Have you heard about the Yaka Anti-Defamation League (YADL)?

Some twenty years ago, an academic by the name of Bruce Kapferer, who had done some fieldwork in Sri Lanka during or soon after the bheeshayana (the UNP-JVP Period of Terror, 1988-89), mentioned in passing that the word ‘Yaka’ was used for ‘the lowest form of beings’.  This was during a lecture at Harvard University.  If memory serves, Nur Yalman, another Anthropologist, raised questions of ontology and Kapferer, to my mind, side-stepped and not very deftly either. 

‘Yaka’ is a misunderstood term.  It has multiple meanings.  It refers to a collective and a history, a way of life and a disavowal, is a vilifying term and one embraced with pride.  My friend Hemantha from Pelmadulla, for example, whenever we meet each other (which is not very often) is wont to exclaim ‘Yako!’ Spontaneously.  And then he would say ‘mama hari neda?’ (Am I correct, am I not?).  I remember a conversation we had on the subject of yakas.

Neither of us had purchased the story of Aryan colonization.  We both felt we were more ‘Yak’ than anything else.  We felt that it was the Yak-element, more than anything else, that gives Sinhala Buddhist civilization its character and resilience, not to mention a largeness of heart to embrace difference and even invader (in whatever garb) in ways that few societies have or do.  And that goes back to the Lankavathara Sutta, the civilized treatment of Sita by Ravana (as opposed to the crude way Rama’s brother Lakshman treated Ravana’s sister), the way Kuveni treated Vijaya as opposed to how Vijaya treated her, the encounter with Arahat Mahinda, the respect accorded to Elara, and the entire set of interactions with the Europeans.  

Did I hear someone say ‘myths and legends’?  Well, there are myths that are presented as fact and facts that are mythologized through selective and creative vilification.  That’s a different debate and if anyone wants to get into it, we can talk about a lot of things that are faith-based but recounted as really-happened facts. 

There is ‘Sihala’ or ‘Siv-hela’ or ‘the 4 helas’, namely Yaksha, Naga, Raksha and Deva.  Ceylon, in this sense (a corruption of ‘Sinhale’ after ‘Sivhela’) is the more appropriate named-name for the island and its people.  There are enough and more ‘Yaka’ stories and if history is also written in folk story and folk song, then it is not inappropriate for my friend Hemantha to greet me as ‘Yako!’ and for me to respond likewise, just as it is strange and uneducated of Bruce Kapferer to offer the kinds of readings as he has. 

In any event, the whole Yak business has got totally out of hand with the ‘Grease Yaka’ phenomenon.  So much so that it now appears that the Yakas have got really upset.  A few days ago I received a Press Release, authored by the YADL (Yaka Anti-Defamation League), headquarted, appropriately, in Ritigala.

YADL Press Release
In this minute of arrant tumult in the heavens below, hell above, and earth betwixt, it has come to our notice that Yakas have of recent been inculpated in a spate of physical and metaphysical phenomena aka kolama across our island nation.

We must assume it surely be a typographical error, misspoken perhaps for Greasy Yankees or other yuck, long known to slip in and out of air, ear and eye space, indulging in such preemptive hysteria of one moment psy-ops the next sycophancy.

Yaka, long the revered ancestors of the people of this isle, have underscored its basic rhythms and techniques of work and war and words, helping build great channels and configurations, defeating sundry imperialist invasions, esp. post-1505, and cussing the rest of them.

It is only in recent times, since the polar-reversing events of 1815 to be precise, that Yakas became Deities, and Demons became Yaka.

We hope the korporate media and their dizzy drones will desist from further kalumny that can only evoke righteous requital, let alone ginijala, selesma, bhuta and vevulum aka fire, migraine, fleeting madness and a trembling.

We are not a minority. We are the world.

We seek not equal opportunity, cos we are not all equally opportunist.
Signed by: Visvakarma, Riri, Nonchi Akka, Kalu, Suniyam, Lenchini & Jasaya, Gara, Mahason & 18 others on behalf of the Yaka Anti-Defamation League (YADL).

I don’t think you’ve heard the last from the Yakas.  And I think that’s a good thing.

[Courtesy, Daily News, September 17, 2011]

Read more

On freedom of expression a la Sunanda Deshapriya

Sunanda Deshapriya: Hoofed out of the CPA for pilfering funds (CPA called it 'Clarity-Lack')

Sunanda Deshapriya is reported to have been snubbed in Geneva when offering his two cents’ worth subsequent to the screening of ‘Lies Agreed Upon’, a rebuttal to the inglorious Channel 4 production, ‘Sri Lanka Killing Fields’.  Given the man’s fondness for bucks, one can only wonder how much he got for this two-cent interjection, but I doubt he expected the earful he received from the President of Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed.

Deshapriya, whose track record warrants the insertion of an extra ‘a’ in his name with a hyphen separating the a’s, in case people have forgotten, was hoofed out of the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) for doing things that ‘lacked clarity’ (the sanitized term for ‘theft’ preferred by the CPA, which, by the way continues to remain silent about allegations of financial hanky-panky and keeps things under wraps despite moralistic posturing about transparency).  In Geneva, however, it was not about bucks, but patriotism (of all things!).

Deshapriya is reported to have asked Nasheed what right he had to speak about Sri Lanka.  The Maldivian President had informed Deshapriya that not only does he visit Sri Lanka for medical treatment, but is fluent in Sinhala and very well informed about things and processes in the country.  He added that it is generally expected of citizens to defend their countries and not hobnob with the enemy. 

Well, Sunanda does much more than hobnob in the current incarnation of his mercenary persona, but that’s not really news.  What caught my attention was his question to Nasheed. 

The implication of the question is that non Sri Lankans don’t have any right to talk about Sri Lankans.  Now this man, who calls himself a ‘journalist’ (and a senior one at that!) and is described as such by ill-informed ‘journalists’ such as Sara Nic, seems to have forgotten that what applies to Nasheed applies to others as well.  So let’s play with the idea.

I am imagining Sunanda telling off people like Susan Rice, Navi Pillai, Louis Arbour, David Miliband, Bernard Kouchner, Robert O Blake, Barack Obama, Ban ki-Moon, the jokers he appointed to conjure a ‘reality’ about this country, Patricia Butenis and other former Sri Lankans now happily domiciled and ‘citizened’ in other countries.  In fact I am imagining Sunanda standing before a mirror and engaging in finger-pointing. 

Sunanda to Sunanda-MI (Mirror Image):  you have by your admission (to Sarah Nic) admitted that your stories (good word-choice, by the way) are not ‘flesh and blood’, meaning they have no substance; you’ve robbed money from the CPA; for all your talk of transparency and accountability, you continue to balk when asked to submit relevant documents pertaining to financial matters in the Free Media Movement during your stewardship as ‘Convenor’.  What right do you have to talk about Sri Lanka?

Sunanda-MI to Sunanda: you are one to talk, brother:  have you forgotten how you always pandered to the LTTE’s agenda, whitewashing in any way possible its crimes against humanity?

Sunanda looks at the mirror.  The mirror-image looks back. They hang their heads down in shame, as though on cue or on account of a sudden bout of self-realization.

Sunanda will be Sunanda and that’s fine with me.  What worries me is that those who took over the Free Media Movement continue to enjoy sweeping things under the carpet.  They know that Sunanda is guilty of double-billing-pilferage. They know that he suppressed documents relevant to an investigation into financial fraud.  They’ve said a proper investigation would be too costly, i.e. ‘at least 1 million’.  I offered to find that amount (IF they can’t get a pro-decency funding agency to help them).  Not a word from the FMM. 

Maybe the FMM is speechless, which is pretty sad considering that ‘media’ is its middle name.  Maybe it’s just that touching Sunanda would force the current leadership to submit itself to similar touching.  Maybe they are as ticklish as Sunanda is.  It is all sad.  As I’ve pointed out (see ‘Does the FMM love old wine,’ in the Daily Mirror of September 15, 2011: http://print.dailymirror.lk/opinion1/49866.html) my only concern is that advocacy organizations that engage in odd operations only make true advocacy difficult. Sunil Jayasekera seems to have lost his voice.  I hope he finds it.  If not, he might end up in Geneva or some other part of Europe or North America having conversations with his mirror image.  On the other hand, considering what a great career Sunanda has made out of mis-journalizing, that might be a mouth-watering prospect.  

As for Sunanda Deshapriya, he could release evidence of tossing to other foreigners (friends included) the question he put to the President of Maldives.  Will he? Naah!

[Courtesy, Daily News, September 16, 2011]

Read more

Why lament when we can still laugh?

There are moves in Geneva, we hear.  Documents authored by politically compromised and intellectually inept people who lack integrity and have horrendous writing skills have been tabled for discussion in forums chaired by people who have axes to grind and suffer from partial myopia.  Al Jazeera interviewed me a short while ago, asking me for my thoughts.  My response could be summarized as ‘not surprised!’

The commissioning of a panel, appointment of those appointed, scandalous refusal to recognize the malice and incompetence evidenced in the report, and acceptance of tall tales manufactured by politically motivated individuals and organizations who have been as thick as thieves with terrorists all add up to one thing: witch-hunt.  It was not for purposes of securing entertaining toilet-read, clearly. 

Around the same time, the prime minister of a western monarchy called for a boycott of the Commonwealth heads’ confab in Sri Lanka.  Let’s leave aside the fact that there was never a commonwealth but just a common-thief interested only in passing around a common-welt.  The same premier once claimed he had no truck with dictators (re-claimed, I should say) but not too long afterwards was making deals with the man who carried out a military coup against a democratically elected leader in a Latin American country. 

This self-righteous premier stated ‘the kind of values [he and his country] have in the world: freedom, democracy, human rights, the rule of law’ and added, “those societies that promote those values tend to share our interests, and those that do not tend to, on occasion, if not frequently, become threats to us.”

My friend, who sent me these tidbits observed wryly: ‘I wonder why we get excited about this kinda news…as if we expect something different...as if they can do anything different considering their way of life.’

That’s what I had to tell Al Jazeera. 

So what do we do in this land called ‘damned if we do, damned if we don’t’ that we are living in?  Weep? Submit? I don’t know.  I just laugh. 

I can’t remember where I heard this first, but after some horrendous right-wing crime, there was a slogan some radical had coined that stayed with me: ‘don’t lament; organize!’ 

In the end, we need to be pragmatic.  We need to have a decent assessment of relative strengths.  We need to factor in friend and enemy, their relative strengths and the possible shifts in degrees of support.  I returned again and again to words penned by my father 27 years ago in a boy scout souvenir: ‘…So, if it is not prudent to stand ramrod straight in the face of storms beyond your strength, you must let them pass over you.  Stand firm if you can, retreat if you must; above all, never panic!’ 

There is no need to lament.  No need to get emotional.  What is required is sobriety.  What is required is assessment of strength, correction of flaw, enhancing overall abilities on all fronts, respecting the enemy, treating things with equanimity, figuring out the correct compassion-wisdom mix and doing the best we can without compromising integrity. Our foundation is strong and even if bombardment takes away the walls, rebuilding will not be impossible. 

Time is longer than life.  Empires are born, thrive, decay and die.  The flame burns brightest before it goes out.  I see a bright western flame and I come to conclusions.  It is darkest before the dawn.  I see darkness and I anticipate light. 

[Courtesy, Daily News, September 15, 2011]

Read more

Prasad Edirisooriya says 'Thank you Mr. Robert O. Blake'

There was something called 9/11 which is supposed to have changed the world.  Changed the world yet once again, I should add, for before that there was the world-changing moment of some wall in some place in Europe being brought down. Berlin, if memory serves.  There was a thing called the New World Odour. Sorry, ‘Order’.  ‘9/11’ was a tragedy that called a nation to take stock, take aim and discharge at will its frustrations, anger and the instruments made for robbing the world.  Sorry, ‘making the world safe’. 

I’ve heard the name Katrina.  That was some time ago.  I hear she huffed and puffed and blew away tall stories of invincibility and disaster-readiness.  I hear she’s left quite a few scars and that some wounds are of the slow-to-heal kind.   I’ve heard of a woman called Irene too.  She is supposed to have caused several cities in several states of the United States of America to weep copious tears.  Caused quite a flooding, she has. 

‘Hollywoodness’ might fool you, but I hear that it is possible for a third world to exist within the belly of a first world.  I’ve already heard that democracy is hypocrisy, dream actually nightmare and that for all talk of equality before the law and flatness in opportunity, the political economy of that landscape is not only skewed on class lines but is patently and potently racist too.  I’ve heard that troops are regularly dispatched to ‘see the world, land on territories with fairytale names and ravage them, and encounter exotic people and kill them’.  I’ve heard that when they return shell shocked (sorry, suffering from PCTS – Post Conflict Trauma Syndrome), they are handed a sexy name-tag (‘Veteran’), praised to heaven on every 11^th day of November (Veterans’ Day) and duly forgotten on the other 364 days of the year (and 365 each Leap Year) as they wallow in their personal and collective hells. 

I’ve heard of terrible histories and somber future that can be reasonably extrapolated from sick presents.  I’ve heard of some 25,000 people being killed in shootings every year including kids killing kids, a woman being raped every so many seconds, rampant substance abuse, a prison-industrial complex that is an affront to humanity where slavery thrives (legally, once again), a system that cannot educate the nation’s children, cure the sick or take care of the elderly.  It’s a country where supposedly educated and intellectually sharp leaders mimic their dumb and moronic predecessors and where the poor are kicked in their teeth and the thieving rich bailed out when they trip over their own greed and fall on their sorry behinds. 

From that terrible and unhappy planet (shall we say?) an emissary has arrived.  A noble man and one so large-hearted that he made a life-project of boldly going forth to make pure a corrupt world, sort out the little bruises and scratches of each and every society he wanders into and so on.  Robert Blake, ladies and gentleman, is a rare kind of hero.  The whole of Sri Lanka know him. And owe him too, shall we add?  I really don’t have the words to say ‘thank you’ in ways that do justice to the largeness of his heart, but my friend Prasad Edirisooriya clearly has.  Here’s the English translation of a song he composed just for our hero, Robert Blake, who loves the world so much and is so giving that he would put any country before his own:

Hail O Robert O. Blake (Hon)!

Like an Eastern rising he arrived

On our blessed land

from a Western horizon

this noble and generous man –

All hail! All hail!

Floods, hurricanes

Unemployment and other grief

Uncountable, indescribable

And tears for these and other back-home tragedies

He brushed aside to be with us

To bring gift and friendship –

All hail! All hail!

And he came to walk among us,

Visit our villages, our homes

Our lives and hearts,

Extended a hand, gave year to heartbeat

Brought relief too,

He did, he did,

This generous, noble man –

All hail! All hail!

With unstinted affection

Eyes pinched by tear-need,

He came, he saw, he gave:

Relief, victory, joy,

This son of another land

To us a shining, life-giving sun –

All hail! All hail!

Yes, a crude translation.  Prasad will forgive, I am sure.  He had a footnote: ‘This is a welcome song, penned to mark the arrival of US Deputy Secretary of State, Robert O. Blake (on September 12, 2011), who accorded us with the rare privilege of his presence despite his many duties and obviously busy timetable just so he could educate himself about Sri Lanka’s problems and offer practical solutions.’

I heard yesterday that this gentlemen has been strolling around up-market department stores ‘touristing’ in a terrorist-free country that must have been a kind of dreamspace for him back when he was the US Ambassador.  He must have been taking a pulse.  So kind.  So erudite.  We are not worthy, I am forced to conclude.  As I said, I don’t have the words, but I believe despite my translation-butchering, Prasad’s words express the nation’s sentiments.  I hope it is thanks enough, Robert. 

[The Daily News, for reasons best known to them, did not carry this article]

Read more

Slumber-fake doesn't fool everyone

A few days ago approximately 500 ex-LTTE cadres spent five days visiting Colombo, Kalutara and Galle, travelling from Vavuniya by train and bus and stopping in Galle, Matara and Embilipitiya.  Given that almost 70% of LTTE cadres who had surrendered or had been captured have been rehabilitated and reintegrated into society with marketable skills and/or having completed courses of study, this doesn’t come as a surprise.  What made me mention the fact is a comment by a US citizen: ‘Can you imagine a group of hardcore ex Al-Qaeda members who had been ‘rehabilitated’ visiting Washington DC?’   My tongue-in-cheek response was, ‘they do, they do.....and have, have...virtually’.

Washington DC was never anti-terrorism.   It was and is terrorist-friendly. Selectively.  Some might even argue that Terrorism Incorporated is headquarted in Washinton DC or that terrorism is another name for ‘Washington DC’, considering that the name is associated with implemented US policy, stated or otherwise.  On the other hand, even if we believed the glossy version of the world regularly dished out by the more or less kept media, the notion of ex terrorists (bearded and turbaned as per popular caricature) visiting the capital of the USA is impossible to visualize.  This is the difference between that country and this, and perhaps explains certain moves against Sri Lanka from that part of the world, i.e. those generated by righteous entities rather than the self-righteous.  They just can’t believe that things can happen in a different way.  And, if you still believe what outfits such as the BBC dishes out, then consider the fact that they had to apologize for using blatantly fake footage from a demonstration in India claiming it was in Tripoli’s ‘Green Square’ to ‘show’ that the city had fallen.  We’ve had enough reports of Gaddafi’s forces bombing civilians from similar organizations without a shred of evidence.

The point is that even those who are ignorant and/or innocent, unlike the movers and shakers in Washington DC, just can’t imagine a world where things get sorted out outside of the guns-in-booty-out logic.  If wars end, they must, they probably believe, involve mass slaughter (planned and executed) and follow with total humiliation of the defeated.  That’s the history that they’ve read and benefitted from.  I am sympathetic. 

There’s no point preaching to the converted.  There’s no point in believing that the truth would help change perceptions that are born out of malice and disseminated as fact even though they are laced with conjecture, wild extrapolation of dubious claims by dubious sources.  One cannot wake up someone who is pretending to sleep, as they say.  Still, it is important to let the sleeping know that it is known that slumber is being feigned.  This is why my thoughts go to visiting US Deputy Secretary of State, Robert Blake, former US Ambassador to Sri Lanka.

The USA recently ‘remembered’ the 9/11 attacks.  It was the 10^th anniversary.   Ten years after the attack, there’s a thing called ‘Ground Zero’ and a piece of paper called the ‘Patriotic Act’, draconian and racist.  There’s also the fact that the ‘9/11 Commission’ was arranged to fail; the Chairman, Vice Chairman and Senior Legal Counsel of the body have all disassociated themselves from the report and have charged that their work was deliberately blocked by Washington.  ‘This investigation is compromised,’ one member of the Commission, former Senator Max Cleland said.  Nothing adds up and we don’t need conspiracy theorists to say this, noting also that there are enough Washington-made conspiracies that require far more urgent attention than the 9/11 cover-ups.  ‘Conspiracy’: that’s another possible ‘aka’ for Washington DC, come to think of it.

For all these reasons, when Blake, according to Wikileaks, shows interest in blueprinting Sri Lanka’s post-terrorist future, there’s lots to tell.  ‘Interest’ is diplo-speak, just so we are clear on this.  The man wants investigation into so-called crimes against humanity.  He knows about Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan.  He’s feigning sleep after all.  We need to tell him we are aware though.  Here’s some you-are-not-asleep-Blake pills that Blake will not swallow but whose existence the world knows of.

NATO and the Transitional National Council (Libya) gave the people of Sirte ten days to surrender or face a massacre.  Food, water and electricity were cut off and they were subjected to shelling by artillery and British warships and NATO bombing.  This is another ‘October 14, 2004’, i.e. the day when water and electricity were cut off to Falluja, one day before the start of Ramadan, and when the starvation of the population and a 3-week long bombing spree began before the final assault by US Marines killing 3,000-4,000 civilians.  Blake knows Article 14 of the second Protocol to the Geneva Convention.  We know he knows.

An investigation by the New Statesman and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has revealed that NATO wants to formalize the process of handing over prisoners to parties who are known to use torture, a procedure that violates international law, according to Dr. Juan Mendez, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture.

If Robert Blake actually falls asleep, he might wake up and admit that US troops have summarily executed civilians in their hundreds and that there is evidence (not allegations) that people were handcuffed and shot dead.  He might admit that the man the US claimed to have been Osama bin Laden (captured a few months ago in Pakistan) was summarily executed in gross violation of all norms and laws of civilized military conduct.  He might shut up about Sri Lanka and all the cooked up allegations of misconduct by security forces in the island nation’s struggle to rid itself of the menace of terrorism. 

He would preface every statement he makes with the infamous Madeline Albright quote ‘[The USA will] behave with others multilaterally when [it] can and unilaterally as [they] must’ and spare the world and especially Sri Lanka the rank nonsense about democracy, humanity, civilization, conflict-resolution, reconciliation and whatnot that he dishes out regularly. 

As for his fascination with ‘devolution’, let him come out and match ‘Tamil grievance’ to devolution-resolution, without fudging the numbers pertaining to demography and evidence regarding historical claims and with due reference to theories of democracy and development.  

Robert Blake is visiting Sri Lanka.  I wish him one thing: good, long, restful slumber.   I doubt he will want to sleep, however.  He may or may not be planning a Libya in Sri Lanka (or a Sri Lankan version of ‘Iran 1953’), and who knows, he might even succeed.  He can count on one thing, though.  Yes, we know he’s feigning sleep. 

[Courtesy, Daily Mirror, September 13, 2011] 

Read more

Thank you, belatedly…

One year ago, almost to the day (September 10, 2010), I wrote a piece titled ‘Imperfectly yours…’.  This was to mark the first anniversary of ‘The Morning Inspection’.  A year has passed since then.  I’ve been away for a week so I missed the anniversary.  The world doesn’t look any different from what it was on the day before and is unlikely to change much tomorrow, but anniversaries are for remembering.  So let me remember. 

Last year, I wrote about how it began.   Here’s a para:  ‘I was without a regular job. Freelancing doesn’t pay much. There’s no job security. No EPF or ETF. No vehicle allowance. No festival allowance. No distress loans. No loans, period. No perks. Times were tough, so I met the Chairman, Lake House, Bandula Padmakumara to ask if I could write for the Daily News. He asked what kind of stuff I would be writing. I told him that I have a decent idea about what can be written and what cannot, so I will try to stay within the boundary line (there have been times what I have wandered outside and the editor has put his foot down; I never complained for in most instances I understood the logic of the decision). I told him about Amitha and Ginger. He asked ‘how many articles a week?’ I didn’t think: ‘six a week’. ‘Can you produce that much?’ he asked. ‘I will try’. That’s how it began.’

Times are still tough.  In terms of the column, disagreements (I can be temperamental) with the editor led to temporary stoppage.  Things got sorted out eventually.  I didn’t write 258 articles for the Daily News over the past 12 months, but the number stands over 200. A year ago, I promised to publish a collection on September 10, 2011. Didn’t happen.  There’s a reason.  My friend, benefactor and meticulous editor, Errol Alphonso, passed away after a brief illness.  He wanted to sort all the articles, clean them up, and publish several books on various themes.  Didn’t happen.

Time and events get in the way.  Laziness too.  It’s not hard to write 10-12 articles every week (I write to other newspapers too and perhaps this is bragging-day for me, so please indulge), after all there are doctors who see over a hundred patients every single day, judges who listen to dozens of cases, prostitutes who sleep with half a dozen men and so on.  My time is not mine most of the time.  That’s what comes out of being a freelance writer (and I have explained this in a previous article, i.e. we are lanced by the ‘free’ in many ways).  Anyway, the publishing didn’t get done and might never get done either.  No worries on that. Errol, though, wherever he is right now, would howl in protest if he reads this last sentence. 

An anniversary is for thanksgiving.  Errol was not the only benefactor.  I owe him a lot.  Learned from him.  Miss him too.  There are others who help and continue to help. 

There are what one may call ‘regular readers’.    Sandika Kamini, for example, responds at length to every article that I write.  Sumudu Gunaratne (school mate and fellow scout of 42^nd Colombo), for example, claims that he reads ‘The Morning Inspection’ every day.  A few others also make the same claim.  There are many who write to me and I am not naming them all, both for reasons of space and for preference for anonymity.   I try to respond to each and every email that I receive.  The recipients know and that’s enough I believe.

Not everyone responds and those who do don’t write to me regularly either.  There are exceptions.  I can count on Aunty Saji to point out flaws and the occasional commendation.  In fact she educates me with snippets of her life, her experiences, observations and reflections on a wide range of subjects.   D.L.O. Mendis and Gamini Gunawardena write to me often, the former pointing out errors and directing me to areas I need to explore while the latter being a meticulous commentator on things related to the Dhamma, among other things.  I am grateful.

Feizal Mansoor, Tissa Pilimatalawa, Jeanne Thwaite, my father Gamini Seneviratne, an unpretentious and honourable Yaka from Thimbirigasyaya, Dimuth Gunawardena, Fazli Sameer, Mohan Baghwandas, Seyed Moulana and many others direct me to information they believe I should acquaint myself with.  I am grateful.

Ramzeen Azeez is a very special person and reader.  He spends his days in Habarana teaching English to children who didn’t even know the alphabet.  Ramzeen writes often, comments and inspires in so many ways.  I am especially grateful to him.  The same goes for Drupathi Silva, my self-effacing friend, who has introduced me to many exceptionally gifted and courageous individuals as well as organizations that do admirable, thankless and extremely important work among sections of the population that have for a multiplicity of reasons been marginalized. 

Then there are friends who bail me out when I have technical problems.  King Nish Pitigala, a schoolmate who lives in Los Angeles and Pam Rajapaksha who is in Australia have always obliged when I got stuck, the latter even setting up a blog for me.  The give extra life to the words I string together. 

Bandula Padmakumara gave me the space and intervened when I was sidetracked by issues of ego.  Jayatilleka De Silva (former editor) and his successor Lyn Ockersz have been, all things considered, very accommodating and understanding ‘bosses’.  Lyn’s secretary Champa Perera and Anjali Garnier, the sub-editor, have been extremely patient whenever I got derailed courtesy the ‘free’ of ‘freelancing’ (which is quite often; ‘too often’, I must admit).  Thank go out also to Mr. Leslie Jayatilleka, who I have never met but who unerringly captures the essence of what I write in his illustrations, amazingly reconstructing people, places and events almost as though he too was witness. 

There are also hate-mailers.  They keep me amused and/or on my toes.  I am grateful. 

Among the words that I put together are people, lives lived, transgressions suffered and contested.  That’s all the ‘Sri Lanka’ that I describe.  Many are no more.  Some don’t know.  I hope I’ve done justice and admit that any recounting error was honest and beg forgiveness. 

My teachers, without exception.  I owe them so much.  Especially Indrani Seneviratne, my late mother.  And of course the greatest teacher I’ve encountered, the Enlightened One, our budun wahanse, for life/lives lived and doctrine expounded so simply and eloquently.  That’s the most illumination I’ve received by far and this is why I murmur every morning and several times a day the namaskaara, reflect on the virtues of the Buddha Siddhartha Gauthama and the tilakkhana (three characteristics or signata of existence: impermanence, suffering and non-self), and say the words ‘sabbe satta bhavantu sukhitatta’ (may all beings be happy).  

[Courtesy, Daily News, September 13, 2011]

Read more

Development: api wenuwen api or un wenuwen api?

It was about us. It was for us. By us.  That was the difference, one could argue, with the offensive against the LTTE launched by the Rajapaksa administration and the other ‘engagements’ with that terrorist outfit that previous regimes had flirted with to no avail. 

For years our thinking, conceptualizing and doing were principally informed by external forces whose agendas did not necessarily coincide with our interests.  Even in the past three years, it was not the case that there were no attempts by outside forces to dictate to us the ‘how’ and ‘why’ and ‘when’ of executing a military offensive against the LTTE. We were never an island, politically or economically, and as such there was some ‘inevitability’ to all this.  What was lacking was that we had not been a ‘nation’ culturally, an ‘island’ in terms of resolve, determination, courage and self-belief. 

People may point to superior strategy, a more effective assemblage of weaponry, better coordination, astute leadership, better training, fortuitous re-configuration of the global balance of power, enlightened efforts at the diplomatic front, a more informed and therefore ‘readied’ people and enemy-error as having made the difference, but there is an underlying thread that gave signature to this overall tapestry.  It is all captured in the slogan that defined the last phase of the war: api wenuwen api (we, for us). 

Mr. Good-Hearted Foreign Expert lectured down to us.  We were told it cannot be done. We were told to sue for peace.  We were told the economy would collapse. We were told that in the interest of peace, dialogue was necessary and for dialogue to take place parity of status needed to be conceded.  That’s the kind of logic that peace-NGOs were vomiting left right and centre for years.  The objective was not peace, we now know; it was about granting much-needed legitimacy to the LTTE as a necessary first step towards secession-facilitating ‘resolution’ by way of devolution along federal lines.  The end of the war forced them to re-assess reality and adjust slogan appropriately, but this was the kind of rubbish that was dished out in the name of enlightened literature on that politically pernicious subject called ‘conflict resolution’. 

Our leaders listened.  Chandrika Kumaratunga listened. She danced to that tune.  Ranil Wickremesinghe listened. He danced too. They were not alone.  Academics, peace-advocates (so-called), journalists and others also came to this party and danced the un-wenuwen-api dance quite happily.  It took us nowhere.  It weakened the security forces, strengthened the enemy, silenced those who had the arguments to refute the Eelamist claims and in these and other ways forced upon the people defeatism, helplessness and a readiness to be played with any which way the relevant players wanted them to be played.  Api wenuwen api sorted all that out. Today, a year later, we are free of the terrorist menace. 

Today, a year after the war ended, are we a happy, developed, prosperous and contented nation?  No.  We have lots of problems on our hands.  I have in previous articles over the past 7-8 years warned that the LTTE and the terrorist threat that it represents as well as Eelamism are not the only problems we have.  I warned that ridding this beautiful island of the ugly entity called the LTTE would at best only clear the ground for a re-thinking of who we are, where we have come from, who our ancestors are so that we can return with humility and compassion to one another and look to the future with hope and fresh determination. 

There is a sense in the country that we are somehow in control of our fate as a nation.  Even in the most difficult times, the Government did not do what most governments would have done at the drop of a hat, privatize state institutions.  The Government dug its heels, withstood all pressures and vilifications, and got the job done.  It is natural to feel a surge of national confidence.

This is, to my mind, a crucial time, a period when euphoria can blind us, appearances can deceive and where the defeat of a formidable foe that was thought to be invincible can lull us into believing that the hard work is all done. No. It’s just begun.  This is the time to keep eyes open, to be alert, to pinch oneself and say again and again ‘appearances fooled you again and again; don’t let them lead you astray’. 

An api wenuwen api nation is not necessarily an inward-looking, frog-in-the-well, protectionist political entity or island.  It is rather a nation that is acutely aware of itself, a people who know who they are and what they want, and negotiates with the ‘outside’ with full understanding of and intend to further that which is called self-interest.

The end of the war gave us that line and I worry that we are using it more as slogan and not operative principle or philosophical foundation for each and every engagement.  I am thinking of ‘development’ in particular.

‘Development’ is the thrust of Mahinda Chinthana – Idiri Dekma, the manifesto of President Mahinda Rajapaksa and the United People’s Freedom Alliance.  As I pointed out earlier, we are not exactly an island and are not exactly situated in a happy place in the overall political economic structure of the ‘family’ of nations.  We are stronger than we were and our resource base has improved thanks to the extra square kilometers of sea and related resources we have acquired recently.  We are still poor.  Comparatively. 

We listened to ourselves and triumphed over terrorism.  Are we ‘listening to ourselves’ when it comes to development; that ongoing sangraamaya no less crucial than the war against terrorism?  It is not enough for locals to be doing things.  We need to ask ourselves whose agenda we are working according to.   Who drew up the blueprint?  The modalities?  Who was consulted and more importantly who was not?  How much of the plan is infused with api and how much of it with un (them)?  How much of traditional knowledge?  How much of ‘needs’ targeted based not on what we need but what others want us to need? 

The architects of this development drive seem to be fascinated with infrastructure.  Nothing wrong in that.  But we must keep in mind that the British didn’t give us roads; our ancestors paid for them, in money or kind, and that they were used to take away wealth (labour value and resources) from wherever those roads led to.  How much of this ‘development’ is for communities and households and how much for politicians, officials, contractors and that easy hiding place for value, the treasury? 

There is a difference between the appearance of apa doing things for api and things being done by us for ourselves.  The last phase of the war proved to us that we are an apa wenuwen api nation, that the line is consistent with the brand that is Sri Lanka, that it is a core attribute of who we are.  If it worked in the war, there is no reason why it should not be tried in development.  I am not convinced that the powers that be are convinced.  Yet. 

Courtesy: Sunday Island - 23 May, 2010

Read more