The journeys of W.G. Weerasinghe

They say a man roams the world in search of the truth and comes home to find it.  This is basically an observation that things are never as far as we might think they are or are led to believe they are.  Distance is erroneously defined and measures in terms of miles or kilometers, flight-time or road hours, number of coffee/tea stops, night-stops and fuel-fill-ups.  These ‘real’ things do exist of course but when it comes to truth-elicitation the perspective and experience that travel gives can be adequately compensated by a more conscious engagement with the hear and now and the physical-social vatapitaava or environment.

Some people travel far but not necessarily in search of truth.  Some leave home in search of greener pastures, some to obtain better training and some because they just cannot stay at home and not just because they’ve been afflicted with the Rahu Maha Dasawa, that particularly pernicious (but to some heaven-sent) planetary configuration which makes home-stay impossible.  There are those who go away and are happy to be away or even if not exactly thrilled are resolved to inhabiting what they believe is a better option all things considered. There may be moments of doubt and even pangs of nostalgia but the bottom line or rather the last word remains ‘settled’. 

Some have the choice of staying or leaving, others do not. Some can travel far, to the other end of the earth or to the moon, while others don’t make it outside the borders of their country. Indeed, some spend lifetimes within the boundaries marked by a radius of a few dozen miles. Some change residences like changing shirts. Some not only change residences but move from city to city as well. Some make their village their universe; some out of choice and some due to lack of choice.

I know of someone who could have gone far but didn’t.  He remained close to his native village not because travel never appealed to him or he was not interested in seeing the world.  He was the eldest.  He had to help his parents educate his three brothers and two sisters.  University was known but only as a possibility if a one-time A/L attempt yielded good results.  He didn’t enter university. He became a teacher. 

I know him because his brother was a batchmate at Peradeniya.  The brother was an excellent public speaker. He told me how this happened.  Apparently the older brother had got a teaching appointment when my friend, Premasiri, was in the 5^th grade.  The Loku Aiya had insisted that the little brother prepare a speech, a short 3-5 minute affair, on some pertinent topic to be delivered at school during the period set aside for such innocent exhibitions.

I first met W.G. Weerasinghe about 22 years ago.  At the time he was teaching in a school in Udayapura.  Quiet. He helped their father in the paddy fields.  Was happy that his brother Premasiri had ‘made it’; even though a university studentship was more a liability than a passport into the good life at the time. 

I met him again a few months ago.  This time he told me his story.  He had passed the O/L Examination in 6 subjects with a single credit pass.  On the 2^nd of July 1977 he was appointed as an Assistant Teacher to the primary school in Arantalawa. Two years later he went to the teachers’ training school in Polonnaruwa. Upon completing the two year programme, he was sent to a school in Bandaraduwa, remote and with hardly any facilities. The following year he was transferred to Udayapura, that is the village next to his own, Kumarigama.

‘No one had ever passed the scholarship exam. I was given the Grade 5 class. Two children passed the scholarship exam that year. They are both teachers.  I was in this school until 1997.  On the 1^st of June 1991 I was made Principal of the school. By the time I left we consistently had the best results in O/L Mathematics in the Uhana Division.’

There was so much pride in the eyes of this soft spoken man.  On January 1, 1997 he was transferred to Werenketagoda MV, Uhana.  He had 5 months to prepare the children for the Scholarship exam and the school had the best results in the Eastern Province. That year 16 passed.  In 2001, 74 out of 171 who sat the exam passed the Scholarship.  That might be an island record, I am not sure.  The following year, Weerasinghe Aiya was transferred to Udayagiriya, a school that was about to close down.  It was not closed down because the school started producing decent results. 

I think all this constitutes a journey.  All within the Digamadulla District of course but then he’s planted so many seeds that burst into plants and grew into trees, sprouted wings and flew to places he never knew existed or worried about the relevant ignorance.  In 2008 he came home, so to speak.  On the 23^rd of October he came back as Principal, Kumarigama Maha Vidyalaya, his alma mater.  A year later, the school was No. 2 in the District in terms of performance at the A/L. 

It was not just the education.  ‘There was a dilapidated well. There was no water. Now there’s a tank.  The toilets were unusable.  I got all of it repaired.  There wasn’t even a flowering tree to pick some flowers to worship the Buddha. Now there are.  Earlier parents didn’t want to send children here. Now they do.  The teachers chip in with money. The Civil Defence Unit provided some material. The parents contributed labour. Rev. Senapathiye Ananda…Kumarigama Sri Pushparama Viharasthanaya helped set up a library.  We need to rebuild this school. It is my school. I have to do it.’

Some journeys take us far. Some people don’t travel but they precipitate unbelievable journeys.  Some build the building blocks, some build upon the building blocks. We must all do our little bit, not so that our children get to travel but they have the choice to do so.  Weerasinghe need not have done any of this. He did.  Some journeys are worthy of salutation.  His certainly is; hence this tribute or sorts.   

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On the journeys of W.G. Weerasinghe

They say a man roams the world in search of the truth and comes home to find it.  This is basically an observation that things are never as far as we might think they are or are led to believe they are.  Distance is erroneously defined and measures in terms of miles or kilometres, flight-time or road hours, number of coffee/tea stops, night-stops and fuel-fill-ups.  These ‘real’ things do exist of course but when it comes to truth-elicitation the perspective and experience that travel gives can be adequately compensated by a more conscious engagement with the here and now and the physical-social vatapitaava or environment. 

Some people travel far but not necessarily in search of truth.  Some leave home in search of greener pastures, some to obtain better training and some because they just cannot stay at home and not just because they’ve been afflicted with the Rahu Maha Dasawa, that particularly pernicious (but to some heaven-sent) planetary configuration which makes home-stay impossible.  There are those who go away and are happy to be away or even if not exactly thrilled are resolved to inhabiting what they believe is a better option all things considered. There may be moments of doubt and even pangs of nostalgia but the bottom line or rather the last word remains ‘settled’.  

Some have the choice of staying or leaving, others do not. Some can travel far, to the other end of the earth or to the moon, while others don’t make it outside the borders of their country. Indeed, some spend lifetimes within the boundaries marked by a radius of a few dozen miles. Some change residences like changing shirts. Some not only change residences but move from city to city as well. Some make their village their universe; some out of choice and some due to lack of choice.

I know of someone who could have gone far but didn’t.  He remained close to his native village not because travel never appealed to him or he was not interested in seeing the world.  He was the eldest.  He had to help his parents educate his three brothers and two sisters.  University was known but only as a possibility if a one-time A/L attempt yielded good results.  He didn’t enter university. He became a teacher.  

I know him because his brother was a batch mate at Peradeniya.  The brother was an excellent public speaker. He told me how this happened.  Apparently the older brother had got a teaching appointment when my friend, Premasiri, was in the 5th grade.  The Loku Aiya had insisted that the little brother prepare a speech, a short 3-5 minute affair, on some pertinent topic to be delivered at school during the period set aside for such innocent exhibitions. 

I first met W.G. Weerasinghe about 22 years ago.  At the time he was teaching in a school in Udayapura.  Quiet. He helped their father in the paddy fields.  Was happy that his brother Premasiri had ‘made it’; even though a university studentship was more a liability than a passport into the good life at the time.  

I met him again a few months ago.  This time he told me his story.  He had passed the O/L Examination in 6 subjects with a single credit pass.  On the 2nd of July 1977 he was appointed as an Assistant Teacher to the primary school in Arantalawa. Two years later he went to the teachers’ training school in Polonnaruwa. Upon completing the two year programme, he was sent to a school in Bandaraduwa, remote and with hardly any facilities. The following year he was transferred to Udayapura that is the village next to his own, Kumarigama. 

‘No one had ever passed the scholarship exam. I was given the Grade 5 class. Two children passed the scholarship exam that year. They are both teachers.  I was in this school until 1997.  On the 1st of June 1991 I was made Principal of the school. By the time I left we consistently had the best results in O/L Mathematics in the Uhana Division.’

There was so much pride in the eyes of this soft spoken man.  On January 1, 1997 he was transferred to Werenketagoda MV, Uhana.  He had 5 months to prepare the children for the Scholarship exam and the school had the best results in the Eastern Province. That year 16 passed.  In 2001, 74 out of 171 who sat the exam passed the Scholarship.  That might be an island record, I am not sure.  The following year, Weerasinghe Aiya was transferred to Udayagiriya, a school that was about to close down.  It was not closed down because the school started producing decent results.  

I think all this constitutes a journey.  All within the Digamadulla District of course but then he’s planted so many seeds that burst into plants and grew into trees, sprouted wings and flew to places he never knew existed or worried about the relevant ignorance.  In 2008 he came home, so to speak.  On the 23rd of October he came back as Principal, Kumarigama Maha Vidyalaya, his alma mater.  A year later, the school was No. 2 in the District in terms of performance at the A/L.  

It was not just the education.  ‘There was a dilapidated well. There was no water. Now there’s a tank.  The toilets were unusable.  I got all of it repaired.  There wasn’t even a flowering tree to pick some flowers to worship the Buddha. Now there are.  Earlier parents didn’t want to send children here. Now they do.  The teachers chip in with money. The Civil Defence Unit provided some material. The parents contributed labour. Rev. Senapathiye Ananda…Kumarigama Sri Pushparama Viharasthanaya helped set up a library.  We need to rebuild this school. It is my school. I have to do it.’ 

Some journeys take us far. Some people don’t travel but they precipitate unbelievable journeys.  Some build the building blocks, some build upon the building blocks. We must all do our little bit, not so that our children get to travel but they have the choice to do so.  Weerasinghe need not have done any of this. He did.  Some journeys are worthy of salutation.  His certainly is; hence this tribute or sorts.   

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Let’s get to know the International Crisis Group*

A few weeks ago the British Parliament is reported to have debated the issue of alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka.  Any comment on the various statements made and the charges leveled against Sri Lanka need to be prefaced by things that came without saying and therefore go without saying but should not be allowed to go away without saying.

Number 1. LOOT.  Did the British document?  Who has the inventory?  And total theft been calculated?  When will it be returned.

Number 2. DOUBLE STANDARDS. Have the British finished having a conversation with themselves and all relevant ‘others’ about all crimes against humanity (alleged, proven etc) that their ancestors and they themselves have perpetrated. ‘Are Perpetrating,’ I should say, in the present continuous, because Iraq and Afghanistan are yet to become ‘past tense’ and Gaza is a present and continuous tragedy of blood-letter by the Israelis, backed to the hilt by Obama and Elizabeth.

Number 3. SLOTH. When people don’t do their homework they get shown up.  A lot of people who had nasty thing to say about Sri Lanka have been guilty of such howlers that after being taken to the cleaners a couple of times they go silent.  I have no doubt that the members of the British Parliament who spoke that day are good-hearted human beings.  I do fault them for their double-standards, their clearly apparent myopia and absolute ignorance of that lovely English adage, ‘charity begins at home’, but that can all be put down to general ignorance stemming from being a colonial power for too many centuries.  This, however, this issue of giving unwarranted value to allegation (given slim supporting evidence and notoriety of source) and slipping quickly from allegation to fact to demand for censure smacks of a kind of vulgarity that we have been told has no place in the best of British parliamentary tradition. 

The MPs who have tripped over their egos and hearts and whatever else there is to trip over in the mad rush to feel self-righteous hunger need to be undressed but this is not the moment or the place.  What struck me is that all allegations, all good-guy posturing and other utterly nauseating articulations of the best of British arrogance is based on a report issued by the International Crisis Group (ICG).

Some weeks ago, after I wrote a piece about the ICG, I got an email from a person called Andrew Stroehlein, who chided me for not having visited the ICG website before writing. Andrew claimed that the ICG has in fact issued lots of ‘statements, comments and podcasts’ on recent events and implied that it was not singling out Sri Lanka for censure.  I apologized for not having visited the website. I pointed out that it was Chris Patten who had been shooting his mouth and that I hadn’t seen any statement from him regarding Isreali action on Gaza, for instance (which I had referred to in my article). 

I also sought Andrew’s help: ‘would appreciate if you can send me official releases pertaining to demands for investigations into us/uk actions in iraq, afghanistan and pakistan and more specifically, allegations of systemic torture (eg. guantanamo bay, abu ghraib)’.

He ignored my request.  He said, instead, ‘I am sure in quoting from this email exchange you will include your admission that you did not look at the organisation's website before criticising the organisation's public positions.’ 

I’ve done my part now.   He is yet to give me links to the ICG’s ‘work’ on the places and events I referred to.  I did visit the ICG website and perused its pages on Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, i.e. countries where US/UK action has resulted in hundreds of thousands of unnecessary civilian deaths including the death of children due to sanctions, deliberate ‘absenting’ of drugs and medical facilities etc., not to mention internally displaced people numbering over half a million and living in conditions that would make the plight of Sri Lanka’s IDPs look quite ‘first-wordly’.  The overall thrust is very clear.  The ICG is quite comfy with what the USA/US rogue states are perpetrating in these territories and is at best quibbling about modalities on marginal matters and even then placing the blame squarely on ‘rebels’ for creating conditions warranting military action. A predictable European Conquistador narrative, I felt. 

The entire website is the stuff made for a phd thesis on colonialist posturing and relevant ranting.  Andrew Stroehlein and others at ICG need to be educated about the politics of absenting.  A full review of the website will be sent to Andrew and I hope he will post it somewhere in the interest of saluting the values and principles that the ICG was ostensibly set up to champion.

For now, though, I choose to write about the background, the who’s who, the what-have-they-done etc., and I am referring to the big names in the ICG. Just so that our readers will get a good sense of where these people are coming from and where they want to take us.  For the record, though, let me first get this qualifier out of the way: the ICG report is based on ‘evidence’ submitted not by independent witnesses but parties rabidly against the Government of Sri Lanka, parties that are openly pro-LTTE and individuals whose integrity has been severely compromised on account of embezzlement, theft and directly and/or indirectly supporting terrorism.  The ICG is a half-way source and the British MPs should have dug deeper. They didn’t, possibly because they are ignorant or else in cahoots with the bunch of shady characters that make up the ICG’s top brass.

My friend Vinod Moonesinghe did what the Sri Lanka Government ought to have done a long time ago.  It is something that I regret I didn’t do.  Sadly, Vinod’s letter was not picked up by any newspaper.

Vinod gives us the names.

‘The ICG was founded in 1995 by Ambassador Morton I Abramowitz and ex-Congressman Stephen J Solarz, among others. Helping to draw up the original proposal was Abramowitz’ special assistant Lynne A Davidson. The ICG’s Co-Chairs are former European Commissioner Christopher Patten and former US diplomat Thomas R Pickering. Its Board of trustees includes Abramowitz, Solarz, former US National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, former US diplomat Kenneth Adelman, former US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, former Israeli Foreign Minister and Minister of Internal Security Shlomo Ben-Ami, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander – Europe (SACEUR) General Wesley Clark, former Foreign Minister of Australia Gareth Evans, former president of PolandAleksander Kwaśniewski and former Venezuelan minister Moisés Naím. It’s Senior Advisers (former Board members) include former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser and Israeli President Shimon Peres.’

Who are these people?  Vinod lays it out.  From now, it’s his voice. I concur and take full responsibility.

Morton I Abramowitz and Zbigniew Brzezinski are part of a network of shadowy right-wing organisations and advocacy groups. Both of them belonged to the now-defunct American Committee for Peace in Chechnya, another member of which was Kenneth Adelman, who had been Assistant to US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld in the 1970s, at precisely the time in which the CIA’s George W Bush (later President) was building up the BCCI-narco-finance network.

Bush’s son President George W Bush later employed Adelman in the Defence Policy Board, where he was a strong advocate of the illegal invasion of Iraq. He famously claimed in the Washington Post in 2002 that the invasion would be a ‘Cakewalk’. He has also advocated the pre-emptive invasion of both Iran and Saudi Arabia and supported the notorious 2002 ‘open letter’ to President Bush drawn up by the shadowy Project for the New American Century (PNAC), urging him to attack Iraq and the Palestinians.

Another supporter of the PNAC was a signatory to its 1998 letter to President Bill Clinton, demanding an invasion of Iraq without UN sanction, Richard Armitage. During his stint with the US Navy special operations, he was allegedly involved in the PHOENIX programme of murdering opponents of the USA in Vietnam.

As Assistant Secretary of Defence for International Security Affairs in 1983-89, Armitage was implicated in the Iran-Contra scandal, involving the use of drug money to supply weapons to the Afghan terrorists as well as to the Contra terrorists in Nicaragua. He has been on the board of CACI, a defence contractor implicated in the Abu Ghraib torture scandal.

Another member of the defunct American Committee for Peace in Chechnya was ex-congressman Stephen J Solarz. In 1998, as a member of the Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf, Solarz called in an open letter to President Bill Clinton, for the US armed forces to intervene illegally in Iraq.  Co-signatories of the document, which later formed the basis for PNAC policy, included Richard Armitage and Fred Ikle.

Abramowitz, Armitage and Solarz were also signatories to the PNAC Letter to President Bill Clinton on 11 September 1998, in which he was called upon to overthrow Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic and establish ‘a new political status for Kosovo’.  The USA had covertly been supporting the al-Qaeda linked narco-terrorist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) since at least early 1998, and possibly earlier.

ICG Co-Chair Thomas R Pickering, while Under-secretary of State for Political Affairs, championed the US position of interference in Yugoslavia with aid for the KLA – even granted that the legal position on this was somewhat shaky. He was also obliquely involved in the Iran-Contra scandal while Ambassador to El Salvador.

Yet another ICG member involved in the Kosovo adventure was General Wesley Clark. He attended the Rambouillet talks, at which the US tried to force Kosovo secession on the Yugoslavs (with Abramowitz acting as adviser to the terrorist delegation). He threatened to bomb Yugoslavia, which he proceeded to do during the undeclared war on Yugoslavia, in his capacity as SACEUR; at the start of the campaign he threatened “We're going to systematically and progressively attack, disrupt, degrade, devastate and ultimately, unless President Milosevic complies” with US demands.  The British commander General Sir Mike Jackson reportedly told Clark "I'm not going to start the Third World War for you".

The bombing of Yugoslavia saw little damage to the Yugoslav armed forces, but considerable ‘collateral damage’, as the ‘Shock and Awe’ tactics which were to be used against Baghdad were tried out against the Serbian population. Among what Clark referred to as ‘mistakes’ were the bombing of the Chinese Embassy and a deliberate attack on a civilian train by a US Air Force F-15, which Clark tried unsuccessfully to cover up.

Board member Lord Chris Patten was part of the Thatcher regime which enabled the training by the SAS of Afghan terrorists. He was also minister in charge of Thatcher’s attempt to dis-enfranchise the British public through the notorious poll tax scheme. He referred to people taking part in the popular anti-poll tax demonstrations as ‘rent-a-crowd outsiders’.

Board member Gareth Evans was Foreign Minister of Australia and the foremost apologist for the Indonesian army’s reign of terror in East Timor, during which 200,000 people (a third of the population) were killed.

The commission investigating the October 2000 riots in which Israeli police killed 13 Arabs, held Shlomo Ben-Ami, the then Minister of Internal Security responsible for the behaviour of security forces, which came under his purview.

Malcolm Fraser, as Minister of the Army and later as Minister of Defence of Australia in the 1960s, oversaw the implementation of conscription for the Australian armed forces’ participation in the American war of aggression against Vietnam. As Prime Minister, he was the first to recognise the annexation by the fascist Indonesian regime of East Timor and to overlook war crimes committed by the Indonesian forces. His government gave massive aid to the Indonesian military at this time.

The chief claim to fame of Aleksander Kwaśniewski, a former president of Poland, is that he managed to get Polish forces embroiled in the illegal occupation of Iraq against the opposition of 70% of Poles.

Moisés Naím, a former Venezuelan minister, is a director of the National Endowment for Democracy NED), a US Government-funded organisation. Allen Weinstein, who helped draft the legislation establishing the NED, declared in 1991: "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA." The NED has been involved in undermining democratic elections in Albania, Bulgaria, Mongolia, Nicaragua and Venzuela; funded the ton-ton-macoute opposition to President Aristide in Haiti; and funded the Cuban-American National Foundation, which financed the terrorist Luis Posada Carriles. Its latest exploit has been backing the anti-democratic coup in Honduras.

Shimon Peres was part of the High Command of the Zionist Haganah terrorist organisation during its implementation of Plan Daleth (the ethnic cleansing of Palestine) in 1947-48. As Director General of the Defence Ministry he began Israel’s nuclear weapons programme and organised the tripartite mediation with Britain and France that led to the Suez Invasion. Peres was an early supporter of Israeli settlements in the West Bank after the 1967 war. He has criticised the International Court of Justice for ruling that the building of the Apartheid Wall in the West Bank is illegal. As Prime Minister, he was responsible for the massacre of civilians seeking refuge during the Israeli shelling of the UN compound at Qana in Lebanon in 1996. Incidentally, Peres also began the Israeli alliance with the apartheid state of South Africa, even offering to sell the latter nuclear warhead in 1975.

The ICG has bucks.  There are buck-givers. Here are some:

Sasakawa Peace Foundation - founded by self-proclaimed fascist and power-broker Ryoichi Sasakawa, who developed a private army to exploit Japanese-occupied Manchuria and Mongolia and who, after the Second World War, obtained political control and amassed one of the biggest fortunes of the world with the support of criminal organisations, the Yakuzas. 

BHP Billiton - the largest mining company in the world. It was responsible for the forcible removal of communities in La Guajira, Colombia to make way for the Cerrejon Coal mine, the biggest export strip-mine in the world.

Merck Foundation – which gets its wealth from the Merck Pharmaceuticals company, the drug company involved in the Vioxx controversy, in which it was alleged the company had a list of doctors critical of Vioxx to be "neutralised" or "discredited", that it intimidated researchers and impinged of academic freedom.

This is not a case, then, of pot calling kettle black.  We are talking about high-profile operators, a gang in fact of pretty foul-smelling creatures with lots of blood on their hands.

The name says it all. “CRISIS” is the key word.  It is a crisis-making outfit.  It is an organization that needs and thrives on crisis.  The top brass owe whatever creature comforts they have secured to a lot of crises. 

*This article was first published in the Sunday Island in July 2010.
 

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Grievance first, devolution later (if at all)

Kalana Senaratne, in an article titled ‘Will there be peace before death?’ published in www.groundviews.org, begins an interesting essay on the 13^th Amendment with the obvious preamble that the end of a war is followed by the resurfacing of problems that could not be resolved through the use of force.

Kalana offers that the answer to political problems rests in our own attitudes and perceptions, and in our ability to compromise.  He singles out two issues; that of ‘devolution of power’ and ‘promotion and protection of human rights and equality’; as challenges that confront us and ones on which people hold strong and uncompromising views.  He is correct.  These have been talked-to-death issues over at least two decades and the two have often been conflated for reasons of political convenience.  They can be but are not necessarily related.  Kalana makes this distinction. 

He dwells at length on the issue of devolution, picking the debate over the 13^th Amendment as an illustrative case of the condition he laments over; i.e. perceptions and (in)ability to compromise.  I am yet to come across as clear and accurate a delineation of the contending positions, pointing to the fault lines that have time and again caused fissures in discussion and crumbled compromise when it comes to devolution.  Being an opponent of the 13^th Amendment and devolution along the lines proposed by both Eelamists and their academic and other apologists, I will focus on the issues that Kalana raises regarding objections to the 13^th.

He observes that some of the arguments against the 13^th Amendment are presented mischievously. For example, the on-the-ground failure of the 13^th is not a sufficient argument against devolution, Kalana points out, because ‘failure’ can be attributed to ‘the inability and/or unwillingness to implement,’ and ‘waste of resources less a problem of the document that a problem regarding those who were supposed to implement it’.  He is absolutely correct here.  Just because some Christian or Buddhist fundamentalist does something horrendously uncivilized in the name of Jesus of Lord Buddha, respectively, it does not mean that the respective faiths or their founders are uncivilized and/or erroneous.  The 13^th can be rubbished on other grounds that have nothing to do with identity-issues and which indeed are foregrounded by issues of democracy, human rights etc. 

I find Kalana’s observation regarding myth and reality to be spot on. This is what he says:

‘One would not believe in the concept of a ‘traditional homeland’ or in a merged North-East, and would dismiss these ideas as political myths. But the fact that the majority of the North and the East consist of Tamil speaking people is not a myth, along with the fact that this demand for power-sharing had always been the predominant demand of the Tamil minority, or its representatives, elite or otherwise.’

Yes, ‘Tamil-speaking’ and this, let us not forget, was political sleight of hand on the part of Prabhakaran and a little game that Ashroff, the founder of the SLMC was happy to play.  The two communities, Tamil and Muslim, in terms of linguistic commonality do make the majority.  It doesn’t mean that the total land area of the North and East is mostly ‘Tamil-speaking’ though.  The linguistic issue can have a language-related ‘solution’ and the legislation for this already exists. Political will has been slow off the blocks, but it is not standing still either.  Citing ‘language’ when convenient and leaving it out when it is not is bad, insincere and ‘rubbishable’ politics. That kind of conflation is good for Eelamists, not for any sensible person who genuinely wants resolution or is agreeable to deferring to superior logic. 

Yes, the demand for power-sharing has always been a biggie as far as the Tamil minority is concerned.  So?  All kudukaarayas (drug addicts) consistently want heroin.  When they run out of money they rob.  It is quite ok to demand, but for demand to be reasonable, it must flow from grievance.  Having said this, I do agree that ‘devolution’ cannot be rubbished off the political stage easily, but for different reasons from what Kalana offers.  Devolution has been politically accorded a kind of currency that is not congruent with the grievances that it seeks to redress. Furthermore, the grievances have been so frilled that their true dimensions need to be re-obtained.  This is why I say that we are putting the card before the horse when we talk about devolution and grievances. 

My contention, as the title indicates, is that ‘Devolution’ is not a necessary town that the nation-train has to pass on the way to a conflict-free, peaceful and harmonious future.  I am not saying that we must not take a route that takes us through Devolution, but that the issue of devolution has been poorly framed. 

The question of whether or not the 13^th Amendment makes Sri Lanka a federal entity or not is academic at a certain level.  Kalana believes that the 13^th is harmless.  One doesn’t write into law and implement all harmless things.  That makes constitutional enactment a joke.

The bottom line here is that we have to work up from minority grievances.  ‘Devolution’ cannot only be about efficiencies (the 13^th is inefficient for reasons other than those that Kalana states), it has to allude to the grievances.  We are not talking about aspirations here because that’s an as-high-as-the-sky kind of thing.  We are talking instead of real grievances of a community that is clearly aggrieved.  We are talking of redressing these grievances and doing without disregarding demographic realities, political doability and in ways that make economic sense. 

It is important to understand, as Kalana argues, that resolution of grievances (through devolution or in some other manner, as made ‘appropriate’ by grievance-dimension) must go hand-in-hand with ‘constitutionalism, the rule of law, the establishment of independent institutions and a firm resolve to promote and protect human rights and equality’, not just to placate minority anxiety but in creating the conditions conducive to a wholesome citizenry.

It all begins from the beginning that time was made to forget by a politics that I suspect did not necessarily like it: GRIEVANCE.  Forget it and all ‘solutioning’ is easily reducible to crass politicking. 

Kalana is absolutely right: an opportunity, a tremendous opportunity, has arrived, now that there is an absence of violent conflict; but success depends on how well that opportunity is used, or utilized.’  I would add, it depends on how honest we want to be about what we gripe about. 

[This article was first published in the 'Sunday Island' in May 2010]

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