There are NGOs and NGOs and then also the Buddha Sasana

Sometimes words are used so often and so uncritically that they not only lose communicative value but those who utter them and those who hear them no longer know what they mean.  We really don’t know what ‘democracy’ means, do we?  Decency, anyone?  How about justice?  Love?  There are thousands of such words and terms including ‘people’,  ‘sustainability’, ‘development’ and ‘hegemony’, but I am thinking of a name, an acronym, a term, a phenomenon, a curse and an agent, all rolled into one.  NGO. 

Non-Governmental Organization.  I first heard it in May 1988 at the Marga Institute, while engaged in a study of development assistance, its sources and destinations.  It didn’t take long for acronym to comfortably replace term.  And so we had NGOs and INGOS (i.e. those NGOs that were ‘international’ in character), repositories of wealth, residences for all kinds of shady creatures and especially internally displaced and thoroughly confused self-styled Leftists. 

A study on the ‘NGO Sector’ commissioned by the Asian Development Bank and carried out in 1996 revealed that most NGOs were mom-and-pop affairs, veritable cottage industries that benefited slick operators who could string together a few words of English and that even those outfits that were engaged in advocacy were in fact engaged in various projects which in various ways undermined the national interest and sought to entrench conditions of dependency.  They were the Zamindars of the late 20^th and early 21^st Centuries, a friend of mine opined, based on a study of the phenomenon in Bangladesh.     

It didn’t take me long to realize that for all the ‘civil society’ posturing of such entities, NGOs were essentially businesses.  They don’t really fall between ‘state’ and ‘private sector’, they belong to the latter.  Those in NGOs would like to be an alternative to the state and indeed operate as though they are even though in reach, delivery, scope and range of operations they are but glorified maranaadara samithi and as ridden with corruption as any state institution.  Or any corporate entity, for that matter. 

Let’s take this acronym apart.  ‘O’ is for ‘Organization’.  N-G is for Non-Governmental.  Thus anything that cannot be categorized as a government institution/body would theoretically be an NGO. Every corporate is an NGO. From the most powerful and visible multinational to the petti-kade at the street corner and the maalu laella and the paththara laella are countless NGOs. 

But let’s ask a simple question.  What is the biggest NGO in Sri Lanka?  ‘Big’ has to be understood in terms of budgets, scale of operations, reach and spread, range of activities, overall impact in multiple spheres etc.  Some outfits can have a major impact although small and a lot of NGOs that made a lot of money touting federalism and feeding the LTTE can in this sense be called ‘big’.  In physical terms Sarvodaya is big, some would say.  The thrift and credit cooperative movement, better known by its Sinhala acronym, SANASA, is as big or even bigger considering impact and reach.  SANASA is a network of over 8000 community based thrift and credit cooperative societies and is therefore ‘bigger’ than Cargills Food City, which has a little more than 100 outlets.  The underworld and especially those sections engaged in drug trafficking is ‘big’. The LTTE was big. 

There’s another ‘big’ one that I am sure most would miss: religious organizations.  These are also non-governmental organizations technically speaking and any insult by association is unintended, let me state at the outset.  Some of them operate in quite the same way perhaps because intent and interests are similar.  We have hundreds of evangelical outfits that are an embarrassment to Jesus Christ (given methodology of operation and the utter lack of humility and a corresponding lack of respect to other faiths) going about sowing anger and hatred in the zealous urge, paradoxically, to spread ‘the word of the lord’, using the cover of ‘religious freedom’ and abusing the general tolerance of Buddhists and Hindus in this country.  This is something quite absent in supposedly ‘secular’ countries that nevertheless privilege the Christian faith/religion through constitutional edict, education and cultural policies and ‘national’ iconography). 

And yet, all such operations, big and small, vile and benign, identifiable or utterly incongruous with the life and philosophy of Jesus Christ, are in every sense ‘tiny’ compared to what is arguably the largest NGO in Sri Lanka: the Buddha Sasana.

If we are talking about ‘potential’, then the Buddhist order can if it puts mind to it, make all other NGOs and much of the state irrelevant.  Indeed, given that it is an advocacy outfit (again, no insult intended but just employing NGO terminology to make a point) it has the strength of numbers, intellectual weight and all the advantages of history, heritage, social acceptance, mobilizing ability etc to out advocate halmessas or, to use street lingo, haal-kaeli like the Centre for Policy Alternatives, National Peace Council, MIRJE and poorer and wannabe versions of these shady outfits.  Indeed if there is any entity that has what it takes to supplant the state (the perennial wish of the Colombo 3/7 NGO boys and girls), it is the Sasana. And this can be good and it can be bad, but that’s an issue we shall come to later.

This is why the rare occasions that the Most Venerable Mahanayaka Theros make comment on issues of national import we need to sit up and take notice.  This is why, for example, the Government got quite jittery when the Mahanayaka Theros of the Siyam, Amarapura and Ramanya Nikayas announced that a special convention of the Maha Sangha would take place on the 18^th in Kandy and issued a special statement regarding the arrest of General (Rtd) Sarath Fonseka.  The statements contained a liberal dose of the NGO buzz words pertaining to democracy, rule of law, good governance etc etc.  On the face of it, this is a good sign. 

On the other hand, even a cursory delving into the politics of that particular issuance of statement would be enough to dampen whatever enthusiasm one may have had regarding the Buddha Sasana asserting itself on behalf of and for the betterment of the general citizenry. To begin with, the Most Venerable Mahanayaka Thero of the Malwatu Chapter was motivated by political loyalties and not a general concern for democracy, decency etc.  C.A. Chandraprema quite eloquently and quite convincingly argued earlier this week that if that were the case, the Venerable Thero ought to have chided Fonseka for irresponsible statements, lack of decency, absence of basic civility and most seriously his frivolous, adventurist and utterly irresponsible act of jeopardizing the security of every member of the Army’s 58 Division and potentially compromising national security as well.  It is not a question of trying to hide wrongdoing (something that is quite unpardonable), but the real threat constituted by the fact that even a lie uttered by a person who was commanding the troops in the last phase of the battle could potentially override other evidence and would in any case cause untold embarrassment to the state and the citizens in all international forums.  Needless to say the enemies of Sri Lanka salivated.  The Venerable Mahanayaka of the Malwatu Chapter was silent. 

The complaint here is about inconsistency.  There have been numerous instances where the Mahanayaka Theros have issued statements, retracted them, showed disagreement among themselves etc.  There have been numerous instances where the Mahanayake Theros have been scandalously silent when the nation faced grave dangers.  The signing of the Indo-Lanka Accord (J.R. Jayewardena and Rajiv Gandhi) and the signing of the Ceasefire Agreement (Ranil Wickremesinghe and Velupillai Prabhakaran) didn’t see an informed, well-argued and united response from the Venerable Mahanayaka Theros. 

If there is genuine interest in things like democracy, good governance and the rule of law, then there should be a constant and consistent engagement in relation to these issues on their part.  What we are seeing is ad hoc, politically motivated, and almost knee-jerk like missives coming from these leading Bikkhus.

Indeed, I believe they have to do much more than this.  Recently I met a devout Christian who writes to newspapers occasionally and defends uncivilized and hate-filled acts of evangelical zealots as ‘that’s politics, if politicians can bribe people into conversion, this is similar; just another device to win people over to a particular ideology’. He had no ‘charity’ Christian or otherwise to treat the customs and practices of other religious faiths with any degree of respect or tolerance. He blurted out that the Dalada Perahera was nothing but an expression of Buddhist Nationalism. He virtually spat it out.  He also said, ‘Buddhism is in decline because the haamuduruwos are corrupt and because Christianity is a more compelling doctrine’.

I don’t think Buddhism is in decline, but if its all about corruption then the Christian faith would have died long ago, not just in Sri Lanka but all over the world for the high priests of that faith have caused suffering and orchestrated more bloodbaths than all Buddhists put together from the time of the Buddha have.  As for the issue of one doctrine being more compelling, that’s a matter of opinion.  Still, the learned gentleman got me thinking. 

The Mahanayaka Theros preside over, as I mentioned earlier, the biggest NGO in the country.  The Buddha Sasana does not require, unlike these other NGOs, any foreign funds.  The Venerable Mahanayaka Theros oversee a massive economy, such is the wealth at their disposal.  This material wealth amazingly complemented by human resources for the Sasana is not made of just the clergy but the upasakas and upasikas as well, large numbers of whom can be mobilized quickly and effectively.  Yes, for the good and the bad, for the betterment of society or the celebration of extremism and bigotry. 

Just as Christianity is a doctrine of liberation that has also been perverted in practice to cause suffering to the very people that Jesus sought to help, just as Marxism, a doctrine that too sought to engineer emancipation, was employed in ways that caused suffering, so too Buddhism, a philosophy that advocates the sathara brahma viharana (kindness, compassion, rejoicing in another’s joy and equanimity) can be manipulated to similarly destructive ends.  Of course people would argue, like that kind Christian gentlemen, that that would not be ‘Christian’, just as certain Marxists would say ‘no, that’s not Marxism’ and Buddhists would similarly say ‘the Buddha never advocated this and therefore this is not Buddhism’, but that’s just being academic and silly. 

The statements and posturing of the Buddhist prelates on account of Sarath Fonseka’s arrest therefore should be seized by all Buddhists as an ideal occasion to question and redefine the position and role of the Maha Sangha in these times when the nation, having extricated itself from a destructive war, attempts to move forward. 

Let there be consistency. Let there be a conscious effort to avoid becoming pawns of politicians and political projects. Let there be, most importantly, vigilance so that the Mahanayakas don’t become pawns of those treacherous little mom-and-pop NGOs and their anti-national agenda.  Let there be a better and more efficient employment of resources to uplift the poor and underprivileged, a condition that necessarily requires submission to proper auditing procedures (a practice that all religious bodies should submit to). 

The bottom line: a return to the dhamma.  There has to be humility to acknowledge that the Christian gentlemen has a point (even though he does not have the eyes to see the same ‘wrong’ in institutions professing his faith), that there is corruption, veering away from the path Lord Buddha advocated, an unhealthy fascination with things material and a parallel distancing from engagement with the core tenets of the doctrine, including the considerable sections of the canon devoted to developing a just and peaceful social order. 

The Buddha Sasana is an enormous and unique resource.  And given its dimensions, we must acknowledge that in the wrong hands it can cause harm to society.  As a Buddhist and therefore a member of the Sasana, I humbly call upon the Most Venerable Mahanayaka Theros to consider a Dharma Sangayana.  It is long overdue.  If this is not done, let there be no doubt, the Sasana will become a pawn of the NGO gang, which is clearly anti-Buddhist.  Let the Most Venerable Mahanayaka Theros take note.

[first published in 'The Daily Mirro', February 20, 2010]

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Good luck USA and remember I love you

[The thirteenth and last of a series called 'Love notes to democracy', written while in the USA as a member of a team of international monitors overseeing the US Presidential Election 2004]

In “The Town Line”, a daily newspaper serving Central Maine, USA, I came across two postings under the “personals” in the classifieds section.  The first one said, “Dear Mom, you are right.  I’ve decided to get an education.  I’m running away to join the circus.” The second, further down in the section, said, “Dear Daughter, life is a circus, and the clowns are running the show.  Good luck and remember I love you.”

This was just one week after the US presidential election.  I don’t know if the mother and daughter involved were related to each other or if these postings referred in any way to the democratic process.  However, it occurred to me that if one were to substitute the word “politics” for “life”, one could obtain a fairly accurate description of political life in the United States. 

A circus is a spectacle.  It is grand.  People get to see it, but are not allowed to participate.  In the spotlight are clowns, acrobats, jugglers, high-wire artistes, fire-eaters, stunt artistes, and animals.  They make audiences laugh, make them gasp, give them thrills, win their adoration, and make them cheer wildly.  After the show is over, the audience returns to its separate, individual lives, and memories of the spectacle are replaced in their minds by issues such as rent/mortgage payments, the education of their children, healthcare, the increasingly probability of a draft, and the “need” to retreat into the happy land called Apathy to name just a few of the after-laughs.  The circus manager does not resolve any of these issues, either for the collective or for the individual. 

Yes, they go to the circus, so what?  Yes, they had a presidential election, so what?  One could articulate both these questions without changing tone, without changing facial expression.  You don’t go to see the circus everyday.  You don’t have an election every day.  One’s senses are flooded by an orgasmic flush now and then, but always momentarily.  The United States elected a president, amidst an outburst of political activism.  The people have gone to the circus.  They’ve had their moments.  They’ve had their laughs.  Now they have gone home! And on their way out, a giant sign told them, “Glad to have entertained, glad to have performed for you.  We’ll be back in 2008.  See you then!”

Of course, this is caricature.  If politics is a circus, then there are many circuses, many of which are not called “Presidential Election” and many of which refuse to see entertainment as a sedative, but as a potent stimulant encouraging audiences not to remain passive recipients of cheap thrills but to participate, flip and/or change scripts, to re-choreograph their lives and their communities. 

Jorgensen’s, the coffee shop in Waterville, Maine, where I am typing this, has a couple of note books for people to scribble down their thoughts.  Someone has written, “I think I am off-stage in someone else’s play and I can’t decide if this should bother me.”   It brought me back to the “circus postings”. 

If Mom, above, saw circus as the appropriate metaphor for the political mainstream, she is absolutely right.  If the “daughter” believes that “circus” refers to that other politics, she is going to learn and probably write her own political script. 

She might encounter Charlie Chaplin, the grandmaster of laughs, who was named for “un-American activities” and whose American residency was sought to be terminated.  She might also hear of the singer Paul Robeson, described as the  epitome of 20^th Century Renaissance Man, who was denied a passport and like Chaplin named for “un-American activities”.  She would be appalled by the continued relevance of McCarthysm and the persistence of the Jim Crow ideology.  She might learn of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg.  She might revisit the famous statements by Malcolm X regarding “American Democracy” and “the American Dream”. 

She would learn of Maurice Bishop and the New Jewel Movement and how Uncle Sam robbed that democracy of its luster.  Of Salvador Allende and Chile.  Of Patrice Lumumba and the Congo.  Of other honorable people and brave nations bloodied and pillaged by the United States through guns and deceit.  She would learn of the Uruguay Round of the GATT spawned the World Trade Organization and how poverty and idiocy were globalized. 

She would also, I am willing to wager, discover the Third World that exists within the borders of the United States.  She would realize that this “country” is a resource plunderer and a market-seizer outside this country.  She would learn about the political economy of war.  Hopefully, she would feel the warmth of the fraternal embrace of other peoples in other parts of the world, who too are scripting their lives in the alternative circuses that spell the future of hope. 

In this process of recovering education from the grasp of clowns, she would be able to distinguish the true, educative clowns from the imitators that are legion in this polity.  She would realize that saying “no” is not necessarily a negation, but an affirmation of the will to be different, to resist the invasion of the mind by everything-will-be-alright type of propaganda. 

She will have my salutation.  She will have my embrace. 

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Territories of the displaced political

[The eleventh in a series of articles collected under the title 'Love Notes to Democracy', written while in the USA as a member of a team of international monitors overseeing the US Presidential Election 2004]

This is the age of globalization.  This is an age celebrated in terms of the imminent setting up of the Global Village and indeed where people are already talking of something called the Global Family.  This is the age of the Information Superhighway.  An age of freedom flowers bursting into flames in the most desolate landscapes, an age where the unmistakable word of the creator downs the unbeliever into submission by the very power of its truth.  This is an age of the fulfillment of Orwellian Prophesy.  Pigs fly.

For this is also the age of mass migration, from villages to cities, from forced unemployment to conditions of slavery and urban squalor, the global south to the global north, from community to gated community, from contentment to conditions of misery, from war zones into refugee camps, from the picket line into jail, from a conscious objector to a conscious subjectivity, from the expression of outrage into the shell of disbelief.  Pigs fly. 

The globalization of markets and the irrelevancy of national boundaries for the flow of capital, exploitation of labor, extraction of resources and violence to fragile ecosystems, has been accompanied, it seems to me, forgive me if I am wrong, the globalization of idiocy and of poverty, the replacement/misplacement of Territorial Nationalism by Diasporic Nationalism, the mushrooming of Promised Lands and virtual communities, and the emergence of the “refugee” as the largest collective category on earth. 

This, therefore, is a refugee story, and given realities, it can be argued that it is the story of our time worth relating.  I am not a storyteller, and therefore I hope my arrogance in attempting to write this introductory note to what ought to be the Magnum Opus describing our time, would be forgiven. 

Fidel Castro understands refugees and the politics of refugee-making.  For decades now successive administrations in the USA have berated Castro for being a tyrant and for denying to the people of Cuba the “freedoms” they ought to enjoy, never mind the fact that people in the United States do not enjoy free education and free healthcare.  Successive governments have urged and/or tried to coerce Castro to allow the people to go, to look for and discover the magic of freedom, justice and democracy in the United States.  Castro did the unthinkable.  He actually “let his people go”!  And the US quickly shut its borders. 

This is the fundamental problem of the monstrosity that is a monster wanting to bring down a monster.  When the monstrosity acquiesces, the winning monster can’t take it.  In refugee terms, the refuge-seeker never finds refuge for he/she is never liberated from the burdens of nostalgia.  Even the most ardent Cuban American celebrator of US-style democratic freedoms, says he/she wants Castro “taken out”, so he/she can go home, although in his/her heart of hearts that is an option if made available would be flatly refused!  More crucially, the Promised Land into which refugees pour their lives and their dreams seldom keeps the promise.  Put simply, there has been too much colonization and re-colonization for anyone to reasonably expect to recover or build “home”. 

Sure, the world has known millions of “boat people”.  The United States of America itself, for example, was made into what it is today, through violence and constitutional enactment, by “boat people”.   Nevertheless, for all the millions who have abandoned their traditional homelands and replaced these with nostalgia, there are millions more who do live on their traditional homelands, without rights, without acknowledgment of history, without franchise and very often under conditions of slavery, colonized out of their minds. 

The problem with the United States of America, is that it refuses to accept that it is peopled by refugees.  Worse, their descendents who for want of anything better to call “home”, while believing rightly or wrongly that these “united” states make up their traditional homelands, are unwilling to accept that they are in fact refugees on their own land, helpless recipients of ideological bombardment, disenfranchised and conditioned to fight wars on people they do not know for reasons they are never made to understand. 

Anyone whose mind is colonized, is not an agent, but by definition a subjectivity.  There is no voter in this country that can state with absolute certainty that his/her vote counted and/or was counted.  Vast sections of people, especially the minorities have little or no say in the decisions made on their behalf and supposedly for their own good.  This is why people, in the aftermath of the November 2 “result” are expressing a need to “go to another country” and are talking about “seceding from the union”. 

Decolonization is not an easy project.  Just as one cannot obtain decolonization by migration, one cannot decolonize the mind without breaking down the colonized regions of the thinking faculty.  One can perhaps live out one’s life in the refugee camp called Hope in a land that one believes would someday be named the Promised Land, but one cannot employ the faculty of nostalgia to recover what is traditional in the homeland of the mind. 

There is a refugee in the mind of everyone who has been in many ways structurally disenfranchised.  This refugee can be clothed and fed thanks to the largess of a social and political environment that is enveloped in make-believe, but he/she cannot recover his/her hills and valleys, rivers and oceans, breezes and soils, nor the loot that have been in many ways plundered from his/her traditional homeland, unless he/she decides to do so. 

Don’t let them get your voice, baby, don’t let them get your heart, for voice and heard congeal into melodies and these are never totally inaccessible.  Where people resolve to sing, they turn themselves into a massive orchestra, and in the vast and mysterious communality, results in a harmony that has the power to obliterate colonization and refugee camps. I firmly believe.

 

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“Nothing” really matters

[The tenth in a series of articles collected under the title 'Love Notes to Democracy', written while in the USA as a member of a team of international monitors overseeing the US Presidential Election 2004]

“Queen” refers not just to Elizabeth.  “Queen” for me is the band that gave us Bohemian Rhapsody, and I remembered “her” because of a particular line in that song, “nothing really matters, nothing really does” thrown in among a confession of sorts dedicated, we are made to understand, by the murderer to his mother.  I am just referring to the overt, literary meaning of the lyrics and if there is any hidden meaning, it escapes me.  I plead innocence on account of cultural difference. 

What reminded me of this particular line was a Seinfeld episode where Jerry and George attempt to sell a sitcom to a major television network about “nothing”.  The proposed sitcom would mirror their “real” television lives, which play out, day in and day out, the various elements that make up “nothing”.  This nothing-of-substance seems to be an accurate mirror of urban life in the USA.  Seinfeld, after all, enjoyed one of the most successful runs in television history.  “Nothing” had mattered, after all. Nothing matters, really! 

From the founding fathers to someone who believes he is a kind of founding god father, from Lincoln to Bush, the United States has proved that mediocrity can only be subdued, and then not forever, for it somehow finds its way to the top.  The less you have of substance, the more you have to show!  This is why there is a thing called “show business”.  Yes, marketing nothing and making a sale is what is called business or more accurately business-as-usual.  Let me elaborate.

You go to war on account of non-existent “weapons of mass destruction” and your friends make a killing (!) after securing contracts to re-construct the country you’ve just destroyed.  You fight in the name of god (whose existence is disputed) and you end up controlling some of the richest oil fields in the world.  You fight in the name of that silly word “democracy”, which has been robbed of any useful and/or applicable meaning, in order to establish and/or protect the worst tyrannies. 

The New Yorker, in its “The Talk of the Town” section of September 27, 2004 has a hilarious story, which I offer below in condensed form.

“Earlier this year, the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, hired a team of independent experts to go to Iraq and evaluate the agency’s programs there.   The experts returned with a pretty pessimistic prognosis.  Prior to publication, USAID kept sending back parts of the report for revision, draft after draft, essentially weeding out all criticism and ensuring a decently whitewashed document.” 

Yes, the world was given quite an optimistic picture that would surely have made those on the ground in that many times tortured land puke many times over.  Anyway, how is that for transforming nothing into everything?  Should we laugh?  Perhaps.  Except that this is not news.  This is the modus operandi of despotic regimes intent on preserving ideological control over populations.  What is funny is that the USA does not need to pretend to be the champion of democracy and justice anymore.  For one thing, everyone knows it is not.  Secondly, the USA has the guns and the will to know what to do to anyone who wants to say it as it is.  It is not that nothing really matters, but nothing can really be made to matter!

Let us take the case of democracy or lack thereof in the USA.  In your democracy, good people of the USA, for example, there are no people there are only numbers.  They vote, but they don’t get counted.  You have a free media whose collective brain is too crippled to think and express freely.  You have relatively easy access to the information superhighway, but you are conditioned to deny access to the bad news.  You have the watchdogs of democracy acting like puppy dogs, content in playing the old records that re-produce your master’s voice. 

One could argue, philosophically, that nothing actually means everything.  I’ve known people, for example, who have renounced everything and by this very fact are richer than most.  The converse is also true.  The United States generously offers foreign aid to countries that have been structurally impoverished as though it wants nothing in return, but in fact extracts ten times what it gives.  Nothing is as ridiculously simple as obtaining something close to everything after investing nothing, if you have the capacity to enforce certain types of contracts on corrupt or otherwise flawed governments. 

I believe that between nothing and everything, there must lie something.  So let me try to enumerate the “some things” that I have seen and which give me hope that this uneven and indeed immoral commerce of nothing for everything, this show-business of fraud, can be transformed into something more socially palatable than delusion. 

The United States of America, I firmly believe, is the home of the same proportion of idiots, bigots, crooks, swindlers, murderers and other vermin, as one would find in any other country.  The United States of American, by the same token, I firmly believe, is the home of decent, honorable, good-hearted, giving, human beings capable of community and embrace.  I have seen such men, women and children, felt their warmth, been caressed and comforted by the life-giving waters that flow abundantly from their cultured sensibilities.  I have seen them fight the honorable fight, seen them devastated by defeat, and have seen them reconfigure their lives and their resolve.   

This largely unacknowledged community of people is alive and full of liberating energy and love.  You will find them keeping life alive in the teeming metropolis as well as in the heartland of “red” America.  They may wear the Republican or the Democratic badge or may not wear one at all, but they all carry in their persona and their lives, the unmistakable insignia that seeks to build a better, more inclusive system of governance.  They may pray in different churches or not pray at all, but they will not prey on innocence and ignorance.  They have “something”, these people do.  And it matters and hopefully will matter much more the nothing-everything dichotomized world of usurpers of popular will and re-definers of un-won or misbegotten “mandates”.

They might laugh at or laugh with Jerry Seinfeld, but will not be moved to emulate the brain-effacing sitcoms that bombard their living rooms with nothing on a daily basis. They are capable of making “nothing” matter less than it does now and of reducing “everything” to its real, believable proportions.    

How and when does this something come to matter?  Who can tell?  All I know is that it is reasonable enough to believe that when certain things come together, by design or by natural law, the vast emptiness that is nothing has to concede ground.  Faiz Ahmed Faiz, the great Urdu poet comforted himself in his multiple incarcerations in these lines in which I constantly find inspiration and which therefore I frequently share with fellow-travelers:

“Your feet bleed, Faiz,

but something must surely bloom

as you water the desert

simply by walking through it”.

I do not have to urge this other, more hopeful and infinitely more beautiful “America of the Something” to walk.  It already does and I am glad. 

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“Chortle Now”: the hidden transcripts of “democracy”

[The ninth in a series of articles titled 'Love notes to democracy' written while in the USA as a member of a team of international monitors overseeing the 2004 US Presidential Election]

About a week after the US presidential “election” I watched a fascinating program on “60 Minutes” about fake degrees.  The report covered a fake degree-awarding institute that called itself Hamilton University.  Essentially a web-based racket, this intriguing “university” has been in the business of selling certification for many years. 

I was not surprised.  In a world where pollution and polluting rights are bought and sold, a world whose operative ethic is deceit, why shouldn’t people have the freedom to purchase whatever it takes to deceive?  What grabbed my attention was one of the scripts used by Hamilton’s telemarketers to sell their deceit-product to customers on the lookout for deceit-facilitating certification. 

This is how it went, roughly: “Well, you know about the great liberal arts schools and what kinds of people they produce, don’t we (chortle now)…” Yes, they scripted in the chortle cues as well, as would any telemarketing scriptwriter I suppose.  I couldn’t stop chortling, though.  This was just after the “election” and I was full of democratic sentiment and full of sympathy for those who believe that the USA has a functioning democracy. 

If chortles are scripted into duping mechanisms, what of the subtexts of such scripts and what of the chortles therein, I wondered.  These people must laugh to themselves, all the way to the bank or to the White House for that matter.  So I thought I would try my hand at unearthing the subtexts (chortles included) scripted by, for and with telemarketers of the Hamilton Universities of Democracy. 

“Ok, so we screwed up in Florida, so we just got smarter.  We brought in machines so that we can minimize human error (Chortle now!) and proceeded to eliminate the eminently human agency of voting by human intervention subsequent to the closing of the polls.  We have the media, the watchdogs of democracy (Chortle now!) behind us, ever-willing to sacrifice the will of the people so that we don’t lose face internationally, and we shall count on them to deliver the free-and-fair.  Thanks Fox! 

“Sure, we played our little games of subversion by posting misinformation regarding polling stations, by moving them without informing people, threatening the poor that they were liable to be arrested for non-payment of electricity and other bills, and other rib-tickling things (Chortle now!).  These were of course eyewash.  Those poor democracy-worshipping suckers got an army of lawyers and poll watchers, some from as far away as Sri Lanka, to observe and report malpractice throughout the voting, but they couldn’t do a thing about those machines now, could they (Loud guffaws now!)? 

“Jokes aside, let us talk about “democracy” in general now.  Democracy is government by some people, with some people for some people, fuck the majority (Chortle now!).  One man, one vote?  No.  One person, one vote (Chortle now!)!  Well, really (wiping tears of mirth), people have nothing to do with it.  To tell the truth, this is the democracy of the rich, most of whom are white, for the rich and by the rich, and people still believe that Woodrow Wilson really believed or practiced what he said.  Those poor bastards (Chortle now!)!  I mean, c’mon, he promised the poor voter he won’t take the country to war and committed his troops within six months of assuming office whereas the Bolsheviks promised they would pull out of the war and kept their word. 

“Let us, despite our poor knowledge of geography, go more global for a change.  Haven’t those who still believe this is a democracy, heard of our track record internationally?  Surely they know how we have supported the worst tyrants and despots throughout the world?  Was not Ferdinand Marcos our friend?  Was not Samoza? Was not Batista? Didn’t we look the other way when Suharto slaughtered half a million people in Indonesia?  Did we not fund and arm people who were trying to overthrow democratic regimes the world over?  Did we not establish a School of the Americas to help our friends mete out punishment to those who didn’t toe our line?  Didn’t we support the white racists in South Africa? Is not our greatest ally, Britain, a monarchy? Don’t they know that we fought a war to re-install a monarchy in Kuwait (Chortle now!)?  Did we not put the finishing touches to a land that we had helped reduce to rubble by bombing the living daylights out of a long suffering people, so that we could hand it back to the war lords?  Would these people know that we are talking of Afghanistan, for god’s sake (Chortle now!)?

“And what of Iraq?  We went there to re-claim for the Iraqi people their country(Chortle now!), save them from our former friend Saddam, and establish democracy.  We sent them democracy encapsulated in bullets (Chortle now!), we made their desert bloom into a million flowers called participatory decision making, by raining bombs on them. 

“The talk of the town is that the constitution is to be amended to allow Arnold Schwarzenegger to run for president.  Why not?  He is certifiably white, isn’t he?  And rich.  And a Republican.  In short, he is eminently qualified to become president.  We wouldn’t do it for someone like Amadou Diallo, the West African immigrant who was shot 44 times by NYPD heroes a few years ago, would we (Chortle now!)? 

“Demographers say that in 50 years the number of white people would drop to below 50% of the population.  The Founding Fathers must have known this.  This is why they come up with the brilliant idea of electoral colleges.  First of all it eliminates the danger of the popular vote throwing up, god forbid, a president who is not a blue-blooded Caucasian.  Also, in conjunction with the constitutional sanctioning of gerrymandering, we can keep these dumb asses off the white house for a long, long time.  Hopefully by that time we would have a de-facto monarchy, with, hypothetically, George Bush VII sitting on the throne (Chortle now!) and the problem of “majority” would not even arise.” 

What of the real scripts now, and who will read them and when?  I don’t know.  Mis-education is as much a crime of the mis-educated as it is of the mis-educating.  Self-censorship is as grievous a fault as is censorship.  So, I shall leave the script-readers and script-believers to weed out misinformation and fashion for themselves a democracy that works for them, but I will by way of fraternal embrace, offer the following anecdote.

In the early nineties, a Cuban economist, Carlos Tablada toured the USA, promoting a book called “Man and Socialism in Cuba”.  He went from university to university, talking about the book and about Cuba”.  A friend of mine had gone for one of these talks and he told me that Tablada had been heckled by some Cuban immigrants and self-righteous democracy-know-alls.  They had said that Cuba was not a democracy, that Castro was a tyrant and a despot.  Tablada had listened to all of this and responded in the following way.  

“You might not know that every adult in Cuba has military training and are permitted to carry arms, all provided by the state.  Fidel Castro frequently visits factories and universities, unarmed and without bodyguards.  Can you name me one leader in the so-called free world where democracy is supposed to be thriving, who does this or would be prepared to do it? Of course Cuba is a democracy!

It is ok.  You can chortle now.  For real.  Go write your own scripts.  Go include your own chortles.  I wish you strength as I do my own and fraternal scriptwriting, chortling in the process of course.   

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A second 88-89 unaffordable!

There are two moments in recent history that stand out, both for what they meant to the general population and for what followed: 1977 and 2009.  In 1977, the UNP was swept to power after a 7 year hiatus and with a commanding majority.  Things would be better, the people hoped, after having lost patience with Sirimavo Bandaranaike’s import-substituting, inward-looking, live-within-means efforts which may have worked but in the end turned out to be half-baked.  The year 2009 was as or more euphoric, with the 30 year struggle against terrorism formally brought to a close.  Today we are looking at 2012 and since this is the last Sunday of the year 2011, it might help to recount.

 

What began as a high in 1977 hit a low in 1989.  That year didn’t fall from the sky.  It began with a constitution horribly skewed against the citizen and patently anti-democratic. It came after 1980 (attack on the organized working class), after 1982 (body-blows on the opposition), after 1983 (attacks on innocent Tamils led by ruling party goons sanctioned by a look-aside government), 1984 (killing of two university students) and after things rolled, war-like, to 1987.

 

We came to 1989 through a development drive that made things but broke people and an Indian bailout of the LTTE coupled with an illegal piece of legislation (13th Amendment) which was a veritable pick-up of a JVP in decline.   That’s how we got the 1989 of proxy-arrests, abductions, disappearances illegal detention, vigilante groups, political assassinations, torture and murder of some 60,000 youth, mostly unarmed and almost all in non-combat contexts.  

 

It is two and a half years since the ‘2009 High’.  If that was a beginning, then now we are in an ‘unfolding’.  Regardless of how pernicious the intentions were of the movers, shakers and those who piggy-backed, it is a fact that workers were attacked.  The opposition was not dismantled, but has been intent on self-destruction.  There was less threat-and-bash than lure-and-purchase.   There are no assaults on Tamils. In fact the government has at great cost not only rescued some 300,000 civilians held hostage by the LTTE, but cared for them as no displaced persons have been anywhere in the world in recent times.  The rub is that instead of thanks communal-minded Tamil politicians continue to prod, poke and blow on the dying embers of inter-ethnic tensions.  

 

Like in the eighties there is widely publicized ‘development’, a misplaced fascination with the largely outdated model of growth-led-development and many questions about who really benefits.  The professionals are up in arms and so too are the academics.  The middle-class is restless about the law and order situation, a palpable disinterest in correcting institutional flaws, the tendency for all disputes to be resolved not by relevant authorities but by the goodwill of the executive and clearly evident wastage for pomp and pageantry.  These are opinion-makers, it must be noted.  The masses are certainly not readying to do battle with government or state, but history has shown that spoilers don’t require big numbers.

 

Today’s spoilers, like yesterday’s ones and like all successful spoilers will wear a righteous garb that effectively covers their pernicious designs.  There are disturbing whispers about the breakaway faction of the JVP hooking up with the LTTE rump.   We know also that there are enough weapons floating courtesy of the country’s battle with terrorism.   We know also that certain powerful players in the international arena with declining stock in the moral market and depleted sway in the global economy are more than flexing considerable military muscle to secure resources, markets and territories of strategic importance. We know ‘Libya’ happened and cannot rule out a repeat.  We know now that excuses can be manufactured or else inflated.  

 

We know that the JVP can be violent and whip up unrest. We know that unruly, emotional youth can be spurred to disrupt the universities, get them closed and thereby develop frustrations that can later be preyed on.  Democracy has not worked for the JVP.  Terrorism has not either, but that has never stopped the arrogant and myopic, anywhere in the world, and anyway even these terms are too good to describe the present crop of ‘radicals’ that the JVP has spawned.  They are unlikely to win, but their adventures can cost the nation.  

 

All this is unfolding upon a canvass called the 1978 Constitution, the same piece of cloth on which much blood was splattered and not only because the main protagonists could legitimately be called megalomaniacs.  

Colombo looks pretty.  There are lotuses blooming on the surface of the water bodies of political ferment. Regimes can never afford to be complacent and it is unlikely that the warning signs have not been read. What is important is not just to meet threat head-on but to recognize and correct what the threat feeds on: flaws of omission and commission.  

 

It is hard to think of anyone who reads the political equation as astutely as does President Mahinda Rajapaksa.  He can think and he can act, of this there can be no doubt.  The stress, one hopes, is on ‘think’ at this point, for although we are not close to a present-day version of 1989, we cannot rule it out altogether either.  

 

History is a teacher but only for those who have the will and courage to learn, citizens and politicians included.

 

['The Nation' Editorial, December 25, 2011] 

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