With you Kapuge, "goodbye" is a ridiculous word

A few days ago I saw a poster announcing a concert.  The title was familiar: 'Piya satahan'.  It was the title of one of Gunadasa Kapuge's songs.  Indeed it was the title song of that album.  It meant 'Footprints'. 'Piya' of course refers to 'father'.  A slight word twist and appropriate too, for it was a son's tribute to a father.  Gunadasa Kapuge died, tragically, in April 2003.  The poster brought back memories.  I remember that day very well.  I wrote about it back then.  This is what I wrote.

Between Bambalapitiya and Colpetty, there is only enough time to listen to one song on the radio. I was on my way to a wedding in a car driven by a man in a hurry. The song was familiar, it spoke of a long ago that time could not erase, as is the way with songs, flavours and fragrances that have touched or have arrived at moments that linger beyond character and event. "Duka haadu dena raye" (translatable as "the night when sorrow showered kisses") speaks of love, loss, and how these things descend and remain on the surroundings, how the condition of sorrow, of departure and separation is magnified as it is reflected by the environment that receives the troubled gaze. I sang with the singer and thought to myself, "someday, this man will die and I will not have the words to express my sorrow". This happened on Thursday afternoon. A few hours later, my wife said, "Aney, Gunadasa Kapuge merunane!" I had not heard that he had met with an accident the previous day. There was shock. And silence. I did not have the words then, and I am not sure I can summon the right words to express this emptiness even now.

Gunadasa Kapuge was always "ours". He came to us first as a voice from the Raja Rata Sevaya. His voice travelled beyond the Raja Rata and most important, the Raja Rata never left his voice. Kapuge was "ours", is "ours" still, because he sang of us, with us and for us. His voice mirrored the rhythms and rhymes that make up our lives and moreover it took us to places where we could see ourselves and therefore understand where we should go. When he came out with his concert "Kampana" we knew that this man was not only singing of the way in which our world trembled and shattered, but was also healing our senses with a balm that can only be produced by someone who was acutely aware of what had happened and had suffered the same losses, same sorrows. His example, as much or more than his art, made us strong.

"Sitha niva pahan kala" was the song of the generation that had to live through the bheeshanaya, for it spoke of sacrifice, humility, love, hope and forgiveness. It is also the song of everyone who is shaken by injustice and everyone within whom integrity has taken up residence.

He did not wish his song to please the powerful and the rich, but wanted it to soothe the hearts of the victims. He sang therefore of injustice. "Leli thalana doni", "ahasa usata" and a countless number of other songs taught political economy more gently and infinitely more clearly than any text of Karl Marx. For me, at least.

And it was not just the politics that made him ours. He chose to speak of the full range of human feeling. His love was not reserved for the politically dispossessed, the politically inclined. His sensitivity travelled over the more earthy, more real troubles of the individual. "Ninda nethi raye" like "dam patin la sanda besa yanawa" (with the late Malini Bulathsinghala) sang the sadness of all departures. "Sudu nenda" captured every nuance of discomfort that attends a scene where the nephew is denied the hand of his cousin. "Sumano" weeps the tears of a man who loses his woman forever. "Ula leno" is a lament that pierces the heart as hauntingly as does the cry of the devil bird. "Unmada sithuwam" most eloquently describes the solitude that a broken heart has to suffer.

Then again, it was not all heartache and lament. "Piya satahan" was about the enduring quality of hope associated with love and the charm of remembered yesterdays. "Oba gena mathakaya mada pavanai" affirms love, partnership and the togetherness of marriage and how these someone make up the salve that makes it easier to suffer life’s many blows.

He was soft, this man. He did not want us to be like mountains, trying to reach higher than each other, but to be like a cool spring, distributing life; not to be a nightmare that troubles the child at night, but a dream that awakens the people from their slumber. He taught us the worth of treating things with equanimity, he taught us love, and he taught us how to overcome the greatest obstacles and more than all this, the worth of community. Kapuge was a benevolent stream that slowly but surely made its way into the desert and forced it to bloom. For you, friend, there is an eternal flower in my heart. If it has colour, it is because your life, your song, your example, graced it with the gentlest touch. There can be no goodbyes spoken. With you, for you, there is only an embrace. You made "you and I" meaningless. And that is not a contradiction.

For now, and for always, you are us. You are ours. And for this reasons, I choose to meditate on the flower you watered with your being. And I can smile. For you gave meaning to the word "tomorrow". Things cannot remain empty, for he reminded us that life can be full. As long as we want it that way.

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‘Dammika’ was hardly an omission

[Written a few days after the piece on the 'Janatha Mithuro', also posted in my blog]

A few days ago I wrote about a ‘get-together’.  It was a sending-off party to a friend who was going overseas and also a celebration of friendships that had lasted twenty years and survived political disagreements, loyalty-shifts and the trajectories that personal lives take, sometimes dragging the relevant persons far away from the world of power and intrigue, betrayal and sacrifice, rhetoric and white lie.  I gave that article the title ‘A Janatha Mithuro moment’ and referred in passing to an organization by that name which those who gathered that night had helped form or were part of. 

I got an email from a friend from my university days, who, after reading the article made the following observation: ‘Malinda, you’ve forgotten one great name of the founder of Janatha Mithuro: Dammika Amarakoon.’ 

I replied that he was not at the little party we had that night.  No deserves to have his/her life written in a line where name and life are embedded in the midst of so many other names and lives that they become invisible.  I was not writing biography and am not doing so now; just wanted to say that Dammika, most than any of those who gathered that night, was and is still my closest political associate. 

Political associates remain good friends if the relevant politics coincide or the trajectories of political transformation run parallel to one another.  It is friendships that remain strong regardless of the political differences that are precious (at least when it comes to politically-associated friendships).

Dammika is unforgettable for many reasons.  He was one year junior to me at Dumbara Campus, University of Peradeniya.  He had excelled at badminton while at Dharmaraja College and was in the National Junior Pool, I believe.  He was a sportsman and a sports fan.  Followed all sports. Played most of them.  I still remember going for a Kandy-Police rugger match at Nittawela with Dhammika.  Kandy were leading right up to the final minute.  Two goals, on in the last minute and one in injury time, saw the cops trip the hosts and left the Kandy supporters stunned.  This was in the early nineties.  We still talk about that match.  Dammika recalls: ‘the spectators hung around as though there had to be more minutes left to play’. 

It was, admittedly, the politics that generated most conversations between us.  We were Marxists then, he and I, and of the ‘Old Left’ tradition.  We were anti-JVP, therefore.  And yet, we could identify with the student movement and its objections to the UNP regime of the time.  We were both horrified by the fascism of both UNP and JVP and would both object later to the complicity of the Old Left in the bloodbath that took 60,000 lives in just two years.  Dammika complained that the LSSP never opened the party office in Kandy for him to tender his resignation. 

We were both inspired by the writings of Gunadasa Amarasekera and Nalin De Silva of ‘Jathika Chinthanaya’ fame and they helped rescue us from the determinism, reductionism and overall inadequacy of Marxism.  It was natural, then, for us to gravitate to the Janatha Mithuro brand of green socialism and the nationalisms that just could not suffer the pandering to Eelamism by way of myth-mongering of the Old Left and their new avatar The NGO Lobby (well, key sections of it anyway) and their thinly veiled anti-Buddhist politics. 

Dammika stood up to the JVP in the early nineties. Single-handedly.  He worked tirelessly.  He started a magazine called ‘Sanvaada’ (‘Debate’) and created the ground conditions for political debate to take place and eventually for the JVP monopoly of student politics to be seriously challenged throughout the nineties.  His contributions to various political magazines constitute to my mind the most articulate, theoretically profound, philosophically deep and intellectually honest contributions in the Sinhala language during the past two decades.  If he were to collect and publish his essays they would put to shame most academics in his field of specialization, political science.  His essay on friendship, published in the ‘London’ I think, is a classic, a wonderful exposition where philosophy, politics and literature blend in ways that make it impossible to extricate any of these threads from the tapestry.

He was funny.  I asked him, a few years ago, when he was visiting Sri Lanka (he lives in the USA, where he was once an award-winning cook and now teaches in a university) what he thought of marriage: ‘Marriage, my friend, is a sinful institution!’.  He claimed, at the age of 42, that he had never been in love, but a year ago, he wrote to me claiming, ‘Machan…Dammika here…I think I am in love.’  The subject line of the email read ‘Touched for the very first time at the age of 43!’ Yes, he loves music. Old music.  And films too. He gives me ‘must watch’ lists every now and then. 

He could marry her for her voice alone, he said.  He was becoming dysfunctional, he confessed, reporting that he had spent a weekend in bed doing nothing.  He asked if this is what they call ‘love’.  He believed it was a karmic thunderbolt hitting him for laughing at those who claimed to be madly in love.: ‘I do not care if I have to wait for another 10 years; if that day comes I want to marry her in the traditional Sri Lankan way, covering her with jewelry from head to toe. And you will be my best man.’  I’ve seen him weep over other things, man’s inhumanity, social injustice, poverties and tragedies that are so preventable that they challenge us to examine the worth of our existences.  He had no tears for women.  Or so I had thought!

It is more than a quarter of a century since I met Dammika Amarakoon.  Whenever he’s here we meet up. He meets all his friends, organizes cricket matches and picnics.  And we talk. For hours.  About all kinds of things.  And he knew how to laugh too.

A few days ago he sent me an email with the following on the subject line: ‘inspected enough’.  There was a request: ‘Machan, can you please take me off your ‘morning inspection’; your name is all over my account…it is like a curse.’  I obliged.  He likes to insult me. He praises me too.  He once said he’s writing a sequel to Plato’s ‘The Republic’ and that he will dedicate it to me because, in his words, ‘you will be forced to read it and you more than anyone I know deserve it’. 

He’s the purest political associate I’ve known.  I felt stronger with him by my side. Felt privileged to stand with him.  We were not many then.  He is the most adorable of friends.  Someone to die for, without hesitation. 

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A ‘Janatha Mithuro’ moment

[First published in the Daily News, November 10, 2010, this bit of 'small history' and the 'small' things that 'small' people did shows, hopefully, that odds can be evened out]

There was a time I was associated with an organization called the National Movement Against Terrorism (NMAT).  It was an agitational front that grew out of or was a new avatar of a group that called itself ‘Janatha Mithuro’, formed in the early nineties and led principally by Patali Champika Ranawaka and Ven. Atureliye Rathana Thero.  The members were mostly young graduates and undergraduates who took issue with the Premadasa Government as well as the fascist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna. 

There were others too, like M.D. Daniel, a long standing Maoist and a campaigner for the rights of farmers and his twin-like comrade-at-arms, Sunny who was involved in an attack on the US Embassy in 1971, along with G.I.D. Dharmasekera (later ‘Anagarika’) or so the legend goes.  The ‘Janatha Mithuro’ (JM) were interested in green socialism and advocated a different paradigm of development which factored in different methods of assigning value to things. 

The JM naturally attracted the ire of the fascist JVP and the nineties saw a fight for control of the universities between the two groups.  The JVP got the IUSF but lost control of Colombo University, Moratuwa and the Science Faculty of Kelaniya Campus, not necessarily to the JM but to anti-JVP groups in which the JM had a big say.  The JM played a key role in the all-important Southern Provincial Council Election in 1993 which marked the beginning of the end of 17 years of UNP rule and helped propel Chandrika Kumaratunga to power.  The on-the-ground aspect of that campaign was dominated by the JM.

I still remember a meeting that took place in Rattanapitiya at my schoolmate Bandula Chandrasekera’s house just after the People’s Alliance won the 1994 Election.  Champika said simply, ‘A lot of people who walked with us will find this win enough of a consolation to give them a sense of achievement; we must expect a drop in support.’  It was downhill from that point onwards. 

The NMAT championed a cause that had few takers.  They echoed the sentiments that Dr. Nalin De Silva had articulated for almost a decade: the LTTE can and must be defeated militarily.  The NMAT had a role to play in whipping up support for this ideological position.  Naturally, they were labeled ‘war-mongers’, ‘racists’ and other such names by those who wanted to legitimate the LTTE and break up the country.  Those who after the defeat of the LTTE are secretly heaving sighs of relief will not, significantly, whisper a word of thanks to the likes of Dr. Nalin De Silva or Champika Ranawaka, one notes. 

The NMAT got ‘derailed’, I believe, when its leaders got into electoral politics, first with the Sihala Urumaya and later the Jathika Hela Urumaya.  The NMAT was transformed into a house for the shock-troops of those political entities. After the unprecedented success of the JHU in 2004, the NMAT was left orphaned and also homeless. 

It was at this point that the NMAT was taken over by a few individuals who insisted that the organization will (in the words of its principal ideologue, Anuruddha Pradeep) be like a Petrol Shed (one-item shop: countering of terrorism) and not a supermarket (taking on issues of identity, religion, injustice etc).  The NMAT was effective because it knew its limitations.  All that needed to be done was to put up a well-designed poster in Colombo and the JVP (believing that the NMAT was an arm of its key enemies, the JHU and Champika Ranawaka) would play with the same slogan and put up a poster all over the country, obliterating the NMAT signature. The NMAT wanted message taken and got the JVP to do it.  The NMAT also put out many publications which were later used to counter LTTE propaganda abroad.  Then there were also the occasional demonstrations.  Small crowd, yes, but compensated by cohesion, focus and dressing.  Thus was created the conditions for a paradigm shift in terms of how to deal with the LTTE.

By the end of 2008, the NMAT went out of circulation, so to say. Someone asked me what had happened and I remember responding: ‘there was a leadership change’.  ‘Who?’ was the follow-up query. ‘Gota’ was the answer. The work was done. 

Last night (November 20, 2010), there was a gathering (at short notice) of the first set of ‘Janatha Mithuras’ to bid farewell to Karunaratne Paranavithana, newly appointed Consul General to Toronto.  At the time the first discussions pertaining to forming a political party were held (sometime in 1990), Parane was a first year student at Colombo University.  It was a small gathering but a lively one. Talk of old times, nostalgia, old jokes, heated debate about current realities made food unnecessary (although we did knock back some rice).  Someone asked about NMAT and someone answered, ‘It was dissolved at the Nugegoda Bo Tree’. I can’t remember if the date of dissolving was mentioned. 

Someone else chipped in ‘Janatha Mithuro was dissolved at the Fort Railway Station; that’s what the JVP said at the time’. We laughed.  I quipped, ‘The JVP was dissolved in Parliament’. More laughter. 

Karunaratne Paranavithana, Charitha Herath, Anura Weerasekera, Lakshitha Jayawardena, Bandula Chandrasekera, Priyantha Pathirana and Anuruddha Pradeep were each in their own way effective political activists, excellent orators, intellectuals in their own right and they all contributed to making this country what it is today.  None of us are perfect; all of us are flawed and there are probably thousands who believe we set the clock back even as millions identify with and cheer the outcomes we all helped produce by doing our little bit and a lot more than that too at time. 

I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to associate these people and look forward to such another gathering years from now when we are younger than we are now, less wise and more free to think and love. Just to compare notes, make a joke and laugh until our lungs give out. 

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Neutral I am not and I don’t think you are either!

 

[This was first published in the Daily News of May 5, 2010.  It refers to issues that were talked of around that time, but I am posting it here because I am amused when people make charges about bias without having the courtesy of stating their biases or even acknowledging that neutrality is purely and simply, balderdash!]

This is old. Really, really old. And we all know that some old things are so old that people think they have never been talked about, never thought about.  They are so old that some people even think they are fresh and brand new.  That’s how old the idea of ‘neutrality’ is. 

I write about neutrality today because it is old and it is new and some people (like this utterly confused and despondent dude who thinks he is a renaissance man writing to a Sunday newspaper) don’t seem to have a clue about the ‘realities’ pertaining to ‘neutrality’, especially the fact that the notion is patently untenable.  

My late mother believed in being partisan. She was partial to the family, to the school she attended, the University of Peradeniya, Sangamitta Hall, the schools she taught at, her students and friends.  For her, such things came first. She also expected her children to be like this. I was not.  I remember one of the last conversations I had with her very vividly. 

She had got into a huge argument with her brother, who was staying in the same house, and was insisting that he leave.  I happened to be in the house at the time. It was around 9.00 pm.  I told her that it is not right to throw someone out of the house at that time, especially not someone who didn’t have anywhere to go to and especially not after she herself had invited him to take up residence.  She replied that she had got my father’s permission for this. I said that was not relevant to the issue at hand. 

She had a dismissive retort: ‘In all your life you have never taken my side’.  It was impossible to argue with her, but I got my last-line in before I left: ‘All my life I have sided with what I thought was right’.  All loyalties came second to this, or at least, I’ve tried my best and to the extent possible to keep ‘loyalty’ out of all right-wrong, good-bad type deliberations.  I attribute this approach to something that the then Vice Principal at Royal College (Christie Gunasekara) told me during my last days as a schoolboy: ‘Do what you think is right whether or not the world appreciates’. 

I am not unaware that my knowledge is like a speck of dust compared with the universe of my ignorance, and I do many a conscious effort to qualify statement and desist from grand, totalizing claims.  I slip, I know, but am not ashamed of this and am open to both criticism and correction. 

I can’t be neutral not because I don’t place a lot of value on loyalty but because ‘truth’ itself is not neutral. It is value laden, heavy with preferences, a necessary product of a person’s experiences, learning, cultural upbringing and religious, and the philosophical and ethical universes he/she tend to inhabit.  One cannot talk about The Truth in most instances, therefore; one talks of the truths one chooses to believe in, defend and promote. 

Perhaps an example would help make things clear.  About a year ago I got a lot of fan mail, praising my writings.  At the time we were in the last phase of the military struggle to eliminate the LTTE.  Sri Lanka was getting a lot of flak internationally, thanks to intense lobbying by pro-LTTE groups abroad.  This was the time when people like David Miliband and Bernard Kouchner were at their vile best.  I was applauded for taking them on.  The applause slowly and naturally subsided after May 18, 2009. 

Then came Sarath Fonseka the Presidential Candidate.  All of a sudden, people who had backed both Mahinda Rajapaksa and Sarath Fonseka, found themselves in a situation where they were forced to pick one over the other, at least as default option.  Then there were those who had vilified both as well as the effort to liberate the country from the clutches of terrorism.  They had to pick Fonseka over Rajapaksa in view of the fact that their preferred party, the UNP was backing the former.  I am thinking of the renaissance loser who had to twist himself quite a bit to salute Fonseka and even fooled himself into believing that it would be a ‘close fight’ (more fantasy than extrapolation based on ground reality, but highly pardonable in someone who’s clearly struggling to come to terms with realities in general). 

All of a sudden I was accused of not being ‘neutral’.  Excuse me!  The charge of being ‘partisan’ was utterly ridiculous coming from people who were not at all neutral.  Neutrality, to them, meant something like this: ‘you are not supposed to back those I dislike and you are supposed to refrain from being critical of my man/woman’.  Interestingly, as I pointed out above, there were no calls for ‘neutrality’ when I sided with the state, government and the security forces in opposition to LTTE-interests.  I was not required to treat Prabhakaran kindly and would have been chided had I overly criticized the military operation (indeed, I was, even when the criticism was mild and qualified).

Some, like the renaissance tripper thinks that anyone who writes to the Daily News is in the pay of the UPFA. Interesting, since the man writes to a newspaper that openly admitted that it was backing Sarath Fonseka and the UNP, and he doesn’t have enough intelligence to turn the argument on himself and admit that he must be in Ranil Wickremesinghe’s pocket.  Also, since I write for several newspapers, this man who obviously reads very little ought to conclude that I am in the pay of all the parties and personalities that have connections with these media institutions. 

Let’s forget the little whiner.  Neutrality is our subject.  I am not interested in neutrality claims because people have choices, they vote, they promote, they criticize unequally and do all this without stating bias.

As for me, I have never been neutral.  I’ve always been partial to certain things.  The truths I believe in. The kinds of endgames that I think are better for my country, my fellow citizens and my children.  The improvement of life chances all around. Equality before the law.  Transparency. Accountability. Love.  Compassion. The cultural soils of this land. 

I recognize also that embedded in the making of choice is the rejection of other options.  I reject federalism because I don’t think it makes any sense, historically, geographically, economically and demographically.  I reject the 13^th Amendment because it was illegal, inefficient and eminently objectionable for the same reasons given above. I believe it should be implemented because it is part of the constitution but argue for its abrogation, legally.  I reject all attempts to colonize and re-colonize this country and in this I resist attempts to destroy Buddhism (from within and without) because I am convinced that to the extent that any religion constitutes a core element of our overall cultural ethos it is Buddhism.  I think ‘modernity’ is a big lie and that western scientific paradigms are highly overrated. 

I side with the poor, the marginal, the underprivileged. I shall not be ‘neutral’ in the face of oppression and exploitation.  I side with the exploited and the oppressed and if I qualify my support it is because I know things are not always black and white; and I will always write and express the shades that make me conclude one way and not another.  No, I was never neutral and doubt if I ever will be.  

Here’s what confuses a lot of people: they think I am a reporter, i.e. someone who is required to dispassionately write fact.  Well, even reporters are not neutral. They can pick and choose fact, add or subtract colour, be selective in writing context and so on. The editor can pick and choose where to place the story, what kind of prominent is given or suppress it in numerous ways. That’s ‘politics’. That too is ‘partisan’. 

I write commentary.  This does not mean that it is all passion and no reason.  There is, I hope, some logic and I welcome objections that challenge the logic with superiority of reason and introduction of facts and factors not considered or suppressed.  Outside of such an approach there is only dismay at not siding with one’s choice. Sad, but not a tragedy, surely? 

For the record, I believe that I have been as critical of all the players I tend to side with than most critics and in ways they have refused to be critical of the parties, positions and personalities they prefer.  Even in this, I have not been persuaded by notions of being ‘neutral’ or ‘balanced’ but fidelity to the things that I prefer, as enumerated above. 

If you want to ‘be neutral’ go ahead and indulge yourself in the illusion.  There are no laws against it.  As for me, I am not neutral. To be quite blunt I think professed neutrality is one of the most insufferable fibs I’ve come across in my life. 

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As the sun sets on the dominant paradigm of development…

The fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Soviet-style systems in Easter Europe for people was seen as a triumph of one political and economic system over another, that of capitalism over communism.  Even today very few people recognize that the two systems are essentially two versions of a single paradigm called ‘modernism’, which flows from a largely Euro-Centric understanding of the world and consequent extrapolations. 

For many decades there were things we were supposed to treat as self-evident truths.  We were allowed to be anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist but were not allowed to question ‘modernity’, which was duly accorded with some kind of ‘intrinsic’ value and marketed as something good that everyone should aspire to obtain.  And there was ‘science’ as in an overarching knowledge system and relevant applications which too were based on fundamentally Euro-Centric philosophies and epistemologies.  We could criticize the West and its imperialistic urges but were required to treat with utmost respect and accord god-given status that thing called ‘science’ as defined by the West. 

When people like Dr. Gunadasa Amarasekera (‘Ganadura Mediyama Dakinemi Arunalu’ – ‘I see the first rays of dawn breaking through the dark night’) and Prof. Nalin De Silva (‘Mage Lokaya’ – ‘My world’) began questioning the modernist premises and especially its Marxian variants, they were vilified as racists, chauvinists and accused of being archaic and guilty of an unwholesome fascination with the past. Even those who recognized that they could not be pooh-poohed away, complimented them in backhanded manner, calling them ‘native intellectuals’ as though there is such a thing as an ‘international intellectual’. 

A lot of what these two individuals were articulating were in fact already quite in vogue in intellectual circles in the Western Hemisphere.  The ‘cardinal error’ committed by Gunadasa and Nalin was that they drew extensively from Buddhist philosophy to critique the dominant paradigms and recognized the fact that much of the critique that was coming from within the West itself was founded on principles that Lord Buddha had articulated more than two millennia before. 

I still remember a comment made by Deepthi Kumara Gunaratne of the now defunct ‘X Kandayama’ which quickly succumbed to in-fighting and thanks to incomplete and erroneous reading of the bibles they preferred slid from scholarly engagement to pornography.  This was outside the Public Library in the early years of this century.  He chided me: ‘You will become just another journalist if you don’t give the reading public the new knowledge of the world’.  I asked him what this new knowledge was.  He said, ‘Derrida, Foucault, Lacan’.  I said, ‘mata e siyalu denaatama wediya budu haamuduruwo aluth’ (to me, Lord Buddha is more ‘new’ than all these people).  That newness was something that I discovered thanks to people like Nalin and Gunadasa and which I was persuaded to explore in greater depth by Champika Ranawaka.

In February 1992 Champika Ranawaka and 15 others were arrested at the Kauduwuwa Temple in Wadduwa by some overzealous police officers.  They took into custody and destroyed the manuscript of a book that Champika had authored based on notes he had been maintaining since 1989, i.e. long before terms such as sustainable development and traditional knowledge systems entered the lexicon of ‘sanvardanaya’ (development) in Sri Lanka.  Champika was held for three weeks.  All he did was write.  Re-write, to be more accurate.  He re-wrote that document, which he titled ‘Sanvaradanaye Thunveni Yamaya’ (translatable as ‘The sunset of development’).  That book, ‘published’ in Roneo print in 1991, was the foundational document of the first ever green political movement in Sri Lanka, the Janatha Mithuro. 

Those who are quick to call Champika (and others) racists, chauvinists, extremists etc., refuse to acknowledge two things. First, that their consistent, principled and at that time largely unpopular and vilified struggle against LTTE propaganda and Eelamist posturing (including its ‘federalist’ versions) played an important role in overturning the ideological dominance of the Eelam Project to which significant sections of the polity had succumbed.  They do not acknowledge that had these ‘racists’ not been around, it is quite possible that we would be living in a post-CFA Sri Lanka which would have (in the very least) the LTTE governing one-third the country and half the coastline and where all of us constantly live under the shadow of terrorism. 

Second, even if there is reason to treat with suspicion and fear the Sinhala Buddhist nationalism that Champika championed, this does not take away from the fact that he is clearly way ahead of his generation in terms of intellect and academic output.  Few can match the volume of his writing. Fewer still would dare challenge him to debate on any of the subjects he has engaged with over the past two decades, including the philosophy of science, quantum physics, paradigms of development, politics pertaining to environment and Buddhist philosophy.  He gave political expression to the theories first articulated by Gunadasa and Nalin.  Even those who disagree with him on certain issues, and I am one of them, must recognize that he is a formidable foe, not least of all because of his indefatigable energy, the fact that he is a voracious reader, and his considerable capacity to synthesize the material he encounters and extrapolate and apply in ways few are able to do.  

My principle critique of Champika has been the fact that he has allowed Sangvardanaye Thunveni Yamaya to gather dust, as it were, in preference to the politics pertaining to overcoming the terrorist threat, even though the latter was a prerogative that no nationalist could put on the back-burner.  This is why I believe that despite certain flaws and shortcomings, some of which is understandable given political realities and limitations of resources, he was the most suitable person to be the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources.  It forced his hand.

That he turned the ministry and its various institutions into profit-making entities that did not have to depend on the Treasury, attests to his considerable abilities.  He also deserves applause for running a clean show and can be justifiably proud of the fact that former COPE chief, Wijedasa Rajapaksa’s assertion that his was one ministry that was free of corruption and misappropriation of funds.

What struck me most and what made me write this, however, is a small news item in the Daily News of March 11, 2010 (business section) titled ‘Council for Sustainable Development mooted’.   He has said that a ‘Green Lanka Programme’ will be implemented from 2010 to 2016 through a National Council for Sustainable Development which will be set up by the ministry. 

He has pointed out the dangers of over-dependence on fossil fuels, remarking that the emission quota for this century ended on September 25, 2009, a sobering fact indeed.  We know today that the ecological footprint is obliterating bio-capacities and that nations are running on ecological debt.  Champika Ranawaka, it can be argued, is two decades late.  On the other hand, we have to recognize that we were a nation and a people that were lazy and clearly unwilling to wake up to these realities during the same period. 

There is a significant mismatch between the sentiments that Champika has expressed and the strategies implemented (and those in the pipeline for implementation) and the overall direction, thrust and character of that which is called ‘national development’.  Both ‘environment’ and ‘people’ have been de-factored or suppressed to regime preferences which still salute (in practice) the dominant (and failed/failing) paradigms of development.  

We can vilify Champika Ranawaka, Nalin De Silva, Gunadasa Amarasekera and others if we don’t like their faces or are uncomfortable with their politics pertaining to notions of identity and nationalism, but we can’t vilify ourselves and pretend that things are ok, or that ‘modernism’ or ‘capitalism’ or anything else would ‘work’ under a different regime. That’s being naïve and moronic. 

We believed human beings could dominate nature and craft it as they liked. This was the fundamental flaw of Euro-Centric philosophies and development paradigms and indeed ‘science’.  The ‘centrality’ of the human being has proved to be a massively erroneous conjecture.  Correction requires the injection of massive doses of humility.  I am not saying Champika is humble. He is not.  On the other hand, his theories and the strategies he is trying out are most certainly ‘humbling’ and this is a step in the right (or at least ‘a better’) direction.  

[first published in the Daily News on March 12, 2010]

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The crisis in diplomacy

Diplomacy is supposed to be a profession, an activity or skill of managing international relations, usually by a country’s representatives abroad.  ‘Manage’ is a tricky word, though, pregnant with diplo-speak if you will.  It is essentially about securing advantage, and safeguarding and furthering interests without rupturing relations.

Some countries, if they have guns and bucks, have the inside edge in these matters and can get away with anything, murder included.  Some machinations by some have to be treated with grin-and-bear by some others.  That’s what international political economy is about.  Some arm-twist, some wince and say ‘thank you’. 

So when Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State sends an Avurudu message about democracy and human rights, it is not about either but about having bucks and guns to say the most outrageous things.  It’s the same principle that was evident in the ‘diplomatic’ moves of the Australian High Commission in Sri Lanka with respect to the ‘abduction’ of Premakumar Gunaratnam alias Kumar Mahattaya alias Ratnayake Mudiyanselage Dayalal alias Noel Mudalige.

Now the Government’s version of the incident and its shy-making regarding abductions hardly hold water and most certainly make embarrassing reading regarding the law and order situation.  While one can be sympathetic about the difficulties of governing a country that is under threat from within and without, it must be mentioned that no one, least of all politicians, expects running a country to be easy.  Politicians benefit. Enormously.  If managing difficulties is a price to pay then it must be paid.  One would say it’s a ‘small price’, all things considered, except that securing the benefits directly and negatively impacts governability, not to mention that it severely compromises law and order. 

In short, while the government finds itself divested of several headaches, the explanations have generated more questions than answers.  Fortunately for the government, Gunaratnam’s apparent penchant for cloak-dagger politics has not resulted in any public sympathy for the man or his party.  The script, if there was one, has been played to perfection; a thorn has been removed and a potentially disruptive political gathering has had its coming-out party pooped.  Complicity in the ‘un-thorning’ seems apparent and that can only boost the enemies of the Government, here and abroad, especially in the context of the kind of ‘diplomacy’ that took place in Geneva last month. 

What is more interesting, however, is the moves by the Australian High Commission, moves that are best understood if boot was on the other foot.  Imagine an Australian leaving the country under suspicious circumstances including need to evade arrest, violating  all immigration regulations, obtaining citizenship in Sri Lanka, then re-entering Australia, overstaying his visa, and launching a political party along with others who are associated with a political party that has an insurrectionary history.  Imagine the Sri Lankan High Commission being privy to his operations and knowing that he used various aliases.  Need we say more about how flat or otherwise global politics is?   

It is in the context of these realities that Sri Lanka cannot afford anything less that utmost professionalism from her diplomatic corps.  We can’t have bickering.  We can’t have braggadocio.  We can’t play the blaming game about a game which was scripted in ways that we just could not win.  We can’t have ambassadors who are more interested in self-aggrandizing.  We can’t have people batting for India or the USA or some other country.  We can’t continue to have political appointees running our missions abroad.  There must be strict guidelines about what is ok and what’s not.   Above all, there must be a cogent policy.   That policy must be informed by national interest, first and foremost, and be crafted in securing the best possible outcomes in a power-skewed world where we don’t call the shots. 

The bottom line, however, is that if the national house is not in order, then international moves can only be expected to flounder.  The ‘National House’ has a king post called Constitution and is made of law, order, institutional safeguards that ensure accountability and transparency and so on.  That ‘base’ is shaky and has been so for decades.  The Government can no longer postpone repairs.  The people cannot afford that work to be outsourced. 

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