Reflections on a ‘radical’ of our times

Champika Ranawaka has emerged as a key spokesperson in Maithripala Sirisena's presidential campaign. Some of his former critics have now become admirers.  Even his foes grudgingly acknowledge that he is not just eloquent but backs rhetoric with substance.  This is a revisit of sorts; an article written for the 'Daily News' of December 17, 2009, five years ago to the day.

I think it was George Bernard Shaw who made the following observation: ‘Reasonable men adapt themselves to the world, unreasonable men adapt the world to themselves; therefore all progress is due to unreasonable men.’   It is about swimming against the tide, doing the unthinkable, defying logic and reason and overcoming all odds. 

‘Progress’ is of course a loaded term, but Shaw is essentially right in that it is those who are ‘unreasonable’, who possess powers of observation and reasoning that enable them to envisage possibilities unthinkable to most, that have a transformational impact on society.

The true measure of a person’s impact on his/her social, economic, political and cultural environment is obtained only after that person is no more.  All salutations should be kept on hold until then.  And yet it is not impossible to praise and blame as appropriate in an interim sense.

This is about a book, a biography covering 30 years in the life of a man, a document appropriately titled ‘patisothagamiwa this wasak’.  My friend Karunaratne Paranavithana who reviewed this book recently in the Divaina points out that patisothagami means ‘swimming upstream’ and observes after the late Tissa Abeysekera that it is the appropriate Sinhala equivalent of ‘radical’.  The term ‘radical’ has been appropriated by Marxists and others who are obsessed with the left-right dichotomy; the truth however is that radicalism is not necessarily bound by preferred political outcome or social order. 

The book, by the way, was authored by Patali Champika Ranawaka, the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources.  The book is more than Champika’s recollections of his political life.  It is essential reading for students of Sri Lanka’s recent political history, especially the student movement and the agitations in the late eighties as well as the rise of the nationalist movement which peaked, one could argue, with the comprehensive military defeat of the LTTE in May 2009. 

It is just one man’s version and does not give the whole picture, yes.  On the other hand, the man concerned was not an idle observer, but a colossus in the political firmament.  I remember Upul Shantha Sannasgala speaking at a book launch several years ago, saying that there were three individuals who stood out as giants of his/our generation: Daya Pathirana (leader of the Independent Student Union, Colombo University), Ranjithan Gunaratnam, Convenor of the JVP-dominated Inter-University Student Federation and Champika.  He observed that the first was murdered by the JVP, the second by vigilante groups affiliated with the UNP regime of the time and opined that had they not perished in the UNP-JVP bheeshanaya they would have definitely shaped the nature of Champika’s intellectual and political interventions in the nineties. 

A few years ago, Milinda Moragoda asked me what kind of person Champika was. This was my answer: ‘He is a person who reads the political equation very accurately and is capable of playing trumps no one knew existed and turn everything upside down’.  Victor Ivan, editor of the Ravaya, who was also present, concurred. 

My association with Champika goes back to the year 1990, in the immediate aftermath of the annihilation of the JVP when there was a marked political silence in the entire university system.  I was introduced to him by Ven. Athureliye Rathana, a brilliant student at Peradeniya.  They were instrumental in rescuing me from the intellectual reductionism and limitations of Marxism.  I have known him close to two decades now. I was associated with political organizations he helped launch and have observed closely his political career as it evolved. 

Champika was not born with a political ‘silver spoon’. He did not come from a wealthy family.  And yet, this man with sheer force of determination and incredible intellectual drive left a singular mark in the political developments we saw in the last twenty years.  I can safely say that I have never met anyone endowed with the creative and intellectual capacities that Champika Ranawaka possesses. 

He has a rare clarity of mind that allows him to sit and write an entire political column within 30-45 minutes, without any errors, grammatical or otherwise, and without compromising ‘lyricality’, logic and overall coherence.  That quality is evident when he speaks too.  There was never a word too many and he got his point across whether he had 30 mts or 3 minutes. 

I still remember a brilliant lecture he delivered at the Institute of Fundamental Studies, Kandy at a conference on Buddhism, Science and Realism.  He spoke on quantum physics. In 45 minutes he was able to explain the most complex theories to people who had no background on the material he referred to. A professor who taught this subject observed, ‘if I was asked to speak on this subject I would have needed  3 weeks worth of lectures to say what Champika just said in 45 minutes’. 

Champika, like Nalin De Silva and Gunadasa Amarasekara, argued that the LTTE must be and can be militarily defeated.  Those were unpopular positions to take during the Chandrika Kumaratunga years.  He was vilified as a racist, a Sinhala-Buddhist chauvinist.  The agitational fronts he created such as the National Movement Against Terrorism played a crucial role in creating the ideological foundation from which that ultimate victory charge could be launched. 

Champika is not a journalist, but it would be difficult for me to name any regular columnist who could match him for volume, range of subject and argumentative power over the past two decades. 

When he took over the Ministry of Environment, he bragged that he would show how ministries should be run.  Well, he made good.  Within a year he made sure that the Ministry did not require any Treasury allocations.  His work in the sphere of environment has earned him a lot of respect internationally.  He and I may disagree on many things, but I, like almost all his detractors would acknowledge that we are better off as a nation for the energy, intellectual punch and strong and unwavering nationalism of this man. 

He may come off as an aloof, humourless, matter-of-fact individual, but that’s not true.  He is caring and sensitive when it matters.  I still remember an incident when we were both detained (along with 12 others) at the Wadduwa Police Station.  Champika was in a cell, I was handcuffed to the stairs along with Paranavithana (referred to above), Janaka Bandara (who later became Public Trustee and is now a National List MP of the UPFA) and others.  I was not in the best of moods because I had been interrogated a little while earlier and the officer who questioned me had threatened to assault me in the night.  Champika must have noticed that I was a bit down in the mouth.  He smuggled some biscuits to me as he passed me and spoke a few words of comfort. 

In all the years of our association, I have never failed to be impressed by the depth of his knowledge on a wide range of subjects, his eloquence in conversation, effectiveness in argument and to win for this country and our people victories that were thought to be unattainable.   Others might be dismayed of course, and that’s understandable.  Whichever way one looks at him, Champika Ranawaka is a man to be reckoned with. In our generation, I can say with confidence, there is no one who is endowed with the skills and capacities that this man possesses.  His book is therefore a window into an extraordinary political actor and one who will remain a determining force in our society.   Worth a read.

Malinda Seneviratne is the Editor-in-Chief of 'The Nation' and can be reached at msenevira@gmail.com.

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A ‘Janatha Mithuro’ moment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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