posed are founded on a particular set of assumptions that do not stand inquiry in relation to history, demography and geography, not forgetting of course political ‘doability’ and indeed the political risk for the regime. 

The 13^th Amendment, ladies and gentlemen, amounts (in this time of Eelamists being in reduced circumstances) to fixing Eelam boundaries.  And, even if the TNA had history, geography and demography on its side as well as some kind of economic logic that shows devolution would make for better development-distribution, then the 13^th has to be accompanied by extensive amendment to the constitution with respect to curtailing the powers of the executive presidency. 

Dayan is a political scientist by training. He cannot be ignorant about this.  Why then is he pushing for the 13^th?  I have to conclude that while he was against the LTTE and terrorism and fought valiantly on many forums in this regard, he is an unabashed supporter or pawn of separatism, whose current ‘incremental’ is the fixing of Eelam boundaries. 

[Courtesy Sunday Island, August 14, 2011]

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