The question of national security and personal safety

“Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem to be more afraid of life than death” – James F. Bymes

It was not so in the past. Nor was it two and a half decades ago. My story was in early 1980's. I was once in the morning train that comes on the coast line from Galle. Its a very popular train, the “Ruhunu Kumari” which carries commuters from the South to the metropolitan Colombo every day. There was one old and lanky gentleman in a typical white cotton “national dress” in the compartment that I got into and had to travel standing. He was having a very casual “gossip” type talk with the commuters who were mainly employees in different public and private sector offices. When the train reached Kollupitiya, he got off the train with a neatly rolled black umbrella used as a walking stick and ambled out of the station. Out side the station there was a lonely black car with just an ordinary driver, that carried this gentleman away. He was Dr. W. Dahanayake, Minister of Co-operatives at the time. He perhaps was not aware then, what “security” was for politicians. Nor was there any public talk of “national” security.

The whole issue of “national security” in Sri Lanka emerged as tied to the armed conflict of the North. Every aspect of public life too got “barricaded” with it. With that came the personal security of the present day “politician” who by then had evolved differently to that of Dahanayake type politicians of the past. What really irks and irritates people is not the necessity of highlighting “national security” that can be discussed. But the high level of security that has come to accompany all shades of politicians. The first major armed security allocated for politicians became an accepted necessity, not with armed Tamil groups in the North, but with the armed insurgency in the “South” by the JVP.

With the Indo-Sri Lanka accord in July 1987, the JVP led an armed insurgency against devolution and provincial councils in the most savage way Sri Lanka had ever witnessed till then. The then UNP government of J.R. Jayawardne was thus compelled to provide security to all who politically accepted Provincial Councils (PC), both in and outside parliament. This meant that all those who contested PC's too had to be provided with armed security. Thereafter the targeting the lives of parliament members by the LTTE made armed security a fact of life in Sri Lanka.
That in brief is how SL came to be a country under a “24 x 7 armed guard” and heavy security. With the LTTE targeting high profile personalities like President Premadasa, Minister Kadirgamar, Athulathmudali, Dissanayake and the like, stricter and heavier armed security for politicians came to be socially accepted and as inevitable in unusually generalised terms.

Over the last 02 decades no politician, whether parliament or PC, moved about without armed guard and that became the most convenient show of power, for politicians. There were those who ran about with convoys of armed men with total disrespect to the public they were supposed to represent. There was no criteria or basis the public knew about, in how such armed security was allocated to politicians. Worst was that no one knew whether they were even official State security or not. That too was never questioned. The blanket acceptance of “Tiger threats” to politicians provided such beefing up of armed security for those who wanted to show their political muscle in public display.

While the question of how best security could have been organised for high profile public personalities, remain a question outside public debate, the security that was thrown into political life in the country in such abundance and for so long, has had a devastating effect on the law and order situation of the country and its democratic existence. In a country which lives with politicisation of all its State appendages including the police department, the apparent legality added to security allocated for politicians have especially in the provinces given them unquestionable ability to override policing of the society. Thus a social breed that is not accountable to law as other citizens do, or have to, has emerged with a “beyond legal” immunity that is not easily, or ever challenged.

Thus the habit of politicians moving freely with armed security that in a way suppressed the civil life of the people, has also distanced the “elected representative” from the voter who elect them. Armed security has provided the elected men and women with an acquired arbitrary discretion and an undue advantage of refusing to listen to their own constituents. This has helped develop an attitude of arrogance and of irresponsibility in politics. Despite all those negative and intimidating impact on the voter, this is being defined as “political power” and thus as high attraction even in elections.

The recent provincial council elections held and the one that is now in the running in the South, are ample proof of all that indecent brute armed power. Para military groups allowed to run for elections under political party registrations have added more offensive stink to the already gangrenous wound. Its a rolling mountain that gathers more force with the ruling elite's patronage.

Wijenayake who is still an accuse in an election related murder in Gampaha and promoted a Minister, Labour Minister Silva who goes about with presidential patronage even after his notoriously riotous attacks on media personnel and publicly claiming he could send the Kelaniya PS Chairman to where SL Editor Wickramatunge was sent, two candidates in Galle district at the provincial council elections now being held, making complaints with the police against a third candidate for threats on their lives, the CaFFE claiming law enforcement agencies are not taking adequate action and JVP election offices coming under attacks by armed thugs are all extensions of this “sick” armed security mentality that prevails among politicians.

This is a steady growth of the brute thuggery that was witnessed especially after the infamous Wayamba PC elections and at most elections over the past decades This is an extension of armed brutality that controls and intimidates the civil society, beyond elections. It has allowed not only politicians, but their irresponsible, undisciplined siblings to create chaos even at public places. This therefore calls for an end to militarisation of this society.

What ever promises the politicians make, the Sri Lankan society can never achieve any semblance of democracy, unless the society seriously takes up the issue of politicians running around with armed escorts. As for the more sensitive official positions like the President, Defense establishment heads and may be the PM and the Leader of the Opposition, one could accept continued security. Yet, what ever excuse the other politicians had previously, they don't have the right to have them now. At least the ordinary minsters, MP's and especially the PC members can not say they are threatened by Tiger suicide cadres any more.

Its time therefore to call for these ordinary politicians to be totally stripped of all security they parade with. The PM should be called upon in parliament every month, to provide a list of designations and names of those who are officially eligible for security and to declare on whose recommendations the security is provided for those considered eligible.

The whole security issue that was kept out of the public domain and at a huge public cost during the war, has no reason now to be kept so elusive and confidential. The public who bears the billions spent on security, should have at least the basic information as to who is provided security now and why.

It would in effect remove the issue of para military groups operating, as they are no more threatened by an already eliminated LTTE. The people, especially in the South should now start defining the conclusion of the war as declared by the Rajapaksa regime as one that brings a demilitarised society by default. Its just logical too that the security provided for politicians in the face of LTTE threats have to go off with the government declaring the war over. Not just the war, but the LTTE as well.
It would effectively demilitarise the society to a great extent. At least to the extent that the people would know provincial politicians who move with armed security thereafter, are those who do so illegally. Politicians who could well be called “rogue politicians”. Law enforcement agencies that are not held responsible for such public display of armed security now, could be held responsible for such misuse, thereafter.

While this may not be very palatable for most Opposition party politicians who are also vying to be as powerful or more powerful at their earliest opportunity, it is wise for the public to take up the call for demilitarisation of society, beginning with removal of security of ordinary politicians. Some things are necessary to be named, though at times the society is not ready to do so. But this society should not allow, too many Silvas, Wijanayakes, Muthuhettyges and their likes to go round with arms any more. Monday 21st the International Peace Day could well be the day for this call.

Kusal Perera
21 September, 2009
also published in transcurrents.com
under the title Demilitarisation of Sri Lanka....

East - West and half born Sinhala “Jesu daruwa”

It was a lazy evening ebbing into a wet Saturday night, after a Friday poya holiday. This was a Sri Lankan evening, down what was better known as “Flower Road” during a “long weekend”. The acoustically elegant but not so modern hall of the Colombo Ladies College, was quietly but hurriedly accommodating the culturally affluent in urban Colombo. This year the crowd was somewhat different though, to that in previous years.

The reason perhaps was that the “Symphony Orchestra of Sri Lanka” (SOSL) in its 52nd Season was to provide music to two versatile and respected musical personalities of the exclusively Sinhala world. That for the first time too, such an “experimental” blending of Sinhala songs were to be made with chamber music of a large symphony orchestra that has for decades been proud to play classical music of the best celebrity composers in the West.

As Professor Ajith Abeysekera who worked out the chemistry of this new blend of Western orchestral music and the not so classical, popular Sinhala song told a few days before the event, they (SOSL) were “......not really trying to do fusion. That is not the idea. We haven’t done anything to make them sound Western, but we make use of orchestral colour with entirely western instruments. It’s very interesting.”

True to his words, there were no improvisations to melodies and no change of style and pitch in signing. The two artistes, Visharadha Nanda Malini and Sangeethvedi Victor Ratnayake simply stood in front of two mikes and sang 06 of their best songs each, as they had been singing for the last 30 or 40 years. They did well. They sang their best. Yet there was something amiss. Was it the “orchestral colour” that Prof Abeysekera said they were adding that went missing ?

The “orchestral colour” the Symphony orchestra had when they played 02 Western Classical operas, in contrast to their musical backing of the 02 singers, was what missed out in the show. There seemed some restraint in musicians playing their musical score for what was arranged for the songs. The musical mood was “cautious ” in their accompaniment of the two singers.

This feeling of alienation of a sort was clearly audible, in all songs sung, except in the one that had a Church choir influence. Music opened up in its symphonical style for the song “Jesu swamy daruwane...” when Nanda sang her heart out on that. This is one song that broke off from the orthodoxy of the now established Sinhala music form reaching out to a choir style melody. That then made a rare link between the singer and the orchestral players. With all other songs sung that Saturday night, obviously they felt a distance to the style, melody and the quality of voice of these 02 very “Sinhala” singers.

That had to be expected, although most in the audience seemed not to. Yet it was an experience to feel the difference. The Western classical music as we hear and enjoy them now, has a long history of many centuries, evolving from the time of the Greek empire. Shut to public performances during the Roman era, it sustained the group or “large gathering” character of playing many instruments at churches, funerals and at places of religious worth. This form of “concert” music then evolved into philharmonic or symphony music through the European “Renaissance” to the modern world.

Through its evolution, it has gained much with written music for large orchestras with different instrument families. Growing in a liturgical social context that had the advantage of “printing” much before other societies outside Europe, Western classical music flourished in a disciplined design as decided by composers.

Writing music before it is played out, composers searched for very many variations that saw intricately complex relationships between its emotional content and the intellectual means by which it is achieved. This complexity in emotions and intellect is the forte in Western classical music where “soprano” voices have gained a prestigious presence as capable of delivering both emotion and intellect.

The ability to stand up in singing for such musical composing, was what went missing with the two singers who are schooled in a completely different musical tradition. Schooling in the borrowed North Indian “Hindustani” (Utthara Bharatheeya) music here in Sri Lanka is not even a century old. Then “Ceylon” looked towards North Indian classical music as one that was opposed to British rule. The Sinhala elite looked towards a musical tradition that was anti British in colour.

This Hindustani music that satisfied the politics of the pre independence Ceylonese too has a long and strong history of growth, starting as devotional appeals to God Krishna. It had its influence from early Persian folk music and later from the Arabian traditions with the Moghul empire. The long path of evolution of Hindustani music is esoteric and is based on “ragas”, each said to be devoted to a different emotional state.

So is the other South Indian tradition of Carnatic music. That too is very religious from its origin and has very much less influence from Persian and Arabic traditions. Yet these two neighbouring music traditions that Sinhala song and music derives their theoretical base, grew into perfection through rituals and intellectual discourse. They therefore needed extremely devoted and committed learning and training.

Music and art become living cultural traditions through long evolutionary exercises in society and then become part of social life in them. A society that lives with such endemic traditions horning its skills with every generation for centuries and not decades, develops an intellectual component that in art forms takes on high aesthetic values. This is common in both Western classical music and in Indian “raghadhari” music in two different planes of intellectual entertainment.

Yet the Sinhala society in its entire history, greatly influenced by Theravada Buddhism had no such cultural base. The Sinhala culture lacked any music tradition and its folk forms were extremely mediocre and primitive to even assimilate a strong music tradition. There was also no “palace culture” of Sinhala music and dance that could have at least provided a niche for such acceptance and nurturing of Hindustani music. Therefore in Sri Lanka, the modern day Sinhala music begins as purely an intervention from the outside world from the 16 century when with the Portuguese and the Dutch, their “Baila and Kaffringa” entered into coastal social layers and much later in early 20 century the Hindustani music was brought in that then turned into an academic exercise in its later years.

The first singers and musicians therefore came from backgrounds that were not Sinhala and when they were Sinhala, they were from a church training. The first few who ventured out to secure learning and training in Hindustani music too were from such church backgrounds.

That was in late 1940's and they became pioneers who experimented with a new Sinhala musical tradition. That was more in the realm of lyrics as aptly seen in the difference between Saranagupta Amarasignhe – Deva Suriyasena type of songs and Ananda Samarakoon - Sunil Shanta variant. It was their simple Sinhala lyrics that compelled them to try out melodies to carry their lyrics from early 1940's into the 50's.

There were few others too who were also seeking out a Sinhala identity in music and what was tried out by all of them was developing a popular Sinhala song, different to those early Sinhala songs with a Dravidian flavour. What they lacked was not only a strong culture, but also a strong entertainment market that could sustain them. An entertainment industry that was absent in the “welfare State” economy the early Ceylon carried after independence. Except for the old “Radio Ceylon” they only had a cheap fledgling cinema that was not very much open for experimental songs and music. The possibility of training and developing professional Sinhala musicians as classical exponents of that art form, had very little or no scope within post independent Sri Lanka.

This therefore diluted early efforts in establishing “Shanthi-nikethan” type musical schools. Horana “Shripali” that was graced by Rabindranath Tagore at its birth, gradually turned into an ordinary school in the area. The State sponsored “Haywood” as an aesthetic training institute that can boast of popular Sinhala artistes like Victor Ratnayake, Sanath Nandasiri, Amara Ranatunge, late Gunadasa Kapuge to name a few, was not in any way a substitute for classical music teaching of high order. It could mostly turn out Music Teachers for primary and secondary government schools of the day. Very creative classical exponents of the art in the calibre of Pundit Ravi Shankar,Ustad Vilayat Khan, Ustad Ali Akbar, Hari Prasad Chaurasia, wasn't therefore Sri Lanka's pride and fortune.

This has not changed to the better, even after the economy was opened up 03 decades ago. In modern societies that do not promote democracy and thus can not afford a healthy “night life”, the possibility of establishing strong cultures of performing art including music within an entertainment market, is one that does not happen. The absence of “night life” not only deprives an entertainment market, it deprives the society of healthy discourse too. An indispensable necessity in developing critical intellectual interventions that in turn catalyse intellectual growth and development of art and culture.

Sinhala music is one that has therefore not attained the classical perfection of its borrowed musical traditions even after many decades of continued indulgence. This is reason why Sinhala music has not been able to produce Ravi Shankars and Ali Rakkhas who could perform with awe as oriental musical giants alongside Western musicians.

This perhaps was what lacked at the Ladies' College auditorium that night. While a standing ovation accepted the effort of the Symphony Orchestra of Sri Lanka, a question that remained glum and dumb was whether a Western classical symphony that had grown with complex relationships between emotional content and intellectual aesthetics could effectively be the musical facilitator for yet to be born Sinhala classics that had stopped with light pop songs. Again the answer would only be theoretical and not practical in a society that has little wherewithal to meet such challenge.

By Kusal Perera
September 06th Sunday, 2009
Colombo

South Asian "National Security" and the Sri Lankan war won

“Irom Sharmila” a young ordinary woman from Manipur came to my ambit of reading while I was in the company of a pioneering social activist from India, who has very many contacts in the troubled Indian North - East provinces. She is still in an unending fast, moving into its 09th consecutive year, demanding that the Indian State remove the “Armed Forces Special Provisions Act” (AFSPA) enforced in her homeland. It was curious to hear of a person who could go on fasting for that long. She had been arrested and is being force fed through a nasal tube, by the Indian armed forces in Manipur, from the first days she started her fast. Each time she is released from detention, she continues with her fast and with her demand for repeal of the AFSPA from Manipur. Now Irom Sharmila is in prison, force fed and waiting to be tried for attempted murder of herself.

While she is no doubt an iconic power of social motivation in Manipur, while the Indian media drags its feet in highlighting her struggle for freedom and democracy, Irom Sharmila’s struggle manifests the present trend in South Asia of how brutal and maneuvering the States could be in suppressing democratic rights.

The AFSPA against which Irom Sharmila is fasting provides extra ordinary powers for Indian armed forces and para-military forces to “shoot to kill” if they feel it is necessary to do so, in the name of law and order. The Indian State believes it has every right to do so, in eliminating Maoist guerilla groups fighting in most under developed and over corrupt N-E State provinces. These struggles have now come to be talked of as “insurgency” and “terrorism”.

The most recent “Rajnandgaon massacre” of 29 policemen with their District Superintendent of Police, was projected in such language in the Indian media. So was those in Chhattisgarh, Jarkhand, Nandigram, Lalgarh and most other Maoist armed activities that were rolled out as local “terrorism” by the State and the Indian media.

The fact remains, from the perspective of States in how “terrorism” could be addressed, there is presently no different categories of armed struggles and armed liberation struggles accepted any more. There can not be armed liberation movements in this post 9/11 period, like the Mao’s guerillas in pre 1948 China and Fidel’s guerillas in pre 1958 Cuba. Perhaps the last of such liberation armed cadres were the African National Congress “terrorists” of Nelson Mandela in South Africa.

Today, all armed groups that take up arms in defiance of State terror and the lack of space for democratic struggle, fall under the general and vague definition of “terrorists like Al-Qaeda”. Therefore all armed groups in South Asia are broadly treated as “terrorist” groups that undertake attacks running across borders like the Mumbai 26/11 LeT militants, Jammu and Kashmir armed Islamic militants, the Afghan and Pakistani Talibans, the Myanmari Rohingya militants in Bangladesh and the Sri Lankan Tamil Tigers, to think of a few.

All these cross border trafficking of armed conflicts, have provided governments the excuse to militarise States, in the name of “National Security”. Nationalism in this part of the world, could be easily marketed without much questioning. The issue of the “Nation State” is packed with high emotions or could be easily hyped by the majority as “patriotism”. Therefore the media goes hoarse “24x7” questioning governments why they don’t take steps in the name of “National Security”. Media coverage of attacks by terrorist outfits from across borders and with “across border” implications in local “terrorism”, has drawn public interest in curbing “terrorism ” through stronger military means in the name of “saving the nation”.

It was the New York 9/11 terrorist attack that left a human tragedy, with the Bush call for a “global war against terrorism”, that gave all governments this unchallenged legitimacy to eliminate “terrorism” through military means at any cost. The post 9/11 period thus brought about a new culture in “intelligence” gathering that has neither morals nor ethics. It has no legal bindings too. All “Intelligence” agencies now have the privacy and the right to go beyond any foreign policy limitations, to work covertly with any country in collating intelligence on “terrorism”. The mechanisms of “intelligence” gathering have thus become very strong, brutal and an unquestioned, specialised “arms” of repressive States. This in fact was part of the Indian share in fighting the war against Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka.

It is within this “coming together” of all neighboring States and the international community against “terrorism” that the Sri Lankan war against Tamil Tigers have to be seen. All of them were very apparent and operative in the Sri Lankan war against Tamil Tigers, waged on the same arguments and acceptance on “Global war against terrorism”.

First, the international community at no point, wanted the “war against terrorists” stopped. The LTTE was banned or restricted as a “terrorist organization” in all those major countries. Yes, they nevertheless had a “conscience” issue with heavy “civilian casualties”, being stoic defenders of human rights in the pre 9/11 period. That did not deter them from restricting themselves to statements on and visits to judge the civilian situation. The war continued unabated, until it was declared won by the Rajapaksa regime, with over 300,000 civilians left destitute in barbed wire internment camps and over another 12,000 civilians killed during the last phase of the war. The injured, the maimed, the parentless and the spouseless due to war, going without a count so far.

The role of the other unorthodox international players like China, Russia, Iran and Libya along with the less talked of Israel are now in the open and always easily explained by them as helping another in trouble, whilst the conflicts are not theirs to bother. As for Pakistan and India, they have been competitive in helping the Sri Lankan regime with the war and been settling into demarcated areas of support.

With the war over and the Tamil Tigers accepted as eliminated, including its once elusive and deified leader Prabhakaran, the neighboring governments and States around have plenty to learn from the now projected “success story” from Sri Lanka. Governments of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, all have “terrorist” problems to take a cue or two from this Sri Lankan war won.

The Sri Lankan conflict taken again as a case in point shows that it did not begin with the armed groups that left the LTTE as the most ruthless of all and will not end with the defeat of that LTTE. It is a political conflict that is based on the right of the Tamil people to be part of the national political process in decision making as equals. It is therefore a question of sharing political power and the conflict would continue as long as that political issue remains unsolved.

Unfortunately for Sri Lanka, this struggle for “power sharing” was planted in the present context of “global war against terrorism” and militarization of societies against “terrorism” that totally refused a political answer. The Sri Lankan conflict was thus redefined by the dominant Sinhala majority as one that had to be fought against Tamil “separatism“ to save the country in its “Unitary“ form. Projected as one that challenged the sovereignty of the “nation” State, the international community and regional neighbours accepted it that way to go on with their own militarization programme(s).

What nevertheless should be focused on, is the after effect of this war against global terror” unleashed against Tamil Tigers on the Sri Lankan soil. The Sri Lankan experience though a success story for governments and States to replicate with much military fervour, nevertheless militarised the whole society with no chances of return to normalcy. All democratic life, not only in the North - East of Sri Lanka but in all other parts as well, has been simply flattened in the name of eliminating “Tamil separatist terrorism”.

The media was the first bleeding victim of this State terror. Through out the war, the defence establishment took upon itself the right to decide what should be told to the people and with what amount of “doctored” info. The difference there was between State controlled media and the privately owned media was thrashed into a monologue of State designed campaign for war and against all who wanted to dissent. The result is not only a long list of abductions, arbitrary arrests and detentions, torture, disappearances and extra judicial killings, but also a media that now lives a controlled and coerced life under a State appointed Press Council, after the war was declared over. The snooze left on free media, on right for information and freedom of expression had come to stay.

With that harsh crack down on the media and with all social dissent and dialogue wiped out, a war machinery was established under the political regime that allowed for para military groups to work in tandem with the State security forces. New unidentified groups were let loose with unrestricted freedom of mobility in a heavily fortified society. Impunity was the order of the day with no investigations into abductions, threats, killings, disappearances seeing positive conclusions and indictments where necessary.

Political decisions became the right of the military establishment headed by the Defence Secretary and the Executive head. The cabinet of ministers and the parliament was thus turned into a “rubber stamp” to give a legitimate façade to all decisions ruling party politicians were expected to defend. The new politico - military regime decided the day to day life of the society. Except for the extension of the Emergency Regulations that had to be done through parliament, all other decisions related to “national security” came to be the power domain of the defence establishment.

This politico-military mechanism which used all overt and covert repressive measures, saw to it that no “opposition” to the warring regime was emerging on any agitational platform. Thus even in the South, no workers’ or student protests were allowed to mobilise a social presence either as a dialogue or on open streets. This turned into a regime that used the slogan of “eliminating terrorism” to not only fight a war with the LTTE, but to eliminate all democratic forms of social life in every part of the country.

In every sense of dictatorial rule, the “war against terrorism” in Sri Lanka has eventually established a politico-military regime that has come to stay, with international and regional support and funds. The most unfortunate fact is that it is the colossal human damage - 300,000 plus IDP’s interned behind barbed wire, wounded thousands packed in under served hospitals, lands infested with mines, devastation to infrastructure - with which Sri Lanka has to live with in the post war era that also generates financial support for the present regime.

Immediately after the war was declared over, India pledged INR 500 Crores for rehabilitation and the US $ 1.9 billion loan from the IMF that was said to be stuck, came increased to $ 2.6 billion. EU and Japanese assistance are also in the pipeline and who knows what and how much more next ?

Is there a lesson to learn from this SL conflict ? What would the people, the society that needs social and political stability with democracy, freedom and respect for human rights, learn from this conflict ?

The most important lesson to learn is that, this “war against terrorism” is one that leads to total suppression of the society with the consent of the larger majority in society, who would also loose its democratic life in the process. That it paves the way for a very repressive regime with a political cabal at its head that would use all the ideological and military power to drain off democracy and the economy too. Also that there would not be an organized civil society left to lead a break from the tyranny that usurps all socio political power with a legitimate face in governance that provides only a procedural form of democracy.

The next important lesson is that finding political answers to socio-political conflicts can not be outsourced to armed “liberation” groups. In their rigidly regimented structured life, trained to suspect every one outside the organisation, they would never understand what democratic life is. Their “liberation” would only mean a transfer of power to an organic ethno-religious armed organisation in captured land that would also run a totalitarian regime.

It was true in the past in China and true in Cuba and Kampuchea too. It would certainly have been equally and savagely true, if the LTTE came to rule the Tamil homeland. This would also hold true to Jammu and Kashmir, to Assam, Manipur, Nagaland, Mizoram and all other conflict ridden States and areas in India that have come under severe repression and legal restrictions over the past years. This was proved the same in the SWAT valley when the Taliban took over rule there.

Therefore time has come for the people and their civil organisations to take on both the oppressive State that would want to militarise the society in the name of “national security” and the armed groups who talk of “liberation” but would resort to the most brutal anti-democratic means in fighting the State. Together they work towards undermining democracy in society, violating human rights and dismantling social structures, irrespective of who gains control of the land under conflict.

Time has thus come for all human rights and civil society forums to push through an agenda for democracy and respect of human rights and accordingly challenge both the State and armed groups for contributing to the single oppressive factor of militarising society.

In a single line, its time to stand up for a democratic South Asian region against all forms of militarization that cross national borders, as State intelligence, professional military expertise and as armed militancy, never mind the label attached to them. All of them contribute to the same evil of robbing the people of their democratic right to rule themselves.

Kusal Perera

05 August, 2009

Perhaps you needed to live and die there….

He understood, indeed, that something complicated was wrong, but he knew, too, that he wouldn't be there long enough to find out, that perhaps you needed to live and die there, to find out. All she heard over the phone was the voice assuring her, 'Every one's been marvellous…..really marvellous. I just hope I can get back here some day….that is, if they ever let me in again…' [concluding lines in Nadine Gordimer's short story "Open House"]

No. It wasn't over the phone that we talked. It wasn't over the phone that he told us, he would 'love to get back' because every one was marvellous. But he was, rather doubtful, whether he could get back 'some day'.

"You know, I'm on dialysis…..may not have more than a few years more to go about with all this." He said. His slightly bloated face, dyed and trimmed pen line beard with a slightly thicker moustache, small but screwed eyes behind thick, black frame spectacles, did not show him as a sick soul. Nor did his gravel but confident voice.

"I wish we could……agree to honourably conclude these discussions for all of us to have peace…." He sounded quite sentimental and reclusive too.

"We hope so too" said my friend most sincerely and honestly, a well respected colleague in the media.

He looked round at the young cadres who were there to help him. One of them brought us two scotch whiskeys on ice. He was served a fruit drink.

It was a cosy lounge room in a luxury suite in the tallest hotel in the centre of Oslo. It was biting and freezing cold there in December. But not within the heated, spacious room. Within the room, we could not light cigarettes. Not any where in the hotel either. So we simply sipped the whiskey with long lazy spells, in between.

"I was extremely sorry to hear of Sugath's death……you know we were working together ? A nice man that fellow…." He mused.

"Sugath was ill,…..for some time…..before he passed off…." I said.

"Yes, yes. I know……in fact I wanted to write to his wife…..but you know this work…..it doesn't give us that luxury…..some how I couldn't". It was a long pause and a slow breath that shook him out of that melancholic mood.

"You know….those days……Sugath and me…..we used to scoot off to see 'blue films' without telling others …. In Colpetty….I forget the name of that lane now…..Sugath new that joint….." another pause and "Those were wonderful days". His voice was lined with a yearning for that faded past of his, in an otherwise silent room that held some hope for the future.

"We used to have very good discussions and arguments…..he was a very strong believer of himself…..somewhat of a 'Marxist', but I doubt he was a member of the Communist party…." He said, sipping at his fruit drink.

He asked a young cadre to get us some thing to bite at, with our whiskey and added, "I think he was close to the Sama samaja party and you know, he influenced me to study Buddhism."

Sugath he was affectionately talking of was none other than Sugathapala de Silva, the versatile Sinhala playwright, Stage dramatist and author, respected by all as one who stubbornly and most selfishly guarded his high integrity. As one who did not know and did not want to know what compromise is when it came to his conscience. These two men had been good buddies in the 60's when they were both employed at the British High Commission, one doing Tamil and the other Sinhala translations for the diplomats there. His eyes were soft and wet traversing that past, he wanted to live that life again, though he knew his buddy has left us all a few years ago.

"Is that café…..Indo-Ceylon….still there ?....Must be quite different now…" he suddenly asked and answered it himself. "You know…..we used to go for the 9.30 late night show at Liberty and then have 'wadei and plain tea' at Indo-Ceylon….. till the last CTB bus came." He was happy picking out all those lovely things, we were also happy to nibble at.

It was a short late evening that dragged us all into a long, common history. One that was totally unknown, perhaps unbelievable too, to the young cadres who moved around us, serving, and perhaps keeping watch on us. They were unable to understand what we talked, though. The language too, I presumed.

Here was a man who was bridging generations. One who was playing tutor to the new generation that knew only Tamil and wanted to be only Tamil. To a generation that took over the responsibility of finding answers for them as Tamils.

That he knew had bled too much on both sides of the divide for too long. He also knew, this new generation of Tamil youth had justifiable reasons to continue through bloody struggle though with devastation. He therefore was one who tried to find a way out of this bleeding conflict, wanting to get to his past.

"It took me many years to convince 'Thambi' …..we could compromise on 'internal self determination'…… that's how we came to agree on a 'federal framework' as a solution."

That sort of surprised us.

"Have you agreed on a federal solution?" my colleague asked him.

"Yes…. We would agree tomorrow to pursue a final solution within a federal frame work….But don't let it out…..till we sign tomorrow.…. We'll then hold a media briefing"

We walked out unusually happy though into the freezing snowy cold. Happy we would once again live together as a democratic nation.

We also knew he was not supposed to tell that to any one. But he had to. He was so impatient to live his old life again. He stole a glimpse of it, telling it to us.

He is no more since December 14, 2006. He has thus left a void that would not be filled again with such trust and authority within the armed Tamil Tiger movement. He is no more there to stitch together two generations that have two differing experiences over the same issue. The Tamil political aspirations. The conflict we failed to resolve and left him no chance to mull over his past all over again.

He was Anthony Stanislaus Balasingham, Better known as Anton and Bala. Born in Batticoloa to a Hindu father and a Christian mother, he left to London after his stint at the British High Commission in Colombo. Was never an armed cadre, yet was the undisputed political guru and theoretician of the LTTE. Probably the only person who could call the LTTE Supremo, "Thambi". Perhaps the only one among them, who had lived a past to know what democracy is, in human life.

Kusal Perera

December 20, 2006

Colombo

[Though written to be published in a mainstream news paper, this remained unpublished. No reason known, but that's what happened - kp]

Will this international community actually help ?

The international community, the UN Security Council, The Commonwealth Member Countries, the SAARC are all organizations and forums at different levels that could prevail on Sri Lanka over the human carnage that's most nakedly unfolding, at the expense of innocent civilians, who are caught in the bloody conflict between the government of Sri Lanka and the Tamil Tigers. This catastrophe has been unfolding in a very savage manner especially from January this year, after Tamil Tigers accepted defeat by leaving Killinochchi and retreating to their acclaimed stronghold, the Mullaitivu.

Even before that, there were calls going out to the international community, to the EU, to the UN and to most other humanitarian agencies, asking them to intervene in this conflict on the basis there is an imminent humanitarian crisis that needs independent intervention. This call for independent intervention from the outside world went out louder when the GoSL systematically closed all access to international and national aid organizations, humanitarian organizations and to the media in reaching the war affected areas and the people caught in the war. A war behind iron curtains can never be within humanitarian limits and decency.

Yet in a typically bureaucratic manner, all international organizations from the UN Security Council to the EU and the SL Aid Group, including all humanitarian agencies, worked hard to find protocols, international charters and covenants that could lay the blame square on both the GoSL and the Tamil Tigers equally and request for adherence to international law. It is not that they did not know such statements from distant cities would provide the government with time and space to continue with its military offensives how ever ruthless they could be.

This isn't the first time these international organizations and associations have been into this business of allowing armed conflicts to grow savage at the expense of human life. The Rwandan conflict is one classic example of how the UN Security Council and the international community played on their own agenda at the expense of innocent human lives. In less than 100 days, over 01 million Tutsi civilians were hacked, butchered and cut to death in one of the most callous neglects in world diplomacy, while the UN Security Council members were arguing on who is right and who is wrong and whether it is right to intervene and how. They went into long discussions and debates over coffee and tea, for they had all the time in the world in their plush offices. But not those Tutsi men, women and children, the young and the old who were dying at the hands of Hutu power on the roads, in their homes, at workplaces and in hide outs they thought they would be safe.

The US Secretary of State under the Clinton administration, Madam Madeleine Albright writing her autobiography in her retirement says, [quote] As I look back at the records of the meetings held that first week, I am struck by the lack of information about the killing that had begun against unarmed Rwandan civilians, as opposed to the fighting between Hutu and Tutsi militias. Many Western embassies had been evacuated, including our own (US), so official reporting was curtailed. Dallaire (head of the UN Peace keeping force) was making dire reports to the UN headquarters, but the oral summaries provided to the Security Council lacked detail and failed to convey the full dimensions of the disaster. As a result, the Council hoped unrealistically that each new day would bring a cease fire.[unquote] – (Madam Secretary / page 188; emphasis and explanations within brackets added)

That is simply how these big powers play their role as international leaders. After all that massacre, after 01 million innocent lives had been unnecessarily hacked to death, Albright says, [unquote] My deepest regret from years in public service is the failure of the United States and the international community to act sooner to halt those crimes. President Clinton later apologized for our lack of action, as did I. [unquote] – (ibid – p/185; emphasis added)

Its easy for them to tender apologies and lay the chapter of mass killings aside. So is it with all the other conflicts she lists in her memoirs. Bosnia, Somalia, Haiti, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Angola, Liberia, Mozambique, Sudan, Cambodia, Afghanistan and Tajikistan were all extreme cases of conflict that had received priority over Rwanda according to Albright. It was 1993 and 16 years ago that she lists all these conflict ridden countries. Israel and the Gaza, is not there though. That's despite the UN Security Council adopting 131 Resolutions on the Israel – Palestinian conflict, but has never invoked Chapter VII of the UN Charter. Israel is thus given freedom to behave the way it wants. Burma and Aung Saan Sukyi wasn't even listed. The Military Junta carries on regardless.

How many has the UN Security Council and the international community solved or at least positively intervened in paving a way out of the conflicts, from this list in Madam Secretary's memoirs ? None for sure. In fact the list is longer and broader now. There is Iraq, Iran and North Korea on a different plateau. Afghanistan has now turned the conflict into an Afghanistan – Pakistan – India conflict. Robert Mugabe continues with his Zimbabwe reeling with armed conflicts while enjoying inflation at over 2,000 per cent. President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan is indicted in the ICC while the international community allows Darfur to turn into a playing field for human catastrophe.

The list is definitely long and bloody.

Can the Sri Lankan conflict receive from these cumbersome agencies any treatment that would be different to what they have always been doling out ? In all these international agencies, from the UN to IMF and World Bank, the US dollar has big interests in how they act. All international agencies have to accede to super power interests and that is no secret. Who are they ? They are all big time arms manufacturers and dealers. The US between the years 2000 – 2007 has been leading the military hardware market with US $ 134.84 billion which was 37% of the market share. The five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, the US, UK, France, Russia, and China together in 2002 shared 88% of the reported sales in conventional arms.

Imagine this planet earth in soothing peace ? No armed conflicts any where, only dialogue and negotiations in managing conflicts. Can these five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council afford to lose US $ 273.5 billion ? As former US President Jimmy Carter said during his presidential campaign in 1976, [quote] We can’t have it both ways. We can’t be both the world’s leading champion of peace and the world’s leading supplier of arms.[unquote]

They would rather say "sorry" again after everything is over. If Sri Lanka could on its own finish the conflict what ever the human carnage, as in Serbia, they would still issue a statement, ambiguous in tone but thanking the government of SL for finishing off "terrorism". For they wouldn't lose this tiny arms market immediately and there are other conflicts they moderate on their own agenda, any way.

Its ridiculous to expect international big time players including the UN to help stop human tragedies. They wouldn't.

Kusal Perera
May 01, 2009

For details on world armament market visit - http://www.globalissues.org/article/74/the-arms-tradeis-
big-business#GlobalArmsSalesBySupplierNations

Digging my past for 'Sudath'

I have been out of this blog for two moons. Not for nothing though. Most of my political musings were published in more public domains for better access. This I kept for some time as I thought this is too personal. But as some one later told me, "politics is personal", or the other way round, is it ? Any way, I thought I would share it with those who would want to know.

It was a hot afternoon and I was tired. Mentally fatigued. Sitting on the up stair balcony on the side of the main hall which is used by Sudath for scribbling story boards for his commercial advertisements, I lit a cigarette. Sudath came with a warm cup of tea without milk and left it in front of me. He sat dragging a canvas chair and agreed it was a gruelling morning. We slid into disjointed tales from the past, unknowingly and most willingly. His and mine too. Then he asked me something that I had never thought about before. It was about a patch in my past, seldom talked of and less seldom thought of. It seemed, a film world personality, an award winning director, Sudath Mahaadivulweva was trying to capture me in close up with his probing lens of curiosity.

His question was unusually contextualised and surprised me. Why did I work with Mahinda instead of Mangala in organizing the "paada yathra" during President Premadasa's era ?

I toyed around with many aspects of the same answer. One, that would satisfy me first, before Sudath. One, that had to be dug out from my past, which I knew was Mahinda's too. A past that was two decades old.

I was then in the editorial of a Sinhala periodical "Vivarana", that licked politics into every aspect of social life. We decided to cover the growing crack down on the JVP that had then gone underground for the second time. The year was 1987 and it was late November. There were reports trickling to Colombo of a nasty repression silently let loose in the South against a slowly emerging insurgency led by the JVP. In June that year, it was rumoured 22 suspected JVP cadres were arrested at Hungama, Hambantota district, while in a closed door meeting. An assistant lecturer of the Ruhunu University, Sathyapala Wannigama had been abducted and gone missing, a fortnight before.

I was to resurrect my contact with Mahinda Rajapaksa to collect information on the crackdown in the South by the J.R. Jayawardne government. The assignment was for a cover story for the January, 1988 issue of the magazine. I made two trips one after another to Tangalle and the feature article appeared in January with the title "The South on fire too ". The North had already caught fire from early 1980's. My visits to "Carlton" Tangalle to meet Mahinda, helped me cultivate new information sources and a new insight too into the repression in Hambantota that was then handled by the famous SSP Udugampola, sitting in a fortified wing of the Tangalle Rest House by the beach.

Mahinda was a practicing lawyer, married with three lovely sons, the last still a tiny toddler then. His wife Shiranthi a one time beauty queen of Sri Lanka, was a popular Montessori teacher, in charge of her "Carlton Montessori" the only English Montessori in whole of Hambantota. The baby of the parliament in 1970, Mahinda was the SLFP organiser of his parental electorate, Beliatte, but had lost it twice over, once at the 1977 general elections and then again at the by-elections held in 1984. Yet he had a clout in local politics, hailing from an influential family in Giruwa-pattuwa that was into politics from the State Council era.

With Mahinda, I had access to many leading personalities in the city of Colombo and to Rosemead Place. An easy going, homely person, he had an enormous appetite to digest a wide array of personalities as friends. With Mahinda, I sat through evenings with many SLFP stalwarts of the time that had little serious politics but had big plates of city gossip. And with Mahinda, I had occasion to try my own brand of politics too.

Before that, I had cut my teeth in political activities working for the Ceylon Teachers Union, while an English teacher in the remote hinterlands of Uva. My first posting was in an unknown village called Karagaha-ulpotha, off Welimada on the slopes of the North – East mountain range of Hakgala. With teachers' union work, I gained calculated patience and a sharpened edge in sitting at political debates. All trade unions in Sri Lanka are politically affiliated or politically motivated. Then into party politics, I turned into a strong Trotskyite "Marxist" mainly due to the influence I had from my parental home, where my father was a hardened "Samasamajist" of the old school.

They were interesting days, when looking back. I had served, or rather was posted to 11 schools in the district of Nuwara Eliya alone, on 13 "immediate" transfers, in a short spell of 08 years. Stopping at the same school twice. No ruling party MP in any electorate in the Nuwara Eliya education district ever wanted me, considered a "militant trouble maker". The vernacular politicians did not know the word 'terrorist' then, I presume. My teaching career ended up in a political career, me taking up full time work as a Central Committee member of the Nava Sama Samaja Party (NSSP) and getting its first weekly news paper going. Thus cutting my teeth unconsciously, as a journalist.

Political debate and theoretical divisions in "left" political parties' world over, lead to factional struggles and breaking up into smaller and smaller groups. In a few years, I ended up a "loner", but still a hard line Marxist, on my own definition, working for the "Vivarana" magazine. This gave me the opportunity to dabble in politics that I thought was right.

In Mahinda I thus found a very easy friend, who agreed often and rarely disagreed. In fact he never disagreed, possibly for his own convenience. He just dragged those issues he wasn't comfortable with into other seemingly innocent and simple issues. He wasn't politically a strong mind, though a strong willed fighter. He wasn't a cunning politician, but a pleasant and simple tactician in local politics. One who knew a dumb and a dependent constituency like Hambantota is better than a politically mobilised, opinionated one. The best in him was his pleasing personality that yearned for higher political aspirations with minimum effort.

It was this blend in Mahinda that gave me space to work with him in human rights work in late 80's with my visit for the "Vivarana" assignment. It was HR activism that propelled Mahinda into the lime light of Colombo politics from the hinterlands of Southern local politics. It was my spade work in networking and documentation that gave Mahinda the strength to campaign. It was these campaigns that made me understand Mahinda better each day.

I learnt, he could grasp things fast in straight dialogue, though he was not a keen listener in long discussions and debates. I learnt he was a fine assimilator of ideas and could throw them out in his own words, with a tinge of emotional rhetoric. He wasn't the type who could speak for long with a serious political thread, but one who could thrash out short, provocative speeches with a gutty voice. I therefore took time out with Mahinda to discuss politics while driving to and from Tangalle and when we did evening rounds in Colombo.

By then we had become two close political allies picking up democratic issues that gave him his place within the SLFP and me my right to be outside the SLFP, but both on a political journey that challenged the Premadasa rule. It was all of it and his casual self that takes decisions without bothering himself too much that brought about the "paada yathra" a long, 15 day trek from Colombo to Kataragama in 1992 March. A "paada yathra" that proved a sea of people with commitment and out on the streets, could change the political landscape in a country.

Yet, how that came on the streets with 04 months of full time work for me, is yet another long story with many anecdotes and bitter experiences, better left for another day. For now, I think I have answered Sudath's question, to the best of my satisfaction.

Kusal Perera
06th February, 2009

Demise of the Opposition and Sinhala future in nation building

What should eventually happen, did happen. The UNP finally curled up meekly to make an official statement on 27th January which said, "The United National Party salutes the Sri Lankan armed forces for its military victories in the North" adding that the UNP acknowledges it was "the President, the Prime Minister and the Cabinet of Ministers who were responsible for overseeing the conduct of these military operations". Although the then acting PM and FM of India, Pranab Mukherjee is not known to have met Wickramainghe during his hurried visit, the pre-written statement of the UNP was read out to the media by Ranil Wickramasinghe personally, few hours after Mukherjee met with President Rajapaksa in Colombo. Wickramasinghe sealed the UNP position on the war, erasing all ambiguity there was in the past year. Accused by the JHU, the JVP and Weerawansa of allowing the LTTE to control land, Wickramasinghe admitted by allusion, he gave the LTTE armed control of areas in the North when he says in his statement, "Key towns that have been under the armed control of the LTTE have been re-taken after a lapse of many years." He then hastens to add, "The sovereignty of our nation has been protected and the country's territorial integrity restored." His statement in fact should have best suited the President to address the nation, after Mullaitivu fell. He now confirms, what ever he had been saying all these years has to be trashed as those said by some one who had mixed up Mullaitivu and Mulleriyawa.

Wickramasinghe's attempts at saving himself with a Sinhala face are also mediocre. "We remind the government that there are formidable hurdles to be crossed. A genuine political solution to bring long lasting peace, is one such hurdle." says this Opposition Leader. He's forgotten that President Rajapaksa keeps saying he would not stop with defeating Tiger terrorism militarily, what ever his brother Defence Secretary's and the Army Commander's plans are. President Rajapaksa has repeatedly told the international community and India, he would work out a consensus on the solution to the Tamil problem through his APRC, which the UNP opted to avoid. This political leadership at the helm of the Executive has also proved it would only project such solutions when opportune to its survival and withdraw same there after. This regime is based on the ideological power of establishing a "Unitary" Sinhala State that others are expected to tolerate, what ever else it may feel profitable to say. What then is this reminder by the UNP ?

This is a reminder the UNP is no more the responsible Opposition it ought to be. It reminds that within the Sinhala society, there would be no alternate platform to facilitate a discussion on the next phase of the military outcome. It reminds finally, that in general, the Sinhala political parties are all chauvinists, playing for Sinhala votes to gain political power without a programme and leaves the society without any opposition to the politico military programme of the Rajapaksa regime.

It comes when all non State actors who were bidding for a negotiated solution to the ethnic conflict has also either gone the "Wickramasinghe" way, or have opted to mark time, expecting the LTTE to turn up with something that could change the picture. There are different reasons to this "peace confusion". Wickramasinghe is caught in his own trap of scheming and manipulating within the party to remain its leader, instead of working to be a leader of the people, the party would not part with. The non State actors have lost track of what they had learnt in conflict resolution. The military had removed the important armed contender who was a formidable and a necessary partner at the negotiating table. Without that LTTE, what negotiations now ?

All these years, why past governments stayed within the process of negotiations in working out a solution were because, no government could avoid or eliminate the LTTE in Tamil politics. With their armed ability to strike any where and very hard, no government could ignore the LTTE in working out any solution to the ethnic conflict. With their armed power, the LTTE had convinced themselves they could push Sri Lankan governments to accept their stand of "self determination" in their homeland. The fact that they never compromised on that issue and was able to hold the SL army at bay with expanding land areas, convinced the SL Tamil Diaspora also that one day, the LTTE would succeed in its project of establishing a separate Tamil State, or one, almost as good within a single country.

Such a broad promise with expectation of "liberating" the Tamil polity on one side gave the LTTE as an organisation immense power and authority over Tamil politics, marginalising other political parties and groups, who either compromised with the LTTE to survive, or with the GoSL, also to survive. Such unchallenged power, perhaps made Prabhakaran to believe he could change the face of SL politics on his own conditions, as he did before. Hence Prabhakaran's decision that allowed Mahinda Rajapaksa to be elected as President with only Sinhala voter participation. A decision that now proves fatally wrong. His calculation on how the Rajapaksa government would intervene in the conflict was a gross under estimation of the capacity of a Sinhala government to mobilise the Sinhala society on its ideology. His calculation on how he could bend the international community too was a miscalculation.

Contrary to LTTE estimations, this Rajapaksa regime proved itself as ruthless as the LTTE in meeting them on the battle field. Accusations on HR violations were not issues the Rajapaksa government were taking seriously; from what ever quarter they come. Civilian casualties in battle are all what this government would leave for the LTTE to answer. All Tamils who die in the war were made into "terrorists" and all who speak against this dastardly war are "terrorists", "terrorist informants" or at the least "unpatriotic" elements against whom death in any form is justifiable. The biggest human tragedy that's evolving is not what the Sinhala South would protest about now, when they are told the government is fighting a "patriotic war" in saving the country from a ruthless "terrorist".

For the first time, the LTTE was hitting its head against a government that thinks the same way as the Tel Aviv regimes. A government that raised the Sinhala cry for blood, in saving the Sinhala nation. For the first time, the LTTE was up against a government that wasn't bothered about international protests and condemnations, for they had other foreign allies in Iran, Pakistan, China and even Russia, who wouldn't bother about HR violations. For the first time the LTTE was made to realise India would negotiate Tamil politics in Chennai to support a SL government that proves it could defeat the LTTE, no matter what pain the Tamil people go through and how violent TN would become.

All that, no doubt at a very high human cost not worth it though, has left the UNP bewildered and sulking. It has peace campaigners left without alternate strategy. It has created an equation that has only one side of the equation, the opposite cumulative unit to be decided by the military strategists themselves. Will it have space for peace lobbyists and what would the path be, for any final compromise on the long standing Tamil aspirations?

When President Rajapaksa says, "let us extend the co-operation of the entire nation to the people of the North and the East who suffered under the grip of separatist terror for many years, to once again step towards satisfaction and freedom in life. Let us come forward both in word and deed to bestow upon them the kindness, friendship and prosperity they deserve." should have to be taken in the context that his brother also the Secretary Defense Gotabhaya and the Army Commander who all these years were publicly promulgating policy on how the government fights the LTTE, were never denied that right by the Rajapaksa presidency and they continue to do so. Gotabhaya thus went on record saying no media would be allowed "dissent" as dissent, according to his definition only means "giving another breath" to the Tiger terrorists who are cornered in Mullaitivu.

Such political context in which any solution the government offers and the Indians would market as "solutions" to the Tamil people, would restrict discussions without 'dissent' to suit the needs of the ruling regime. Instead, those Tamil groups working with the SL military establishment and individuals like Sangaree who play for a niche in the political power structure would be brought in to discuss government proposals. They, in any case have no other choice, lurking in the shades of the military for their own survival. Douglas, Karuna and Sangaree would be the type who would be made to sit at APRC negotiations, to fill the vacant Tamil slot. The peace lobbyists would then agree such is reality; the only option is to ask for a full implementation of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution.

The Rajapaksa regime has already put together a vociferous bloc against any further devolution through Champika, Weerawansa and Karuna. India would again be left to choose between their own baby the 13th Amendment as it is implemented now, with a puppet Northern PC similar to the one in the East and supporting a Rajapaksa regime that dismantled the military power of the LTTE at the cost of hurting TN votes. That any way would have to be taken care of by the next Delhi government and Mukherjee would be shuttling between Colombo and Delhi to see how many of those disgruntled TN votes could be lured by his shuttling for a Congress victory.

If the post 2009 February period turns out that way, the South would have to learn for the second time that political aspirations of a people who are held together on a culture of their own can not be militarily wiped off, like wiping off an organization. The two are not the same though they walk alongside each other. Yet it would take time for the South to realize they have been taken to where they were, when the Jaffna Public Library was burnt and the DDC elections in the Jaffna peninsula were put under Sinhala goon attacks. The post 2009 February period would thus gradually turn out as a period with space for the emergence of a new and more youthful brutality to take charge of Tamil aspirations that would still be crying and bleeding, left stranded by the LTTE after all the sacrifices the ordinary people were forced to live through. Another long wait in establishing a nation State that accepts and respects plurality on this soil.

Kusal Perera
08th February, 2009

Winning the war and losing the future for the Sinhala South

"Wars, conflict, it's all a business.

One murder makes a villain.

Millions, a hero. Numbers sanctify."
- Charlie Chaplin

It's all now a talk of living in a country free of "terrorism". The Separatist Tigers are almost eliminated. Driven to the forests of Mullaitivu and restricted to lick their wounds, till they are completely annihilated as promised by the Defence head. Ruthless and merciless as no other armed organization on this planet earth, the LTTE had to be cornered, tamed and eliminated politically, long before. That not done in a pragmatic manner, we are told "a full scale war" is the only option "within our unitary State". The hard and rigid position of claiming a non-compromising unitary State in a Sinhala dominated country, perhaps left no other option but a war for the majority psyche that believes it owns this plot of marooned land.

Yet, at what cost ? In rupees and cents, the total is huge. It was 130 billion rupees in 2007 plus a supplementary budget that enhanced the defence allocation by another 15 per cent, half way through the year. In 2008 it was 166 billion plus another supplementary budget allocation of 28 billion, making it a staggering 194 billion rupees for the war, with 177 billion budgeted for 2009, for now. Cost of war is not only the allocated annual defence budgets. It is also the cost of rebuilding and replacing the massive destruction caused to buildings, roads, bridges, rail tracks, electricity pylons and other infrastructure, after the war. How many billions more would we need for that ? That in rupees or dollars is not the total lost in this war. Add the productive cost of a society, how ever meagre that may be, that was and is being lost over the years due to war.

A very educated professional considered a friend by me, told me, "War has its own cost any where. It takes lives and there is no point in counting them. Its so in Iraq. Its so in Gaza." Whilst Iraq and Gaza does not justify a weeping and bleeding Vanni, but only makes it two plus one in human tragedy, he and his family are fortunately living in a very secure urban residency in Colombo, 450 km away from all the innocent people who speak a different language to his, who are dying, left destitute and in hunger and pain. With broken and shattered families, politically and ideologically distanced from the Sinhala polity. That cost of war tragedy has no assessment in rupees and cents in a modern civilised world.

Is that all ? No. Count the number of Sinhala youth who are permanently limping around you. Those who have their adult life maimed. Count the number of young widows who are staring blank into the future, with a fatherless infant on her lap. Count the little children who are often used as "exhibits", standing in rows for politicians to grin at them, the children of "war heroes". Make a note of all those teenage village girls who frequent the Anuradhapura town for a living, waiting to be picked up by vacationing young soldiers. They are looked after by organised mafia and the underworld is infested with army deserters in large numbers. Some allegedly used by powerful politicians.

Is that all ? Sorry. There are more. More that goes unaccounted and unaudited socially. The Sinhala society that supports the full scale war has also come under a sledge hammer of a rigidly regimented defence establishment that by now has become an indispensable factor in political decision making. The organised social fabric that defines and decides democratic functioning of the society is shredded. The media had been openly coerced into compromising and to live as told, through threats direct and indirect. With gunmen on motor bikes and white vans. The Sinhala society accepts with glee, the political explanations wrapped in military priorities doled out by this defence establishment in defending all that suppression and also how the democratic structures should behave in its day to day life. The judiciary has been ignored by the Executive to maintain its own indemnified power. The political regime uses all those regimentations in society to live an unchallenged, unquestioned life seeped in corruption, nepotism and political arrogance. Protests are allowed at the expense of protest leaders running the risk of meeting masked armed men on motor bikes and white vans there after, who would never be tracked down. Any dissent in society, any deviation in perceptions thus comes under brutal suppression.

The Sinhala society has been herded into this subordination and this subjugation on the twin slogan of "patriotism against Tiger terrorists" and "supporting the war heroes". What has now emerged is a totalitarian regime on the strength of crushing the LTTE terrorism and accepted and given the honour to be just that by a citizenry that for now wish to live with that euphoria. Like it or not, that's where we have come to in accepting a full scale war against Tiger terrorism and that's from where we would have to wake up, to see what the future holds for us amongst all this debris and human carnage left.

Right now, it's India and the international community that talk loud. The international community that lived to see a bloody human tragedy evolve, issuing diplomatically phrased statements blaming all sides and asking for respect of international law protecting civilian life, from a government they themselves accused of impunity in violating basic human rights, has now hurried to assess the possible rehabilitation of the devastated areas. Yasushi Akashi was around and in Trincomalee, meeting the Eastern Province Chief Minister too, in his 17^th visit as a peace envoy to talk about humanity and development, even before the SL military entered Mullaitivu.

India that blundered at a heavy cost trying idiotically to manipulate in teaching the Jayawardne government a lesson by training and teething the armed groups, rushed Pranab Mukherjee, acting PM and Minister for External Affairs, to Colombo when the government was being accused in Tamil Nadu of targeting thousands of displaced and stranded civilians trapped in cross fire, with government forces pushing hard towards Mullaitivu. Indian strategy was always clear with Delhi only worried of Pakistani presence. Given the annihilation of LTTE and Prabhakaran, the armed menace they nurtured and promoted for a long time, Delhi would try to placate Tamil sentiment to the extent it would not embarrass the Rajapaksa government.

What more would you expect from a selfish world ? Till the next phase of armed Tamil politics gather its own strength and justification to fight on for yet to be honoured dignity as equal citizens in a shared country, the Rajapaksa government and its extensions would be showered with soft loans and grants for "rehabilitation and reconstruction of devastated life". It would now have the right to continue as it did through war. The carpet of savage suppression doesn't have to be rolled back. The South agreed to have it spread out all these years. Why roll it back now ? All indications are, that "patriotically bloodied" repressive carpet would now be legalised and strengthened for political arrogance to walk on. All indications are, with such change, the military would continue in politics. "Winning the war does not mean I have finished my job." said the Army Commander to the Daily Mirror a fortnight ago. "I have other work. I have to strengthen the army." he said.

It’s a big price the South would have ended up paying to live without Tamil separatism. Without a decent and a sane Opposition that does not know it's in the Opposition to challenge an overstepping government. It's the price of living without its own democratic life for the South.

Bob Dylon's definition of "peace" - the moment when you reload your rifle

Kusal Perera

29th January, 2009

Defeating SL ‘Tamil Nationalism’ into a broader Indian dimension

Kilinochchi was captured fuelling stronger hopes in the Sinhala polity of defeating the LTTE completely and “separatism” for good. ‘Separatism’, as the JVP hastened to explain after the Kilinochchi occupation on January 02nd, is the ideological base on which the LTTE works and interprets the concept of a “separate Tamil State” in the land of Eelam. Although the JVP vowed to defeat this Tamil separatism, the concept of separatism and the emotional binding of the major Tamil political process to this separate Tamil State, the “Eelam”, is the ultimate growth of Tamil nationalism within Sri Lankan Tamil politics. This was democratically sealed and projected as the mandate of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka, at the 1977 general elections. The Waddukodai Resolution in 1974, which adopted an “Eelam State” as a legitimate political necessity of the Tamil people, was interpreted as having been passed unanimously by the Tamil society which voted the TULF en masse in July 1977 leaving absolutely no doubt, the Tamil polity was firmly behind the slogan.

The separate State slogan was firmly backed by armed groups of the day. These nascent armed Tamil politics had two divergent outlooks from the beginnings. One led by the PLOTE and the other by the LTTE. Though opposing each other, they did have one binding logic within them. The Eelam State which they took up arms to establish would need external assistance and support. The PLOTE theorised that the “Sinhala South” should have a “Left” led government that would accept a Tamil neighbour and thus tried to link up with a few break away “Left” grouplets. Prabhakaran worked the other way round. The Tigers worked on a strong Tamil heritage which they found in the Chola Empire and provided historical bindings to Tamil Nadu. That was an aggressively founded, culturally rich Tamil history which provided Prabhakaran with his ruthless determination to establish an ‘Eelam’ for the Tamil people.

It is this historical strength that brought Prabhakaran and the LTTE all this far, while all other groups that took arms for a separate State compromised, splintered and turned into paid voices. Prabhakaran survived to successfully instil in the Tamil youth a “superior cult” psyche on “Cholaism” stronger and prouder than DMK’s “Dravidianism” of the 1950’s. The Chola rule was the golden age of Tamil-speaking South India. Music and dance, poetry and drama, arts, sculpture and painting, jewellery-making and architecture, philosophy and religious thought reached new heights, with the temple as the centre of all activity, the effervescent base of the present Tamil identity.

While that proud Tamil history gave the LTTE a binding foothold they needed in Tamil Nadu, within the LTTE the Chola concept of martial art and its ritualistic reverence, helped resurrect the “Tamil Martyr”. The Tamil Martyr, decorated with “Maha veer” episodes enacted every where in Tamil society, became the flagship brand of the Tigers every one feared, but with a respect. All of it not only gave the LTTE the “snarling Tiger” of Chola supremacy, the organisation’s hallmark logo, it also provided the aggressive ideology to develop one of the most intricately structured and organised armed outfits in the world. The LTTE became ideologically so well motivated with “Cholaism”, it allowed Prabhakaran to be a ‘Rajaraja’ who dictated terms within the Tamil Diaspora though holed up somewhere in a Mullaitivu forest.

This unusually extra ordinary organisational might with a fiercely publicised and hyped Chola ideology, established the LTTE as the only Tamil organisation that could challenge the Sinhala State. That settled the LTTE as the only Tamil organisation, without whose consent no solution could be agreed upon to end the conflict at any level. It is not simply clandestine work of LTTE ‘moles’ that had its impact beyond the Palk Straits within the Dravidian separatist splinter groups. It was the aura, the Tamil national pride that was gradually built around the non compromising LTTE that helped resurrect a 3G Tamil separatist sentiment in TN. According to Vinoj Kumar in “Tehelka.com”, there are at least 10 such groups active in TN. Most formed after the outbreak of the ethnic war in Sri Lanka in the 1980s.

The growth of this new generation Tamil separatism is what the LTTE is banking on now, with its military defeats at the hands of the SL government’s security forces. These splinter groups that still revere the Dravidian icon Periyar who founded the Dravida Kazhagam (DK), the DMK’s fore runner and the first to espouse a separate Indian Tamil Nation in 1938, have now been more ideologically influenced by the ‘Greater Tamil Nadu’ concept which includes “Eelam”, the Tamil homeland claimed by all Tamil groups in Sri Lanka, a concept argued by Adithanar, the founder of the Tamil daily, Thina Thanthi. These groups now have a presence in almost all parts of the TN state, claims Vinoj Kumar. While public names like Vaiko, Nedumaran, Karunanidhi, Veeramani and Thirumavalavan perhaps carried the media glitz, it was militant groups who worked steadfastly in bringing together the broad coalitions in TN which agitated for the SL Tamil people during the past months. It would be them who would provide the nexus for the next phase of the LTTE campaign.

The LTTE now on its own have very little chances of realising their Eelam dream, during Prabhakaran’s active life. They made a serious mistake in paving the way for a Rajapaksa regime. Their calculations went berserk when the Rajapaksa regime went beyond the expected rhetoric of opposing a negotiated settlement on the basis of power sharing in a united but a single Sri Lanka. Their calculations the Rajapaksa regime’s Sinhala rhetoric would lead to the international community supporting the LTTE’s claim for a separate State, wasn’t what came about. The Rajapaksa regime went out of the Western oriented international community, to have its own foreign alliance with Chinese, Russians, Iranians and Malaysians that accommodated Pakistan on a different equation. HR violations weren’t their plate of rice for this new alliance and the Rajapaksa government managed enough funds to survive. With that new foreign alliance, the Rajapaksa government compelled the Indians to come after it, to bargain a stop to Pakistani influence in SL politics. That gave Rajapaksa a mileage the LTTE never bargained for. It gave a free enough hand to savagely oppress the whole of the Tamil society, in squeezing out the LTTE and crushing it militarily.

Proved beyond doubt that the LTTE can not hold on to large tracts of land, although they could intermittently shift to conventional battle mode, Prabhakaran is now compelled to reinterpret his Eelam dream. Politically the LTTE stands valid as the Rajapaksa regime would assume power devolution would now be on its own terms with no necessity to negotiate. The LTTE would make themselves more valid to a grumbling and complaining TN with their perspective of an Eelam extended to accommodate the “Greater Tamil Nadu” idea as well.

There is more than their initial baptism with Cholaism to give the LTTE a lead. During the Indira Gandhi period when SL Tamil militants were officially nurtured in TN, the Delhi regime had to contract the support and participation of the TN State machinery. That changed perceptions all round and allowed Tamil militants to have their support bases within the State’s administration. The LTTE kept nursing those worthy contacts through out their Eelam wars. With such inroads into the State apparatus, the recent broad anti Sri Lankan protests with artistes, trade unions and exceptionally large student participation is a clear indication of the growth of militant groups cutting their teeth in TN soil beneath that of Karunanidhi and Jeyalalitha. They could well turn out to be Amirthalingams and Anandasangarees of TN.

All indications are, the battle for an Eelam State is shifting to a battle for a Tamil Nation State. The LTTE network in the Diaspora providing a new life line to the hitherto isolated separatist militants within South Indian Dravidian politics. If that Cholaism catches up fast enough in TN, the next phase would have both sides of the Palk Strait facing the same conflict for a third but more than feudal new Chola dynasty to be established. But for Prof Venkatachalapthy of the MIDS, formation of a Tamil nation will remain a dream, but such dreams spur and spawn militancy.

Kusal Perera
January 05th 2009

Khemadasa – Subaltern Musician and a Revolting “Obamian”

Dr. Premasiri Khemadasa of late and Khemadasa ‘Master” of all times, will live into our future with many trying to define him in many different tones and colours. He certainly lived his long musical life with many facets and many shades. At times contradicting himself, but never afraid to do so. At times reaching to the past, but never losing the grip on the future. Picking what he wanted from the North Indian tradition, yet never wanting to stop there. He, Khemadasa was in fact a curious musical traveller, who couldn’t simply stop travelling. And for me, therefore, he was not just another great musician. Not just a creative composer. He was the musical expression of post independent Sri Lanka that grappled to find its future direction, and to date is still struggling. He was therefore the “Obamian” Sri Lankan musician who wanted a futuristic change and believed in it.

Khemadasa finds his foot hold in the Sinhala musical world, or rather, Khemadasa is taken note of in the Sinhala musical world in early 60’s, when others before him were trying to identify and develop a musical genre for the Sinhala society, that was understood as developing “our own national musical identity”. Ananda Samarakoon perhaps pioneered the voyage in searching for a musical soul in ordinary Sinhala language, when he a baptised Christian, George W. Alwis, became a converted Buddhist by the name of Ananda Samarakoon. His lyrics were simple and ordinary as in “Podimal ethano” and “Wiley malak pipila”. Sunil Shantha, another Catholic was a contemporary of Samarakoon who went further with his Sinhala lyrics and the pace was set to make a difference in song from that which ‘Ceylon’ in its pre-independence, listened and sang. Munidasa Kumaratunge was a strong influence with his “Hela” language during that period and is very evident in Sunil Shantha’s genre of songs.

But that was ‘songs’ and not music. Music had to be brought in from somewhere. During the pre independence period the most inspiring experience for music came from India that fought the British stronger and louder than we Ceylonese. Reaching out for the Western classical music was “imperialistic”. Our musical base thus became North Indian Hindustani and less Dravidian. Samarakoons and Sunil Shanthas had their first grooming in North Indian musical tradition with Sunil Shantha taking a special fancy towards Bengali folk. W. D. Albert Perera leaves Ceylon to learn music in India and comes back as “Visharada” Amaradeva. Sinhala musical culture thus gets institutionalised on what came to be known as “Uttara-bharatheeya” music. Songs for Radio Ceylon was rated on their relationship with that tradition. Music in schools had their syllabi based on that same tradition. Sinhala music per se was what based itself on Uttara-bharatheeya music. “Baila” the popular culture in coastal areas coming down from the Dutch – Portuguese influence was not taken for any consideration in creating a Sinhala musical identity. To that extent, the Sinhala society was able to identify itself separately from the Tamil society which had its musical life born out of Karnataka and other Dravidian musical influences.

The ordinary life in society meanwhile had a different experience through popular South Indian Tamil film and its influence on post independent Sinhala cinema in the 50’s. It was then that Makuloluwa and Kulatilake experimented to be different through Sinhala folk poems that had a very simple melody and a soft rhythm. Although their efforts provided a collection of some 3,500 folk ‘songs’ those folk traditions did not have a strong musical language to develop a new musical tradition of “our own”. Therefore even at the end of the decade of 50 and early 60 with the ’56 Sinhala resurrection of Bandaranayake energising the Sinhalisation process, it was only the Sinhala song that started developing with new genres of lyrics with different metres, but not Sinhala music. Sinhala music was nothing more than North Indian Hindustani tradition.

It is within this lost effort of developing a musical tradition with a Sinhala face, that Khemadasa emerges without any serious musical roots or tradition. He had learnt music formally for a short while, but wasn’t a hardened traditionalist. Therefore his instinct and yearning to learn music on his own, left him outside all others. And left him on a voyage of learning and de-learning to learn more. Being one without a tradition gave him the privilege to seek all traditions. He thus roamed the classical world of Western music that for the Sinhala musicians was almost taboo. While the Sinhala society was moving in search of its past glory, while the Sinhala society was politically positioned against the developed West and refused to get influenced by the Western culture, Khemadasa was moving in the opposite trajectory. He was talking of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven. He indulged and marvelled in the vastness of their musical compositions and tried to understand how they had interpreted the world around them through musical arrangements. He then wanted to experiment in interpreting our own experiences through their form of music.

The 70’s gave him an added advantage too. With our politics heavily layered with Soviet values and thinking, there were lots of traffic between Socialist East bloc countries and Colombo. The advantage was in cultural exchanges. That was the era when Russian authors became the only known international literary heroes to the Sinhala reader. That period gave Khemadasa an opportunity to be acquainted with post Soviet music at its best. And he grew to be a musician in search of new landscapes in music and without tradition.

This Khemadasa was thus revolting against his own musical learning, trying to give his creative self another platform that went beyond writing music for songs. That he found in film music. The greatness of Khemadasa comes to life in film music that was neither background nor filler. There he had a larger canvas than in writing music for songs to experiment and create his own style. While “Bambaru awith” could be the popular Khemadasa, the Maestro was in “Nidhanaya” that is internationally ranked as one among the Best 100 films in the world with Khemadasa’s musical score.

Khemadasa definitely was too large a character to sit along with classical traditionalists. He wasn’t a formal musician. He was one who wanted to feel the sweat of the toiling men and women, to breathe the salty pathos of the women on the rough sea edge and one who wanted to caress the love and agony of all mothers. And he Khemadasa, was one who struck the most emotional chord for them all in the realms of sophisticated musical emotions. One who could not live for today but searched the rhythm of tomorrow’s life. The “Obamian” musician of Sri Lanka.
Kusal Perera

27th October, 2008
[A felicitation to Khemadasa Master at his demise]

Tragedy of the Sinhala Buddhist Citizen

If one talks of this country – which in reality is the areas under government control – the question is, who rules the country now ? After a slow but gradual shift in the past, this responsibility of ruling the country has taken a phenomenal shift towards the judiciary during the past year or two. Now the Sinhala Buddhist citizen has to seek the support of the judiciary to sort out his/her daily issues. During the previous week (starting from 15th September) alone, the Supreme Court took up quite a number of Fundamental Rights petitions on social issues. From the use of loud speakers to admission of children to grade one, marking of answer scripts, residing in Colombo, privatising of public enterprises, deciding on retirement age of public employees, price hikes in LP gas, fuel prices, environmental taxes are all issues the Supreme Court is now required to sort out.

Unfortunately, what is being taken for discussion on this, is the role of the Chief Justice, which is irrelevant. What needs to be discussed is this new trend of going to the Supreme Court with FR petitions. Why has the Sinhala Buddhist citizen got to petition the Supreme Court on his/her daily social issues that the government should decide and the State should implement ? Isn’t it a serious political concern that more and more have to seek redress for their issues in daily life from the judiciary ?

This clearly highlights the treatment meted out to the Sinhala Buddhist citizen from his/her own Sinhala State. This citizen, unfortunately, is not accomodated by the State, any more. This Sinhala State does not function any more as a system that serves the needs of the Sinhala society. This in fact is a State safeguarded in Unitary form at a heavy cost, but has degenrated to an extent that it can not even serve its own Sinhala Buddhist citizen. In plain language what it all means is, the Sinhala Buddhist citizen has been totally left out of his/her own Unitary State as a result of his/her own Sinhala Buddhist politics.

Today, this government in charge of this Unitary State has no answers for the problems that burden the Sinhala society. This government does not have the capacity or the will to solve those problems. It does not have a semblance of an idea as to what direction the national development of this country should take. This government that is under public oath to defeat Tamil separatism in the name of a Sinhala Unitary State, does not know how it could kindle any growth in rural and backward districts like Moneragala, Hambantota, Polonnaruwa, Nuwara Eliya, Puttlam or Badulla. Of the total 440,000 plus pupils who sit G.C.E O/L exam each year, even the innocent Sinhala rural pupils that roughly accounts for about 68 – 70 per cent or 300,000 have absolutely no future within their rural econommy. The rural econmy they live in, can not absorb them into any economically viable livelihood.

Day to day living is also not that easy any more. What ever the Central Bank boss who qualified himself politically to hold that high office may say on national development, there is a defnite crunch on the cashflow in rural and semi urban societies. Despite the numbers and figures doled out by the Central Bank, retailing in the rural society indicates a drop in consumption. That sector had hit upon a thinning of cash flow. Most consumer products distributors would say their sales have dropped by about 30 per cent in those areas.

It is the war that generates employment for this government. If those young soldiers sent to war after a brief training, do not bring their salaries to the rural economy and if the memebers of the civil defense force that’s heavily financed, do not bring their incomes to the rural economy, the rural economy would freeze hard. It’s the war money that keeps the cash flowing even at a minimum in those rural areas.

It’s a weird growth on which no citizen could live on. Thus the Sinhala Buddhist citizen is being driven with the hope that this war, which was never winnable for 25 years, will certainly be won under the Rajapaksa regime. The war had been hyped to make the Sinhala Buddhist citizen live on an ethnically fueled patriotism. Yet, if that patriotism is not used to mute the Sinhala society, any noisy revolt asking for a better social life could turn out to challenge the Rajapaksa regime.

This nevertheless does not stop at merely doping the Sinhala Buddhist citizen. That Sinhala ideology for war also requires a war psychology instilled in society. The Rajapaksa regime has been at it in many ways and brutally so. All dissenting voices in society were systematically compromised with or silenced. So was the media, as it is not only the non-Sinhalese and the non-Buddhist who would venture to question the social cost and the viability of the war. The Sinhala State was thus turned into a new and brutal mechanism that serves the war and the sustenance of the Rajapaksa regime, instead of the Sinhala Buddhist citizen.

Such a State teethed to keep all anti government protests at bay, takes a heavy toll on human rights, with its militarisation of society. Abductions, involuntary disappearances, extra judicial killings, long and arbitrary arrests, all become part of the life of the society, with which the Sinhala Buddhist citizen has to compromise. Evolving of this new State, though still dressed in the familiar Sinhala Buddhist garb, accomodates other appendages that intially has no real link or shape within the State machinery, but gradually becomes an accepted part. Complaints about “white vans” frequesnting at will and para military forces operating with tacit support from State security forces are all part of this new change over. What this Sinhala Buddhist citizen did not realise when compromising with such a brutality is that, he/she also looses the right to question the government, the Rajapaksa regime, even on his/her own socio-economic issues that relates to day to day life.

At this point, it should be stressed that all States have and work on their own ideology. A State is no dry machinery. The ideolgy of the Sri Lankan State was a Sinhala ideology that entrenched all work of the State with a bias towards the Sinhala society. That was the only reason why the SL State was termed a Sinhala State and not only becasue it was governed by the majority Sinhala political leaderships. That provides the logic which underlines the change in ideology in the now evolving State. The new ideology now goes beyond that of the Sinhala Buddhist ideology and over the past few years, has shifted in taking over an autocratic responsibility of servicing the Rajapaksa regime. It thus becomes an idoeology that looks Sinhala Buddhist in appearance for now, but talks in a different brutal autocratic language, alienated from the Sinhala society.

That alienation is yet to be understood by the Sinhala Buddhist citizen, who still takes this State to be the old Sinhala State that was his/hers. This State only works on Sinhala patriotism for its own brutal autocratic existence now. Although this is new and not as yet understood by the Sinhala Buddhist citizen, the Tamil citizen was faced with alienation from the Sinhala State long before. The Tamil citizen therefore wanted a restructuring of the State to accommodate him/her self with a share in political power. This request for sharing of power with restructuring of the State, was totally rejected by the Sinhala Buddhist citizen, who thought he/she had a right to live within a Unitary Sinhala State. The then moderate Tamil citizen knew that total alienation one day would leave Tamil politics with the only option of working towards a separate State. Such apprehensions are now voiced by the Muslim moderates too, but not taken seriously as at now. Leaving all and sundry in peril, the stubborn choice of the Sinhala Buddhist citizen in rejecting all efforts in sharing power in a restructured State and insisting in keeping a Unitary State, has finally left him/her outside the very State that once was thought to be his/hers.

There in lies the confusion within the UNP leadership. They live in the myth of generalising this Sinhala patriotism to be that of the Sinhala people and thus keep a blind eye on all other savage and autocratic changes in the Sinhala State. The UNP therefore is trying to restrict itself to other issues that are only extensions and outgrowths of the hyped war. They are afraid to take on the actual cause, the war, to all this brutal change. If they ever want to learn a lesson at least now, it’s the JVP’s mistake they would have to turn to. If there is no opposition to the war, then there is no alternative to the Rajapaksa regime. When the JVP chose not to oppose the war, they became a secondary force that tagged behind the Rajapaksa regime. War is truly a Rajapaksa project and no one could at this point compete for its ownership or a share in it. The JVP proved that clearly at the recently concluded PC elections, if the UNP wants to learn anything from it.

If the main opposition does not want to accept that the Sinhala Buddhist citizen who strove to safe guard this Sinhala State and was eventually thrown out of it, has little reason now to rally round prices and corruption, fraud and inefficiency, then those Sinhala Buddhists who would be less disciplined and more hasty than those who seek judicial interventions may revolt and rebel against the State. Who could then blame whom for the tragedy of a whole nation ?

Kusal Perera

26th September, 2008

Thamil separatism survives on the strength of Sinhala nationalism

With SAARC on the cards, reminiscing “Black July” is almost over. There were plenty of articles in most of our print media and in web portals with differing points of view on “Black July”. In some, Black July was even discussed in a South Asian context. What ever the route taken to reach July 1983, the point of convergence in most was that it helped an accelerated growth of armed groups to establish their case for a separate “Thamil” State. There were also readings about the South, about the Sinhala psyche, that said the South should reach a broad consensus on the ethnic conflict. Some wanting such Southern consensus to negotiate a viable and justifiable solution and others to crush separatism militarily. A Southern consensus, nevertheless.

Yet what was missing in most of that discussion was a reading about the LTTE psyche, 25 years after the Black July. Does the LTTE work towards achieving any justification or sympathy from the South for their struggle, liberation or separatist war or what ever label one may wish to stick on it in the South? This is the single most important question the South needs to ask itself, if the South is serious about concluding this war in any way they wish to have it concluded.

In plain black and white, the LTTE is clearly committed and working towards a separate Thamil Eelam State, never mind its size and the geographical area to begin with, while holding onto the Thimpu concept of a Thamil Homeland. From the very beginning of the conflict, Southern political leaderships had opposed this Thamil homeland concept and stood for a Unitary State. All governments since 1977, except the Ranil Wickramasinghe government (Dec 2001) have fought a war to defeat this separatist movement. Madam Chandrika Kumaratunge who in 1994 braved a racist campaign against her to win both the Parliamentary and the Presidential elections on a platform of conciliatory politics, also went to war within 06 months of assuming power as President. Under her, the heavily fought and much emphasised “Jaya Sikurui” military campaign that lasted 18 months and drained off billions of rupees to capture some parts of Northern territory, failed to dislodge the LTTE from their Wanni base. Much hyped “Jaya Sikurui” military victory was turned into a national event. On 06th of December, 1998, President Chandrika Bandaranayake Kumaratunge addressed the nation to announce the victorious conclusion of “Jaya Sikurui” military campaign and opened her statement thus.

“I wish to tell you that the second phase of the peace offensive launched by the government of Sri Lanka against terrorism and separatism was victoriously concluded last morning, the 05th of December.
A moment ago, the Army Commander, Commanding Officers of the armed forces and the Police Chief, informed me about that news.
We are proud to accept this historical and noble news and we remain humble too.
From this day, with the dawn of this new era, we have opened up a path for peace and prosperity for every citizen living in our country and to be able to live in a free society with equal rights……”(translated from her Sinhala speech)

The government’s euphoria over that victory couldn’t last long. The LTTE launched their most vicious onslaught ever called the “Unceasing Waves III” in 1999 November and within a fortnight had even run over the heavily fortified Elephant Pass military base. Ever since then, the LTTE assembled their State structures, in areas under their control. They organised their administrative and police apparatus in those areas. With their police in action, they needed a judicial system, which they brought into place complete with a Law College. To run them as civil systems, the LTTE needed money from society and they have imposed taxes, the percentages and totals not very important right now, except for the fact that they have an Inland Revenue collecting system of their own. Close upon 10 years for now, all these have evolved into more systematic structures and have gained currency among those living under their undeclared State. A State, yet to be accepted internationally as an independent State.

This is what the LTTE leadership is grappling with, now. Their concern is no more the necessity of immediately gaining ground. Their concern is the ability to guard the area they have now brought under their administration. What they therefore pursue now is recognition as a State and the opening for such legitimacy. Do they need a Southern approval or a Southern justification for that ? They simply don’t and they also know they wouldn’t get such Southern accreditation, although minor “Left” groupings would say the Tamil people have a right for self determination and therefore a right to secede. But the “Left” taken together is a non-entity in Southern politics.

Unfortunately, over decades the South has been moulded into a “patriotic” mindset that takes national pride in crushing the Tamil voice. It has been moulded to think that the majority Sinhala society has a right to offer and the minority Tamils would have to accept what is offered under a unitary system. Any rejection of what is offered gives way for oppression and that had been our history in settling the issue. With every attempt at negotiating answers to justifiable Tamil aspirations given a dud coin by the Sinhala leaderships, emergence of a Tamil psyche that opted for a separate Tamil State was unavoidable. For that Tamil psyche to justify taking arms was logical too. The heir to such armed struggle and the emergence of the ultimate leader of that armed Tamil politics is no different to the Palestinian armed struggle. Yasser Arafat’s Al-fatah, Dr. George Habash’s PFLP, Nayef Hawatmeh’s PDFLP, Abu Abbas’s PLF are all major components in the PLO. But it would be one single decisive armed force that would eventually decide the Israeli – Palestinian conflict, either way.

The LTTE emerged as the decisive force within Tamil politics in Sri Lanka from among many others. For the LTTE to pursue their Separate Thamil State for which they have sacrificed thousands of lives, they would not wait for the Left or the moderates in the South to flag them off. They prefer the hard line Sinhala Buddhists to engage them militarily to establish the Sinhala “Unitary” State, the corollary of their Eelam State. More ruthless and fanatical the Southern approach is in forcing a Unitary State, bigger their space would be in arguing that the Sinhala leadership is not prepared to share power with the Tamils and the minorities. Therefore, what the hard line Sinhala platform in the South does, is all what the LTTE would want them to do. In short, the LTTE wouldn’t waste time placating the South over the right of the Tamil society to co-exist either together or separately with the Sinhala South. The South as a polity is no priority in their agenda.

Yet if the South needs to live in a united country with a single constitution, that is possible too. But for that the South needs to reach a broad consensus to re-structure its old, inefficient and corrupt State that is exclusively a Sinhala State. A State that has for 60 years since independence not given even the Sinhala people a space to better their lives. A State, against which even the Sinhala youth waged war, twice within the past 35 years. A State that has pauperised this society and burdened the people with international debt, underdevelopment and continued conflicts with increasing crimes and break down of law and order.

If the South wants to live a decent modern life, the South should accept that the people in this island has evolved over centuries with two modern standard languages, Sinhala and Tamil. These two languages have also helped two distinct cultures. These two cultural identities with language as their main and dividing factor also carry with them distinct geographical areas where Sinhala and Tamil societies are historically very conspicuous. Using one of them (Sinhala) to secure a basis for nationalism in establishing a nation-state over the whole of Sri Lanka, provides a dialectically opposing (Tamil) nationalism for another state. The ensuing nationalistic desire to establish a nation state based on one (Sinhala) language gives way for political coercion over both societies. One, to achieve its nationalistic ambition and the other (Tamil), to resist and overcome its opposite. The logic behind the “Separate Tamil State” is the failure of the Sinhala society to understand this simple, civilised necessity of pluralism in modern day nationalism. Understanding and accommodating that pluralism within a new democratic State structured to be inclusive, provides the only possible answer in defeating separatism, which the South refuses to accept and thus provides for the LTTE to exist and fight for their ideal separate State.

By
Kusal Perera
03rd August, 2008

The present TU strike, the JVP and our future - Part I

Politics of this token strike

So, it is done and over. The JVP declared and the UNP touted, July 10th token strike came to a deflated end by evening the same day. The government claimed it was a total failure. The JVP claimed it was a success. So did the UNP. Talking in percentages, the self appointed spokesman for the token strike, the JVP trade union boss Lal Kantha said it was 70 % successful. Out on the streets in Colombo, the strike wasn’t felt at all by the ordinary citizen. It was a case of searching for news about the strike during the day and then in the evening, talking in terms of segmented sectors and patches where “some had struck work”.

What in fact is left to talk about this token strike now ? The government accused this was a politically planned strike to support the Tigers. Yes, it was a politically decided strike, and what is not ? War is politics, peace is politics, cost of living is politics and in this country now, very existence of life is politics. Therefore this is all about politics of this strike and the roll and fate of trade unions in this country.

Let’s begin by accepting that this strike was certainly a failure. Numbers and percentages don’t matter in a strike. What matters is the impact the strike could make on society. This strike had little impact on society. In fact in Sri Lanka today, no strike can make an impact on society, unless the CEB and the transport sector could be totally paralysed. That today is no easy task for any trade union centre. For there is plenty of politics involved that obstructs such joint action. That was very evident in the party politics that decided this strike.

This was decided by the JVP and JVP alone, although the UNP jumped the gun thinking it could also rake in some “profits”. The JVP had its political reason to take the strike decision. It was the major political player in forming this government in 2004 April and then in installing the government’s candidate Mahinda Rajapaksa as the President in 2005 November. Four years after establishing this government and two and a half years after seating Mahinda Rajapaksa as the President, the JVP can not defend this Rajapaksa regime any more. All the high profile promises given to the people on better and affordable living standards, good and responsible governance, improved democracy and an honourable peace, are in shambles.

Having brought the UPFA to power, the JVP can not this day talk of an affordable consumer life, with inflation racing past 30 per cent and bank interests on borrowing topping 22 per cent. Prices of all essential food items have gone up by at least 200 per cent. Transport and fuel costs are far worse. Disposable income in families has shrunk by more than half and keeps shrinking. The economy is in a crying chaos.

Although the JVP promised a clean and efficient government with the UPFA in power and Mahinda Rajapaksa as President, they themselves were forced to talk of massive corruptions and waste, under this Rajapaksa regime to once again distance themselves. They had to accuse the government of nepotism and a family monopoly in governance that has led to total inefficiency in the administration. The JVP had to condemn the mega auditorium of ministers and their luxury life styles to show the JVP innocence in establishing such a ruthlessly incapable regime in power.

The JVP was thus forced to distance themselves from this government under President Rajapaksa. They struck their name out from the cover of the “Mahinda Chinthanaya” booklet, while the contents talked about their authorship. University student pickets, farmer agitations, pickets against cost of living and their usually loud rhetoric were ploys to make the people forget the JVP is responsible for the chaos that is setting in.

But where they had emotionally entangled themselves in and was caught with a stupid grin, was where the government talked of a winning patriotic war. It was the JVP that hyped the government’s anti-LTTE slogan for a unitary State. It was the JVP that stood with the government for a war to end Tamil separatism. It was the JVP that helped the government to label all arbitrary arrests, abductions, extortions and disappearances as necessary anti-terrorist work. It was the JVP that shouted the loudest against those who called for negotiations and peace, as LTTE supporters. It was the JVP that went mum on media attacks in the name of a patriotic war. They created this Sinhala Buddhist ideology against any negotiations and peace efforts that provides the government with a licence to wage this present war. They can not now dismiss and disown the war as easily as they dismiss and disown the economic blunders of this government.

This led to a very hard and biting debate that grew within the JVP on their political future. They had voted in parliament for the emergency as a necessary tool to wage war and still continue to vote for the emergency. They voted for all the budgets brought by this government that accounts for all the economic chaos, just to continue with the government and the war. Should they now leave economics and support the war as first thought by Nandana Gunathilake and then by Weerawansa, or should they leave the war to itself and take the government to task on economic issues, as argued by Anura Kumara and Tilvin ? This debate paved the way for the rift and the break away. Of course, the two contending groups by themselves were not as clean as they projected themselves and allowed other vested interests to manipulate the rift. Therefore when they actually broke up, it had a disgusting flavour and a nauseating fragrance. All damage controlling by the JVP added more piss to the already messy pit.

By now, the two groups, NFF and the JVP, have clearly positioned themselves on their previously argued political platforms. NFF has taken up the war cry with a louder call for “patriotism” what ever that means for them. The JVP is taking their slogan on economic woes with a tasteless militancy to re-emerge as an independent political entity. This was all the politics behind the July 10th token strike. Politics the JVP also thought, would prove they have the total party machinery with them despite the Weerawansa break away.

The political extension of it required the JVP to have the totality of the July 10th token strike under their party banner. For this plain reason, the July 10th token strike was stingily restricted to a makeshift outfit unlike the broad trade union front that was forged to lead the 1980 July strike. That JTUAC in ’80 had recognised and accepted TU leaders like Panditha, Tampoe (who subsequently dissociated on tactical issues), Oswin, U.E Perera, Mahanama, Moulana and many others from different political party affiliations as well as independent leaders, although the JVP opposed the strike supporting the Jayawardne regime. But this present out fit projected by the JVP as the National Trade Union Confederation, differed completely in that it was a lone Lal Kantha and no body else who owned it. Who are the other TU leaders in this collective that boasted of 366 trade unions ? No Tampoe, no Muruttettuwe Ananda, no Kumudesh, no Rathnapriya, no Anton Marcus, no Joseph Stalin, none.

But the reason why the UNP jumped on this very sectarian move by the JVP was also political. Fundamentally, the UNP does not know what trade unions are. They don’t even have timid figures in the calibre of Moulana and Devendra after decades of JSS presence to line up at a press conference to support the strike. For the UNP this was a political project to pursue a tie up with the JVP against the Rajapaksa government. With no perspective to challenge this government, the UNP could not even assess the impact of the JVP declared strike. Their blind declaration of support could not add any muscle to the already limping strike.

The outcome ? President Rajapaksa and the government was given yet another endorsement. The working class did not oppose this government because they want the government to move on with the war, as immediately assumed by the President for his advantage. There are two clear assumptions that could be drawn from this. One, politics played out on petty sectarian agendas, without addressing the core issue openly and clearly has once again publicly strengthened the government. Two, the trade unions need to draw up their own agenda within this crisis for which they need to thrash out their immediate and future programme, outside party politics.

Kusal Perera

17th July, 2008

Part II is the next post below

The present TU strike, the JVP and our future - Part II

The archaic politics of trade unions

In early 1980’s, after the beating the trade unions got from the ’80 July strike, there ensued a discussion within “left politics” of a truly independent trade union centre. A new phenomenon that was looked upon as a viable alternative was the Indian Datta Samanth’s emergence into trade union activity. A dentist by profession, he was able to bag in a very sizeable section of the Mumbai working class into a politically independent trade union that was strictly out of party politics. Challenging huge figures like George Fernandez and Bal Thackery of Shiv Sena, Dutta Samanth emerged as an icon of trade unionism even beyond Maharashtra with his style of militant trade union activity that gave the workers very much more democracy in decision making than in any other “left” affiliated traditional trade union. His role in the famous year long Mumbai textile strike in 1982 that involved over 200,000 mill workers, gave way to a new tradition in that sector after he allowed the workers to decide on continuing the strike with a secret ballot. A democracy, trade union leaderships in this part of the world would never ever allow its membership.

Despite the failure of this strike that led to relocation of large textile mills outside Mumbai and thousands of worker lay offs, Samanth had created a new working class phenomenon that was independent of political party affiliations. It was this concept of independent trade unionism that was discussed here among some leftists. But the disintegration of structured traditional worker unions after the ’80 July strike that delivered a crushing blow to the whole trade union “movement” in Sri Lanka left very little space for such a discourse within the trade union movement.

The ’80 July strike was essentially a public sector strike in a society that was shifting from a decades old State centred economy to a free market economy. The importance of the public sector in delivery of services and commodities was gradually played down and privatisation of commuter bus transport, textile and steel, marked this new change in a big way. Free Trade Zones with migrant rural labour changed the political demography of the private sector work force as well. Within these changes the public sector unions like the clerical, teachers and railway, lost the best militants at work place level with the ’80 July strike.

All these changes were taking place while the “traditional left” was being devalued and dissipated, both politically and organisationally. They were no more attractive and could not reach out to the new youth who gradually entered the work force. Large segments of young rural labour that entered the work force, brought with them their own brand of confused political thinking very much close to the noisy JVP which entered mainstream politics during the early ‘80s. Therefore in these new enclaves in free trade zones and in some public sector services including banks and the medical profession, the JVP was able to have their organisational foot in or influence institutional thinking. But not so in the plantation sector where the ’80 July strike was never an issue with the traditional union structures still left firm and strong. So was it in large established companies where “collective agreements” dictated worker decisions and behaviour.

Politically, the JVP hold in the rural society extended its thinking into work places and moulded the new generation of trade union leaders. That thinking is a very narrow, mediocre thinking, far behind that of the “left” in the ‘50s and the ‘60s. Then the trade union leaders negotiated on the strength of their membership. Today the membership is driven politically by trade unions that does not allow internal democracy even among their own political cadres. Therefore the present trade union thinking would not allow D.G. Williams, Bala Tampoes and the like to develop within trade unions. The bottom line therefore is that trade unions would not and can not cope with the new modern market world. Can not cope with even democracy.

Trade Unions are bogged down with old, redundant thinking and are never ready to change their attitudes on trade unionism. What should be the ultimate purpose of these trade unions ? Can they not help plan better management systems and demand better human resource development for their membership ? How best could they intervene in working out better quality working environments for their membership ? The quality of working life in the CGR is archaic and has not improved over decades, although new technology and management systems are available. How old is the ticketing system in the CGR ? Hundred years ? Clerical and teacher unions have failed to take up issues that would necessitate a modern working culture with better management systems to benefit their own membership. Such is not the attitude in our trade unions.

If in Sri Lanka, telecommunication was not privatised ignoring trade union objections, the trade unions would have allowed the old gloomy working environment and the employee status to remain, while agitating for pay hikes. The change and improvement brought with privatisation in the telecommunication sector the trade unions usually oppose as privatisation, is a huge positive change in the quality of the workers’ life and that of the ordinary consumer. Imagine the fate of today’s consumer if he had to linger for years in long waiting lists to have a telephone connected ? There was a time the consumer had to stand with a medical certificate in hand to request a priority order for the telephone connection.

Trade unions too have to change their attitudes in working out their own visions and missions. They have to now work with a global mindset. They have not only to demand pay hikes, but also negotiate cost effective and modern management practices that would benefit their membership. This thinking is not possible unless the trade unions break off from their mediocre political leaderships. Unless they think in terms of a new trade union movement that could put to right the mistakes of the Datta Samanth experience. He thought he could live with uncompromising demands ratified by his membership. While his practice was democratic, his thinking was too old to live through a modern world.

We have an old undemocratic tradition buckled down with old thinking. With that trade union psyche the next workers’ agitation led by the JVP may push the government to accede to part of the demands, but would not lift the trade unions to a better quality movement. But here in Sri Lanka, we don’t even have a Datta Samanth to experiment.

Kusal Perera
17th July, 2008

“Shanmugalingam – Three plays”

Trekking the Tamil mindset through Tamil drama

It’s been a long time since I sat in an audience to watch a stage drama. The last time was when I sat in the audience at Elphinstone Theatre, a half year ago. That was to watch the “Janakaraliya” production of “Charandas”. An adaptation of Indian dramatist Habib Tanvir’s “Charandas Chor”, the Janakaraliya production was based on the versatility of dramatist cum teledrama and film director Parakrama Niriella, who had given his own interpretation to the Indian drama in terms of the present Sri Lankan context. Since then, there was no other stage play that compelled me to set aside a few evening hours. The era of intellectually creative drama that was pioneered by Prof. Sarachchandra followed by playwrights like Dayananda Gunawardne, Henry Jayasena, Sugathapala de Silva and R.R. Samarakoon in the 60’s and the 70’s had fizzled off. Dharmasiri Bandaranayake, Asoka Handagama and a few others who lived through into the 80’s and after, have not brought anything new on stage for over two decades. We don’t have creative productions on stage any more that could at least stand in par with those in the 60’s and the 70’s. What needs to be stressed here about Sinhala stage drama is that it depended very much on adaptations than on originals.

We are most unfortunately talking of Sinhala stage drama only. Talking of Sinhala drama as a national fact that ignores Tamil drama altogether. Do we in the South know about Tamil stage drama ? I honestly doubt, we do. We know of popular adoptations from Bertold Brecht, Henrik Ibsen, Jean Paul Satre and Dario Fo to name those from the developed proscenium theatre. Brecht of them all is better known than any local Tamil playwright. I for one came to know of Tamil dramatist Prof. Maunaguru and his production “Ravanesan” more through writings than through stage. There is definitely something amiss. We do not have any conscious interactions with Tamil stage drama and their dramatists.

There are two basic reasons for this. One, there had been very little Tamil stage drama in the first decades after independence that stood its own ground, in comparison to the new development of Sinhala stage drama that evolved with Prof Sarachchandra from mid 1950’s. Development of Sinhala stage drama also had the advantage of being projected as a national effort with the advent of Sinhala politics in the South from mid 50’s. Heavy emphasis on Sinhala art and culture was part of this emerging Sinhala politics. Two, Tamil stage drama perhaps stymied by being pushed into provincial status in social acceptance, also because of the hype given to Sinhala rejuvenation from the 50’s was not an important cultural participation in the South. This therefore did not help develop a Tamil stage drama loving audience in Colombo that could sustain it, even with difficulty. Out of Colombo, they are no national events.

Within this broad cultural parameters in the South, the Sinhala dramatists did not look towards Tamil stage productions or literature for any discourse. Within our literary discourse, we did not have comparisons with or intrusions from Tamil literature. Way back in the 70’s Dharmasena Pathirajah tried his hand on a Tamil film called “Ponmani” and then Parakrama Kodituwakku came with a collection of Tamil poems translated into Sinhala titled “Indu saha Lanka”. They were the two most significant interactions between Sinhala and Tamil creative art. If there were anything else, they were insignificant in a society that was trying to come to grips with social aspirations divided and divergent as Sinhala and Tamil.

Political divisions on either side of the divide getting ethnically radicalised, the chances of moving together, in learning together in all forms of performing arts, also fell between extremism. They had moved away to such an extent that almost none knew Prof. Sarachchandra had borrowed from the Tamil “Koottu” dance traditions in producing his own “miracle” on Sinhala stage. For the Sinhala society, they were its own tradition brought down from the past. The Sinhala hegemonic politics in the South weren’t prepared to accept anything as Tamil even if they were.

This break down of literary dialogue among the Sinhala and Tamil artistes was the result of political antipathy. During the 1980’s and more conspicuously after the 1983 July pogrom, the escalation of the war closed all doors and paved the way for a new trend in Tamil political drama in the North, unknown to the South. That Tamil drama which struggled to establish itself in the Northern Tamil society, had a distinct difficulty in performing publicly as we do at the Lionel Wendt or at the Elphinstone theatre. They grew in an atmosphere of increasing political suppression trying to find expression among nonconventional audiences. This new Tamil stage drama produced a pioneering and committed playwright in the name of M. Shanmugalingam, better known as ‘Kuzhanthai’ Shanmugalingam, who wrote his own plays from what he saw, felt and lived in his own Tamil society. He was thus an organic product of the Tamil society in the North that struggled to express itself through drama.

Three of Kuzhanthai’s plays had been translated into English by a well known Tamil poet, S. Pathmanathan, also known as ‘Sopa’. The three plays have a cover title, “Shanmugalingam – Three plays” printed and published by Kumaran Book Home. It is wholly unfair to stand on judgement of plays that had been produced and staged in a very oppressive context, by a mere reading of their script. Yet it is worth the read, to get a glimpse of the mind set in Jaffna, as it grew over two decades from early 1980’s through armed conflict.

The three stage plays included in this book “Maņ Sumantha Méniyar (With sweat and dust on their shoulders), Enţayum Tāyum (The land of our parents) and Veļvithee(The sacrificial fire)” cover a period from early 1985 to late 1993. Politically this covers the period begun after the 83 July pogrom and run till the end of the Premadasa era, through the IPKF presence and the Indo – Lanka Accord. Obviously, for a dramatist who struggled to have his foot hold in society, all these would have surely had their engravings with due stress.

These are all plays that have within them the echoes of the ordinary man in Jaffna. They are quite different to the armed cadres we generally see as Tamil life. The struggle of the innocent farmer in Maņ Sumantha Méniyar is brought out with the hardened hope he cherishes within a crumbling society. This play had first been staged in February 1985 and thereafter had become popular with youth groups that staged it in many parts of the peninsula. It was the period youth in Jaffna emerged with a loud bang to challenge the democratic presence of the traditional Tamil leadership. Enţayum Tāyum produced and staged in 1992, first in an inner courtyard of a house in Nallur, came at a time when Jaffna was in grips with itself. The famous Vadamarachchi attack by the security forces had left thousands displaced and homeless. The IPKF the Jaffna society thought would liberate them, had also left bitter memories. It was a period the older generation in Jaffna was struggling with a fractured conscience. This play portrays this elderly forlon life in Jaffna that tries to come to grips with the absent child sent off to seek safer and a greener future. What Kuzhanthai Shanmugalingam does best in the play Veļvithee is using the old traditions of marraige in a contemporary society that rocks all traditions, not due to change of life by itself, but due to a hostile break down of normal life. He uses old stanzas as songs to drive his characters to contradiction and pitches them against Shakespeare’s Othelo and Desdamona too, in testing love and attachment in the burning world around him where even sacrifices aren’t enough.

They are not mere reportage of Jaffna life on stage. They are all about human relationships and aspirations within a turbulent society. About life that nevertheless screams, wanting to live. Its life we are not familiar with and wouldn’t see in the perspective of the victim. Finally, they represent a culture that has over the past decades distanced itself with a vengeance due to broken promises, but does not seem so distant in human terms. Sopa Pathmanathan with his lucid translations of these stage plays provides a rare chance for the South to reach out to the Jaffna mindset through Shanmugalingam’s drama that otherwise would not be possible in this war ridden, politically divided and culturally diverging Lanka.

Kusal Perera
08th June, 2008