A thank-you note to the Ravaya

The Sinhala weekly, ‘Ravaya’, celebrated its 24^th birthday this week.  It was the successor to a magazine by the same name, founded and edited by Victor Ivan, a colourful, evergreen and enduring presence in one way or another in the Sri Lankan political firmament. 

‘Ravaya’ was a pioneering magazine.  When it came out there were no political monthlies in Sinhala. It was followed by Vinivida, a counterpoint of sorts and as such leaning towards the JVP, whereas Ravaya was a more mainstream, ‘Old Leftish’ publication.  Sithijaya died with the end of the second unsuccessful JVP insurrection. 

We had, following the UNP-JVY bheeshanaya, another Leftish (I hesitate to call the magazines or the relevant scribes ‘leftist’ given histories and track records of allegiances) magazine, ‘Diyesa’, again handled by ex-JVPers (i.e. retirees of the ’71 insurrection) like Ivan, namely Wasantha Dissanayake (‘Podi Disa’ and by far the most honourable of the ‘Class of 1971’) and Patrick Fernando (good-hearted, ideologically confused and infected with the anti-Buddhist virus that has plagued most of the Marxists in this country, many of whom not coincidentally were either born to Christian families or were so Anglicized that they were not only alienated from the greater cultural traditions but in fact derided them as being inferior, archaic and regressive).  Publications such as ‘Kalaya’ (by the Jathika Chinthanaya group led by Dr. Nalin De Silva), ‘Mathota’ and ‘London’ (a Sinhala political monthly put together by the ‘X Group’), ‘Sithijaya’ (JVP-owned) by and large followed the Ravaya ‘model’ even though the ideological thrust was varied. 

Ravaya the Newspaper largely followed the line that Victor Ivan had chartered for the magazine: left-leaning, social democratic, strong advocates of negotiated settlement to the ‘ethnic’ conflict, federalist in thrust and, when occasion demanded, ready and willing to do its bit in affecting regime change.  In all this, Ravaya has been fairly consistent and more so than all other ‘mainstream’ newspapers, English or Sinhala. Other newspapers also pushed particular political lines. They too would entertain dissenting view but would make sure that the preferred politics gets the glory-spaces. 

I found the Ravaya’s preferences despicable at times.  The uncritical embrace of the Chelvanayagam Methodology of Splitting the Nation (Federalism as part of a ‘a little now, more later’ strategy), the unpardonable reluctance to call a terrorist a terrorist (the coverage of the Kebithigollewa massacre was an all-time low in journalistic ethics) and virulently anti-Buddhist posturing severely compromised its claim to aspire to high ethical standards, journalistic balance, champion of media freedom and such.

For years the Ravaya columnists argued that the LTTE could not be militarily defeated and did their best to demoralize troops and sabotage the efforts of the security forces.  For me, this is unpardonable.  It was, however, predictable.

This predictability has I am sure won the paper a considerable number of loyal readers, most of them leaning towards or at least interested in perspective that are roughly (I am using these words carefully) Marxist. 

The predictability had another function.  It attracted people who did not subscribe to the ideological bent of the newspaper.  Since the Ravaya gave space to ideologues and parties which, to my mind, were thick as thieves with the Eelam Project, it made perfect sense for those of opposing view to read the paper.  I, for one, was able to obtain very quickly the enemy’s preferred outcome, what it tried to hide, what it wanted to inflate, what it was terrified of etc etc., courtesy the Ravaya. 

One cannot talk of Ravaya without talking about Victor.  Victor gave the paper form and for many reasons has been the most consistent and in a strange kind of way the most honourable columnist/journalist in the outfit.  He is bold in a way that Lasantha Wickramatunga was not; consistent, not given to sensationalism and challenging himself to maintaining high standards in terms of substantiation-requirements.  The way he handled former Chief Justice Sarath N Silva was absolutely brilliant.  Relentless.  Silva was of course equal to the task and knew that doing an ‘SB’ on Victor would not help.  Victor slipped when he wrote ‘Chaura Regina’ (‘The Thieving Queen’, i.e. Chandrika), not so much on facts as on style. Cheap.  Still, he was consistent and relentless. 

Victor clearly runs things in a very liberal manner.  He does not push his view on the journalists working under him.  In fact sometimes the more assertive among them take positions opposed to what he believes, even if they fall into the same broad school of thought (for example the Eelam/Federalist Project). He is civil in debate, courteous and accommodating of dissenting view in a manner that is far more consistent than is evident in most other newspapers.  This is good. 

Twenty four years after the newspaper was launched, Ravaya’s poetry page remains streets ahead of those put out by rival newspapers, largely thanks to the traditions crafted and nurtured by Ratna Sri Wijesinha.  Its coverage of the arts has been comprehensive and serious, although ideological slant remains narrow and limiting. 

The Ravaya was and is anti-Buddhist in content-volume and ideological thrust.  It is good that people do their Buddha-bashing out in the open.  It is easier to deal with them.  The Ravaya has, in this sense, and in terms of shamelessly toeing the Eelam line, knowingly or not, willingly or otherwise, done the nation a huge service. 

The Ravaya is also a political space for those who inhabit the out-of-the-mainstream, a refuge of sorts and a half-way house for ideological refugees and even crooks (Sunanda Deshapriya comes to mind). Victor is kind.  The Ravaya is kind.  I like to be kind too.  I don’t subscribe to the Ravaya line, but I will most certainly defend its right to exist and even thrive.  Life would be boring otherwise. 

Jokes aside, folks, it takes courage to bat for 24 years.  Commitment.  Sacrifice.  All salute-worthy. 

First published in the 'Daily News', November 8, 2010.

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The greening of the media

The absence of media freedom and the violation of the rights of media personnel were a constant lament articulated by the then Opposition during the previous regime.  The restoration of freedoms and the upholding of rights consequently was a key element of Maithripala Sirisena’s election campaign.  He picked up the UNP’s gripe and ran.  The UNP, for its part, in pledging support to Sirisena pledged to help him set things right in this regard.

That was ages ago.

If anyone entertained illusions that the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe dispensation was interested in doing anything to stop the rot if not cure the malady altogether these would have been laid to rest when the much talked of and many times promised Right to Information Act was first put on the policy back-burner, then completely removed from the reform discourse.  

And now with elections called the true colors are surfacing.  It is reported that the UNP’s Chairman, no less, has instructed all state media to toe the party line.  Having even without such instruction pandered to party interests in doing everything possible to promote a split in the main Opposition, such institutions now have got the official green light to blank it out altogether.  

If that were not enough a leading newspaper house has been taken over.  It was not yesterday that this country moved from ‘censorship’ to ‘ownership’ of course. That said, we were made to understand that this lot would do better.  After all, these are the very people who cried ‘foul!’ when all that happened and who, during the presidential election campaign, vowed to enshrine media freedom and the rights of media personnel.  The journalists of that newspaper who have been effectively silenced, if asked about media freedom under Ranil Wickremesinghe would no doubt break into uncontrollable guffaws and thereafter snort in disgust.  

The silence of media watchdogs such as the Free Media Movement and the Working Journalists Association as well as other rights outfits that tagged ‘media’ to their resumes for obvious donor-baiting reasons is deafening.  We are yet to hear the US Embassy issue a condemning love note to Ranil Wickremesinghe.  International watchdogs that worked tirelessly to censure the previous regime for such ‘wrongs’ have similarly disappeared into the woodworks.  

And finally we have the curious case of a previous editor of a newspaper that prided itself for operating in the public interest being charged for pilfering monies collected from the public ‘to keep the newspaper afloat’. The Companies Registrar has received a complaint from a contributor.  Those associated with the newspaper have gone silent.  Whether or not the Government will bail out this individual will also reveal the true colors of the UNP with regard not only to media freedom but corruption.  This newspaper, for the record, backed Sirisena to the hilt.  

So this is it.

Media freedom?  Forget it!  Balanced reportage? Trashed!  Fair coverage?  Be serious!  Change?  Past tense!  Yahapaalanaya?  Cheap rhetoric!

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Ravaya: a critical ‘mark’ in the political firmament

The twenty fifth anniversary of the launching of a newspaper is cause for celebration.  It is also a moment for a slow, long gaze at the journey.  ‘Ravaya’ is not the most popular newspaper in Sri Lanka.  It doesn’t have the circulation and the readership of other weekly Sinhala newspapers.  And yet, it has something that few newspapers in this country have: widespread respect. 

The bottom line is that Ravaya does not cater to the bottom line, it does not write to the gallery and is not interested in catering to the lowest common denominator.  The content is serious, sober, deliberately political and shows an aversion to sensationalizing.  It doesn’t concern itself with the trivial and ‘surface’ is clearly not its favourite grazing ground.  The Ravaya likes to delve, likes to dig deep, likes to engage with the complex, likes to analyze from angles that are not common in other weekly Sinhala papers. 

This does not mean of course that other newspapers are fluffy or fascinated with the trivial.  All newspapers have description and analysis, after all.  What is distinctive about the Ravaya is the deliberate privileging of things ideological.  It is principally for those who are interested in issues of power and consequently the structures of power, the structuring of power and the spaces for and examples of processes that engage with these things. 

Whereas the content in almost all weekly papers is organized around roughly the same structure, i.e. with features, business pages, sports, sections of kids and youth, Ravaya’s thrust is the political commentary.  As the paper evolved, other elements common to the newspaper industry, made their way into the Ravaya, but even then a preference for sobriety over the frivolous was maintained.  ‘What happened’ was and is invariable accompanied by ‘why it happened’ and typically by ‘why it should not happen’, ‘what the corrective should be’ etc. 

Now not all people are interested in power games.  Not all are interested in the deeper cultural and political economical articulations and implications of things and processes.  The target audience is therefore miniscule and this is why doing it for 25 years  is a remarkable accomplishment in longevity. 

Victor Ivan, the founding and continuing editor, some would say is the Ravaya, that the two are indistinguishable.  This is not true, though.  He is enough of a liberal to solicit and accommodate views contrary to those he holds close to his heart.  What he does is give direction.  He frames the parameters of writing, not in terms of ideological cans and cannots but argumentative quality and decency.  For all that liberality, however, like-feathered birds naturally flocked together.  Thus, even though the occasional ‘dissenting’ piece was accommodated, the regulars were mostly from one thin sliver of the ideological spectrum. 

For those who didn’t identify with the ‘Ravaya Position’ on issues, especially those pertaining to the conflict, this was a convenience. All one had to do was to read the Ravaya to find out what the other side was thinking, fearing, strategizing etc.  The arguments were coherent no doubt, but they were based on flawed premises.  The conclusions, recommendation and rhetoric were therefore flawed.  At the end of the day, some might say, the Ravaya got some egg on its editorial face, but one-upmanship aside neither Victor nor the Ravaya need feel any shame.  They had a position, they had preferred outcomes and they stuck to their guns.  They still do.

No, neither Ravaya nor Ivan have unblemished records when it comes to ethical journalistic practice, but those hiccups were rare and eminently forgivable when one considered the abysmal levels to which the media culture has descended in the matter of ethical conduct.  More disturbing was a certain deliberate tweaking of the dictum ‘Facts are sacred, comment free’.  The facts were screened to make sure that what appears as ‘news’ supported strongly held beliefs about how things are and how things should be.  This is why the Ravaya (along with YaTV and yes, ‘The Nation’ at one time) was bracketed with eminently rubbishable outfits in the NGO sector.  The Ravaya, committed to the belief that the LTTE cannot be militarily vanquished and therefore must be engaged in processes of give and give (‘take’ was tokenism, for the most part), downplayed LTTE atrocities, vilified those who thought otherwise and by and large ended up painting itself as a needlessly overzealous anti-Sinhala, anti-Buddhist rag. 

Despite all this, Ravaya remains the forum where a particular political position (pro-devolution, anti-history, more or less Marxian and fundamentalist-secularist) is articulated, coherently and consistently.  At one time this ‘Ravayan’ (shall we say?) position had sway, especially between 1994 and 2005, not any more though. And yet, in good times and bad, the Ravaya batted on bravely.  More importantly even as it erred in political analysis of the conflict, it was consistent and spot on in the larger issues of democracy, i.e. representation, transparency, accountability and the rule of law.  That, in fact, is what gave respectability to the jaundiced ideologies that came thick, fast and consistent in its pages. 

Today, even though there is very little evidence of humility regarding the errors of the past, Ravaya continues to be in the forefront of the battle to win back meaning, dignity and power for the ordinary citizen as per the promise of democracy. 

You won’t get it all in the Ravaya, but what you do get is something you will not find in other newspaper or, if you do, only in bits and pieces.  Salutations are called for.  This is mine:  remain!  

[published in 'The Nation', February 26, 2012]

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