Let's talk about 'defeatism' (for a change)

Many celebrated writers flocked to Spain in 1936 to defend the Spanish Republic. Among them was the poet W H Auden, who served as an ambulance driver. Auden wrote ‘Spain, 1939’ as a call to arms. This is how the poem ended:

The stars are dead. 
The animals will not look.

We are left alone with our day, and the time is short, and

History to the defeated

May say Alas but cannot help or pardon.

It has been claimed that chancing on a copy of a book that carried this poem, Auden had highlighted in some form the last line and written a short comment, ‘this is not true.’ Flag that for now. First let me share some thoughts that were posted in social media platforms regarding the 11th anniversary of the defeat of terrorism in Sri Lanka.

Here’s the first: ‘Our country ended; a propitious moment to leave the past behind and to unite as Sri Lankans. Instead an orgy of triumphalist majoritarianism was unleashed and today it has been given a new lease of life. O Sri Lanka, when will you ever learn?’ [maybe the semi-colon was a typo]. Here’s the second: ‘It's 11 years today, 18 May, since the war was won. But Sri Lanka is still to win the peace. Still divided on ethnic lines. Still spouting racism. The State still turning a blind eye. When will #lka stop bleeding & burning & start healing? #unity #WeAreAllSriLankans #SriLanka.' And the third: ‘Eleven years have passed since the war ended. The Tamil question is where it was. Be a Tamil. Then you’ll see.’ [translated from Sinhala].

Triumphalist majoritarianism. We’ve heard that before, together and separately. ‘Haven’t won the peace,’ is frequently observed. ‘Still divided on ethnic lines,’ this too. ‘Spouting racism,’ yes, that too. And then of course the ‘Tamil Question.’

Now the Tamil Question remains unasked. Those who seem to swear by that term are hard pressed to offer it without frills, i.e., exaggerated grievances, wild aspirations and creative historiography. And we are told, ‘Be a Tamil, and you will see.’ I don’t know if there’s a defining/single ‘Tamil’ understanding of ‘Tamil Question.’ However if people are telling me ‘look, I have an issue that I will not tell you and if you can’t figure out what I have refused to state, THAT, friend is the problem,’ I am certainly not going to waste my time worrying about it. 

So we are told we haven’t won the peace. Now, what is this ‘peace’? Yes, there’s bleeding and burning. Think ‘Easter Sunday Attacks’ and the ‘National Thowheeth Jama’ath (NTJ).’ Such things are not mentioned. We have ‘majoritarianism’ flagged. We have ‘no-peace’ tossed into the discourse. We have ‘bleeding and burning,’ but no mention of the NTJ and no mention of rabid communalism and celebration of terrorism by Tamil nationalists. And so the implication is that it is the majority community, the Sinhala Buddhists, who are doing the blood-letting, burning and racism-spouting. No one else. Clever, isn’t it? 

I think it is clever. You say ‘please let’s be united’ and want everyone to chant ‘we are all Sri Lankans,’  even as you directly or indirectly ignore the enemies of peace from other communities and it’s a peace in which the majority community is footnoted or left out altogether.  Maybe that’s the ideal unity-formula for some people. Maybe that’s what would make Sri Lanka ‘one.’ Well, that’s an opinion and I’m ok with opinions that are different to mine. I am not obliged to purchase the same, of course. And, when things are kept vague, I have the right to say ‘dude, that’s an incomplete narrative and quite mischievous, to put it mildly.’    

So let me ask again, what is this peace we haven’t won? Maybe the answer lies not in any broad understanding of that word but a turn of events which pleases the complainants. Theoretically there can be all kinds of peace formulas. One might say ‘Eelam’ is what would deliver sustainable peace. Another might say ‘federalism.’ A third could say, ‘a full erasure of citizenship anomalies,’ adding that territory based ‘equalizing’ does not obtain from ground realities when we consider geographic, demographic, historic and economic factors. 

There was a time when we were asked to swallow a pill called ‘you can’t defeat the tigers.’ That complement of medicines included ‘best to let them have the North and East.’ These (quack) doctors did their best to undermine all efforts to eliminate the LTTE militarily. ‘No one wins in a war,’ we were told. ‘We have to stop the blood letting.’ Yes, they said all that but didn’t utter a word about the LTTE’s blood-lust. They saw nothing wrong in an entire country being held to ransom by a gun-toting set of thugs. Their ‘peace-equation’ included an terrorist who never once entertained any thought of laying down arms.

None of that happened. The LTTE were defeated. It brought an end to blood-letting. And end to death, dismemberment, destruction and displacement. It ended fear. It ended child abductions, forced conscription, hostage-taking (for purposes of shielding terrorists), pilfering of food and medicines intended for civilians, suicide attacks, political assassinations, the gagging of Tamil politicians and all the terrible acts perpetrated by security personnel upon orders or on their own steam (a lot of which we saw in the 1980s and 1990s).

May 18, 2009 marked ‘the end’ of all that. Something to celebrate, surely? But no, it was not the outcome that some people preferred. So the sour losers did the next best thing. They misidentified the festivities. The relief and the outpouring of joy at life being effectively divested of all the horrors that armed conflagration yields, was called triumphalism. No. Majoritarian triumphalism. It’s as though war-end did not allow any of these ‘mourners’ to breathe easier. So they had to say something bad. And they found that misnaming was useful. ‘The Sinhalese consider it a victory over Tamils,’ they claimed. Sure, there would have been Sinhalese who saw it that way. But that’s just part of the story. ‘The Tamils feel they lost,’ they also add. Sure, that sentiment can be understood. Part of the story, again.

But outside that cheap caricaturing, there is probably serious political and ideological dismay. The political project of destroying the unitary character of the state had failed. Obviously for those who advocated this, it was not a moment of triumph but defeat. They were absolutely crestfallen. They had reason to mourn. It was a moment of defeat and defeatism was the inevitable affliction that marked their lives. Naturally, they could not but see ‘triumphalism’ as the other half of the world of flawed binaries they had constructed. 

And so, we return to Auden. ‘Spain, 1939’ is a wonderful poem. It is a call to arms, whichever arms they may be. A rebel’s anthem. Auden, then, believed the Spanish Republic would prevail over the fascists. It did not. The last line might have haunted him. Some say his ideological positions were transformed later. I like to think that when he wrote (as reported) ‘this is wrong,’ he meant that there is no finality in ‘defeat.’ The defeated need not think ‘cannot help.’ They need not seek pardon. The discourse continues and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Without guns. That’s the better way.  And if it is to continue, then it is best that it is honest, that half-truths are not marketed as though they are bible-quotes, that categories are not deliberately misnamed and that sour losers resist the urge to hide their defeatism by calling those they believe have won ‘Triumphalist.’

This article was first published in the DAILY MIRROR [May 21, 2020]

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malindasenevi@gmail.com

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Have you heard of e-con e-news?

‘When orthodoxy fails, heresy must come into its own’ — G.V.S. de Silva.

Last week I wrote about the etymology of the word ‘economics,’ and argued how that discipline and those it disciplined had not just fled definition (‘household management’) but made an art of undermining the vast majority of households for the sustainable development of a handful of mansions.  Economics, or rather what goes as ‘mainstream economics’ which, by the way, is pretty narrow and works for a few, has wrecked households, communities, nations and in fact the entire world.

Covid-19 has brought ‘household’ back to the fore, but let us not be fooled. Households can be wrecked by policies at all levels. National ‘prerogatives’ designed by anti-household economists if you will can continue to impoverish households and disempower householders. Therefore, even as we should fight to retain control and lead sustainable lives, even as we think of a global response, we have to think ‘nation.’ It wouldn’t harm us to think of nation as a household. In other words, we need to think of national policy which looks towards true independence.

My brother, Arjuna, 'nutshelled' the strategy as follows:

‘Our approach should not be for a self-sufficient economy. Bad choice of priorities. What we must aim for is a sustainable society and self-sufficiency is an automatic component of such an approach. For that, we must ensure sustainable production and consumption, living within are means, removing the desire for wealth display which gets us into financial debt, reduce engagement miles (that is produce locally, consume locally) and to do that, first look at sustaining and rewarding the small scale agriculture sector and increase the use of sustainable energy generated at the level of households. Additionally, look to utilizing technology optimally for increasing efficiency and finally, prevent wheeler dealers and corrupt local politicians trying to stifle local production for them to get commissions.’ [see Amali Mallawaarachchi’s feature in the Daily News titled ‘Home Gardening: for body, soul and country.’]

Can we do it? Has it been done? What are the challenges? For the answers we need to dig into the past. Indeed we have to dig through tons of lies and vilification. There’s been a lot of mis-education, folks.

Here’s a hint: Economics? Economy? Hmm...what the flower is that? It's POLITICAL economy, isn't it? If you want to know what's happened and is happening, you got to peel away theory-frill. Warning: the underside is not pretty.

What we have is not political economy. Even ‘economics’ (or ‘econ’) is a misnomer. This is why we need to read it as e-con. That’s ‘e’ for economics and ‘con’ for, well, conning. It’s not that we have nothing to read. There is a thing called alternative media which does not take directive from or has internalized the rubbish dished out by the capital interests that run the USA and of course multilateral institutions that are pawns of that country.  I strongly urge people to visit the website ‘e-con e-news’ (https://eesrilanka.wordpress.com). Therein you will find a lot that’s been deliberately hidden or misconstrued.

The website invites us to say ‘Hell-O’ to the import mafia who ‘are the real rulers of the country,’ ready to undermine any elected government that does not toe the line.

Here are the numbers. Well, some of the import numbers straight from the Central Bank.  We import consumer goods worth US$5 billion. Check out the list (amounts given in brackets):  Food and Beverages ($1.6 billion), Rice $(107 million), Sugar and Confectionery ($250 million) dollars
Dairy Products ($332 million), Lentils ($79 million), ‘Other’ ($839 million), Non-Food Consumer Goods ($3.4 billion), Vehicles ($1.6 billion), Medical and Pharmaceuticals ($532 million), Home Appliances ($232 million), Clothing and Accessories ($310 million), ‘Other’ ($725 million), Intermediate Goods ($12.5 billion), Fuel ($4.2 billion), Textiles and Textile Articles ($2.9 billion), 
Diamonds, Precious Stones and Metals ($573 million), Chemical Products ($904 million), Wheat and Maize ($374 million), Fertilizer ($262 million), Other Intermediate Goods ($3.4 billion), Investment Goods ($4.7 billion), Building Materials ($1.5 billion), Transport Equipment ($668 million), Machinery and Equipment ($2.5 billion), Other Investment Goods ($6.1 billion), Unclassified Imports ($75 million). So, the total import bill is US$ 21 billion dollars!

Has any ‘economist’ calculated how much of all this could be manufactured locally? Well, I doubt it. Received knowledge says ‘don’t manufacture locally,’ and ‘even if you do manufacture locally, let multinationals run it.’  We are also told that t’s the private sector that can do it. It’s private-public partnerships that can work. No one talks about how the public sector was made to fail. And it is not about banning imports altogether. It’s not about replacing trade with barter. The world has known markets that worked, long before the markets that didn’t and don’t work were set up (yes, that’s ‘capitalist markets’).

We are also told that we just don’t have the natural resources. Here’s what I learned from ‘e-con e-news’.

‘We have more natural resources than Japan. We have over 20mn tons of iron ore, which Oruwala Stage 3 was expected to smelt. We have the world's finest graphite, yet not a single factory adding value. We have one of the world's best sources of Titanium, Beryllium, Boron and Thorium in the mineral sands of the North East and South West. We have salterns, but import all our caustic soda, chlorine, hydrochloric acid. We have garment factories but import all the machinery. We have tea plantations, but import all the machinery. We have extensive paddy, but import all the machinery. We have 5 million vehicles on our roads, but import the spare parts and even tyres & batteries.’

Today, as the present government attempts correction (perhaps forced on account of circumstances or driven by conviction) we see the e-con-omists painting dire pictures of a return to an era of rationing, shortages and queues.  They won’t tell you that even the colonial masters used such mechanisms, not just in the ‘colonies’ but in the ‘mother country’ as well! Well, read ‘e-con e-news’: ‘They all like to forget it is the English who introduced rationing in 1942, curtailing wasteful imports and extravagance, even promoting local production! Our beloved Anglomaniacs had no complaints then whatsoever!’

And they won’t tell you the context of those ‘dark days. The ‘dark days’ of the United Front Government of 1970-75 are now remembered with nostalgia by some (no, to by the aforementioned con-artists) simply because it was an angille-tharamata-idimuna time. We tried to live within our means. Yes, we were household-conscious. We tried household-management. We didn’t peddle consumerist nonsense and we didn’t have con-artists disguised as economists.

Anyway, here’s the context  : “70-75” came ‘in the aftermath of assassination, coup attempts, terrorism, bankruptcy and the escalation of multinational and supranational (IMF, etc) interference, during a massive world food and oil crisis, with sharp rises in imported food stuffs prices, when imports of rice, sugar and flour were 40% of the import bill, and the world rice price rose from £36 per ton to £180, 1972-1974.’

And here’s the aftermath of that period as ‘eesrilanka’ puts it: ‘US NGO Advocata and others are now using former Finance Minister Ronnie de Mel to justify what came after. Under de Mel’s tenure, 1977-1988, the open economy was imposed, smashing local industries, undermining public health and education, with the national debt let alone grand theft attaining unprecedented heights, leading to terrorism and war, north and south.’

I wanted to title this article ‘The nation as household,’ but a quick perusal of the blog mentioned above informed me that it neat though it is, such a title would be a caricature. We need to study ‘economy’ more. Indeed, as the blogger urges, ‘if you want to know about economy, you have to study the economists.’ The e-conners, that is. The blog www.eesrilanka.wordpress.com is a good place to learn stuff.

malindasenevi@gmail.com

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When the Government lowered the bar!

Could there be a company or a brand called ‘Business not as usual’? Covid-19 has made people re-think a lot of things including the way things have been done, the veracity of things taken for granted (like neoliberal economics), relationships with one another and the world at large, the untenable and indeed moronic nature of ‘development’ (as in its dominant paradigm) etc.

And so, people adjust. Necessity is the Mother of Invention and all that. Whether it all leads to a paradigm shift, it’s too soon to tell, but then again paradigms of all kinds are certainly being questioned. We can’t do business-as-usual, some people think. ‘Online’ has come to the fore in a lot of activities and businesses of course. Can’t grow vegetable and rice online, we know this, but there’s a lot ‘online’ that can help boost food production, not to mention food preservation and delivery. 

For all this, we must not forget that business-as-usual is far from being dumped. Those who have done business (as usual) and have profited are naturally loathe to change the fundamentals. They would, given constraints, tweak or even radically change operational aspects, they might move to different products and services, but it is still about profit. And, in the case of certain kinds of highly profitable ventures, they will not let go of the cash cows, they won’t kill the goose that lays golden eggs.

A few weeks ago, when curfew was temporarily lifted, people flocked to wine stores. Pictures of people flouting all protectionist protocols made the rounds. The government was deservedly censured. The government backtracked.

The industry didn’t close shop though. Profit has allure. Business cannot be buried. Or cremated. And everyone knows that liquor and cigarettes are big and powerful ‘industries.’ The magnitude of profits and power are easily understood by how tenaciously the tobacco industry fought and still fights moves to bring anti-tobacco laws or even simple regulations such as warnings or plain packaging. They can and will spend bucks because they make bucks in billions. That’s investment prompted by the desire for sustaining profits. In the long run.

And they cover all bases. Search for anti-tobacco literature online and there will be hundreds of sites which are in fact run by the tobacco industry. In other words, they get to own the discourse that counters them. Neat, isn’t it?

They use social media effectively. There are some posts by forlorn tipplers begging the government to go easy: ‘make it possible to have one drink and I will go without one for a month!’ Such things. Some of it is not innocent, though. 

Consider this meme of a woman carrying a child (yes, the play is to obtain empathy) thanking the Prime Minister for ‘saving’ her man from moonshine. ‘He now drinks only branded alcohol!’ It also pokes fun at the strategy that the alcohol and tobacco industries use, ‘illicit stuff is deadly’ (subtext: ‘smoke the branded versions, which we sell!’). 

Now consider this meme which tells the story sarcastically. A man sprawled outside a bar offering pin (merit) to the Prime Minister for being sensitive to their (the tipplers’) needs and opening the bars.  Lowering it, actually.

India has raised alcohol taxes by 70%. The logic is not only about possible violation of safety protocols, but to minimize the potential for domestic violence. There are countless studies of the impact of drinking on this issue. Of course, you will get the counter-argument: ‘those who drink, will drink; if they can’t get it from wine stores, they’ll get it from local moonshiner manufacturers (which is ‘more dangerous’ they will tell us) and that won’t stop domestic violence now, would it?’ Well, that’s a law and order issue which can be pursued relentlessly and effectively. If there’s will. If governments don’t fall into the multiple traps set for them by the ‘mainstream industry’ and its apologists.

Whatever prompted the veritable lowering of the bar, it seems clear that the government has played into the hands of vested interests, the industry as well as its political enemies who tirelessly slander the government in informal media and interpersonal networks with the sole intention of subverting the palpable perception among the general public that ‘the government is ours, it is on our side.’

It’s as though the government shot itself in the foot. No, it’s as though the government was told ‘how about shooting yourself in the foot, it will please the general public,’ and went ahead and pulled the trigger, forgetting that ‘the general public’ doesn’t exist — what exists are interest groups and a vast majority that knows alcohol and tobacco are poisonous and the relevant industries are peddlers of death.

The government was well and truly suckered. It didn’t have to be. It can do better than doing ‘business as usual.’

Other articles in the series 'In Passing...':  [published in the 'Daily News']   

 

Mother and mothers

Back to the nursery

Homeward bound

Vesak and THE WORD

The dignity of a kos-kola otunna

Avurudu in enhanced circumstances 

The Theory of Three Chillie Plants

The story of an aththamma and an aththa

The underside of sequestering

Potters, named and unnamed

Eyes that watch the world and cannot be forgotten 

Gunnepana: Planet Earth's new name

Melodies in and out of the 64 squares

Let's raise an army of rain-makers

Happy birthday Raj Amirthiah

Let's not stop singing in the lifeboats
When the Welikada Prison was razed to the ground 
Looking for the idyllic in dismal times   
Water the gardens with the liquid magic of simple ideas, right now  
There's canvas and brush to paint the portraits of love  
We might as well arrest the house!
The 'village' in the 'city' has more heart than concrete
Vo, Italy: the village that stopped the Coronavirus  
We need 'no-charge' humanity 
The unaffordable, as defined by Nihal Fernando

Liyaashya keeps life alive, by living 

Heroes of our times Let's start with the credits, shall we? 
The 'We' that 'I' forgot 
'Duwapang Askey,' screamed a legend, almost 40 years ago
Dances with daughters
Reflections on shameless writing
Is the old house still standing?
 Magic doesn't make its way into the classifieds
Small is beautiful and is a consolation  
Distance is a product of the will
Akalanka Athukorala, at 13+ already a hurricane hunter
Did the mountain move, and if so why?
Ever been out of Colombo?
Anya Raux educated me about Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis (JIA)
Wicky's Story You can always go to GOAT Mountain
Let's learn the art of embracing damage
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

malindasenevi@gmail.com

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