A radical will explore ‘revelation’ and ‘report’ critically

Siddhartha Gauthama, our Budun Wahanse, in the Kalama Sutra, advocated that the Kalamas should not take things at their face value.  In this discourse that can be taken as a Charter on Free Inquiry, this particular element of ‘not going by revelation or report’ contains very useful and pertinent lessons to the radical or would-be radical as well as to any other individual who seeks to engage in a better-informed and therefore more productive and wholesome manner, to him/herself and the relevant social or organizational context. 

A couple of days ago I was privileged to come across a slim volume titled ‘Critical Studies on the Early History of Buddhism’ authored by the late Ven. Dhammavihari and published by the Buddhist Cultural Centre in 2003.  The learned bikkhu clearly well versed in the pitfalls that ignorance, arrogance and rank sloth construct, pointed to several erroneous conclusions arrived at by well-known and highly acclaimed scholars and showed in the eloquent, simple and genial manner that characterizes his writing, the danger of uncritical acceptance of written word.

Ven. Dhammavihari goes further, in fact.  He suggests that such conclusions and subsequent claims could be the product of a determinism that defers to preferred reading and outcome of political process against a defensible construct of verifiable fact.  What happens thereafter is pretty common.  The error is repeated and magnified by interested parties and after this is done over a considerable period of time and repeated frequently enough it acquires or is accorded a halo and treated as ‘truth’.  Cross-referencing, checking for reasonable corroboration and even dissecting claim to undress it of frill is tedious and moreover can prove to be inconvenient.  The easier course of action is to take the written word (especially if it is authored by a fellow-traveller and buttresses strongly held views) as the final authority on the particular issue.

This is true of all things, not just history and reading of history.  People swear by a ‘theory’ until someone comes along and discovers that the premises upon which it was constructed are false or have been misread or exaggerated or else that the theory holds only in particular contexts.  Newton’s laws, for example, were taken as ‘final word’ until Einstein came up with his formulation.  Thomas Kuhn’s ‘The Structure of Scientific Revolutions’ is an admirable treatise on how theories get constructed, worshipped, found to be flawed and replaced by others which have greater explanatory and predictive power. 

Ignorance, naiveté, umbrage and even a sense of justice and fairplay can fire someone to object to something.  The source of the agitation is not our concern here.  It is in the ‘what should be done’ that free inquiry becomes necessary, if not for anything because erroneous interpretation, analysis and consequent ‘logic’ of response can be counter productive.  Typically, those who have little experience and for reasons of youth or something else answers blood-call as opposed to careful consideration of all available information and reflection on all pertinent factors.  A theory is picked and held on to with dear life, discarding as unnecessary even the occasional investigation of claims pertaining to its predicates.  All windows are closed save this theoretical aperture.  Arrogance is a natural product.  It is only when life hits the word for a six that sobriety returns, often after a lot of water has gone under the bridge, carrying with is blood and dead bodies. 

It is of course useful to have a ‘Book of Revelations’ as a kind of reference manual, but it can be useful only if it is taken as guide and recognized as a human construct and as such prone to flaw.  ‘Reports’ are not value-free.  They are often made of exaggerated claims with little or no substantiation which are then quoted as ‘fact’ and used to construct overall picture and formulate response.  A recent example would be that of Iraq having ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’.  It was a carefully constructed lie.  It was a flag that was waved.  It legitimated a genocidal war.  Today, almost a decade later, not a single WMD has been discovered in that unhappy country.  Only those who were not ready to take ‘report’ as fact could surmise intention, predict outcome and attempt reversal.  Sadly their numbers were small and their capacities to correct error limited. 

This goes for reports/revelations that take the form of ‘doctrines’ as well.  Accounts are written by human beings. Even claims that there are of divine authorship are made by human beings, who we know are flawed.  All texts, especially those that are of the voluminous kind, are made for misinterpretation and abuse simply because they make for selective and convenient reference and arbitrary interpretation. All the more reasons for adherents to exercise circumspect, constantly investigate premise and verify claim in practice and in terms of the overall wholesomeness to self and social overall. 

What we see instead is the quick and easy option of name-dropping and text-naming.  ‘So and so said this,’ we are told.  ‘As so and so has pointed out,’ claims are often underlined.  ‘In such and such a book,’ some would use the bibliographical convenience as substitute for plain and straightforward logic.

This is not ‘radicalim’.  It is sloth.  It is a pandering to the ‘herd instinct’.  For all the claims of righteousness and insistence of selfless sacrifice for the betterment of the collective or the championing of the disposed, mindless faith in ‘The Book’ (whatever the book may be) or ‘The Report’ or ‘The Revelation’ amounts to embracing the Sloth-Option.  The Kalama Sutra is an invitation to inquiry and one which does not exclude a questioning of Buddha Vachana or the Doctrine of the Buddha.

All words are useful, even those in texts that make exaggerated claims and are based on supposition and fantasy.  They are useful only to the extent that they are read critically.  This is the recommendation embedded in the Kalama Sutra. Let’s meditate on it for a moment:

Kalamas, when you yourselves know [that] 'these things are unwholesome, these things are blameworthy; these things are censured by the wise; and when undertaken and observed, these things lead to harm and ill, abandon them.  Kalamas, when you know for yourselves [that] these are wholesome; these things are not blameworthy; these things are praised by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to benefit and happiness, having undertaken them, abide in them.’

Sabbe Satta Bhavantu Sukitatta.   May all beings be happy.

Read more

Buddhism, radicals and radicalism: a necessary preamble

The adjective ‘radical’ has two principal definitions. In common usage, ‘radical’ conjures images of or alluding to Che Guevara.  It doesn’t necessarily have to be about those who think like Che or for whom Che is hero. Anyone favouring fundamental or extreme change, especially in the social, political and economic order, or expressing related sentiments, is taken to be a ‘radical’.  In general ‘radical’ denotes ‘going against the grain’ or ‘swimming upstream’.  Some would say ‘banging head against wall’ but let’s be more optimistic.

There is a more interesting and perhaps less known definition of ‘radical’: ‘of or from the root or roots; going to the foundation or source of something; fundamental; basic: a radical principle.’

The second definition functions as a prerequisite for earning the label ‘radical’ in terms of the first formulation.  It is easy to rant and rave about system and ruler but system-change and ruler-ousting (the latter being the easier of the two) can only benefit by examining the fundamental sources of support, including but not limited to configuration of political forces, ideological persuasions and the degree of support enjoyed, structural factors that inhibit or make easier the obtaining of desired outcome. 

Today the term ‘radical’ and its oft interchanged twin ‘revolutionary’ have become overused and abused to much that they’ve lost meaning and been divested for the most part of operative power, especially in the ideological arena.  Che, after all, is not just a revolutionary icon, but a catch-all visual for any old product or brand that wants to position itself as ‘new’, ‘radical’, ‘great’, ‘revolutionary’ etc.  Similarly those who call themselves ‘radicals’ tend to grapple with the frills of the system they are determined to overthrow and even on the rare occasion that they do effect ‘change’, the transformation is more in the cosmetics rather than substance.  Name-change and face-change don’t connote ‘revolution’ even if marketed as such.  Regime change may take a lot of work and even require a blood-price but the amount of plasma shed and hours of sleep sacrificed are not qualification enough for the outcome to be called ‘radical’. 

My contention is that the necessary disappointment that follows flows from the ready embrace of illusion, the uncritical acceptance of received ‘knowledge’ and manifest sloth in the matter of going beyond rhetoric.  It is in this context that I offer the Kalama Sutra, the Charter on Free Inquiry proposed by Siddhartha Gauthama, the Enlightened One, our Budun Wahanse as an excellent guide to more effective, judicious and efficient engagement. 

The Compassionate One cautioned the Kalamas thus: ‘Kalamas, don't go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, 'This contemplative is our teacher’.' 

The Buddha did not use the word ‘radical’ to my knowledge.  He stated things as they are, elaborated on the human condition, the vicissitudes of life and proposed a pathway out of sorrow.  One of the enduring beauties of the doctrine expounded by the Buddha is the multiple applicability of tenet flowing from observation and commentary.  It is strictly in this sense that I have found the Kalama Sutra to have immense utility value for all those who profess a predilection towards radicalism, in thought and deed as well as in multiple spheres of engagement, including overhauling of social and political order.  

Each of the cautions articulated by the Buddha to the Kalama merit separate treatment, but even a cursory glance at the above set of qualifiers when used as instrument of assessing expediency of action would indicate that for all self-righteous claim and even braggadocio, ‘radicals’ and ‘radicalism’ for the most part are creatures that nibble at systems raged again.  Indeed some could argue that in a certain sense radicals and radicalism are necessary ingredients of system sustainability in the absence of a deep consideration of these conditions for they often and at best affect little more than regime change; the terms of inequality and other anomalies persist beyond ‘moment of victory’ and the replacement of one flag with another.  

Do we not, after all, more often than not, go by reports, depend on traditions and scripture, the power of logic (based naturally on certain assumptions that may not be completely true or at least only applicable in certain conditions and not others), indulge in inference, wallow in analogy, play the numbers game of chance, or defer to reputation of book and author, leader and saint?  How often do we probe that which is taken as self-evident, tease out the assumptions, un-frill it of rhetoric, verbosity and fudge-spot?

I propose to examine each of the above clauses with reference to ‘radicalism’ and ‘radicals’ here and abroad.  Such an examination, I hope, would make for a more honest and wholesome understanding of the terms and their operative potential (or lack thereof as the case may be).  

For now, I shall leave the reader with the thought that pinning the word ‘revolution’ on an event, moment and apparent transformation in political order does not necessarily imply that a fundamental change has taken place.  The ‘radicalism’ implied in the latter definition of ‘radical’ (stated above) could provide an interrogative stand point that helps shed light on revolutions and revolutionaries.  The last thing that those seeking to overturn a draconian social and political order need is illusion. The Kalama Sutra can help, I believe.  

Sabbe Satta Bhavantu Sukhitatta (May all beings be happy).

Read more

A note on the history-phobia of devolutionists

‘It takes centuries of life to make a little history; it takes centuries of history to make a little tradition.’ – Dr. Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan

The term ‘power sharing’ (like its typically recommended, on-the-ground articulation, ‘devolution’) has been used for a long time in the Sri Lankan political discourse, especially in the context of resolving what are called ‘minority grievances’. 

Now ‘devolution’ can be argued for outside of ethnic politics as well -- for example in discussions of development, better distribution of wealth, greater degrees of participation in decision-making processes etc.  On the other hand, there is nothing to state that the objectives relevant to these other arguments can only be obtained through devolution.  Better structures of governance and decentralization of administrative functions can do the same job.  As for ‘development’, the current thinking on relevant economics actually rebels against ‘devolution’. Indeed, in the Sri Lankan context, the devolution argument, when played to its logical conclusion, can result in exacerbating regional disparities. 

While many devolutionists have alluded to economic and governance factors (selectively and erroneously), these have been little more than addendum to the principal argumentative thrust, i.e. resolution of issues pertaining to the ‘ethnic’, in particular the grievances/aspirations of the Tamil community.  This in turn is predicated on two claims/assumptions: the notion of a ‘traditional homeland’ and demographic realities pertaining to ‘ethnic concentrations’.  The former necessitates a reference to and substantiation in terms of historical evidence.  The latter, often framed in terms of a description of Sri Lanka as a ‘multi-ethnic’ and ‘multi-religious’ country, necessitates a discussion of relevant numbers and demographic data.  On both counts, the advocates of devolution appear to fumble and tongue-tied. 

Let’s begin with the numbers.  First of all, in today’s world of massive demographic shifts within and without countries and continents, there are no pure mono-ethnic nations. The only mono-religious state would be the Vatican.  Thus the notions of multi-ethnic and multi-religious often amount to gross misrepresentation. Moreover, leaving them unpacked in terms of numbers indicates political and ideological sleight of hand.  Interestingly, though, the devolution advocates who use these terms liberally also talk of ‘majoritarianism’.  That term ought to be followed by a demographic breakdown but devolutionists are consistently loath to engage in any such exercise.  They don’t do this and one wonders if this is because the term implies that there’s something more than one-collective-one-vote in these things that have the ‘multi’ tag. 

 

When they do talk numbers and demography the discussion almost exclusively focuses either on ‘status quo’ or charges of deliberate attempts to alter the same through racism-motivated colonization.  There are three problems with hooking the number issue onto ‘status quo’. First, it assumes that people are born and die without moving around at all.  Today’s ‘status quo’ was not yesterday’s and will not be tomorrow’s and as such ‘resolution’ of ‘grievances’ relative to ethnic-enclave based status quo demands re-resolution each time the compositions get altered.  Secondly, ‘status quo’ by definition rebels against history and summarily throws out all arguments about ‘traditional homelands’ since this is a notion that is embedded inextricably in things historical and not ‘momentary’.  A third objection would be that the ‘multi-ethnic, multi-religious’ essentially calls for an erasure of citizenship anomalies across the board.  One cannot demand this and also want a privileging of certain collectives over another in a given territorial unit.  Devolutionists consistently gloss over these issues and this indicates a rank disavowal of fact and reason and thereby an unholy deference to myth, obfuscation, error and crass communal politics.

The question of ‘history’ is as interesting. Ask anyone who talks of traditional homelands how far back in history he/she wants to go. Ask him/her about substantiating claim.  Clamming up, shifting gear and diverting attention usually follow.  It is remarkable how those who strongly advocate devolution and liberally use terms such as ‘traditional homeland’, ‘self-determination’, ‘power-sharing,’ etc. are also extremely reluctant to talk about the history of this country.  We often here statements such as ‘the past is all over, let’s focus on the present’ uttered by devolutionists, even as they use history-laden terms such as ‘traditional homelands’.

It is no coincidence that the vast majority of those who get intellectually fidgety with respect to the above happen to be non-Sinhalese or non-Buddhists or else subscribe to apparently identity-less or identity-disavowing ideologies such as Marxism or at least have had their political baptism in such doctrines. 

The length of historical memory preferred indicates political location, ideological bent, preferred outcome and of course the defensible claim on historical time in terms of the particular individual’s ethno-religious identity.   Those who don’t have the ‘centuries’ relevant to Dr. Radhakrishna’s observation above cannot afford to talk history. They can, at best, fudge it (by tagging ‘multi’ to the ethnic and religious) or take it out of the equation by talking ‘present’ and ‘status quo’ (and of course fiddling with the curriculum as was quite effectively done in the nineties).  Without the centuries and the histories not much ‘tradition’ can be made except of course in the fly-by-night, one-hit-wonder kind of formulation that simply cannot replace ‘tradition’ made of way-of-life, cultural ethos and artifact-reality that show undeniable longevity and resilience.  An ‘I was here’ fact of an odd artifact or mention in a verse has very little historical weight and perhaps this is why the historically light would rather not talk about it.

No nation can move towards a better future if it is stuck in the past.  On the other hand, a nation that disavows the past, is destined to walk into trap and confusion.  Only clarity and a certain deference to reason, both about the past and present, can produce useful thinking when it comes to thinking about the future.  A greater claim on the past does not and should not translate automatically into greater citizenship privileges, but a reluctance to acknowledge that past and the who-did-what of civilization-building, it must also be acknowledged, is a recipe for communal disharmony.  If Community A, whose history is two days old, tells Community B whose history is 17 centuries old that history never happened and even if it did happen it is no longer relevant, no one can fault Community B for treating Community A with suspicion.  If Community B tells Community A, ‘we made this country, so you have to live with the fact and moreover submit to us,’ the Community B cannot claim to have acquired any civilization worth talking about.

History-Phobia is not healthy. It reveals pernicious design. History-Fixation is also unhealthy.  History-disavowal is a malicious project that seeks to erase ‘centuries of life’.  It is good to be clear on these things.  The more we try to hide history under the political carpet, the more untenable becomes the matter of inter-communal embrace on a common humanitarian floor.  We would all trip and fall flat on our faces.  We’ve done that enough now.  It is time to acknowledge fact and toss myth out.   It is time to name those who are reluctant to do this as political frauds, racists and chauvinists, and in some instances religious fundamentalists who for their so-called evangelical ‘mission’ fervently seek the erasure that the ‘multi’ tag gives, a kind of politics they would never ever advocate in countries where the particular faith is dominant.  The reason why this last category champions devolution, perhaps, is the knowledge that when you pull the rug from under the Sinhalese (in terms of land-theft for example), the vast majority of those who fall will necessarily be Buddhists. 

We are history-made.  That’s the bottom line.  Anyone who denies this denies instantly his/her parents. To begin with.  He/she then calls his/her child a bastard.  That’s also ‘bottom line’.

Read more

And some love letters will remain undeliverable

It happened sometime in the year 1992.  In a bus.  Returning to Kandy from Matale, after visiting some friends.  A young girl and I.  She was in love.  Madly in love with my best friend.  They were both music teachers and were ‘batchmates’ at the Giragama Training College, an institution reserved for those who taught music, art and dance.  They had just finished their two-year programme.   That day, the two as well as other close friends had visited another batchmate in Matale.  That’s where the goodbyes were  said.

It was rumoured that she was married or that she had a man in Trincomalee, her home town.  No one asked and she didn’t tell either.  All that was known was that she was in love with my friend and that my friend was not interested.  Back then it took about an hour to travel from Matale to Kandy.  She cried and cried and cried.  On my shoulder.  There was nothing I could say or do to ease her pain.  I didn’t try. 

It was not a tragic love story for tragedy is when two people want each other but cannot be together for reasons external to them.  I saw her into her bus to Trincomalee and never saw her again.  I wrote about her, though.

Someday

You will put your head out of a moving bus

and call out my name;

And I will weep

All the tears

I’ve saved for your sorrow.

I do remember my friend Mahendra telling me, upon reading this, ‘you don’t have to write any more poetry; with this you’ve given the world enough’.  I didn’t understand what he meant then and I still don’t. 

Now, almost twenty years later and many tear having been shed for numerous other reasons, I am not sure if I would be moved to weeping should I meet her.  I don’t know how life has treated her and she treated life, although I do think of her now and then, wonder how she is and hope that she’s moved on and beyond this particular sorrow of unrequited love. 

She was young then and who knows, she maybe younger now than she was twenty years ago.  She came to mind last night as I listened to the most ancient love story all over again: I love him, believed he loved me in return but he does not love me anymore or perhaps never did.  Not a tragedy, but these technicalities matter little for hearts that are convinced that heartbeats have perished. 

I didn’t have answers to her questions nor remedy for her sorrow.  I related some stories and told her that the length of sorrow can never be predetermined.  She did not weep although she warned me of possible heart-burst.  She even smiled.  I don’t know if I will ever see her again.  I didn’t write a poem and didn’t think of possible tears to be shed on account of her sorrow. 

She was not a music teacher.  She was young though, as young as that girl from twenty years ago.  She told me her ancient love story and it was, I am sure, as fresh as was the first ever love story.  She took me through togetherness and joy, doubt and laceration, betrayal and wickedness.  She is beautiful, this girl, that much I could tell. And that is all there was to tell too. 

It just occurred to me that these moments, intersections, exchanges, this listening and telling were really love letters that just could not be delivered, either because address was unknown or because recipient had stopped checking mail.  What happens to these words, sighs and tears, I asked myself.  And I remembered the girl in the bus and others who had stories to tell but had to tell them not to the person they wanted to be heard by but some random person who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time or the right place at the right time, who can tell? 

She left and I was left with days and images, recollections frayed by event and time, and also sharp lines that resisted forgetting.  I was left with thoughts of tomorrow inhabited by lives that I might never encounter again and even if I did in colours different and perhaps even unrecognizable.  And I was left with a question I doubt I will ever be able to answer:  ‘Do undeliverable love letters close ranks and discuss for eternity the what-ifs, if-onlys and could-have-beens?’

Read more

On blindness, blindfolding and eye-transparency

Conversations don’t end when people take leave of one another.  We are made of conversation remnant, other people’s thoughts interacting with conversations heard, information culled from people, event and the encyclopedias we have perused with senses.  Words have legs, thoughts have wings. 

Last Friday, I made an observation: ‘if someone’s eyes are not transparent, I will never trust him’.  There was a referent, a real person.  It was just a mentioning of a rule-of-thumb I’ve picked up along the way through lives and living, being used and abused, just like any other detection-device that people develop through experience.

My friend, who was present, wrote a beautiful commentary based on that single assertion, titled ‘Blindfolding the charms of transparent eyes’. It was a reflection on eyes and transparency, those who knew, especially those belonging to women.  It had occurred to him that he hadn’t really looked into their eyes and examined them for transparency. He submitted that he had instead chosen to blindfold himself with love and other sentiments.  When the blindfold was removed little was left, he wrote.

He maintained that some eyes prevented him from seeing hearts, some delusional (‘most’, he added).

He made me re-think eyes. 

I wondered, given the number of times that I have trusted eyes and believed them to mirror heart, whether there’s any truth about the transparency or otherwise of eyes in the matter of revelation. I wondered if it was the flaws of seeing rather than the seen that made for misreading. 

Took me to a short story written by Liyanage Amarakeerthi almost twenty years ago.  If I remember right, a woman asks a man if he is deceiving her (‘maava ravattanavada?  Or was it ‘maava ravattannada hadadde’, are you trying to deceive me?).  The man responds ‘mata one oyaava ravattanna nemie, oyath ekka revatenna!’ (I don’t want to deceive you; I want to be deceived with you).   

Love-blindness explains a lot and maybe whoever came up with the dictum ‘love is blind’ might have been on to something regarding eyes and transparency. 

My friend seems to have seen something important: ‘yes, I know some eyes are non-transparent, but I love them’. 

People change, eyes change and transparency can be compromised. There are always degrees, in the transparent and the opaque when it comes to people we love and people who love us.  It holds for other too.  I was not talking of love when I came up with that line.  ‘Shifty eyes’ is a term that has connotations.  Back in the eighties there entered the Sinhala lexicon a term called ‘Rubber Ehe’ or the rubber-eye, meaning a false eye.  Someone who ‘puts’ the rubber-ehe is one who looks through you, refuses to acknowledge or deliberately snubs.  Lovers do these things, either because they’ve stopped seeing or are not interested in seeing or, in some cases, to feign un-seeing.  Sometimes people hurt just to test love. 

I am no eye-expert but I think for all their deceiving potential, eyes reveal even when they are ‘opaqued’. Or else, I like to think so, for I have over the years learned to be more wary than average when I encounter non-transparent eyes. 

But here’s something my articulate and perceptive friend, Rasika Jayakody can reflect on and perhaps write an equally beautiful comment about:

‘Is the finality with which doors are closed designed to test the blindness of blind love?’

It is something I wrote about 7 years ago.  It was love-wrought and about an ‘de-transparenting’ of eyes.  In the un-blinding that followed, though, I found things to be more transparent than I believed them to be.  Those eyes that inspired the question were, all things considered, more honest than most eyes I’ve encountered.  Maybe it was because she un-blindfolded herself. 

Read more

Time is a coat and blood is made of liberation

The grape is made of wine, someone said someone quoted, I can’t remember now. How true, I thought to myself. Sometimes we have to stand things on their heads to render them readable, because the world as we know it, or have been made to know it, is such a mass of contradiction, deceit and confusion.

This inversion of grape and wine made me think. Are words made of the articulate? Is love made of poetry? Is it also of the universal "her"? Or the "him" as the case may be? Is humour made of Charlie Chaplin? Are the springs from where laughter is manufactured his private property? Did Cinderella make the fairy godmother? Was the shoe made to fit her foot, or was the foot designed to help her walk with royalty?
Omar Khayyam poses the following question and not without reason:

"All this of Pot and Potter - Tell me then,
Who is the potter, pray, and who the pot?"

Yes, the potter is made of clay. This is why an old man in a kumbal village near Galgamuwa once told me, "apiva jeevath karavanne meti" (it is the clay that gives us life). And it is precisely because men and pots are made of clay, that Khayyam wrote thus:

For I remember stopping by the way
To watch a Potter thumping his wet Clay:
And with its all-obliterated Tongue
It murmur’d - "Gently, Brother, gently, pray!"

In general we refuse to see the illuminating truth produced by simple inversion. Parents rarely acknowledge that they are made of children, for example. Fanta, so the advertiser says, is made of orange. But a creative fruit seller in Kandy once got into a bus just about to leave for Colombo, carrying a basket of oranges, the green coloured dodam, not the straight-from- wherever that abounds today. He had a fantastic pay-off line: "Fanta vage, Fanta vage" (Just like Fanta)! It shook me.

Political rhetoric says that people make politicians. People know very well that this doesn’t translate into any kind of obligation on the part of the politician. But do people realize that they are made of politicians, that they are constituted of the political, that ideology is not something "out there" shooting its relentless conforming arrows in their direction but in fact within and indeed is even nurtured within them?

We are told that people make the news. In reality, news makes the people. Or unmakes them, to be more precise. The revolution makes the people and the readership is the newspaper. I remember how Gammini Haththotuwegama, after a performance at the Sarachchandra "wala" in Peradeniya, went on his knees and worshipped the audience. Yes, it is the audience that makes the play.

It is the "I", we firmly believe, that makes the image that resides in a mirror. It is rarely understood that it is as true to say that the image produces the "I". Too confusing? Just consider the words "fashion" and "chic". What’s "in" is what we embrace and want to become. When the "in" goes out, out goes with it, the new "I" so recently adopted. In short, we become the masks we choose to cover our faces with.

Inversion is heavily laden, by definition, with the pitfalls of binary logic. The grape is made of wine, I agree. But isn’t it also made of labour? And wine, for its part, is it not made of love? Is it not made of a resolve to obliterate reason and all its many traps? Is wine itself not made of obliteration of a kind? Are we just going round in circles or engaging in clever but ultimately meaningless word play? I don’t know.

Let me talk of known things, things that come easy and without complexity. I recently read about a man who goes to see a woman he loves. He knocks on the door and the woman asks, "Who is it?" He responds, "It is I". She does not open the door. A few days later he goes again, knocks on the door and is met with the same query, "Who is it?" This time he answers, "It is you". She opens the door and there results the immemorial and exquisite embrace that is love.

There must be a lesson in all this, this "I" and "you", this "in and out", the "within and without" business. The traveler makes the journey and the journey in turn moulds the explorer. Journeys are made less of roads than of encounters. Age is not a condition wrought of time’s passing, but a product of the nature of engagement. Time is marked by event. The colours and contours of events are obliterated by time. Its many distorting instruments leave skeletal remains of monumental happenings, renders them unrecognizable.

Time is a coat, says the garment worker. Blood is made of liberation, says the insurgent. Death will give life to my idea, says the prophet. Kick truth in its butt and everything becomes exciting says the anarchist. To each his pet dichotomy and her preferred inversion, what else can one say?

As for me, I believe dreams are perfumed, that flavours are coloured, that music has a caressing quality. I believe that sensations rebel against identification but when embraced through metaphor, through the grape that is made of wine and the love that is made of a sunset sky, a crushed rose and an epistle that has gone astray, the heart learns of galaxies previously unimagined, spaces tender and of course life’s tremendous simplicity.

These literary soils are no longer virgin. All words have lost their innocence. A long time ago. And yet, it is in the upturning of the virgin soil, in the reconfiguration of word and metaphor, that innocence is reborn and love has a second chance to be the grape, the song and the tear spilled from a heart that is sensitive to the human condition.

We don’t need prophets, for wisdom speaks to us from all sides. All we need is to listen. We don’t need clowns, for we are all jokers. We don’t need politicians, for we are political. We don’t need flowers for our hearts are made of bouquets. All we need to do is to lift the page in a different way and rearrange the words that spill out, just a little bit differently, even randomly. Would be positively intoxicating, I am convinced. Who knows, we might even be able to come up with a bunch of grapes. Or love.

Read more

A note on the ‘commonsensical’ in meeting threat



Dayan Jayatilleka -- obsessed with the 13th?

I suppose it is incumbent on diplomats to defend regimes and policies, to see the positive side of things and call for celebration.  It is perhaps natural also for ex-diplomats to paint the bleak picture and point fingers at policy and personnel for contributing.  This is what I felt reading two contrasting articles on the country’s foreign policy recently, one by Dayan Jayatilleka, former Permanent Representatives at the UN (Geneva) and currently the Ambassador to France (who, between jobs, gave down-in-the-mouth interviews compared to his things-are-rosy articulations when employed by the Ministry of External Affairs), and the other by a retired career diplomat Izeth Hussein.

Dayan, citing a cable from the US Embassy in Sri Lanka unearthed by Wikileaks, pats his ministry and himself on the relevant backs for ‘effective diplomatic approach’ in Geneva.  It is certainly a defensible claim, considering outcome, although the by now par-for-the-course self-congratulatory  vein of Dayan’s comments does leave a poor taste on tongue. 



Izeth Hussain -- touting selective commonsensicality?



Izeth Hussain (‘Rethinking war crimes allegations’) seems to think that the outcome had nothing to do with the grand strategies that Dayan claims were orchestrated (his  typically wordy contention was ‘refreshing non-aligned roots while twinning Tri-continentalism with the rise of Asia and emergent multi-polarity in the world order’).  Izeth says, bluntly, that if Sri Lanka came through unscathed it was simply because ‘the powerful bloc of countries arrayed against (her) has decided that this is not the time to give a whacking’.  He claims, moreover that the test of effectiveness is not measured only in outcome but in winning over those opposed.  In this regard, he claims that the government’s counter-thrust has not made any difference to the US, the EU member states and their allies, and concludes ‘flopped, and flopped badly’. 

Izeth argues that the government ought to try ‘commonsensical arguments’ and adopt a ‘holistic approach’.  The first would, in his view, involve telling the world that any serious war crimes investigations ‘would envenom the political atmosphere’ so much that it would compromise efforts to find political solution and obtain ethnic reconciliation.  He is correct, I believe.  Investigating war crimes, whether or not any were committed would lead to the kind of outcome he describes.  Whether this would dissuade Sri Lanka’s international foes, I am not sure. 

If, as he argues, these powers are not swayed by the logic of argument, there is no reason to believe they would listen to commonsense, if indeed what Izeth proposes is commonsensical.  NATO, for example, didn’t give a damn about the political being envenomed in Libya.  The assumption that things like solutions and reconciliation really matter is not supported by the history of engagement as practiced by these powers.  It is silly to think that truth counts.  Moreover, that kind of line gives the impression that uncommitted war crimes were indeed committed but the perpetrators are seeking to get off the hook by pleading a worsening if they were investigated. 

His ‘holistic’ answer is of course an echo of Dayan’s perennial whine-want: ‘give me the 13^th and lots more besides!’ Both these individuals are loathe to give the true dimensions of grievances and match proposed solution to these, nor defend solution with respect to objections on lines of demography, history, geography, political efficacy and economic sense.  In Izeth’s case, if telling the truth or ‘commonsensicality’ really matters, then it is strange that he is silent on the commonsensicality of telling the truth regarding grievance and related facts. 

Interestingly, while Izeth wants negotiations (one assumes, with the TNA), Dayan, in an interview has stated that the TNA’s expressed desire ‘to start from scratch’ is making the government and the Sinhalese cautious ‘as to where power-sharing might lead’.  Well, ‘starting afresh’ means we cannot presume that devolution will result.  Given that the discourse has been so marred by rhetoric and myth and buttressed by a strong aversion to defeating the LTTE military by vociferous defenders of devolution (Dayan is an exception here), it makes sense to start afresh, which would include a discussion on the true dimensions of grievances.  If indeed they are territorial, then a territory-based agreement makes sense. 

On the other hand, if the issues are not territory-bound, then a different mechanism has to be worked out.  Dayan’s aversion to a fresh start is couched within a devolutionist frame of thinking, hence his contention about imagined fears about ‘where power-sharing might lead’.  As things stand, power-sharing and devolution are being conflated and presented as ‘solution’, when in fact it is just Tamil nationalism in reduced circumstances deferring to the Chelvanayakam option of ‘A little now, more later’. 

The bottom line is that truth and fact have little currency in the machinations of international busybodies and thug-nations.  Commonsense hardly counts.  I don’t know if it was, as Izeth claimed, that the Geneva-outcome had nothing to do with the government’s efforts, but if, as Dayan claims, strong ties with friends and being conscious of changes in the global political equation helps, then it makes sense to pursue this line of engagement.  ‘The Worst Case Scenario’, as Izeth claims but doesn’t factor into his recommendations, is truth-averse anyway.    

Still, it is better to be honest than to lie and it is better to win friends and enemies over with truth.  It is all we have.   What we lack is effective mechanisms to ensure that truth emerges from all relevant deliberations, that there is transparency and accountability, and robust institutional structures including legal mechanisms that are truth-yielding.  In the long run, this is the true site of struggle. Diplomats and ex-diplomats have a lot to offer by way of educating the people on how things happen on the international stage of course, but perhaps these two learned gentlemen can shed more light on what’s possible and what’s not in this regard.  I know Izeth touches on these issues frequently and that his analysis is largely free from preferred outcomes in the rough-and-tumble of party politics.  I know that Dayan is cagey, naturally, and tends to play safe.  I would suggest that commonsense has more currency here in Sri Lanka than in engagements with the largely disingenuous set of thugs running the world these days.

Read more