Keheliya’s Kehelmal*

Malaka Silva, son of Mervin Silva, Minister of Public Relations and Public Affairs is a thug.  He is rumored to be involved in drug trafficking but rumor is not fact.  If indeed he is, there is either a lack of information to warrant investigation or there’s pressure from above to keep things quiet or the investigation is being carried out in hush-hush ways.  It is rumored that the Army officer who was assaulted by Malaka and his thugs and who is known to be attached to the Army’s Intelligence Unit, was actually on duty investigating drug trafficking and drug traffickers. Those who will connect the dots will do so, but that’s all conjecture. 

What is fact and indeed caught on camera is that Malaka Silva and his gangsters assaulted this officer, causing grievous hurt and necessitating hospitalization.  Police Media Spokesperson, SSP Ajith Rohana has acknowledged that the assault was captured on camera and said that the culprits will be apprehended.  The Army has launched its own investigation.  Two Police teams have been deployed to hunt the man down. 

Meanwhile, even as the nation in one voice calls for the arrest of this thug and wonders about the logic of a soldier putting his life on line to free the nation from the menace of terrorism having to suffer the fate of being banged up a common thug, Malaka Silva calmly visits the Kelaniya Raja Maha Vihare, as a VVIP, bypassing the long queues, to pay homage to the Sacred Kapilavastu Relics and this in a place where over 2,000 policemen were stationed to maintain law and order.  He is photographed, duly and the photographs are published.  Malaka is essentially lifting a metaphorical sarong at the country’s law, law enforcement officers, the judiciary and the general citizenry. 

That’s serious stuff.  Here’s the flip side, and the hilarity that should not provoke laughter but does, perhaps because (for good or bad) we are a nation that can see the funny side of things even in the midst of grim sobriety. 

Mervin Silva, the assailants father with a considerable scot-fee history of intimidation and assault himself, claims that his son would never hit a man in uniform.  According to him, Malaka hit someone who he believed was an ordinary person, whose crime was that although he had a cigarette he was ready to give cigarette-needing Malaka, didn’t have a lighter to go with it.  So Malaka can assault anyone he bums a cigarette from if he didn’t have a lighter as well, provided he didn’t happen to be in military uniform.  Stretch that argument and we have Malaka with a license to assault anyone other than military personnel (who too would be spared only if in uniform).  We should not take Mervin too seriously, for the man thinks the law allows anyone to tie anyone else to a tree.  We should take issue from those who do nothing about it. 

Keheliya Rambukwella now holds the dubious record for besting Mervin at this kind of humor.  At the weekly media briefing on Cabinet decisions, responding to a query, he is reported to have said that the Police didn’t arrest Malaka in Kelaniya because ‘he was on sacred ground’.  Now, had Prabhakaran been spotted worshipping at the Madhu Church and the Army had surrounded the place, would he have been accorded the same privilege?  Let’s assume so.  At some point Prabhakaran would have had to leave or starve.  Let’s assume he chose the former option.  Would not the Army have captured him there and then, or shot him dead if he attempted to fight his way out? 

Malaka Silva walked away.  He would have exited ‘sacred ground’ at some point.  The Police could not have been so blind as to leave a to-safety avenue for the thug.  He could have been apprehended at the gate. He was not.  The police are not stupid.  The people are not stupid.  Keheliya seems to believe that both are stupid. 

Malaka Silva is not an extraordinary citizen.  If I did what Malaka did, I would be behind bars now.  I would have been arrested within the hour of assaulting a senior Army officer.  Malaka is free, still.  That doesn’t say a lot about law enforcement in the country.  It says a lot about Malaka’s and Mervin’s political backers.  It leaves a question:  ‘Who is the President of this country, Mahinda Rajapaksa or Mervin Silva?’

*literally ‘plantain-flower’ but used colloquially to mean ‘balderdash’. 

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Going postal at an evening with Ernest Macintyre

People read a lot. Some write too.  Some talk about what they’ve read and some talk about writing.  Such conversations are interesting, provided that those who talk know what they are talking about.  Whenever I attend events where literature is talked about, I lament that I don’t attend enough of them.  

It was nice to listen to Ernest Macintyre speak about his work, theatre and drama (two things, according to him), the people he worked with and those who inspired him.  The event was titled ‘A Gratiaen Evening with Ernest Macintyre’, organized by the Gratiaen Trust and the International Centre for Ethnic Studies. 

This is not a ball-by-ball thing, but let me say that Macintyre was eloquent, precise in response, dramatic in line with audience and venue, and humble.  He painted himself as an ordinary man who had done something he enjoyed doing.  He acknowledged the key figures, giants in their own right, association with whom had helped shape who he became.  He took us from Peradeniya to Australia, Colombo to Jaffna and back, without jumping around but in fact smoothly navigating era and style, prerogative and engagement, weaving through and with the play of language, politics, theatrical device and such.  He was not prescriptive; he kept things open as perhaps they should be. 

One line captured my imagination.  It referred to the ‘purpose’ of theatre (or any art for that matter).  Someone had said that if you want to send a message, go to the post office.  In other words, theatre was not for ‘messaging’. 

It’s an old debate of course.  In Sri Lanka, ‘purpose’ is ‘message’.  The prescriptive drive often directs the play, novel, song, film and other creative pursuits.  At the Gratiaen Awards 2008, one of the judges lamented that the submissions did not engage enough with contemporary political issues, as though it was a ‘must’.  I believe I said around that time that it cannot be that people were being judged for their politics; that it is the literary worth that ought to be assessed.  

In Sri Lanka a lot of people go to the post office.  There are dramatists, authors, film-makers, painters and other artists who feel compelled to do the political, so to speak.  It is not a coincidence that such exercises are often funded by various agencies.  We know that it is not for love of art or the furtherance of understanding of the human condition that prompt such generosity.  Indeed the more pernicious of that particular political economy is the ‘necessity’ to vilify certain communities and faiths, or in the very least cast them in caricature, in order to win accolades in international festivals.  That’s a market.  And that market drives. 

No, such things were not discussed at the ICES last evening.  I remembered, though, Gunadasa Amarasekera’s short novel ‘Gal pilimaya saha bol pilimaya (The solid statue and the hollow statue)’, which was a story that spoke of human relations and invariable spoke to the politics of the time.  It was not prescriptive.  A sequel, published several years later (‘Pilima lovin piyavi lovata’, or ‘From the statue-world to reality’) was self-consciously political.  ‘Project’ underlined the entire narrative.  The nuances of human relations and the societal matrix in which they are played out suffered.   My contention was that if you relate a story, the politics within will get written anyway.  It won’t be in-your-face.  It will be palatable because it is fundamentally laced with humility and gives reader/audience decision and agency. 

Prof. Gananath Obeysekera, during the discussion, made a valid and important observation.  Using examples of various kinds of theatre, he pointed out that ‘message’ was central, suggesting that ‘going to the post office’ doesn’t make that kind of ‘theatre’ lesser in any way.  A couple of others brought in ‘theatre workshops’ and how they play in the political engagement of the oppressed.  Prof. Obeysekera’s  concern was that there seemed to be a certain ‘essentializing’ happening regarding what is theatre, or what theatre ought to be.  I think he made his point. 

It occurred to me then that what we have is not essentializing but essentializings, i.e. in the plural, in other words a politics of definition.   

For me, everything is theatre, everything poetry, everything is sculpted, everything painted.  We transcribe in our innocence and we break tree into sun, air, fertilizer, water and so on and call it one or the other.  We piece together torn love-letters and exclaim ‘Heart!’  It takes nothing from element and nothing from the whole.  We can say ‘message’ if we like.  We can choose to read as we will.  If someone makes a few buck, what harm?  If someone feels good, great.  Delusion is an unguent and if that takes away the throb, who’s to say ‘false ideology!’?  The post office brings multiple messages to us and we string them up and call it theatre.  That’s also true. That’s also ‘essentializing’, Prof Obeysekera might say.    

There’s theatre everywhere, only we don’t pin the label unless the familiar props stare us in the face.   All this is known and was known long before Brecht came along.  ‘All the world’s a stage’ can’t be an unfamiliar line.  ‘Tis all a checkerboard of nights and days where destiny with men for pieces play,’ Omar Khayyam put it in far more alluring terms. 

Ernest Macintyre got the last word and it stuck because it was also (all things considered) the first word: ‘natya’ (theatre) and ‘lok’ (world) are one.  That’s what the ancients knew and said.   And, following Siddhartha Gauthama, one can say that if you cling too tight to one or the other, you lose the plot.  

 

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The wages of believing one’s own lies

Eleven years ago, when the World Trade Centre, NY, the White House and the Pentagon were subjected to multiple attacks, the world was shocked.  Americans of the United States were shocked beyond belief.  World-shock was probably prompted by two things.  First, the audacity of the attack and the tragedy it produced, and secondly on account of the unthinkable having happened; the US was supposed to be invincible or that is the impression that Washington-based media-spin industry had created. 

When the shock abated, as often happens, sympathy for victim was laced with the whispered expression, ‘just deserts’.  People talked of cocks coming home to roost, of what went around coming around.  The ‘shock’ felt by the USA was quickly replaced by belligerence, revenge-intent and unbridled racism.  Nothing went from the people of Iraq or those of Afghanistan, but they were bombed into the Middle Ages. In the name of justice and democracy. 

Then came the turn of the Middle East and the now infamous ‘Arab Spring’ which, after a few hopeful months, settled into an unending winter of discontent.  The USA instigated rebellion.  Rebels were armed.  Al Qaeda operatives in these countries suddenly became bosom buddies.  The USA, as a nation, cheered when the Libyan leader was murdered in cold blood. 

And two days ago, the US Ambassador to Libya, J Christopher Stevens, was killed in an attack on the US consulate in Benghazi.  It is reported that unidentified armed men had stormed the grounds overnight amid uproar among Muslims over a US-produced film said to insult Prophet Muhammed. 

Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State is upset, naturally.  She says ‘many Americans (sic) are asking how such an attack could have happened in a country America (sic) had helped to liberate’.  The answer lies perhaps in a shocking inability to extricate oneself from the lies one propagates.  Propaganda is an inevitable part of politics, but it remains something that comes in the ‘overstatement’ column.  It is about inflation.  It tweaks or (in most cases) exaggerates the dimensions of truth.  The astute politician will see it as tool but will not believe his/her own lie.

There is a reason why the world understood 9/11 and understood it differently from the way the US chose to read it.  There is a reason why the world understands this horrific act that took the life of Stevens, even though the world will not approve. 

The USA must wake up from its drunken imperialist stupor.  Clinton and Obama and any others who may want to be President and/or Secretary of State in that country must understand that the world is not fooled by media spin.  They must understand that if they continue to operate in the manner they have, where queries about crimes against humanity are brushed aside with ‘don’t ask me that question’ or ‘we are executing a plan’ or some such nonsense, no Ambassador or US representative anywhere in the world is safe.  Steven is a victim of US foreign policy in the first instance and secondly that of a mob attack.  Mobs, Clinton should also understand, are made not just by fanatics but by those who stoke the fires of fanaticism by their own brand of religious intolerance. 

The USA is not a tolerant nation.  In the mad rush to ‘Save the USA from terrorism’, her leaders have forgotten that fostering terrorism has been a longtime strategy of containment and that terrorism is a preferred and frequently used fighting option (from Hiroshima/Nagasaki through CIA-led assassination to the drone attacks in Afghanistan).  The world is no less safe.  And no one is less safe than Americans (of the US) abroad.  J Christopher Stevens’ death testifies to this.  Clinton must understand. 

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The Principal of Lumbini College stands tall

There are tons of things wrong in this world. Lots wrong in our country. Many things wrong in our education system.  We have incompetence and corruption.  Slackers and short-cut takers.  But then again, who among us can say ‘I learnt nothing in school’, ‘school was a waste’?  Did we learn nothing?  Can we think of all our teachers, from pre-school through the A/Ls and the university and say, ‘none of those ladies and gentlemen had any impact’?  I think not.

There are teachers who weren’t the best, but we learn not just from the exceptional but the pedestrian as well.  The exceptional, however, are the ones who give us wisdom and values, who give us freedom as well as the mind to use discretion.  They discipline so we learn to be disciplined and so we are not punished for doing things we could very well avoid. 

We all know people like that.  And we hear of them too.  And each time we remember or hear about a teacher, we feel that there is hope for the world and that somehow we needn’t worry too much about our children not being able to cope with the horrors of this world.

This morning I heard of a parent-teacher meeting.  Lumbini College, Colombo 5.  The Principal had summoned all the teachers of all the students in the O/L class.  He named, I am told, three boys.  Two of them had come with their parents.  They had long hair.  Too long.  They got haircuts right there.  In front of all the parents. 

He then talked about attendance.  All students are required to maintain 80% attendance.  There are some, he said, who don’t come on Mondays (because they are attending private tuition classes) and don’t come on Thursdays and Fridays either, again for the same reason.  So they can never complete their notes.  Does tuition compensate?  Here’s what he said or at least the gist:

‘Tuition classes are not like school classrooms.  There are hundreds of students.   Of these students, a good number will get A’s, B’s and C’s.  The rest fail.  The tuition teachers and classes will put up huge signs about how many passed, how many got A’s and brag about their student getting the highest mark in this or that subject.  They will not talk about those who fail, the number that fail, and the percentage that fails.’

He then told the audience that 6 students who had not fulfilled the attendance requirement will be asked to come to school with their parents.  They will be duly sacked, he said. 

Harsh? Too harsh?  I don’t know.  All I know is that this principal is a leader.  He is a teacher.  He is a disciplinarian.  What he teaches will be a constant source of strength to every single student in that school. 

If children and parents don’t take school seriously, then they should take them out.  No school has a full complement of really good teachers.  Lumbini cannot be an exception.  I am sure, however, that with a principal like this, there has to be enough teachers who will make sure that the children pass and pass well.  Either way, a principal worthy of that title must stand tall. The Principal of Lumbini College has. 

Thank you Sir!

 

 

 

 

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Thou art duly warned….!

When the Minister of Public Relations and Public Affairs, Mervin Silva, set out to capture a public servant, he made it a photo opportunity. The media was invited.  TV stations were ‘camera-ready’.  The victim was tied to a tree.  It was reported in the newspapers and the footage was shown on television.  The police did nothing.  The Attorney General did nothing.  The entire justice system shamed itself that day.

In March this year the same minister openly stated that he was responsible for Poddala Jayantha leaving the country.  Jayantha, a well-known media activist was earlier abducted and assaulted.  His assailants are yet to be brought to justice.  While bragging about his role in Jayantha’s exit, this minister also threatened to personally break the limbs of Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, Sunila Abeysekera and Nimalka Fernando.  All four mentioned above have dubious track records in financial dealings as well as being pawns of the LTTE.  All that is irrelevant to the matter of threat and threat-execution.  The law has not pursued these individuals for wrongdoing, but that doesn’t give anyone the right to take the law into his or her hands.

Two days ago, the minister’s son assaulted an Army Major.  He was accompanied by an entourage of thugs.  It is reported that the entire incident was caught on camera.  Police Media Spokesperson, SSP Ajith Rohana in a radio interview last morning told SLBC Chairman Hudson Samarasinghe that this was true, i.e. the assailant, Malaka Silva, son of Minister Mervin Silva was caught on camera assaulting the Army officer.  Statements have been issued, also, claiming that the Police was looking for this thug. 

The man, whose face is familiar to the entire population and ought to be familiar to every single policeman in this country, was photographed worshipping the Sacred Kapilavastu Relics at the Kelaniya Rajamaha Viharaya.  It is known that the police were out in full force to ensure security and to control crowds thronging to pay homage to the Relics.  It is incredible that he was not arrested. 

It is hard to believe that the police do not have eyes.  It is hard to believe they don’t have legs to walk up to this thug and handcuff him.  It is hard to believe that they were ignorant of the fact that he is wanted for assault and battery of a citizen and probably (given context) wanted for other and more serious crimes. 

The father got off scot-free.  Now, for all the pledges of the Police Media Spokesperson, the people cannot be blamed for thinking ‘the son will get away too!’  Indeed, it has come to a point where editorial comments about these acts of thuggery containing demands that the police do their job have been likened to hitting head against brick wall. 

The impotency of the law enforcement authorities clearly indicate a numbing imposed by people in positions of power.  We have to come to some conclusions here.

The police are not sleeping, but pretending to sleep. The Attorney General is not sleeping but is pretending to sleep.  The President hardly ever sleeps, we are told.  He cannot therefore pretend to sleep. 

Sooner or later what was caught on camera will go viral on youtube.  It won’t spark a movement to overthrow the Government, for Mervin Silva’s antics and gross violations have also gone viral on youtube.  Things add up though.  Dots are joined.  Credit gets spent.  Worms turn.  Birds come home to roost. 

Every minute that passes without Malaka Silva being arrested, we get closer to a terrible moment where we begin to walk a path we’ve walked twice in the last 40 years.  That is because of Mervin Silva, Malaka Silva and all the other Silvas who have been spared by the law. 

There are crimes of commission and there are crimes of omission.  Neither is spared in the karmic matrix.   There will be loud knocks on the doors of big houses.  The doors may or may not be opened, but if it is not they will be broken down, in violation of the law.  A letter might be delivered.  It would probably contain an 11-word reminder: ‘What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander’.   

 

 

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Reconciliation matters

More than three years after the LTTE was defeated, post-conflict Sri Lanka still talks of ‘reconciliation’.  The very use of the word implies a lack.  Sure, after 30 years of war fuelled by chauvinism and laced with death, destruction, displacement and dismemberment, only an optimist or a pernicious operator who cares little about implications for ordinary people would demand ‘Reconciliation Now’. 

Politicians care little about people.  They don’t care if reconciliation and peace are trumped as long as their personal/party political objectives are secured.  If it helps to be chauvinistic, chauvinism will be their watchword.  If it is necessary to lie, they will not hesitate to lie.  And so they will, as they have, mine all roads leading to reconciliation. 

No other country that has come out of a conflict such as the one which plagued Sri Lanka for three decades has achieved so much in terms of resettlement, rehabilitation and reconstruction.  And yet, Sri Lanka is faulted for not achieved ‘reconciliation’.  Part of the reason is the erroneous and untenable (in terms of history, geography, demography and development prerogative) conflation of ‘reconciliation’ and ‘devolution’.  Even if the vast majority of Tamils were reasonably happy (at least as much as their Sinhala and Muslim counterparts) with things as they are, there would be spoilers who would claim, ‘no devolution, no reconciliation’.  That kind of goalpost shifting is part and parcel of chauvinistic politics. 

There are other factors that make reconciliation a tough task.

It would be hard to find people who are unhappy that the fighting is over.  On that count alone even the most chauvinistic of Tamil nationalists would have to grudgingly concede ‘things are better’.  ‘Things could be better’ is a phrase that can stay on the shelf forever and be as fresh as the first time it was uttered.  Fighting, however, is something that takes much and gives much too, neither being worthy of celebration. 

Even as she is glad the fighting is over, the mother who lost a son will never be able to reconcile herself to the reality of that loss.  There are thousands of such mothers and many of them would have husbands and children who too would not be able to reconcile to the fact of loss.  There are widows who will never see their beloved husbands, orphans who will never feel a father’s embrace.  Roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, law and order, ‘political solution’ etc., will not dilute the pain, lessen the loss. 

There is a young man struggling to eke out a living in harsh circumstances somewhere in the Vanni.  His father is paralyzed, his mother not in the best of health.  He has his own wife and children to provide for.   He doesn’t have to worry about being abducted by the LTTE.  He doesn’t wonder if his children, when they reach 10 or so, would be conscripted by the LTTE on their way to school or on their way back home and be thrust into the frontlines with guns that outweigh them.  That young man might be happy that the fighting is over, but he won’t get back his two brothers; not the first who blew himself up in an LTTE attack on a military target and not the second who died in the fighting.  There are thousands of such men and they have mothers and father who lament with them, even as they would say, if asked, that they are happy the fighting is done. 

Reconciliation is word that can never be accompanied by the adjective ‘complete’.  Indeed, even ‘partial’ could be misleading.  Three decades spawned bitterness, distrust, hatred and hopelessness.  There are things that Governments can do and things they cannot.  Time and the passing of a generation or two might be, sadly, the relevant ‘musts’ for this country to put things behind and move on. 

No one is happy.  Carl Muller, challenging those who believe in god, heaven and such things, posed a question once: ‘Imagine a pious woman whose younger son is a murderer; she dies and goes to heaven and the son ends up in hell.  Now how can Mummy be happy when podi putha (the younger son) is roasting in hell?’  We were not born to be totally happy all the time.  So anyone demanding that kind of ‘happiness’ would be asking for the moon or more.  No one is asking for the moon, but still, few are even willing to recognize these realities and worse strut around in the political theater as though these things are irrelevant.

In the end it boils down to each individual finding pathways to personal closure.  As a nation, though, we can help, individually and collectively, by being honest about these things and by sharing our stories so we recognize in one another the same human sorrow at loss and the same human ability to live with that sorrow and smile about things we can be thankful for. 

 

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Nothing to cheer about the Common Welt

The 58^th Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference is currently underway in Colombo.  Over 850 parliamentarians and other officials from 54 countries are participating in this annual event.  They are to discuss at length various issues relevant to the ‘Commonwealth’ (CW), although resolution on key matters must await the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. 

Glancing through the stated ‘Beliefs and Values’ of the CW, one is struck by a stunning absence.  Here’s the legend: ‘Beyond the ties of history, language and institutions, members are united through the association’s values of democracy, freedom, peace, the rule of law and opportunity for all’.  No mention of the one, true, abiding commonality: the common welt.  To elaborate, this refers to the ridge or bump on the cultural, physical and societal skin of nations caused by colonial lash and blow or by an allergic reaction to colonial presence in all its numerous forms.  This, more than anything, is the common bind that gives reason for periodic gatherings. 

The values are found in their breach in the welt-giver and in the welt-receiver in local engagement as well as engagement in international affairs.  In the name of democracy, countries are invaded and plundered.  That’s not in the colonial past but the post-colonial present.  In the name of freedom, bombs are dropped, enemies named, captured, tortured and killed.  The rule of law is a notion reduced to the imposition of will by the powerful, either using threat of attack or threat of pulling the rug from under the feet of nations conveniently tagged ‘rogue’ in the form of sanctions.  As for opportunity for all, it is a wish that is terribly at odds with the fixations of capitalism. 

The CW, however, periodically toss around these lovely words and notions, delude themselves and/or delude the respective populations that these values make sense, while at the same time operating as though the common welt which clearly overrides all other markers (economic, political and social etc.) has left no scars and indeed that the whipping has stopped.  The sun may have set on the British Empire, but Britain certainly has not woken up to the fact.  Instead, it has found comfort in playing side-kick to its world conquering successor, the United States of America. 

The global political economy is made of processes that commonalities such as welts and subjugated histories just cannot contain.  While regional gatherings, such as SAARC, for purely geographical reasons, make sense in terms of trade and cultural exchange (where there is commonality as opposed to the wide disparities one finds among the welt-ridden nations), the binding power of the Commonwealth is palpably thin.  The only thing it seems to reinforce is the fact of subjugation and the only tangible outcome is a mild ego boost to the conqueror, by the simple fact of a memory-upgrade of a ruling time, which, on the flip side was a time of rape, theft, murder, plunder, desecration and other crimes against humanity.

The other major absence is the total aversion to mentioning the one tangible avenue for correcting historical injustice: the compensation by returning loot. 

The class of locals who were consoled by tidbits and other crumbs from the colonial plate would point to ‘benefits’ such as roads, schools and hospitals of course.  On the other hand, roads and railways, while facilitating the transport of what was plundered, were built using local labor and taxes collected from subjugated populations.  Speaking strictly about Sri Lanka, every region had 7 types of physicians, temples were schools and the scholarship and literature produced by them (long before the British set up ‘schools’ to produce loyal human resources necessary to upkeep the plunder) is of no less value to any scholarship or writing anywhere in the world.  Our ancestors saw tree and not timber, animal and not game, community and not selfish individual.  One could go on enumerating but the point is clear: we lost far, far, far more than we gained.  We need not say thank you.  And we need not act ‘grateful’. 

The Commonwealth Parliamentary  Conference may or may not mention ‘loot’ and ‘welt’, but if these words don’t come up then let it be because of decency and civilization that always existed and not because we’ve internalized the biggest colonial lie: ‘English Decency’.

 

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Going overboard with crude cartoons

The most recent attack on Sri Lankans visiting Tamil Nadu were roundly condemned by all, except of course the Indian Government which issued a watered-down comment along with the soft dismissal, “‘Law and Order’ is not a Central Government subject”.   The response from this end has been naturally dismay (at the soft end) and outrage (at the hard end). 

A newspaper (not a Rivira publication) carried a cartoon which spoke to Delhi’s prerogatives, insinuating that the ruling party, led by Dr. Manmohan Singh was compromising bilateral relations by pandering to Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, Jayalalithaa’s whims and fancies, i.e. her vote-concerned rabble-rousing.  That is only half the truth because it takes two to tango and Jayalalithaa needs Singh just as much as Singh needs her, so when it suits the Congress Party, as it did during the last General Election, the regional ally can be gagged.  In this instance, Delhi’s shy-making indicates that Jayalalithaa is not acting alone, but with the tacit consent of Delhi. 

The cartoon was graphic and, according to many, utterly distasteful.  The newspaper has pleaded ‘Freedom of expression’.   The same sentiments could have been expressed (and indeed have been expressed in cartoons and commentary) in better and more palatable ways.  An apology would go a long way in setting things right, one would think.

What’s funny about the whole thing is that all of a sudden we have people shedding copious tears about lack of taste and some (un)intended insult to womankind but absolute silence on what actually provoked the sentiments expressed in the cartoon.   Feminists who have not raised a whimper about these thugs attacking buses in which female pilgrims were travelling after having abused them in word and deed , have all of a sudden found voice to object to an ill mix of line and color.  If one is upset about sexism and gross crudity, one cannot be selective about it, and moreover, one should have a sense of proportion!   Some have, one notices, even demanded that the editor of the newspaper resign!

Many have commented on the controversial cartoon in the website ‘Groundviews’ (www.groundviews.org), which opened up a debate with a note titled ‘A tasteless cartoon, Twitter and Indo-Sri Lanka relations’.  The main article, referring to a tweet by the President’s spokesperson Bandula Jayasekera, says ‘The tweet does not endorse the cartoon, but stops short of an apology over its hugely offensive nature’.

Now this is hilarious.  Why should either Jayasekera or the President apologize for something neither of them did?  Does Manmohan Singh apologize for all the sexist, crude and otherwise obnoxious expressions in the Indian media?  What rot! 

Random tweets from various sources are reproduced to make a tweet-mountain of a toon-molehill.  The title itself elevates the opinion of a single cartoonist (sanctioned for whatever reason by his editor) to something that could have an impact on Indo-Lanka relations.  If that cartoon and cartoonist had that kind of power, then we wouldn’t need diplomats and external affairs ministries, for all that would take for countries to declare war on one another would be a crude-minded artist and an editor whose vigilance has slipped. 

Let’s get some perspective here.

If Indo-Lanka relations are bad, the primary culprit is Delhi.  From arming, funding and training terrorists to complicity in upping the chauvinistic ante in Tamil Nadu to the machinations in Geneva and being a pound-of-flesh friend, Delhi has been fouling the diplomatic air for a long, long time. 

So, berate cartoon, cartoonist and editor if it pleases and as they deserve, but keep molehill as molehill.  That’s part of responsible citizen journalism, one would think.  

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Arrest this thug!

Taken from www.indi.com (see blogpost on the same subject)

This is not the first time that the son of Mervin Silva, Minister of Public Relations and Public Affairs, has thrown his weight around. It is not the first time that Malaka Silva has violated the law.  It is not the first time he’s played cops-n-robbers with real weapons.  It is not the first time he has earned the wrath of all law-abiding citizens in this country. 

This is not the first time the son of a politician took the law into his hands.  Not the first time that common thugs operated as though political connections have them special powers to browbeat those who crossed their path.  It is no wonder that cartoonists regularly lampoon the generic political figure with pistol, club, knife or other weapon tucked into belt even as the brute is clothed in spotless white. 

Malaks is not out of order.  He is way out of order.  And if he moved from out-of-order to way-out-of-order it is not he but those who treated him with kids’ gloves the first time he erred that are to blame.  First and foremost his father.

Mervin Silva is a colorful politician and even though parents play a massive role in turning children into who they are, they cannot be held responsible for the wrongs they do ('Arrest this thug' is the title of an article I wrote several months ago).  In this case, however, Malaka is his father’s son in word and deed.  Mervin is a known brawler and Mervin is a brawler who has got off scot-free each time he pummeled someone.  ‘Can get away’ is a lesson that Mervin has been able to teach his son because those who had the power to put a stop to such lessons chose to look the other way.  They were in fact providing a classroom for Mervin to teach his son the finer points of thuggery. 

We have to understand, also, that among those who gave the all-clear to Mervin are those who voted for the man at the last Parliamentary Election.  That was endorsement.   This was the harvest that society reaped, but the bitter fruit had to be tasted by some innocent bystander who in all probability did not even vote for Mervin. 

Forget Mervin.  What’s Malaka’s track record?   In 2005, Malaka and his thugs attacked officers on a drug raid at a night club.  In September 2007 he hit Chaminda Senasinghe in his was hit with a pistol butt at the Bistro Latino Restaurant, before his gang of friends kicked and manhandled the fallen man.  His name, moreover, has come up, along with his father’s when big time drug traffickers and drug trafficking is discussed.

These multiple offences would have earned any other person long prison terms.  In comparison, Malaka has been treated like a king or at least a law-abiding citizen who was the victim of circumstances.  If that is the case, then every citizen should be allowed to carry guns. Every citizen should be able to walk into any place with friends and throw their weight around.  If all this is ok, we can get rid of the constitution, the President can resign and a general declaration made public: ‘Everyone for him/herself, good luck all: Anarchy Reigns!’ 

It is no laughing matter.  About ten years ago, Mervin stormed into the Divaina editorial office and threatened everyone, prompting an editorial titled ‘Me ballath bendala damanu!’ (Tie this dog up as well!).  His antics at Rupavahini are well documented, as are his theatrics when he tied a public servant to a tree.  He has raised the bar for thuggery and obnoxious flouting of power.  His son has taken the cue, it seems.  Those who suffer Mervin must now suffer his son.  And these ‘sufferers’ must be made to pay the price.  

Long before that, this thug has to be put behind bars.  He is a threat to peace.  There is no telling what he might do next.  The ordinary citizen cannot be put at risk.  Malaka Silva must be arrested forthwith and punished as would any other person who perpetrates the same infringements would be punished. Anything less will add up to a massive buck that will float up the political ladder and stop where it must.  

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Good-prose governance badly needed

Mario Cuomo the former Governor of New York once said that election campaigns are like poetry and that governance was akin to prose.  It’s the classic split between rhetoric and reality, the mismatch between promise and delivery, the easy of solicitation and the hard of reward.  It’s not a phenomenon that’s limited to New York politics or US politics for that matter.   

Democracies all over the world are made of voter and candidate, elector and elected.  Elections constitute an important moment that separates before and after.  And the two spaces on either side are almost like two different countries, two different time-zones, two different species and two different languages.  And so, as we sit in the hard-truth sunlight of yet another post-election territory, we lose nothing by reflecting on Cuomo’s pithy observation. 

There is good poetry and bad, and we’ve seen both types during election campaigns.  There is effective understatement as well as overkill.  Good campaigns and poor ones.  There is the poetry of argument and there is the prose of thuggery, there is good-word and bad-poster and so on.  Similarly there can be good after-prose and bad after-prose in governance. 

Good prose is made by a good work ethic.  It is inextricably linked to good behavior.  Honesty is the foundation of good prose or for good anything, for that matter.  The elected have innumerable opportunities to write bad prose.  The secret to writing good governance prose is to develop resistance to do wrong. For this, one has to know what’s good and what’s bad. 

Good prose writing must begin with humility and penitence.  Part of bad-poem campaigning is vandalism.  Countless trees are felled to make the millions of posters that are then plastered on every available square inch of space by hundreds of candidates.  Good-prose begins with clean up.  With ‘sorry’.  If you want to write good-prose politics then you have to get out of the collective face of the voter. 

Sloth is bad prose. Worse prose is theft.  We know that the unwritten verse of campaigns is made of poorly crafted lines called ‘donations’.  The true name of campaign contributions is ‘investment’.  When people invest, they expect returns.  Give and take does not make good poetry.  They don’t make for good prose either.  A politician who can rise above that give-take literature is a rarity.  It comes with a price: admonishment from donor and support withdrawal at the next election.  Pay the price and you’ve written good prose. 

Politicians make bucks in many ways, all ‘jottable’ in the ‘Bad Prose’ column.  Commissions for contracts is bad, bad, bad prose.  Abusing office for personal gain or to favor the near and dear is unacceptable.  Once elected, a politician must serve all equality.  He or she cannot think ‘party’ when discharging duty. 

Are we looking for idealist prose-writers?  Sadly, we could be.  On the other hand human beings, just as they are quite capable of doing despicable things also have the potential to surprise themselves and others too.  Not all politicians are bad. Some do get elected consequent to running good-poetry campaigns.  Some write good prose after getting elected.  They happen to be a minority but their existence shows that it is not impossible to produce good literature. 

There will be prose, of this there can be no doubt.  There will be some poetry, when marketing ‘duty’ as ‘favor’, or when covering up bad-prose as good.  But there will be prose.  We are not expecting that the elected will turn out to be a veritable army of good essayists, but if even a handful write some delightful short-stories, we will take it in these consolation-less days of literary barrenness. 

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RIDI VIHARE: THE FLOWERING OF KANDYAN ART

‘Ridi Vihare, or ‘The Silver Vihare’, has its origin during the early days of Buddhism in Sri Lanka,   Heir to a tradition which dates back to the early Anuradhapura period, its beginnings are shrouded in myth and legend.  Over the centuries the vihare has become a veritable treasure trove of Sinhala art: oainting, architecture, sculpture, ivory carving and metalwork.  This work traces the art and history of the temple from the 2^nd Century BCE to 1815 CE.’ 

The above is part of a general description on the inside of the dust cover of ‘Ridi Vihare: the flowering of Kandyan Art’ by SinhaRaja Tammita-Delgoda, a narrative decorated by photographs from Studio Times, illustrations by Saroja Dharmadasa, and plans and drawings by Ineke Pitts and Kapila Ariyanada.

It is apt, considering the moment of narration, the first years of the 21^st Century, that the author has framed this history with an observation by Ananda Coomaraswamy:

In the words of Blake,

When nations grow old,

The Arts grow cold,

And commerce settles on every tree.

In such a grim fashion has commerce settled in the East.

Indeed, we live in times when commerce has captured tradition and much else besides, what with organ-trade and the trading of polluting-rights.  It has come to a point where all nations, old and new, have commerce-laden trees.  It took time with us, but we’ve learned fast, it seems.  The intrinsic worth of anything, be it artifact of pageant, exorcism or ritual, giving (dana) or devotion, has given way to commercial potential.  King Market rules, decides and dispenses. 

And so, we name and attach price-tag, forgetting often that certain things resist valuation and categorization.  Therefore we find that value-attachment is reduced to the quantifiable and the play of demand and supply.   It is in this context that one has is stopped-in-track by the amazing disclaimer: ‘No one who has worked on this book has asked for or received payment of any kind; all royalties have been donated by the author to the Ridi Vihara’.  That’s giving. Truly.

As great a gift is the book itself.  It is a scholarly study of a kind one does not associate with the dust, foreboding, pedantic and exclusive typical of history books.  Sure, throw in a lot of pictures and you get enough color to drive out the dismal and turn out a page-turner.  These are often better ‘histories’ than some texts which do not reach scholarly benchmarks in terms of standards and sweep  but still see mediocrity getting doctorate and professorship, one must acknowledge.  They also tend to be less ideology-burdened than much of the ‘history’ that is churned out by quacks masquerading as historians.  Even if all this weren’t true, as far as the ordinary (i.e. non-academic) reader is concerned, they are far more readable narratives. 

‘Ridi Vihare’ is not a collection of pictures with captions empowered by exceptional talent at turning a phrase, though.  Here the illustrations and photographs enhance rather than gloss over text, excuse poor scholarship or boost marketability, which is common in picture-history books.  It is not just because the subject is both history in general as well as the appreciation of art-evolution, which naturally make illustration-insertion sensible.  Tammita-Delgoda’s exercise is more wholesome and appreciative of a range of influencing strands that saw the Ridi Vihare move from what it was to what it is. 

It is the historian in him that locates Ridi Vihare in historical context, across the centuries, as well as in the fascinating narrative of temple art, in particular the rock and cave wall painting that our ancients have so generously endowed over the centuries.  It is the embeddedness of an author in his society and as part product of transformations over time that gives body to the narrative.  Such conscious ‘affinity’ would scar objective gaze over the subject, one might argue, but then again it is also true that the neutral gazer is inescapably bound by his/her own locations and histories.  There is always indulgence even though the indulgent might protest innocence.  What is perhaps the more sensible and all things considered, the more scientific, approach would be to resist both grip and discard, and seek ‘caress’ in the appreciation of what is before the scholar’s gaze.  That would be a kind of Buddhist Historiography or let’s say ‘Buddhistic’ historiography.  ‘Ridi Vihare’ has that tender, touching-but-not-touching touch in narrative. 

Tammita-Delgoda offers a careful and exhaustive study of the ‘Ridi Vihare’ complex, i.e. the several caves as well as the structures built on two rocky hills, in the village of Ridigama in the Kurunegala District.    The work introduces to us a comparatively poorly studied temple (of the hundreds of temples that warrant study, one might add) with an excellent foreword about Kandyan art and scholarship related to it. 

The archival research has clearly been exhaustive.  The author must have spent countless hours pouring over all chronicles to seek out references and use these to trace the relevant history.  He tells us multiple stories, some of the folk tradition included by the Mahawamsa chronicler (who appears to have understood the legitimacy of folk narratives long before Gayatri Spivak and others coined the term ‘Subaltern Studies’) as well as the hard-evidence stories.  He gives name and date, details that are so important to those who believe history is a pure science and for others who, even though they are not as fixated, nevertheless like to know who did what and where. 

So we are taken from the 2^nd Century through the many upheavals after the European invaders set foot here to the time of the Kandyan kings.  Woven in is the long and complex conflict between the Theravada and Mahayana traditions of Buddhism, which although portrayed as a bitter political duel, nevertheless demonstrated contestations framed by an agreement to coexist and focus on ideological push and pull.  The tenuous relations between king and Buddhist Order, or Sangha, is similarly referenced to give a fuller picture on the historical canvass. 

The political ups and down naturally left traces on all things, culture included.  Temple renovation is then a part of that story. Patronage too inscribed signature.  Tammita-Delgoda takes us along these sub-plots, interjecting tastefully and appropriately the relevant ideological and philosophical underpinnings.  

‘Ridi Vihare’ then, is not just a description of some monastic or religious complex, but a window on the political changes that took place, changes which are one way or another marked on the narrative of the site. 

From here he proceeds to dissect.  The chapter, appropriately titled ‘Anatomy of a Temple’, is largely descriptive.  The attention to detail is noteworthy.  Each key element of the complex has been subject to a thorough examination and full documentation.  It show not just an enumerators fascination but an art students natural tendency for comparison and contrast.  

Paintings have warranted separate explication, and fittingly too, considering their historical and artistic worth.  Tammita-Delgoda, in delving into this element, tells us about that time and how the politics of that time impacted the fascinating and yet simple paintings which reflected both period as well as general philosophy-driven ways of the Sinhala people.  He has brought in his deep understanding of Buddhist art as well as Buddhist philosophical tenets to enrich the narration of history. 

‘Ridi Vihare’ is unique.  It is not unrelated to the other examples of exceptional Buddhist art.  This book points to the work that needs to be done to document the undocumented, mis-documented and the semi-documented.  Tammita-Delgoda’s pains also indicate a new way of writing history, a manner that makes it accessible to the common reader.  There are, after all so many more ‘vihares’ some made of silver, metaphorically speaking, and some not, but all replete with countless lines, curves and textures that help us rediscover who we are, where we came from and perhaps show us where we ought to go and how we can get there.  That ‘pointing’, so to speak, deserves applause.  But then again, the exercise and the excavator here, by proclamation, have said ‘thank you, no’.  That’s in line with belief system embedded in the artifacts that were examined.  Makes sense.  

[Published in the 'UNDO' Section of 'The Nation', September 9, 2012]

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