Let’s learn the art of embracing damage

The universe is made of breaks. Broken things and things breaking. That’s one way to think of it. It’s made of making too. Things put together. Things coming together. Grand or minute design or even just doing what needs to be done, the act alone suturing that which has been torn apart. 

It’s a half full and half empty glass kind of thing. We inscribe on things and processes the colors of our anxieties or our excitement. Sometimes despair overwhelms but then again human history is replete with countless examples of the human spirit rising above discontent to create magnificent edifices upon the rubble of destroyed cities. 

Such things came to mind perusing a recent Facebook post by Asela Abeywardene. Asela is a sculptor, painter, poet, activist, teacher and a student of everything she engages with. She’s very good at all these things.

“Today's 'Say it with Art' session: Broken but Beautiful - learning from Kintsugi: the art of embracing damage.” That’s the note she wrote for the photographs she had posted of the work of some students. 

Kintsugi. Apparently it is derived from ‘kin’ which means ‘golden’ and ‘tsugi’ which is Japanese for ‘repair’. So it’s a Japanese art tradition which uses precious metals such as gold or silver in liquid form or else lacquer dusted with powdered gold to bring together broken pieces of pottery. Embrace as opposed to discard. How lovely! 

Just the other day I read about roads made of recycled plastic. Of course if we didn’t use plastic in the first place it would have been much better. What has happened is that the true pollution generators such as soft drink manufacturers have neatly shelved guilt by passing it on to consumers who, for their part, have not really objected nor done what perhaps they ought to do, boycott. There's something irresponsible and unfair in a world which some  are determined to break while others are forced to heal. 

However, Kintsugi is certainly an idea that probably draws from all this and yields a message about all broken things, big and small, tangible and intangible. There are things we can pour into cracks which not only repair and hide but heal tired eyes, dispel despair and generate spark and delight. 

Seeds take up residence in the most imperceptible of fissures in the hardest of rocks. They take root. They break through. And landscapes hard and barren become green without envy. Some seeds are planted by birds. Some are carried by the elements. And then, there are teachers who give out secrets of healing that are never labeled as such. 

This world is made not just of fissures, but massive fractures separating human bring from human being, nation from nation, one mad and burning idea from waters that can quench. There’s gold and silver and even lacquer that can be dusted with precious metal. There are instruments such as a brush or a line of poetry that can make the broken beautiful. There are ways to embrace rather than curse damage. 

And it happens. At workshops and elsewhere. In a nation and a household. A community scarred by conflict and multiple communities distanced by distrust. There are histories buried by historiography. There’s unearthing that must happen and sometimes the raising is done not so much by the archaeologist but the artist. 

Asela’s students learn Kintsugi. The implications and applications are unlikely to be lost on them. Or on those who chance to gaze upon what they create. Maybe the world with all its many, deep and tragic wounds have survived because there have been enough people who realized the importance of embracing the hurt. With equanimity. Maybe we have as a species survived because there were gentle people who understood intimately that ‘broken’ does not forbid ‘beauty’.  

Years ago, when my father was very young he wrote a love poem about breaking. It was about how in innocence ‘they’ had squandered beauty. In a Kintsugi kind of moment he spoke about picking pieces and putting them together to produce something ‘closer to the heart’s desire.’ 

Of course none of this should be taken as a theory of sanctioning wrongdoing. It is often necessary to resist things that damage or can potentially hurt. On the other hand, we can choose to abandon desecrated lands or turn them into temples of art, meaning and life. Kintsugi. Maybe this is what will see us through in times of breaking and darkness. Embrace births incredibly beautiful poetry. Heals.

This article was first published in the DAILY NEWS [February 14, 2020]

malindasenevi@gmail.com

Other articles in the series 'In Passing...':  [published in the 'Daily News' on Monday, Wednesday and Friday every week]

Kandy Lake is lined with poetry

There's never a 'right moment' for love

A love note to an unknown address in Los Angeles

A dusk song for Rasika Jayakody

How about creating some history?

How far away are the faraway places?

There ARE good people!

Re-placing people in the story of schooldays 

When we stop, we can begin to learn

Routine and pattern can checkmate poetry

Janani Amanda Umandi threw a b'day party for her father 

Sriyani and her serendipity shop

Forget constellations and the names of oceans

Where's your 'One, Galle Face'?

Maps as wrapping paper, roads as ribbons

Yasaratne, the gentle giant of Divulgane

Katharagama and Athara Maga
Victories are made by assists
Lost and found between weaver and weave
The Dhammapada and word-intricacies
S.A. Dissanayake taught children to walk in the clouds
White is a color we forget too often
The most beautiful road is yet to meet a cartographer

The Eldest: a story written on face and in eyes

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Devanee vs Sanath: who do you want to back, Citizen?

A YouTube video going viral on social media has a state official going one-on-one with a politician.  Well, not exactly one-on-one because the politician had in his corner what could be assumed was a section of his constituency. Not exactly in the corner. They were in the ring, so to speak. 

It was a discussion about encroachments. The politician, Sanath Nishantha Perera (MP, Puttalam DIstrict, United People’s Freedom Alliance) is the State Minister of Fisheries and Inland Fisheries Industry. He sided with the complainants who were wanted laws and regulations swept aside and mangroves destroyed.

The official, Devanee Jayathilaka is an Assistant Conservator of Forests. She spoke of the law. The minister wasn’t confrontational. He did not, as many other politicians do, berate the official. He was cordial throughout, quite in keeping with the reputation he has built for himself, having come through the ranks, local government to provincial council and parliament. He was playing ‘representative’ which is of course legitimate. He however urged the official to be flexible. Interesting word, there. He was essentially acknowledging the importance of the law but was suggesting that relevant laws could be bent and indeed encouraging her to do so. As he certainly should not have. The Assistant Conservator stood her ground. As she certainly should. 

Then there were the agitated. When the official spoke her piece, they screamed at her. The minister let them spew their anger. The official stood her ground. She insisted, again and again, that laws should be upheld and science should drive decision-making, implying of course that emotion neither helps nor should be deferred to in such matters. The ‘aggrieved’ tried to shout her down. Not nice, but then it is the aggrieved who feels most their grief. Understandable, but not nice. 

Now how did this become ‘news’? Why did the clip go viral on YouTube? In all likelihood it is because it is atypical. A long history, that’s decades long by the way, has created a culture where politicians simply ride roughshod over official and citizen. An equally long history of enforced servility has seen the rise of officials marked by a tenacious resolve to maintain silence. There are benefits that silence yield, this should also be kept in mind. It is against such a history and in such a political culture that the official’s decision to stand up and speak her mind, well, stands out.  

The commentary that followed is interesting. ‘She will be transferred, just wait and see!’ That was a common comment. ‘It looks like there’s a culture that’s taking root which allows officials to stand up to politician, defend the law and do justice to their position.’ That’s another way of looking at it.  However, one swallow, as they said, does not make a summer. A single incident does not indicate culture. One individual is not a front.  Nevertheless, the ‘virality’ does indicate a wish that indeed this should be norm and not exception. 

If all the excitement is peeled off, we are left with three individuals representing three segments of the population: a citizen, a politician and an official. The politician represents or is supposed to represent the citizen. The official is mandated to serve the people. The citizen can make representation and is well within his/her rights to expect efficient and fair service from the official. 

Now let’s take this case. The citizen speaks to the politician who in turn conveys sentiments to the official. The official points out established rules and regulations. Citizen wants rules ignored. Politician wants rules bent. Official says ‘no’.  If laws are made on behalf of the people by their representatives as per expressed sentiments then the citizen is required to uphold the law. However, laws are not cast in stone. Situations change. Laws at times need to be amended. There is provision for this. There are mechanisms. It may take time, but then again, that’s the nature of proper and established procedures. Many factors need to be taken into account. A quick amendment may sort out a problem that seems to be in need of an urgent intervention, but such measures amount of precedents that could have seriously negative repercussions. They could generate bigger problems which, typically, the formerly aggrieved but now relieved segments don’t have to worry about. They will necessarily burden the official and to a lesser extent the politician.

It is good for the citizen to express himself or herself. It is good for a politician to listen. It is good for the politician to convey the sentiment to the relevant state authority. It is good for the official to advise a politician about what’s possible within the law and to point out what is out of order. It is good that there are forums where all stakeholders can meet, discuss and look for common ground. It is sad that all things considered we have a weak and docile citizenry, weak and docile officials and a strong, arrogant, ignorant and corrupt political class. In the main. 

So it is not a simple matter of picking Devanee over Sanath or vice versa. It’s not a matter of a citizen’s demand should be met, regardless. It is not as simple as that. 

Instead, it ought to be a matter where public interest gets articulated and is heard with the intention to find sustainable solutions without compromising the regulatory apparatus. In this instance, perhaps the citizen will not get what he or she wants. The solution, if there is one, may not be ideal, but there must be an honest effort to obtain an optimal resolution. Typically it ends up with an official empowered by integrity being seen as an obstacle and therefore removed. Typically, laws and bent. Typically the solution is framed by political expedience. Typically self interest triumphs. That should change. If this issue is taken as a litmus test for a more rational approach to solving problems, we would be moving in the right direction. If not, it would be same old, same old. 

Sure, there’ll be cheers and jeers. Some of it would be informed by political preference. Some by even misplaced belief that official, politician or citizen cannot be wrong, ever. Once the noise dies down, there’ll be space for sobriety.  Hopefully reason will prevail over emotion.

This article was first published in the DAILY MIRROR [February 13, 2020]

malindasenei@gmail.com. www.malindawords.blogspot.com.

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Kandy Lake is lined with poetry

Beautiful places make memories, inspire poetry. Things familiar also do of course. Very often that which makes places most memorable quite apart from what’s spectacular or exquisitely nuanced, are incidents, conversations, people, and moments. As such there could theoretically be thousands of poems about Peradeniya University, for example. Thousands about any university or school or place of work or city for that matter. 

There could be a verse for every drop of water that ever took up residence in the Kandy Lake. I am sure there are many written and many more that swirled in mind and heart and are lost forever. Here’s one that is particularly beautiful. Titled පොරි අහුරක් [pori aurak or a handful of popcorn], it was written by one of the best contemporary Sinhala poets, Ruwan Bandujeewa. 

ජින් බෝතල් තුනෙන්

දෙකහමාරක් ම

හැලුවෙමි

නුවර වැවට

ඉතිරි ටික මට

වැව, නුඹ

වෙරි විය යුතුය

අද

ඉක්බිති

කතා කළ හැක

අපට

මතකද ඇය

මුලින් ම

පොරි අහුරක්

විසිකළ මොහොත

නුඹ මතට.

This poem, included in a wonderful collection titled මීළඟ මීවිත [meelanga meevitha or ‘The Next Wine’] could be translated as follows: 

Into the Kandy Lake

emptied I

of three bottles of gin

two and a half

the rest

for me.

You, lake

must get drunk

this day

For then

can we talk

Of that moment

when for the first time

a handful of popcorn

onto your waves

she tossed.

Not a trace of the pathetic fallacy that often marks place-related love poetry. Says so much. Such poetry abounds in, around and about the Kandy Lake. Some I’ve heard but most I will never know. But here’s a note for one yet to be written, inspired in part by Lakdasa Wikkramasinha’s poem titled ‘Nossa Senhora dos Chingalas,’ about which I once wrote, ‘for lyrical finesse, emotional control, narrative ease, simplicity of metaphor, and for informed and astute political commentary this was Lakdasa at his best.’ Simply, for me, in this poem Lakdasa restored to the human being her lost or rather stolen divinity.  

This story, a short one, is about love, sweat, faith and in the end respect for those who toil. 

It happened last Friday (January 31, 2020). A resident of Alawatugoda got off from a bus near the Kandy Lake. He was to meet old friends at the Kandy Garden Club. He could have bussed or ‘tukked’ it. He had considered these options because he was carrying a heavy bag and is not as young as he looks. 

‘I figured that if Jesus Christ could walk up a hill carrying a heavy cross, it can’t be impossible for me to go by foot. I stopped several times. It was all good. I felt good. It felt nice.’

Naturally. You can stop anywhere along the road that skirts Kandy Lake and be touched deeply by the beauty of the lake, the city, the hills, the Dalada Maligawa and of course history and heritage if such things matter or are known. All the more sweet and beautiful when carrying a heavy bag or a cross (metaphorically speaking). 

Dhammika has spent half his life in the USA. He ‘retired’ early so he can attend to the various needs of his parents, both in their eighties. He does all that and finds time now and then to meet old friends. He hasn’t emptied alcohol into the Kandy Lake, he has had no compelling reason to do so, literally or metaphorically, but his has been a life made of reflection. Carries more crosses than I have seldom seen people burdened with and yet is moved to tears at anyone loaded with the weight of circumstances, memory and responsibility. 

Who or what among the multitude that must have traveled on that road thought of poetry in that hour approaching dusk? I don’t know. A thought, a decision and a simple man of simple ways did, this I know. It was a drop of poetry, a handful of popcorn and timeless commerce with the Kandy Lake. If you want a name, Dhammika Amarakoon.

This article was first published in the DAILY NEWS [February 10, 2020]

malindasenevi@gmail.com

Other articles in the series 'In Passing...':  [published in the 'Daily News' on Monday, Wednesday and Friday every week]

There's never a 'right moment' for love

A love note to an unknown address in Los Angeles

A dusk song for Rasika Jayakody

How about creating some history?

How far away are the faraway places?

There ARE good people!

Re-placing people in the story of schooldays 

When we stop, we can begin to learn

Routine and pattern can checkmate poetry

Janani Amanda Umandi threw a b'day party for her father 

Sriyani and her serendipity shop

Forget constellations and the names of oceans

Where's your 'One, Galle Face'?

Maps as wrapping paper, roads as ribbons

Yasaratne, the gentle giant of Divulgane

Katharagama and Athara Maga
Victories are made by assists
Lost and found between weaver and weave
The Dhammapada and word-intricacies
S.A. Dissanayake taught children to walk in the clouds
White is a color we forget too often
The most beautiful road is yet to meet a cartographer

The Eldest: a story written on face and in eyes

Read more

Wither ‘Separation of Powers’?

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s Independence Day speech was widely applauded. Presidents usually deliver decent enough speeches on such occasions. In this case, the word resonates with initiatives, work done and general work ethic of the president. Easy enough when it’s still ‘early days’ in his term.  

There was one very interesting and even controversial observation in his speech. He said, ‘I am committed to working towards fulfilling the needs of the people of this country.’ Adding that this was his ‘responsibility and duty,’ the President stated, ‘I do not envisage public officials, lawmakers or the judiciary to impede my implementing this commitment.’

This can be read in various ways. It is, at face value, an ominous warning, couched in polite language. On the one hand he has a mandate to deliver on the vision expressed in his manifesto. He could have worded it in a different way, perhaps. For example, ‘I expect and solicit the support of public officials, lawmakers and the judiciary in the matter of implementing what I was elected for.’ He didn’t. On the other hand, there’s a context in which such statements are made. It’s not a pretty set of circumstances. He didn’t detail it and maybe he should have, but neither is it a mystery.  

The lethargy, incompetence and corruption among officials is well known. Not all, some, for this country has survived so many calamities largely due to the thousands of committed, competent and selfless public officials, from the humble Grama Niladhari to the Divisional Secretary, the foot soldier to the General, the clerk to the ministerial secretary. The errant officials, however, can wreck all the good work and they have. There’s foot-dragging, pandering to arrogant and self-serving politicians and such which could and have subverted well thought out strategies to improve the life chances of the people. The President knows this. We know this. 

The legislative. Need we even talk about what it does and does not do? This particular lot have lost the mandate to make laws or rather the majority have considering two devastating electoral defeats suffered by their party (local government elections in 2018) and party’s presidential candidate (presidential election 2019) respectively. As for the rest, the very fact that almost every MP voted for the absolutely flawed 19th Amendment to the Constitution demonstrates irresponsibility and incompetence. Therefore, asking them ‘not to impede’ is not entirely out of order. Over and above all this, the vast majority of MPs have held ministerial posts. Take performance and we can talk about it in the breach. Take integrity and it’s the same story. 

The judiciary. We didn’t need Ranjan Ramanayake’s tapes to know what’s what with the judiciary. Again, it’s not all, but at least some. Nagananda Kodituwakku has exposed corruption at the highest levels of the judiciary. 

Consequently, the President’s ‘warning’ can be understood. It’s almost as though he is saying ‘උදව් නෙකෙරුවාට කමක් නැහැ...වද දෙන්න එපා’ (udau nekeruvaata kamak nehe….vada denna epa, or ‘It is ok if you don’t want to help, just don’t throw spanners in the wheels’). 

On the other hand, the statement can be interpreted as a dismissal of the concept ‘separation of powers’ between the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the state. Institution are not perfect, but the ones flagged by the President do have glaring imperfections. The point is, if there are institutional and systemic flaws, it is necessary to point them out. There’s nothing wrong in subsequently requesting or even demanding that plans are not wrecked. However, that is not enough. Sooner rather than later the necessary corrections have to be made. If everything can be reduced to executive whim, then that’s a tool that can work AND can be made to work for the detriment of the people. 

In short, we can argue that separation of powers in name is just not enough. We can go further and say that separated powers peopled by the corrupt and incompetent are as unwholesome. It is this unwholesome institutional and systemic environment in which things have to be done or rather things tend to get derailed. 

The President could have qualified his statement or worded it differently. Didn’t happen. The context makes it forgivable, but a citizenry that makes a habit of citing context and playing relative merits essentially enhance vulnerability. 

It comes down to fixing things and not skirting issues. Cutting corners is a bad habit. Appealing to intelligence and good will is not necessarily a bad thing, but if everything is dependent on such things, it is dangerous. Bad precedents don’t make for great hope about what could happen. People come and go. The decent will, while they can, get away with ‘goodwill,’ those who are not will zero in on the chinks and wade into edifices for personal gain. 

A good example is the Financial Crimes Investigation Division (FCID). The argument for the FCID was that the regular process of the law was either slow or inefficient or corrupt. Fine. So you need a special institution to handle certain kinds of cases. Of course it turned out to be a grand kangaroo court but that’s a different matter. Even if such a body was necessary, the very necessity demands that it should be removed, i.e. the necessity should be removed. This simply means reforms in the law enforcement apparatus. It means reforming the judiciary. The previous regime showed absolutely no interest in such an exercise. 

Now that’s where Gotabaya Rajapaksa could go wrong. He has to do better than say ‘hey guys, help me out!’ Even if help was forthcoming her should not presume too much. 

Well, there’s a hitch here. He is President but he has to do his work in a given institutional arrangement that has been scarred politically by his predecessors and the parties they belonged to. Certain reforms require legislative support. It is the Opposition, being mandate-less notwithstanding, that holds the parliamentary numbers. The flawed 19th Amendment put in place a politician-heavy and UNP-favoring ‘independent’ institutions which happily buttressed the politicization of appointments. The people they ‘put in place’ are still in place. Doesn’t make things easy for the President.  

An election would change all that, but that’s not enough.  A Parliament which is made of a large number (at least two-thirds) of men and women of integrity might do the trick. The electoral system doesn’t make it easy for any political coalition to secure a two-thirds majority, but the 17th, 18th and 19th Amendments demonstrated that the numbers can be obtained under certain special circumstances.

IF the President wants a system that works and which doesn’t force him to come up with statements such as the one we are discussing here, then a two-thirds majority would be useful. Here again, there’s no guarantee that a party enjoying such a majority would do good or even do only good. History shows that when the numbers are right, laws made are typically partisan. However if the proposal is decent, wholesome and makes for more robust and effective systems that stump the corrupt and devious, then a parliament made of good people capable of seeing beyond party and election, could be a great source of strength: to the President, if he is on the right track and to the people in the event that the President’s proposition is at odds with the interests of the people. 

It would be great if the judiciary, official and the legislature operate in a manner that complements the good work initiated or envisaged by the President. It would be good if these sectors operate to stop him when he could err. It is much better for the institutions themselves to be reformed in ways that ensure they are peopled by men and women who have integrity, are effective and  courageous. In such an eventuality, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa or indeed his successors, would not have to ‘appeal’ to the ‘better senses’ of individuals in various sectors.  Simply, we would have separation of powers and we would have separated powers that make for effective representation, better government and an overall improvement in the lives of the citizenry.

This article was first published in the SUNDAY MORNING [February 9, 2020]

malindasenevi@gmail.com

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Time to drop conservatives and conservatism

UNP parliamentarian Mangala Samaraweera is reported to have said that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa should not let conservative forces mislead him. 

Mangala got that one right. Literally. The issue is, it is doubtful that he understood the meaning of the word. So let’s deal with some definitions first. 

‘Conservative’ is an adjective. It means, 'averse to change or innovation and holding traditional values.’ It is also a noun, referring to someone who is averse to change and holds traditional values. So, there are some key words here we need to think about: change, innovation and tradition’

Now ‘tradition’ usually about transmitting customs or beliefs from generation to generation. Not necessarily bad, but in the political discourse that is in part framed by the colonial discourse, it has all kinds of negative connotations. The ‘traditional’ were called barbarians, heathens, philistines, uncivilized, uncultured, unsophisticated, vulgar, you name it. 

All negative. Not much is said about how the ‘civilized’ became civilized, and how in the name of civilization they destroyed cultures, plundered wealth, torched libraries, poisoned water sources, enslaved and massacred. 

Post-independence, the language changed. It was now about development and ‘underdevelopment,’ the latter sanitized as ‘developing’. Instead of ‘civilized’ we now had stuff like high incomes, high growth rates, growth-led development. Sure, they threw in ‘traditional knowledge’ and ‘sustainability’ and these were just words to sanitize above-board plunder, immiserization, wanton destruction of environment. Check out any development-related project proposal and you’ll find all these. Oh yes, they’ve added things like ‘aid effectiveness,’ ‘disaster mitigation’ and ‘climate change protocols.’ And of course ‘democracy,’ that intangible in whose name wars are declared, countries bombed into the middle ages and people slaughtered or corralled into refugee camps.

So when there’s talk of change and innovation, it's about transformation of societies and systems in ways that facilitate the same kind of plunder. In short, the sustained development of classes in places of advantage in an economy. In short, subsidizing capital interests. And when there’s talk of ‘conservatism’ it is about preserving the same system of plunder and destruction that has brought us genocide, cultural erasure, increasingly frequent ‘natural’ disasters, wars and deadly diseases. Mangala, in the process of defending his guarded praise for President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, tellingly, slips in the following caveat: ‘He should mention that there is no alternative but the economic policy of the previous government.’ 

Now THAT encapsulates the conservatism that Mangala is not interested in changing. THAT, also, is tradition now as far as the sway it has over all things economic, environmental and cultural. Innovation to entrench or further expand THAT is not wholesome, rather it is destructive, it diminishes and could even be called barbaric, uncivilized, uncultured, unsophisticated and vulgar. 

So what else has been ‘traditional’ in Sri Lanka, post-independence? Well, quite apart from the vilification of tradition, history, heritage and other things cultural, we have had the fixation about ‘Exclusive Tamil Homelands.’ Now persisting with THAT would not just be conservative but pandering to a downright lie. Interestingly those who champion such myth models, treating them as givens, are as insistence on the thesis, ‘history is version.’ So, some versions are ok, others are not. That’s conservative. 

So, we should not let conservative forces (which includes in these cases the likss of Mangala Samaraweera) mislead us (as they have for decades). There’s a whole lot of bunkum being passed off as god-given ‘solutions’ to all our ills. They include federalism and neoliberalism. Recent ‘traditions’ but traditions nevertheless. Archaic, based on falsehoods and proven to be untenable, unsustainable and even destructive. Advocates of such things are arch conservatives. They mislead. They should be ignored. 

There’s more. Another ‘tradition’ that’s persisted is the ballyhoo about secularism. It can be summarized as follows: bash the Sinhala Buddhists, rant and rave over Article 9 of the Constitution, maintain dead silence about the negation of the same in Articles 10 and 14 and, most importantly refuse to utter a single word about the Muslim Marriage and Divorce Act and other community-specific legislation that subvert all the lovey-dovey rhetoric of equality. Those who are ‘traditional’ in this sense, are also conservatives who have and continue to mislead leaders and the general public. Mangala is one among many.  

There’s more. How about the ‘tradition’ of being servile to the USA, UK and the EU? Mangala (in)famously took THAT conservatism (which is almost an article of faith of the UNP and of course the SLFP under Chandrika Kumaratunga) to a whole new level with Resolution 30/1 of the UNHRC. That kind of genuflection has become a tradition. That’s conservatism we can do without. Indeed it’s conservatism that impedes progress, subverts change and makes innovation impossible. We have had missions from the West acting as though they are de facto viceroys. We have had ‘aid missions’ that have arm twisted or else bribed politicians and officials to tailor national policy in ways that further their interests at the cost of national security (which includes food security, by the way). 

Dumping ‘National Interest’ has been a tradition for decades. Remember how that ‘great’ UNP leader, J.R. Jayewardene sold national interest down the river on July 31, 1987 to India? That’s another kind of conservatism; submitting to the will of India due to the so-called ‘geopolitical realities.’ That India seems to be changing, but we need to be ever-alert. Alertness, however, is inhibited by this ‘conservatism.’ 

It’s all about things that ‘go without saying,’ which, as the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu observed, ‘often come without saying.’  It’s part of colonialism. It’s part of subjugation through direct and indirect means, through threat and execution of threat. 

So yes, such conservatives and conservatism should be called out and comprehensively defeated. No one should be misled by those who have a narrow, misguided or pernicious understanding of what’s conservative and what’s not. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa probably has his advisors. Mangala Samaraweera is obviously not one of them. We can only hope that those he listens to are nothing like Mangala Samaraweera.

This article was first published in the Sunday Observer [February 9, 2020]

malindasenevi@gmail.com

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