Malinda Words

Thirty three years ago I scrawled a quote from Herman Hesse at the top of the blackboard in the Prefects’ Room of Royal College: “To act is all; reputation, nothing”. Panduka Karunanayake, a fellow prefect back then and now a doctor and a senior lecturer at the Medical Faculty, University of Colombo found fault with it. He said, ‘you could say “the act is all” but then you have to say “the reputation, none” or else say “the act is everything and the reputation nothing”.

Panduka was looking for grammatical consistency. I wasn’t a student of literature and hadn’t heard of the term ‘poetic license’. He was correct but I was not in error either. Rather, Hesse was not in error.

Such quotes were scribbled on the blackboard. Some remained for a week or more and others were replaced in a day or less. Not too long afterwards the following quote appeared: “Do what you think is right, whether or not the world appreciates”.

These lines came to me this morning as I was reflecting on what has become an annual event organized by a small group of people. Their organization, ‘Heal the Life’ was born when the mother of one of them died of cancer. The family had thereafter organized various programs for cancer patients in her memory. Friends had joined later and they had formed a group called ‘Heal the Life’.

Small interventions. They have a home-based palliative care program where doctors take medicine to patients. They also conduct medical camps. Most importantly they conduct awareness programs which increase the chance of early detection and therefore timely medical intervention to save lives.

They are soft, these people. They believe, for instance, that music can play an important role in the overall curative process. Every year they organize a concern called “Sonduru Rathriya” to raise funds for the various programs they conduct. This is the fourth time they are doing this.

Reflecting on the work that these exemplary human being do, I was reminded of a film and more precisely a quote from the film. That’s what took me to those two quotes.

David Gale is the main character of the intriguing exploration of capital punishment in the film by Alan Parker titled ‘The Life of David Gale’. Gale is a professor who is on death row. He was a professor of philosophy at the University of Texas. What’s relevant to us here is not the discussion on the pros and cons of the death penalty or how the plot unravels but a classic quote from one of the professor’s lectures.

After a short comment on fantasies where, following Pascal, he contends that fantasies are necessarily unrealistic, Gale makes an interesting observation on happiness. He borrows from Lacan.

“So the lesson of Lacan is, living by your wants will never make you happy. What it means to be fully human is to strive to live by ideas and ideals and not to measure your life by what you've attained in terms of your desires but those small moments of integrity, compassion, rationality, even self-sacrifice. Because in the end, the only way that we can measure the significance of our own lives is by valuing the lives of others.”

Disappointment is written into acquisition, whether it be wealth, a life partner, future(s) for children, honors, status or anything else, as Pascal points out, for the moment you get what you seek you cannot want it any more. Pascal claims that desire must have its objects perpetually absent. We can also add, that this disappointment often engenders other desires usually in the form of seeking the same object but in greater volumes or better quality. We want more money, a better position, a car that is of higher value, more adventures sexual, romantic and otherwise; essentially things that end with ‘er’ such as better, greater, higher or things that are preceded by ‘more’. It simply doesn’t end, and if ever we look back at the journey carefully and honestly we’ll encounter a road cluttered with disappointments. ‘Enough’ is in our vocabulary and even in the deeper precincts of our consciousness but in our day-to-day, in our ‘this very moments’, it just does not figure.

And so we have the Lacan proposition.

To this I would like to add something. The gift or the act of giving can of course make us happy. What then? Following Pascal, once the act is done, there’s disappointment or rather a quick waning of joy. If this leads to more giving and if a large number of people taking the ‘giving’ route rather than the ‘getting’ or ‘acquiring’, then of course it’s wholesome. I would like to propose that the giving should be prompted not by the prospect of experiencing happiness or witnessing the joy that the receiver experiences, but instead by the simple matter of doing what needs to be done, regardless of the consequences, regardless most importantly of whether or not the world appreciates.

That’s something that the late Christie Gunasekara, then the Vice Principal of Royal College, ‘Kataya’ to one and all, taught me. Facing a possible embarrassing situation after being arrested and locked up in the Cinnamon Gardens Police Station (and released a couple of hours later thanks to Kataya’s intervention), I asked him what could happen. I was a prefect. I knew enough about hierarchies to understand that there would be some who would salivate at the prospect of ridiculing a prefect. The ‘crime’ was that I had jumped into school around midnight with a bunch of other prefects and rung the school bell. I got caught and those who apprehended me probably didn’t even know that others were involved.

‘It’s a schoolboy prank. It will be news for a couple of days and then it will be forgotten,’ he told me in all his wisdom acquired through decades of dealing with schoolboys and being immersed in ‘school culture’.

That was a relief, but that is not what remained with me. He added, ‘you do what you believe is right, whether or not the world appreciates’.

Today, 33 years later, I realize that ‘the world’ includes myself and that following Kataya’s Principle, the ‘doing’ should not involve a consideration of possible appreciation by anyone, including oneself. One does, not because the doing makes one feel good about oneself but because it is a ‘has to be done thing’. Do it, move on. It is about valuing the lives of others; not ourselves, in fact whether or not anyone values our lives for the particular act.

That’s probably what is truly meant by the Buddhist notion, Daana Paramithava or ‘the perfection of giving’. It’s about being able to give and about someone worthy of receiving. Give and with the act of giving end it. No advertisements necessary — not of the intent nor the act. To act, as Hesse observed, is all. The reputation? Nothing or ‘none’ as Dr Panduka Karunanayake would have it.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe was conferred an honorary doctorate by Deakin University, Australia. He’s not the first premier thus honored and he probably will not be the last. However, an honor it is and as such warranted media coverage. What was newsy, though, was not the event but a statement he had made that was almost missed; it was an add-on that was at once a de-conferring, so to speak, at the tail end of the report.

It was reported thus: “Immediately after the convocation ceremony Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe directed Prime Minister’s Secretary Saman Ekanayake to ensure that the ‘Dr’ tag is not attached to his name in official or personal matters.”

That might be called ‘classy’ if not for anything, it separates him from the many others who have received honorary doctorates. Some people love titles. Indeed titles adorn some. In other cases, the person adorns the title. I don’t think the Prime Minister falls into either category, but this mild and minor directive reveals character. Ranil is not about ‘show’ except of course when he heeds the advice of the near and dear of his inner political circles, and even then more out of trust than out of conviction.

He deserves a bit of applause, for both the honor he received and for being humble about it, not least of all because he is heads and shoulders above the vast majority who have name cards with the ‘Doctor Tag’ courtesy honors bestowed. Intellectually, he is clearly up there among the best of that lot.

Our Prime Minister is reputed to be a voracious reader on a wide range of subjects. He also does his homework before making speeches. The worst he can do is to extrapolate on an error, as he has done for example while making observations at the launch of a book by a loyalist, Sujith Akkarawatte, a few years ago. Yes, he does his homework. This was apparent in the speech he made at Deakin. He observed that Alfred Deakin, the Australian Prime Minister in whose name the university was founded had actually visited Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) in 1893 to study the island’s 1000 year old irrigation system.

He may very well have taken a wiki-peek but then again that’s much more than many would do. In any event, Wikileaks only mentions that Deakin ‘played a major part in establishing irrigation in Australia’. Wickremesinghe appears to have dug deeper when preparing the speech or, more likely, had already filed away the fact during the course of educating himself in general. That does not make him a scholar of course, but it does make him a different and even special kind of politician.

His detractors may say he was undeserving. That’s politics. He is, after all, no Mervin Silva or the innumerable doctorate holders who have in word and deed brought much disgrace on all spheres of scholarship. They need to drop the tag, not Wickremesinghe but on the other hand it’s because they cling to it that dropping it demonstrates as much wisdom as it does humility. Let there be no debate over this: Ranil Wickremesinghe is one of the more well-read of our parliamentarians if not the best read. If we consider all the prime ministers since Independence and if we were to assess doctorate-worthiness of them all, on the counts of intellect and vision (and not ideological bent or the balance sheet on delivery), only a handful are deserving. There’s D.S. Senanayake, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, in their own way J.R. Jayewardene and Ranasinghe Premadasa, and there’s Ranil Wickremesinghe.

Let us applaud.

It is indeed a pity, then, that Deakin University got it all wrong in the relevant citation. They were correct in recognizing his long service as a parliamentarian, minster and prime minister. Longevity is certainly praiseworthy, even though it is that same longevity or rather the fact that he survived while others fell to ill-health, old age, assassinations and terrorist attacks, which paved the way for him to become prime minister on multiple occasions. All that may have been fortuitous but let us not discount his tenaciousness and shrewd political skills. His tenure as the Leader of the United National Party may be described as dictatorial but that’s less due to iron-fist than to subtle maneuvering, preying on the weaknesses of would-be ousters and deft footwork to dodge political bullets. None of this requires elaboration. In hindsight, one might argue that had he not done all that he has, the party could very well have disintegrated or at best continued to remain in the political wilderness. Whether it deserves doctoral recognition is of course another matter.

Deakin University cites ‘the role he played in steering the country to a high status in the economic, education and human rights fields’. Prof. Jane Den Hollander reading out the citation in the presence of the Chancellor of the University, Prof John Stanhope, said “several factors including Prime Minister Wickremesinghe’s contribution towards steering the country to a high international status, tactfulness in getting LTTE terrorists into the negotiating table, creating the groundwork for obtaining financial assistance from the international community and dedication towards setting up good governance were taken into account.”

If one were generous, one might say ‘contentious’ or if less generous, ‘tendentious’. Let’s take the economic, educational and human rights fields separately. He was in charge of the economy in 2001 and is in charge of it now (for all intents and purposes). In 2001 he inherited an economy in its death throes. He was hemmed in on the one side by the chief executive, Chandrika Kumaratunga, who belonged to a rival party, and a seemingly never ending battle with terrorists. Kumaratunga didn’t really let him carry out his ‘Regaining Sri Lanka’ program, seizing three key ministries by the end of 2003 and dissolving Parliament a few months later. In April 2004, the UNP was routed in the 2004 General Election. That was probably less about the economy than his demonstrable naiveté regarding the LTTE. We’ll come to that presently. The bottom line about his economic policies was (and still is) selling off national assets. That might tickle the fancy of the like of Hollander who might call it judicious and enlightened, but stripped of sanitizing terminology used by economic pundits with dubious agenda, it’s pretty simple and simplistic thinking. Today, once again at the helm, his thinking hasn’t changed. National pauperization can only be hailed by the beneficiaries, not be the pauperized.

Another thing that pretty much undressed Wickremesinghe’s economic ‘wizardry’ is the downright stupidity in believing that pleasing the USA and Europe would result in those countries backing his economic program by putting money where their mouths are. Someone who does not know that these countries’ national debts are essentially owned by China and Japan is not an economic expert. The ‘Brexit Moment’ saw Wickremesinghe suddenly realizing the existence of China. He said ‘We’ll look East’. That’s, incidentally, where the previous regime had been looking, a gaze-preference that was ridiculed by Wickremesinghe. The gaze-change clearly indicates a certain myopia. Applauding him on his economic thinking says as much about Deakin as of Wickremesinghe.

Education. Whether one agrees or not with the thinking, it’s Wickremesinghe’s vision on this subject that has prevailed. What we’ve seen over the past 35 years is the sometimes open and sometimes subtle implementation of the White Paper on Education that he presented in the early eighties. Whether this alone accounts for the current crisis in education, it is hard to conclude, but certain things have to be acknowledged: a) we still don’t have an occupation classification which takes into account economic realities, policies and projections, so that the education system is in line with these, b) much of the agitation and controversies that have troubled this sector comes from the absence of a national education policy, c) incompetence and corruption override all else in this sector.

Human rights. That’s a favorite term used by those who want to rap Sri Lanka on her national knuckles, especially those who either violate human rights or look askance when their friends do so. Let’s leave Batalanda out of it. Wickremesinghe was a minister during the eighties, i.e. when the most serious human rights violations took place with over 60,000 people being killed in the course of two years. That was a time when the government unleashed the security forces, police and vigilante groups on the population, a time marked by proxy arrests, abduction, torture and assassination and was rightly dubbed ‘the bheeshanaya (terror).’ He can’t complicit, he was an approver and it is hard to claim that he has no blood on his hands. The eighties, let us not forget, was the period when the security forces had next to no discipline. That’s when the greatest atrocities were committed against Tamils in the country. Let us not forget either the decisive role played by the trade union of his party in the attacks on Tamils by mobs in July 1983 nor the fact that his government deliberately reined in the law enforcing authorities during those terrible days. He was a junior minister back then, but if he is the principled man that Deakin paints him as, he could have resigned. He did not.

Let’s now consider the more specific factors that Deakin claims contributed to the decision: “contribution towards steering the country to a high international status, tactfulness in getting LTTE terrorists into the negotiating table, creating the groundwork for obtaining financial assistance from the international community and dedication towards setting up good governance.”

Deakin cannot be faulted for delusion about the ‘international community’ and the relevant moral high horses that its principal movers and shakers often ride. We live in a world where those countries enjoying ‘high international status’ include Saudi Arabia and that such character certificates are dished out by countries such as the USA, Canada, the UK and the EU. Salutation is all about complying, about being an Uncle Tom, genuflection and all that kind of thing. That’s pretty old.

Tact. Now that’s a laugh. There are two broad justifications for the choices that Wickremesinghe made regarding the LTTE in early 2002. The first is that the economy was in such a bad situation that the Government had no choice but to come to some kind of agreement that allowed for recovery. The second is the view carefully orchestrated by those who were and still are soft on the LTTE and the Eelam Project that the LTTE cannot be militarily defeated. Neither of these ‘reasons’ go with ‘tact’. The truth is that the LTTE had its own problems at the time. The LTTE badly needed time and space to recruit, regroup and re-arm. Wickremesinghe’s ‘tact’ allowed the LTTE to do just that and in fact more since the government facilitated the movement of equipment and arms directly or indirectly to LTTE-controlled areas and also severely compromised its security forces by betraying the intelligence units to the enemy. That’s not tact. That’s at best stupidity; the more appropriate terms would be betrayal and treachery.

Deakin claims that Wickremesinghe had ‘[created] the groundwork for obtaining financial assistance from the international community.’ That’s difficult, now? All it takes is say something like ‘whatever you say’ to each and every proposal tossed with disdain at you. It’s a yes-sir or yes-ma’am business. It’s about getting the script from the US State Department, for instance, and reading it out to the letter. Any idiot can do it. But what really happened? True, one could claim that the international community provided financial assistance, China after all is part of this ‘international community’. China never needs any country to do any ‘groundwork’. China is also about business. The only difference is that China has money. That’s what the Rajapaksa regime knew. They didn’t the only ground work necessary — they asked and were given (for terms that were clearly poor but still richer than what the Wickremesinghe-Sirisena dispensation have apparently got).

Finally, there’s this claim about ‘dedication towards setting up good governance.’ He gets a lot of brownie points here. The 19th Amendment fell short of what was promised to the people, but it did erase the negatives of the 18th Amendment. The Right to Information Act finally saw the light of day. Things took more time than promised, but that’s easily forgivable. Things haven’t changed much, but legislation alone will not dramatically change political culture. There is still corruption, there’s still nepotism, there’s still wastage and abuse of state resources. In any event, the brownie points, as such there are, should be shared between Wickremesinghe and Sirisena. Neither talks of electoral reform; this too should be thrown into the overall assessment. The balance sheet is nevertheless positive. On ‘good governance’ that is.

All things considered, Deakin seems to have failed to do the necessary homework and this makes us think that the honor has more to do with ‘liking’ than about what’s deserved. Deakin University got it wrong or rather made some iffy things sound solid, ‘iffy’ being a kind word here. Alfred Deakin, on the other hand, got it right. He had his country at heart. He came to Sri Lanka, got what he wanted and enriched his own country. Wickremesinghe, considering his entire track record and that of the Governments he has served and led, is the polar opposite. What is surprising is that it was Deakin University and not Johns Hopkins University that has conferred an honorary doctorate on him.

Still, as we pointed out above, he is deserving. In a relative sense. In a comparative sense. He is deserving, most of all, for the quick, intelligent, damage-controlling and diplomatic instructions to his media point man, namely the decision to disavow it without disavowing the title ‘doctor’. Now that we can most certainly call 'tact'. Congratulations Prime Minister!

March Madness. That’s what it was called a few decades back. That’s because all ‘big matches’ were played in March. Now the big-match seasons begins in February and goes on till the end of April. Back then there were elaborate previews of each encounter; now there are almost none simply because there are way too many to be crammed into the sports pages of newspapers.

Back then there was the Roy-Tho, the Joe-Pete, the Ananda-Nalanda and the Trinity-Anthonian. Well, there were matches that were regionally ‘big’ but nationally small because they lacked the long histories associated with the ‘glamour’ events. Now we have hundreds of ‘big matches’ and almost all of them have drawn from the ‘culture’ associated with say the Royal-Thomian.

So we have the cycle parades which seem to have less and less cycles every year. There are papare bands. There’s the ‘traditional’ practice of boys thinking they are men and being a nuisance to the public, sometimes even jumping into girls’ schools. Part of it is fun, but limits are often crossed. Too often, some might say. There is the ‘fun’ of boys decorating themselves with masks, hats, and even girls’ uniforms. There’s fun in hat-collections, but there’s harassment too.

But then, we are told, boys will be boys. It’s for just two days of the year. True. The public has by and large indulged.

Then there’s stuff that happens at the match. Lots of things. There’s partying that gets out of hand, and partying that will be unforgettable. Pitch-invasions, out-smarting prefects, stewards, police officers and of late security personnel, and making an idiot of oneself and not caring one bit. Stuff for the memory-book. Great stuff. There are boys and girls preening themselves for each other. Some of it can cross the limits of decency, but a lot of it is predictably hormonal and understandable. Again memory-book stuff.

That’s part of what makes old boys go to the big match. There are memory-slices in the making that will refresh the pages of bygone days they’ve stored in their consciousness. And then it’s back to the old days. It’s back to being the boys and the boyhoods they like to think they never outgrew.

It’s about familiar faces. Re-telling stories they’ve told year after year and being received as though for the first time, each time. What’s nice about it is that despite the boyhood-belief, the years mould enough ‘man’ into mind that whatever ‘nasty’ there was depreciates every year. For the vast majority, let us add.

And it’s the little things that count, not the big scores or the centuries or even records being broken. That’s all nice. You’ll let out a roar, raise arms and even try to will your legs to turn shed the years and get to 16 so you can sprint to the pitch and sprint back without being brought down by the various discipline enforcing authorities. And almost always, the joy of the invasion would outweigh whatever was being celebrated.

It’s those little things that count; meeting an old friend after a lapse of several years or even several decades, recognizing and being recognized despite the re-structuring that time inevitably crafts on the body, meeting sworn enemies from a different era and realizing how the size of quarrels diminish and how something that was once thought of as life-death matter seems so trivial courtesy temporal and spacial distances.

Small things are what make for nostalgia, that lovely region which is divested of all unpleasantness that are as much a part of that time as those which made splendid memories. Big matches, for the old, are about such things. Little things. And the loveliest thing about little things is that there are so many of them that every Big Match seems new. Little things in fact keep re-inventing big matches, year after year.

For schoolboys the match is certainly big. Every new experience is big and imagined to be even bigger. For old boys, it’s different. The old see the young and they smile for they seem themselves in a different time. The young see the old and will never be convinced that one day they’ll get there too. There’s always a little something for everyone, though.

There’s the evil ghost of misrepresentation, the evil ghost of exaggeration, the evil ghost of painting fiction as fact and myth as history, the evil ghost of silence on demographic realities, the evil ghost of a flawed colonial map, and the evil ghost of bullying Sinhalese into thinking that submitting to Tamil chauvinism is equal to ‘a solution that satisfies all communities’.

Any discussion on claims which contain words such as ‘traditional’ or ‘historical’ can make sense only if assertions are backed by fact and not myth. They should be buttressed by a corpus of evidence that are coherent and wholesome, and are not marked by the errors of selectivity. In an article where he sets himself the task of refuting an allegation that ‘the claim of traditional/historical homelands (of Tamils) is a load of balderdash, unsupported by any kind of evidence,’ (see ‘Wigneswaran and the puppeteering with ghosts') P Soma Palan (PSP hereafter) appears to have inadvertently reinforced my assertion (see his article ‘Claim of traditional homeland: not a load of balderdash’).

PSP dwells at length on the Vijaya Legend. He calls it a myth and yet in a sleight of hand typical of Eelam myth-modelers and in contradiction of his own myth-claim insists that the real name is ‘Vijay’ or ‘Vijayan’ (a ‘Tamilization’ that has become ‘par for the course’ in creative Eelamist historiography). The reference to Vijaya is taken from the Mahawamsa of Mahanama Thero in the 5th Century. It is an epic narrative in Pali. We cannot as yet take it as the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth and we certainly cannot call it a total fabrication; the veracity of certain parts have been established by archaeological excavation and by corroboration via other texts while certain other parts remain unsubstantiated. The Vijaya legend belongs to the latter kind.

To make sense of it, it is useful to revisit the chronicler’s disclaimer. Mahanama Thero observing that the narratives (in text or other form) of the ancients (those who came before) are at times overly lengthy, at times all too brief and at times repetitive, claimed that his was an exercise of eliminating error and laying it out for easier comprehension and for the delight (of the reader). What was left out and what was added, we cannot be definite about as per available evidence. For the historian it is a useful document that provides base-text and innumerable clues, nothing more and nothing less.

PSL asks me a bunch of questions, all based on the assumption that I’ve bought the Vijaya Legend. I have not. The ‘refutation’ of the Vijaya Legend that PSP offers is that ‘no race is founded by an individual’. This is absolutely correct, but he’s making too much of a symbol or a signifier. It is not that Vijaya descended from nowhere and founded a race of sons and daughters who inter-married and had children of their own and multiplied. What’s important is not the name, but the process.

It is reasonable to assume that Vijaya was not the first (and certainly not the last) ‘prince’ who came to the island with an entourage and with a conquistador’s designs. For the chronicler his arrival was clearly significant enough in terms of impact on political control to give it the privilege of ‘starting point’. This does not mean that the island was uninhabited or only sparsely inhabited at the time. Neither do we know for sure the ‘clan names’ if you will of the indigenous peoples. We do know that a document compiled by a South Indian Buddhist monk in the 1st or 2nd Century CE titled ‘Seehalavattuppakara’ referring to a community by the name ‘Seehala’. We know that there are references to various communities in early inscriptions but none in which a Tamil trace can be found. There are no references to any Tamil community or even a non-Tamil Dravidian community or any community with any trace of “Tamils, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalees” that PSP claims inhabited the island ‘before Vijaya’s arrival’ (he seems to believe the ‘myth’!). I would love to examine his sources on this. The relevant cave inscriptions, by the way, are in Sinhala Prakrit. If indeed this was a ‘Tamil Island’ as PSP claims and if it were Tamils who were converted to Buddhism, surely there would have been some references, some caves, a dozen or even one with South Indian ‘Brahmi’ characters? None!

More on language, later. Let’s consider the ‘evidence’ that PSP offers. Ravana! It’s a nice story and interestingly written, true, but it’s as much ‘legend’ as the VIjaya story if not more. That was a story that was popularized elsewhere. The place names that PSP refers to are of relatively recent origin, this side of the Gampola Period to be more precise and possibly explained by several waves of immigrants being allowed to settle in various parts of the island by the kings of the time which are interestingly the very same places where ‘ravana legends’ and ‘ravana place names’ exist! That’s ‘history’; what PSP offers is conjecture. No evidence.

PSP likes to conflate terms. Hindu, for him, indicates Tamil. Non-Buddhist by implication has to be Hindu. Of course the people who lived before the arrival of Arahat Mahinda had their own religious beliefs, some of which were quite possibly related to present day Hinduism. The island was never isolated. There have even been Buddhists too before Arahat Mahinda, as evidenced by begging bowls discovered in Anuradhapura dating back to pre-Mahindian times as well. Texts such as the ‘Divyavadana’ believed to have been written in the 1st Century CE speak of Buddhist missions that arrived in the island from time to time, dating back to the time of the Buddha. What’s pertinent is that there is little evidence to say that even if there was any Hindu trace in these cosmologies there is even less ‘Dravidian’ markings and nothing of ‘Tamil’.

“The ancestral progenitors of present day Sinhalese are the converted Tamil Buddhists,” PSP claims. So, did Tamils drop language, create a new language and transform into a different ‘ethnicity’ just because they converted to Buddhism (as claimed)? Whatever date the name ‘Sinhala’ came to be identified with the vast majority of people in the island, what is clear is that there was a process involved and that if there indeed was any Tamil trace it was marginal. If ‘Tamil’ was erased by racist ‘Sinhala’ chroniclers, it is indeed strange that of the 15-20 names given to the island by outsiders there is not one that has any Dravidian trace, leave alone a Tamil one.

PSP is full of myth and legend. In addition to the Ravana Legend, he says that the Kataragam temple (Tamilized as per his whims to ‘Kathiragamam’) existed around 13,000 BC. He offers no evidence. What we do know is that he’s speaking of the Mesolithic Age, the time of hunters and gatherers who didn’t have any fixed abode. “The existence of pre- Vijayan and pre-Buddhistic Hindu temples, millennia before the arrival of so-called Vijay and Arahat Mahinda, proves that the Tamils and other Dravidian Hindu races, was the majority population of Lanka,” he claims, but what’s this evidence? PSP’s sources would make wonderful reading and I eagerly await them.

PSP’s most ‘potent’ devise is language, or rather its corruption; more precisely the easy and utterly ahistorical mechanism of Tamilizing. He says Devanampiyatissa was actually Devanambya Alwar Tissan (a Telugu Hindu, according to him). He offers that the real name of Arahat Mahinda was Mahendra, which would make Emperor Ashoka a Tamil! Claim is fine, but again, it has to be backed by evidence.

The literature on this neat but pernicious exercise is extensive. Ranamadu was made Iranamadu, Akkara Pattu became Akkaraipattu, Batakotte is now Vadukkoddai. Nothing wrong in people twisting names for ease of tongue but to then confer some kind of historical first on oneself is cheap politics, nothing more.

Naming whim as ‘history’ does not make it history; neither does painting fiction as fact. PSP speaks of ‘over hundred Brahmi Rock inscriptions confirming the “Holy Yatra” made by several Saints, Sages, Munis and Yogis, including the Great Agastya, who came to the sacred Kataragama and worshipped Lord Murugan. None of it, strangely, have been recorded. I would love to read the sources, let me repeat.

There are broadly two kinds of ‘brahmi characters’, those found in the Northern part of what’s now India and those found in the South. There are some ‘Southern’ characters in inscriptions found on this island, but they are very rare an are greatly overwhelmed by the northern forms or rather forms that can be said to have some relation to characters that are found in the northern part of the subcontinent. The existence of southern forms at best indicates what is not denied — interaction across the straits; but to extrapolate such existence to a significant and indeed a majority Tamil community without explaining the predominance of non-Southern forms is mischievous. If you want to assume a script because of a single or a few characters, then what do you make of the other characters that outnumber your ‘Tamil (sic)’ characters by quite a margin? I would call it clinging to straws. The myth that Sinhala was based on ‘Tamil Alphabetics’ has been comprehensively debunked, PSP is probably not aware.

In any event, what happened to the Tamils that he claims were the dominant population of this island? PSP speaks of ‘Tamil Buddhists’. Of course there may have been Tamil Buddhists, but Buddhism is a doctrine, a philosophy and for some a religion, and one that has been embraced by people speaking many, many languages. Embracing a doctrine does not mean one has to abandon one’s language, surely? Where are the Tamil Buddhist texts, on stone or parchment? If they were so dominant, why didn’t we see a Tamil script evolving in this island, i.e. one drawing heavily from the Southern Brahmi characters?

So, sorry PSP, “the architectural, epigraphical (Brahmi rock inscriptions) and literary and place names etc,” do not “establish any pre- historic population consisted of Hindu Dravidians in this island”. The ‘Sinhalese’ as such must have been quite a race to convince others to abandon their language and be reticent in bed while they (the Sinhalese) orchestrated natural population increase.

With respect to the issue of numbers and percentages, PSP takes us through the myths dealt with above, but carefully refuses to address the issue of the here-and-now — that pernicious fudging of the multi-ethnic-multi-religious narrative where proportions are absent(ed). Even if we cite ‘war’ and ‘economic push and pull’ to explain why almost half the Tamils live outside the ‘historical homeland’ the overall percentages tell a story and one of land-grab intent by extreme elements of an otherwise highly civilized community. PSP has perhaps forgotten that the Tamil narrative, as Rajeewa Jayaweera points out, has so far been about discrimination and genocide outside the North and East, a claim that is refuted by PSP's explanation of 'job opportunities and security' for Tamils preferring to leave the traditional-homelands (so-called)!

Toss in the absence of history and we are left without ‘traditional’ and ‘historical’ with respect to ‘homeland’. We don’t even have to comment on the (irr)rationality or rather the arbitrariness of the British in drawing provincial boundaries. Suffice to say that PSP's claim that 'there was never a centralized Lanka' is old hat, and a hat full of holes one might add, considering the reigns of several kings, better known among whom are Dutugemunu, Parakramabahu I and Mahasen, as Rajeewa point out.

I hoped that some Eelamist ‘historian’ would come out with some facts. Instead, PSP, possibly a well-meaning Sri Lankan who wishes the best for all Sri Lankans, has arrived with a thin portfolio but one filled with more myths and legends and questions obtained from such things. I must say I am disappointed.

*A slightly shorter version of this article was published in the Daily Mirror on February 23, 2017.

Read also:

A love-bite is hardly a palliative
Sinhala and Tamil traces in an island history

Grievances and resolution: the question of true dimensions

Let's make Sampanthan's New Year wish come true

Cheating Sinhalese through proposal and Tamils through outcome

Death by obfuscation: the prerogatives of the federalist lobby

The management of insecurities

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer. Email: malindasenevi@gmail.com. Blog: www.malindawords.blogspot.com. Twitter: malindasene

And ready to brain-fade again, by the looks of it!

Way back when Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government was getting slammed left, right and centre by the ‘international (sic) community’, especially at the UNHRC, his detractors were thrilled. Little did they care that the accusers were tainted in ways that made Sri Lanka look pretty innocent in terms of (alleged) ‘war crimes’. Rajapaksa was accused of being moronic in his foreign policy. Dark stories were spread about impending sanctions. The removal of the GSP Plus facility was thrown in as evidence and a sign of worse things to come.

The previous regime resisted all moves to interfere in the affairs of the country including direct involvement in judicial processes. It was a foregone conclusion that Sri Lanka would time and again be bested in votes taken in the UNHRC, apart from the first vote with respect to the conflict when Dayan Jayatilleka was the Permanent Representative in Geneva. A good battle was fought and lost, as expected.

Rajapaksa didn’t do himself any favours back home. Corruption, wastage, nepotism, serious compromising of the Rule of Law and other such negatives slowly but surely brought just enough forces together to throw him out of office.

Today, the very same international community is going easy on the current regime. Why? Because they have this government has shown greater commitment to getting things right by way of reconciliation, transitional justice, transparency and what not?

Well!

What do have now? We have a regime that is same-same as the Rajapaksas with a key difference. They’ve adopted Rajapaksa Ways in record speed. Whereas it took the previous regime more than five years to lose the plot, it has taken this government less than 2 to lose it, if they had a plot in the first place that is. And this is best evidenced by the short-sighted, irresponsible and sophomoric thinking with respect to dealing with the international community (via the UNHRC) on human rights, transitional justice and so on.

Prince Zeid has not exactly patted this government on the back, but he’s not swishing any whips either, as was the forte of his predecessor. He is still calling for hybrid courts.

What do the President and the Prime Minister have to say?

The President has clearly said that there will be no foreign judges in judicial procedures to probe war crimes allegations. That’s a blatant snub on the Consultative Task Force on Reconciliation Mechanisms. Lakshman Yapa Abeywardene has said that the President and the Government have full confidence in the judiciary and legal processes. “We have extremely eminent and experienced judges and our judges have served in various countries and global organizations that have given much credit to the country,” he said. The issue of establishing a hybrid court does not arise, as far as that component of this coalition government is concerned.

As for the other half, the Prime Minister has said that a hybrid court was not politically feasible and as such a feasible alternative should be found. His words:

“Setting up a hybrid court is not politically feasible because such a move would need a referendum. Against this back drop, how can we fulfill the expectations of the international community? Let’s get together and think of a feasible alternative for such a court.”

And what do the strongest backers (and now approvers) of the forces that ousted Rajapaksa have to say? Jehan Perera, writing about the Governments performance in Geneva puts it well.

“During their stay in Geneva, the Sri Lankan delegation was able to meet with most important parties at the side events to the official conference. This included meetings with the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and with UN Human Rights Commissioner Prince Zeid bin Ra’ad Zeid al-Hussein and with the ambassadors to the UN of various powerful countries. Some of those who are currently playing a decision-making role in UN processes have had previous engagements with Sri Lanka and are in a position to make a comparative analysis of the situation in Sri Lanka as against other countries. They tend to be impressed at the overall developments in Sri Lanka which they can compare with the deterioration to be found in many parts of the world.”

So now it’s about relative merits. Sri Lanka is better than Myanmar. One can’t help observing that Sri Lanka was always better than a lot of countries (including the USA, UK, Canada and the EU) in terms of dealing with terrorism AND, more importantly, in sorting out post-conflict issues such as reconstruction, settlement of the displaced, restoration of democracy and rehabilitating hardcore terrorists, people with a combat history and adjuncts in the cause of terrorism, from whose grasp, let us not forget, some 300,000 civilians held hostage were rescued. Try beating that!

But that’s not what this government did. The UNHRC officially recognized all this and then duly forgot, but then again, the likes of Perera never even acknowledged all this for reasons that are obvious.

The problem with the Government’s current position is what G.L. Peiris has pointed out. Prof Peiris asks, correctly, “who approved the UNHRC Resolution that Sri Lanka co-sponsored with the USA?” That Resolution clearly shows that Sri Lanka is amenable to the involvement of foreign judges. Didn’t the President and the Prime Minister know back then that a) Sri Lanka has competent judges and a credible judicial process (as the President now claims) and b) that such mechanisms are untenable (as the Prime Minister now claims)? Were they, like all politicians, merely playing the age old game of seeking the postponement of the inevitable in the absence of a coherent, pragmatic alternative approach?

it is clear that an international community that is sorely lacking in integrity should not be shown any respect. This Government was let down by the champions of righteousness (corrupt though they are in this respect). Today the Government is looking to a less-friendly China for help. Well, the previous regime appears to have got everything right in this respect. They knew what the international community was about. They knew who had the bucks and who had the swagger. They blew it domestically.

This government is close to blowing it domestically. And they’ve read the ‘international’ all wrong. In Geneva, they suffered a brain-fade. That’s putting it mildly. They’ve remained brain-faded since then and demonstrated the fact this year as well.

In the very least, the Foreign Minister has shown gross negligence, total absence of intelligence, and utter political immaturity. That’s only if he acted on his own steam, which again is hard to believe. That particular brain-fade buck floats upwards. And whether or not it is acknowledged, it sticks.

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer. Email: malindasenevi@gmail.com. Twitter: malindasene

There’s a little girl. She’s about 15 years old. She sits across the table from me. Her voice is firm and her eyes dance as she speaks about her love. She’s young enough and old enough to identify true love among passing fancies, infatuation and hero-worship. There was a time when she would prefer to do other things, as much as she loved this love, but that was before. That was when she was less than 10 years old. But now, somewhere in the year 1947, she knew enough to weigh heart and mind, deploy them to obtain the most fruitful engagement with the world around her in its wholeness and with its constituent parts.

Her name is Vajira.

Sitting right there in front of me, the little girl became a young woman. And then a mother. She became a grandmother and a great grandmother. And through it all her voice remained firm. Her eyes continued to dance.

And with unwavering voice she transcribed memory into words, traced the dance steps from then to now in a choreography that did justice to a life dedicated to uphold the sacredness of the dance.

Her mother had specific plans for all her children. She had wanted Vajira’s sister to become a doctor and she did. The brothers were to study law, but they ended up as engineers. She wanted Vajira to dance and to learn music. She was sent for violin classes and also dance classes. She danced.

When she was around 8, Vajira’s mother had sent her to Sripalee. Rabindranath Tagore had helped set up this institution, then dedicated to music and dance. At the time Vajira had been attending Kalutara Balika Vidyalaya. Anangala Athukorale, a part time dancer teacher at her school who also taught at Sripalee had played an important role in this decision.

Her father had been working at the Urban Council and was in charge of letting out the Town Hall for various performances. He made sure that there was always a row of seats for his family. And that’s how the iconic Chitrasena had come into their lives. He had come to perform. Vajira’s mother had immediately arranged for him to conduct classes at home. She had got hold of her friends and urged them to send their children for this class. There had been eight in all, including Vajira and her sister.

Vajira was interested and talented, but she was a child. She had other interests as well and did her best to cut these classes. Chitrasena had visited Kalutara for a while and the two families had become good friends. Later, when Vajira’s sister needed a place to stay in Colombo since she was attending Medical College, their mother had approached the Chitrasenas who had arranged for her to stay with them as a boarder.

When Vajira was around 11, her mother had decided that she should also go and study in Colombo. She was duly enrolled at Methodist College, which was located right opposite Chitrasena’s house. And so she too was boarded there. That house was all about music and dance. Vajira went to school in the morning and in the evening would attend Chitrasena’s dance classes and also learn Sitar from Edwin Samaradiwakara. After she reached 15, it was all about dance and nothing else.

“Naturally, I followed Chitra everywhere. I went for every show. I must have started to like him at some point. I was 18 when we got married.”

By that time she was the lead female dancer of the troupe, but apparently she lacked the physique to play the lead female roles. In Nala-Damayanthi, for example, she always played the Swan while various dancers played Damayanthi. When it was first produced, Chitrasena had done the choreography but later, in 1963, when they performed Nala-Damayanthi in Sydney he had let Vajira handle it. “He probably thought I was by that time capable of handling my own scenes,” Vajira said. The Sydney Morning Herald of Saturday, February 16 paid glowing tribute to Vajira.

“Balletomanes who see the second program of the Chitrasena Ballet, which was presented at the Elizabethan Theatre last night, will receive a shock, for there they will find the original of their beloved classical-romantic ballet, ‘Swan Lake.’

“The various pas de deux, performed by Vajira, as the Chief Swan, and Wimal, as the noble King Nala, leave, it must be confessed, our ‘Swan Lake’ sadly lacking in imagination and understanding.

“This critic has not seen in ‘Western’ ballet mime, acting and dancing, capable of evoking the nature and spirit of the swan, to compare with the performance of Vajira in this role.”

“The show must go one,” Chitrasena often said, she recalls. And so it did. Her involvement was intense and passionate, even while pregnant she had continued to dance and choreograph although she didn’t perform.

By and by she came to creating her own ballets. The first, ‘Kumudini’ was done when she was just 19. The following year she created ‘Hima Kumariya’ and in 1955, ‘Sepalika’. By this time she was a part time dance teacher in schools and she experimented with the young children she was teaching. In 1956 she produced ‘Kindurangana’. She created 17 children’s ballets in total.

Some of these she remembers on account of them being landmark creations of a kind. “Rankikili,” a children’s ballet, for example is remembered because her daughter Upekha was by that time big enough to perform the lead role of the Kikili. Her other daughter Anjali played the role of the old lady who keep the fire going, but what was most significant about this ballet, first performed in 1968, was that it was the first time that a ballet was performed without any words or songs, just music and dance. It was, Vajira recalls, was artistically of a very high standard.

“Nil Yaka,” was based on a story by the most accomplished writer of children’s stories, Sybil Wettasinghe. Sybil incidentally and done the decor and created the set.

Seventy years is a long time. Time enough to be afflicted with selective memory, time enough to even forget and be forgiven for it. But Vajira rememebers the Chitrasena’s first student, Somabandu, usually handled the decor and constumes. “Samaradivakara and Titus Nonis were both music teachers and had created the melodies for the children’s ballet ‘Hapana’ in 1979. Victor Perera, she recalled, had composed all the melodies for “Andaberaya” in 1976. As for her, she claims that she had mostly drawn inspiration from something she had read.

Vajira remembers ‘Kinkini Kolama,’ a story about how the nilames or the lords responded to a man who falls in love with a low-caste girl. “It was Chitrasena’s concept. I added the dance and we drew from the nadagam style. This was Upekha’s first in a lead role. In a way it was the show which introduced her as the lead female dancer of the troupe.”

There had been hiccups of course. In the beginning they didn’t have a permanent place to rehearse until E.P.A. Fernando, a friend of Chitrasena’s father, had let him conduct his work at his place. In a more here-and-now incident, Vajira had sprained her ankle on the opening night of a Moscow performance, just as she was to enter. Immediately her sister Vipuli had taken over. It was a seamless transition and apparently no one had known, except of course the troupe. On another occasion, when they had gone for a performance in Australia, the drums had been quarantined causing much anxiety. Vajira remembers Chitrasena eventually emerging with the drums, all smiles.

That’s how it has been. It’s about continuity. It’s about the show going on. There is Vajira and then there was Upekkha. And now there’s Thaji, Vajira’s granddaughter. Passion, dedication, endless striving for perfection and the grace in mind and body that inevitably results. Sacred is the word that Chitrasena used.

The Kalayathanaya produced many, many ballets. Vajira created the dances, did the choreography and taught the dancers, always under the watchful eyes of Chitrasena, she says.

The names go together: Chitrasena-Vajira. It is had to say what one would have been without the other, but for Vajira it’s easily resolved.

“It was always under his guidance and with his permissions. I had to get the production ready. He handled the direction and was in charge of the presentation. He was the inspiration. He was our strength. Part of my confidence in all this can be attributed to him being there, always watching and always ready to put things right in case something went wrong. His blessings were always there. He taught us so much and what he has taught we pass on to our students. He is always present in the work we do.”

And yet, she said there are times she misses his physical presence. That’s how it is with those who are ahead of their times and who tower over the present on account of vision and its realization.

It was not just Chitrasena though. Vajira is ever grateful to her mother and of course Chitrasena’s mother and his unmarried sisters who took care of everything so that all she had to do was dance.

And teach. After sometime Chitrasena had given up teaching and thereafter Vajira had to be in charge of instruction, creation and continuity. Those responsibilities have now been handed over to Upekha.

“I never stopped teaching, though. I created the syllabus and that’s what is still being used. I created special exercises that made it easier to learn traditional movements. Now I don’t demonstrate, however. I use a good student for this.”

In 1963 Anna Ilupina wrote in ‘Izvestia’ about Vajira:

“Every gesture in her slender hands, every glance from her beautiful oval eyes, every movement is full of inexpressible grace.”

She might as well have been writing about Vajira today.

There’s a young girl sitting across the table from me. Her voice is firm and her eyes dance as she speaks about her love. She’s young enough and old enough to identify true love among passing fancies, infatuation and hero-worship. And she knows that it is sacred. She is 85 years old. says “I am happy to have contributed to the dance — in my young days, and even now, and until I die.”

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer. Email: malindasenevi@gmail.com. Twitter: malindasene

Some trophies are hard to secure and even harder to keep

It has become a tradition for Ranil Wickremesinghe to visit various signature tents at the Royal-Thomian and respond to questions put to him. It’s all light-hearted. The questions are often tongue-in-cheek stuff and the responses are calculated to generate some laughter, one feels.

It was no different this year. Two questions stood out because they were as serious as they were light. The responses, similarly, drew laughter and also provided food for thought.

One question was about prosecuting wrongdoers (of the previous regime). The Prime Minister was essentially asked when they would be brought to justice. The response was light:

“We are investigating, we are going to courts and we are allowing the lawyers to make money.” He then added, as afterthought, “lawyers have been big supporters of our party, so we can’t let them down.”

[See the Big Match interview here]

He was obviously joking about helping lawyer loyalists, but he was correct in terms of the tangible outcomes of the process so far. What we do know and can appreciate is that such processes take time, perhaps longer than necessary but certainly better long than short for haste makes for error and perforce cannot service the cause of justice. What we do not appreciate is the selectivity that is so pronounced in the process. The focus is on allegations against the previous regime or rather key personalities in that regime. There have been serious violations, clearly, but some of them would fall into petty thievery compared to the daylight robbery associated with the Central Bank bond scam. If petty thieves deserve arrest, how come those accused of scheming to make billions are allowed to roam around free, is the question that many ask.

But it was all light-hearted and we can leave it at that. As light-hearted was the question put to him earlier, ‘Now that you are in power, what’s your next step?’ Pat came the answer:

“The next step is to stay in power.”

It was not an answer typical of politicians. It was, in contrast, an honest response. That’s what politics and politicians are all about. Power. Striving to obtain it and thereafter fighting to keep it. Only, they don’t say it. Kudos to the Prime Minister, even if it was said in jest and even though it was a slick way of spelling out things. Not the time nor the place, one might say in his defense.

The match is done and dusted or rather was rained out. We can return to the response with more sobriety now.

Power. Some say it is about longevity and out-living the competition. That might explain J.R. Jayewardena and to a certain degree Mahinda Rajapaksa and their respective ascents. It certainly holds for Ranil Wickremesinghe. Luck, they say, can also figure in the equation. In Wickremesinghe’s case it was as much longevity as the lack of it among potential rivals within his party. Whether it is correct to call it luck is debatable, but he was lucky when part of the ruling coalition ‘fell into his lap,’ so to speak, in 2001. He was lucky when Maithripala Sirisena entered the fray in late 2014. On the other hand, perhaps luck is about being positioned well when events unfold in ways that opportunities are created. He was there at the right place and at the right time. That takes staying power.

Staying in power is a different kettle of fish. Today, for all his luck, if you want to call it, the most powerful individual in the country is Maithripala Sirisena.

Power, in this sense, is best ascertained by the answer to a simple question — who can alter the political equation or landscape most with the least effort? This is why ‘staying in power’ is a challenge. There’s no light-heartedness here; certainly not in the sordid theatre called politics.

It’s a big challenge. Things have got so bad that those posing as ‘left intellectuals’ and ‘liberals’ (NGO personalities mostly in the latter category) are getting their respective knickers twisted in their plaintive cries of support for the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe union. Left intellectuals who brutally criticised leftist parties for tying up with the previous regime, throwing in a lot of Marxist terms and drawing heavily from ‘revolutionary’ history, are keeping mum about these very parties supporting what would in their lingo be a ‘rightist government’. Those who mocked these parties for hanging on to the sari-pota and the saatakaya don’t seem to mind the current penchant for hanging on to the edges of the various jackets of the current regime. As for the ‘liberals’ who were horrified at the slightest infringement on liberties not too long ago, they are pretty quiet when this regime makes a mockery of its own doctrine of yahapalanaya.

It’s either about unspoken love for the ruling coalition or rather the UNP segment of it, or else it is a matter of ignoring anything or everything that goes against things they’ve claimed to hold sacrosanct including the principle ‘ends do not justify the means,’ in the belief that their not-so-veiled anti-Sinhala and anti-Buddhist outcome preferences are best served by this regime.

The staying-in-power business is not being served by that lot and Wickremesinghe ought to know this very well, considering what happened in 2004 and 2005. He has disappointed the business community (they do not see this as a Maithripala-Wickremesinghe government, but a UNP regime). Trade unions, academics and professionals don’t make such distinctions, but they are not as gung-ho about yahapalanaya as they were two years ago. It has become increasingly hard for the so-called moderate Tamils to support this regime. In short, things have changed much since the euphoria of January 8, 2015. Perhaps the best sign of all this is the fact that this government has had to argue that the yahapaalanists are actually Sri Lankan Bolsheviks of the 21st century.

They weren’t being light-hearted. They were serious. They were hilarious, but they didn’t know it. What it demonstrated was a regime that’s clinging to straws and trying to convince a doubting citizenry that it is revolutionary. The interesting thing is that the people are not exactly hungry for a revolution. Talk about being ‘out of step’! What more should one say about ‘the next step’ of ‘staying in power’? Well, there is one thing: if you have to say it, it demonstrates self-doubt.

Yes, the Royal-Thomian is done and dusted or rather was rained out. Wickremesinghe’s response speaks not just for the UNP but the entire regime. The next step is all that this regime seems to be worrying about right now. And, the seriousness of it all is best evidenced by the fact that they’ve lost sight of the yahapalana principles in their political day-to-day. The 19th and the RTI will not carry them at an election, Wickremesinghe probably knows this. ‘Staying in power’ is not just the next step, it’s a trace that will mark each step and when it comes to this then one doesn’t really know whether steps taken are in the right direction or not. ‘Losing the plot’ did someone say? ‘Lost it already!’ did someone quip?

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer. Email: malindasenevi@gmail.com. Twitter: malindasene

The most ignored clause of the 19th Amendment is about power, not yahapalanaya

Arjuna Mahendran, the former Governor of the Central Bank, is reported to have transferred out some 500 members of his staff. The Government is all set to demarcate specific areas for protests. The Government got some egg on its face with the appointment and removal of judges. There’s the bond issue scandal. The big boys in the Government ranted and raved about Port City and the Hambantota Port when in power, and all but showed the middle finger to China while campaigning to oust Mahinda Rajapaksa. Today the very same worthies are crawling on all fours before China and appear to be brain-faded about the afore mentioned projects.

Just imagine!

What if all of the above could be placed at the Responsibility Door of Mahinda Rajapaksa? What if it was the USA and not China? How would the champions of yahapalanaya have responded? Well, we are not hearing any shrieks of horror. We are not seeing any terse comments from the US State Department or the British Foreign Secretary. The yahapalana apologists for this Government have all gone quiet. Well, not all of them. Jehan Perera has been reduced to quoting Otto von Bismarck: “politics is the art of the possible”. Bismarck, interestingly, also observed, “The great questions of the time will not be resolved by speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood.”

Let none of this surprise anyone. It’s not about right or wrong. It’s not about ethics. It’s not about doing things right or better. It’s not about good governance. It’s all about power and those whose faces you prefer to see and those you despise for whatever reason. This is best demonstrated by the parliamentary machinations we have seen courtesy the yahapalanists.

Maithripala Sirisena, leader of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), sacked the Secretary of his party and the Secretary of the coalition his party led (the UPFA) days before the General Election and moved to stop the respective central committees from convening. Did the good governance advocates mutter ‘tut-tut’? Nope. That’s yahapalana democracy, the ‘politics of the possible,’ and decisions by iron (we are yet to get to ‘blood’ but don’t be surprised if we do). The end, so to say, always justified means.

Just the other day Speaker Karu Jayasuriya stated that the National Freedom Front (NFF) led by Wimal Weerawansa could not be accepted as a separate party in Parliament as it was not gazetted as one that contested at the last general election.

Fine. Now let’s rewind to a moment in late 2015, i.e. just after the General Election. This was when a coalition government was formed. It was misnamed ‘national government’, a deliberate slip which we will revisit presently. It was a coalition made of which parties, does anyone remember. Pause for a moment. Remember the names of the parties? Write them down. Did you write ‘SLFP and UNP (United National Party)?’ Are you sure? Yes?

Let’s go back to the election. The UNP, which made a big do of a ‘grand coalition’ with other parties and political groups and called itself publicly ‘United National Front for Good Governance’ secured 106 seats. Another party secured 95 seats. Was it the SLFP? No. It was the UPFA (United People’s Freedom Alliance). The SLFP did not contest!

And yet, this government was formed (as per provisions in the 19th Amendment we were told) following an agreement signed between the UNP and the SLFP, and the latter, let us repeat, did not even contest the election. The Speaker, in delivering his decision on the NPP has said that he was not concerned over the internal agreements entered into among parties within those which officially contested and found representation in Parliament.

It’s that trivial, folks. The point is that the numbers and composition are of utmost importance in parliamentary affair including composition of committees, representation in party leaders’ meetings, time allocation in parliamentary debates etc.

It’s a classic case of doing the convenient as per political preferences and quite unbecoming of the Speaker who happens to be a man noted to uphold principles in a manner uncommon among his contemporaries.

Again, why should anyone be surprised? Well, the lack of comment from all those lovely people who would shout and scream at the slightest transgression on ‘democratic practice’ by the previous regime, is by now understandable. Forget them, few eyebrows were raised when the 19th came into effect. No one seemed to mind the vagueness deliberately scripted in with respect to the notion of a ‘national government’. Let’s revisit.

Here’s Article 46 (5) defines ‘National Government’: “A Government formed by the recognized political party or the independent group which obtains the highest number of seats in Parliament together with the other recognized political parties or the independent groups”.

It does not say ‘any other’, which would have made this Cabinet legitimate. Of course neither does it say ‘all other’ (which would have made this Cabinet illegitimate). The wording is vague and shows carelessness and incompetence. Well, we should actually use the word ‘pernicious’ here.

So we have the UNP as the party obtaining the highest number of seats. Nothing wrong there. Then we have other recognized political parties. What’s the ‘recognized’ political party in this national government, so-called? The SLFP? Well, the Speaker would say if he was asked politely that the SLFP did not contest the election and perforce he cannot recognize it. And yet, we have a UNP-SLFP ‘national’ government!

Just so we know what this is all about, the ‘national government’ clause has little to do with nation. It’s about ministerial posts and a neat method of subverting both election promise and the article relevant to the maximum number of portfolios. Thirty, they said. Thirty, they wrote into the constitution. But Article 46(4) allows Parliament to approve a number beyond the ’30’ legislated under 46(1)a and 46(1)b. ‘Beyond’ goes against the spirit of limitation because theoretically all those parliamentarians who are members of the political parties and independent groups that make the ‘national government’ can be appointed to the cabinet of ministers. Quite ‘yaha’ in the ‘palana' sense, what!

So, what should we take out of all this?

We should first and foremost stop being shocked about what was done with the Central Bank bond issue, about the self-righteousness and subsequent silence on Port City and the Hambantota Port, about nepotism and corruption and other things that don’t really sit well with the notion of ‘good governance’ (in word and deed).

If this is yahapalanaya at the age of 2 years, it would be prudent to extrapolate to what the baby would have grow up to come 2020 or even earlier. We have to conclude, ‘politicians will be politicians’. More importantly, we have to understand that their approvers and in fact all those who uttered notions such as good governance with sober faces and in grave tones during the Rajapaksas are essentially a bunch of hypocrites.

As for parties and their recognition, it’s probably best to go with the commonsense definition: a social gathering of invited guests, typically involving eating, drinking, and entertainment.

Read Also:

Yahapalana Brain-Fade in Geneva

A love-bite release is hardly a palliative

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer. Email: malindasenevi@gmail.com. Twitter: malindasene. Blog: www.malindawords.blogspot.com

"No reconciliation without justice," he says
but can there be justice without truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

A highly successful lawyer was once asked why he was not interested in becoming a judge. He had laughed, ‘I would rather talk a load of rubbish all day than listen to a load of rubbish.’ Judges have to listen. That’s their job. And one of the things they have to listen to day in and day out throughout their careers is the oath taken by witnesses to speak the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Whatever else they may have forgotten, this they must remember. It is hard to believe that a Supreme Court judge could forget this basic element of judicial process, even if they know that those who swear thus don’t always tell the truth.

C.V. WIgneswaran is not a judge. He’s a politician. He can, therefore, avail himself of that sad and pathetic instrument that the two-bit members of his tribe frequently use: political license (to toss around half-truths, gloss over fact, ignore context, play to the gallery etc). But Wigneswaran used to be a judge. He would remember things, for example the line about ‘truth’ referred to above. Even if he had to listen to ‘such rubbish’ as a judge, being a judge he would be duty-bound and of course honor-bound to desist from indulging in the same.

Last week, at the UNUR Economic Engagement Programme held in Tellipalai, Wigneswaran made some very valid points. He is absolutely correct in some of his criticisms of the Peace Building Priority Plan Framework, or rather the preparation of it. Participation of key stakeholders in all post-war development planning is non-negotiable and the failure to do this was a serious error on the part of the previous regime.

As he correctly points out, it is still not too late for this government to put things right on this account. Reconciliation demands the participation of those affected freely and dignifiedly, he says and he is absolutely correct. Although the people he represents do not make up all the numbers of the category ’those affected,’ it is clear that they were among ‘the victims’ of a process which included the mindless brutality exerted on them by their self-appointed saviours, the LTTE (championed as such by Wigneswaran’s party, let us not forget). These caveats are valid, but they do not constitute an argument for non-inclusion. The non-mentioning of them, however, does not help his cause, because ‘truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth’ is part and parcel of ‘peace building’ or ‘reconciliation’ or whatever it is you want to call this process.

Wigneswaran bemoans ‘the lack of reference to the inclusion of War Crimes jurisdiction into Law, demilitarization, High Security Zones, and security sector reforms,’ and the non-reiteration of ‘the need to withdraw the Prevention of Terrorism Act’. He also complains that the framework has no reference to ‘war crimes accountability’.

We do know that this government makes a lot of noise on all these subjects, but we do not know whether such matters were considered by those responsible for developing this framework. Prioritizing is no easy matter, one has to concede. What bites Wigneswaran does not necessarily have to bite others as well. It makes sense, post-war, to be serious in word and deed about demilitarization and security sector reforms. If anyone expects the government to toss ‘security’ into a policy dustbin that would be optimistic in most situations. On the other hand, this government does act as though security is no longer a concern and this fact alone gives credence to Wigneswaran’s gripe.

In any event, as an elected representative, he has every right to demand representation in any body which deliberates on matters that impact the people he represents. No argument there. The problem is that he does not seem to understand that one cannot indulge in Eelamist posturing, sing hosannas to terrorists and be selective in recollection of the past, and at the same time expect his proposals to be championed to the exclusion of all others.

He makes some claims. “Discrimination and a hegemonic attitude on the part of the Centre led to our initial disagreements and unpleasantness. It was the snowballing effect of such negative attitudes which led to violence. When violence was brought to an end with International help the means adopted at the tail end by our powers that be were dubious and brutal.”

That’s Wigneswaran’s version of what happened.

There’s truth in it, but what he has said does not constitute the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The land-grab intent, the deliberate positing of myth as history and fiction as fact, the exaggerations that accompanied all this, the easy inter-change of ‘grievance’ and ‘aspiration’ and such also contributed to the ‘snowballing effect’. And it is not possible to blame snowball for all that the LTTE was and what it became.

Wigneswaran wants ‘the diaspora’ to be included. The logistical nightmare aside, why on earth should any government ‘include’ non-citizens. If they still hold citizenship or have dual-citizenship, such inclusion as proposed by Wigneswaran has to be preceded by a stringent screening process for the simple reason that ‘the diaspora’ (in the monolithic sense the term is used by Tamil Nationalists) was an important cog of the principal obstacle to peace and reconciliation, namely the LTTE. It would be a foolish government indeed that would ‘include’ such elements in any peace-building exercise.

But where he errs more (which by the way is hard to pardon for reasons expressed above) is when it comes to ‘accountability’. Wigneswaran, surprisingly, has treated the entire period of the war prior to ‘the last days’ as though not worthy of scrutiny. This is strange since there were serious crimes committed by security forces in the early days of the war. Those lives lost and the anguish caused as a result cannot be less important, surely?

He focuses on ‘the concluding stages’. He speaks of ‘attending to the psychological injuries caused by the war’ during this period and places the totality of blame for ‘brutality and extortion’ on ‘sections of the armed forces’. This is where this ex-judge expunges the phrase ‘the whole truth’ from the transcript.

What was this ‘last stage’? Let us detail it.

In the last stage, the LTTE continued to do what the LTTE had always done. Tamil children were abducted and forcibly recruited. Guns were thrust in their hands and they were sent in to battle. In the last stages the LTTE continued to plot acts of terrorism on civilian targets. In the last stages the LTTE help hundreds of thousands of Tamils hostage. In the last stages the LTTE prevented Tamil civilians who were forced to be part of its ‘human shield’ from fleeing to the relative safety of areas held by the security forces. The LTTE shot at those attempting to flee. In those very same ‘last stages’. In the last stages the LTTE sent children strapped with explosives which were then set off as they reached the ‘receiving points’ set up by the security forces, clearly with the intention of wrecking the process whereby civilians could get to safe areas.

The last stages constituted a massive and historic hostage rescue operation. In the last stages, judge, your party went pleading to anyone who was willing to listen to prevail on the then government to provide free passage to the hostage-takers. In the last stages the United States did its best to evacuate the hostages, possibly to ‘be free to fight another day’.

Remove all these elements from ‘the last stage’ and it’s not the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth that will be obtained. Remove them all, and yes, ‘brutality’ becomes the preserve of those who carried out the rescue operation at great cost. Remove all this and it will not be just those ‘sections’ of the armed forces who ought to be brought to justice for violating relevant laws, local and international, that will be punished, but the entire armed forces and every single citizen who stood for democracy over terrorism.

The pity of it all is that by using this brush of selectivity and in indulging in truth-twist, it is Wigneswaran who is most guilty of the very error he accuses other of: sweeping things under the carpet. The great pity of course is that this kind of concealment detracts from the most noble elements of his overall proposal. Simply, he denies himself the right to be taken seriously.

The Sinhala and Tamil traces of the island's history

Wigneswaran and the puppeteering with ghosts

The 'national question' and the vague-speak of Tamil 'moderates'

President Sirisena has spoken (on Eelamist myth-mongering)

The quiet and shout of the racist label

Let's listen to Wigneswaran

The NPC resolution is both a threat and an opportunity

Truth and justice are un-deferrable

Resolving to hate

Why Wiggy missed a train

Wigneswaran's framework

Wigneswaran's double-speak and dilemmas

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer. Email: malindasenevi@gmail.com. Blog: malindawords.blogspot.com. Twitter: malindasene

Do not ask this priest to explain the meanings of these paintings. As Tagore once said, "ask the paintings themselves their meaning. They will give you the answers".
- Prof. Valpola Rahula Thero

The tradition of painting is not something that does not belong to the world of a monk. The Chula Vagga Vinaya Chapter show that even at the time of Buddha, there were monks who had done painting and sculpture. History tells us of an incident where a Lankan priest Nanda had gone see the Emperor of China in 5AD taking priceless sculpture that he himself had made. All the paintings in Degaldoruwa and Ridi Viharaya of the 18th century were drawn by a person in robes who was called ‘Dewaragampola Silwaththana’. The attempts of Rev. Katuwana Piyananda is not very different from what has been done before. Painting to create pleasant emotions within a person is very much in accordance both with the heritage and the role of a monk.

I am hardly qualified to pass judgement on art, never having given the subject the attention and study it deserves. I am poorly equipped to penetrate the deeper layers of meaning of a given painting. The richer aesthetics escape me. Still, at some basic level, I do appreciate, and probably not less than the next ignorant consumer of art. Exhibitions inevitably allow me to come off with some crass caricature of the experience congealing in my mind. More often than not I latch onto a couple of thought-threads which weave their own rough and imperfect tapestries of reflection.

About four or five years ago, while passing through Matale, I heard about an exhibition of paintings. Since I had a couple of hours free, I decided to take a look. I was struck by the meditative sympathies that the works exuded. I came off with one thing clear in my mind; the fact that the artist had a profound understanding of colour. The artist, Rev. Katuwana Piyananda, was already well-known in the art community, not least of all because he was an anomaly, for the notion of an artist bikkhu was defined carefully as being discordant with the doctrine of the Buddha. This view actually is itself out of tune with history as well as the fundamental tenets of the Dhamma, including the vinaya rules for bikkhus, but that we shall reserve for later comment.

All my life, I have been more interested in the life-stories of artists than their art itself. The life stories of Picasso, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Goya, Dali and others I could relate to because they contained recognizable elements. Their paintings were a different kettle of fish altogether. The only artist I knew personally was Kulanatha Senadheera, a batchmate and family friend of my father. I couldn’t make head or tail of his paintings, and yet he was one of the more fascinating people I have met in my life. Rev. Piyananda’s story was like that. More "readable" than his paintings.

Sisiraratne Liyanage, who upon ordination became Katuwana Piyananda, was born in 1965 into a farming family living in Katuwana, in the Mulkirigala electorate. He was the second in a family of four. Sisiraratne began his education at Horawinna Maha Vidyalaya. He had become a bikkhu when he was around 12 or 13. "The haamuduruwo and my parents wanted me to join the sasana. I was also very keen. Thinking back, I believe I was taken up by the life of a bikkhu after seeing the village monks walking through the paddy fields. Much later, it occurred to me that the Buddha must have had a keen sense of colour. After all a group of saffron-robed monks slowly walking with the green of the forest as background is a picture that is serene and awe-inspiring."

Even as a child he had been very interested in things like art and dancing and said that he had attended a local kalayathanaya. After being ordained he joined the Siyambalagoda Vidyakeerthi Pirivena, situated in Akuressa. "Siyambalagoda is located just outside Sinharaja. So I began by painting what I saw, the trees, the vines etc. I used whatever material I could lay my hands on, water colours, pens, pencils etc. After passing the Ordinary Level Examination, I joined the Horana Vidyarathana Pirivena. I decided to study Art, along with Buddhist civilisation, political science, and Sinhala for the Advanced Level. Ariyapala Gamage was my art teacher and this was the first time that I had any formal training in painting."

He had obtained an "A" for art and had done well enough overall to qualify to enter the Arts Faculty. However, by this time, he was only interested in furthering his knowledge and honing his skills with respect to art, and although the application form has space for the particular candidate to write down a series of preferences, Rev. Piyananda had decided that he would study Aesthetics in the Kelaniya University. Unfortunately, he had not taken into account the general antipathy towards bikkhus studying aesthetics. He was not accepted.

"Even though I was not in the university or any art school, I was encouraged and helped by many teachers and artists. Albert Darmasiri, Tilake Abeysinghe and Sumana Dissanayake gave me a lot of strength with their encouragement. Since I was denied a formal training, I decided that I would study art on my own. I spent a lot of time studying temple paintings. I was able to trace the trajectory of development from Sigiriya through the Kandyan period, Kelaniya and Gothami Viharaya to the Sedawatte paintings. In addition, I learned a lot about the European tradition through books."

Rev. Piyananda’s studies, coupled with deep reflection on the Abhidhamma, apparently helped him develop a style of his own. He started exhibiting his work in 1984 with "Vedana" (pain). This was followed by "Yatharthaya" (Reality) in ’85, "Samaya Minisamaya" in ’86, "Mihitale Minissu" (People of the earth) in ’87, and "Mahee Rekha" (Lines on the earth) in ’88. These exhibitions were all held in Colombo. Political unrest in the country and the resultant dislocations and social ferment inevitably found expression in his paintings around that time and his meditations on canvas appeared in an exhibition called "Pelagesma" in 1990. This was held all over the country, and this turned out to be his break-though exhibition. His work started receiving the attention of serious scholars and fellow-artists.

"Niramisa Thelithudaka Chalanaya" (The movement of a peaceful paint brush), "Pevethma Ha Nevatheema" (existence and ceasing), and "Antharavaloka" (Introspection) followed soon after. As the titles suggest these collections were in fact artifacts of a journey of discovery, both of self and the relationship of self to the universe. "This ‘introspection’ of mine constitutes not only a penetrating look into my own mind, but also the minds of all people living in this society. I am trying to examine if the areas touched by my brush, the harmony of colour and lines, can penetrate and expose anything of the inner conditions of my own environment and the world around me."

In "Bhava Veethiya" (Passage of emotions), Rev. Piyananda attempts to transcend the barriers imposed by language. In other words, believing that sometimes it is difficult to express in words the heart-rending situations arising from racial conflict, attempts to create a language beyond words, where the emotions can be traced and understood better.

Having already exhibited in Malaysia and Singapore in 1994, Rev. Piyananda’s work got further international exposure when Rev. Galayave Piyadassi and Nandana Weeraratne invited him to visit London. "Bhava Veethiya," was exhibited in the London Kingsbury Town Hall under the title "Mental and emotional journeys through images". He spent one and a half years travelling in Europe, exhibiting his work in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and Netherlands. His work has won critical acclaim from artists and art critics.

"That trip was very important since I became friends with some of the top painters in Europe, some of whom were impressed by the philosophical message I try to convey through my work. In fact there were some who wanted to come to Sri Lanka to study Theravada Buddhism. I also think it was important that I was able to learn first-hand about the European traditions and their modern expressions."

Upon returning to Sri Lanka, he put together another exhibition titled "Rupantharanaya" (Metamorphosis). "It is in a sense a trace of my artistic journey, from the very beginning where I was influenced by the aesthetics of Sinharaja, through my study of Buddhism and temple art, and finally the church art and the artistic traditions of Europe."

Having followed a training course at Rupavahini, Rev. Piyananda has experimented with the medium of teledramas as well. His first effort, "Mediyam Isawwa" (The region of midnight) was called off half way due to lack of funds. "Last year, a one-hour film called ‘Bhava Veethiya’ was shown on Rupavahini. And I have completed another one-hour film called ‘Rupantharanaya’ which is in need of a sponsor."

If the initial reaction to his artistic endeavours was negative, so was the response to the news that he was moving into the cinematic medium, although for vastly different reasons. "I was told that my art would suffer as a result. But after the first film was shown, the same people encouraged me to experiment further. They had found the images in the film to be very artistic, like my paintings."

I had to coax him to elaborate on his vocation’s alleged infringement of the Vinaya. "Like in most things, there are obstacles. Even the Buddha had to surmount opposition. I got inspiration from the Buddha’s example. Ven. Walpola Rahula was a constant source of support and encouragement. So was Rev. K. Ananda. As Ven Rahula rightly points out, the tradition of painting is not something that does not belong to the world of a monk. And the Buddha himself used the visual medium to illustrate salient elements of his doctrine. What else was he doing when he created the image of a monkey and then goddesses in order to convince Prince Nanda?"

Art, clearly is just one form of expression. Literature is another. If Buddhist monks were not prohibited from writing, it should follow that artist monks should be treated in the same way. There seems to be some double standards about art and artist monks, for our temples are veritable art galleries. They are meant to persuade the seekers to reflect on the eternal varieties of life, through depiction of Jataka stories and other visual forms.

Rev. Piyananda’s efforts, however, are a radical departure from the traditional art forms found in temples. His passion seems to be one of creating visual tools to help reflect on the philosophical teachings of the Buddha. They contain dynamic messages in spiritual, inspirational and social terms.

He is convinced that the modern artist has to move with the times. "Bana is being preached over TV. This didn’t happen before. If literature was used to convey the message of the Buddha, it follows that today the television and the internet should also be used."

Rev. Piyananda remains a person highly sensitive to the world and social milieu around him. He has always been a keen student of politics. "These things naturally find expression in my paintings." He travels a lot around the country, lately because he keeps looking for appropriate locations for his films, but for other reasons too. As such his work will naturally be a mirror of who we are. But more, about who we can become.

Talking to this soft-spoken monk in his sparsely furnished Avasaya in Udahamulla, made me wonder how I would read subsequent collections of his paintings. I wondered if I would still end with something as drab as "A nice blending of colours". He referred me to Ven Rahula, who says "Do not ask this priest to explain the meanings of these paintings. As Tagore says, ask the paintings themselves their meaning. They will give you the answer." Patience and reflection should help, I think.

Prince Dutugemunu is said to have been close to two sisters, one fair and the other dark. They had duly been re-named ‘Sudu’ (Fair One) and ‘Kalu’ (Dark One). The dark one had spurned him and in the end the prince had fallen for the sister. When Kalu finally overcame her pride and expressed her feelings, it had been too late. The Prince, legend has it, had simply said ‘manda Kalu pin nokale?’ (why did you not acquire enough merit?).

This has been variously interpreted. There’s one which holds that ‘Kalu’ had first spurned the prince and by the time she had finally decided that she loved him, his heart had found residence with her sister. The other is all about color and the claim is that the prince was essentially saying ‘why couldn’t you have been a bit fairer?’

Here’s another story. It’s not about a prince and not about the skin color of a girl. Not about love either. A young boy is fascinated by the trials and tribulations of an older girl in the village. The thrills are inversely proportionate to the sorrows that visit her. It’s the reason that concerns us.

One day, he narrates, the said girl who was actually his cousin had been walking ahead of him along a niyara. His mother was between the girl and the boy. The girl had made an observation. Maybe she thought the boy wouldn’t hear, but he did. The boy had a pet name: Sookiri. Sookiri on account of color (he was fair) and not disposition (whether he was sweet or not we are not told). The girls’s observation: Sookiri is fair, but he’s not as pretty as his brother. Sookiri’s brother was the darker of the two. That comment was the source of his mirth at the cousin’s misfortune.

The girl touches on something that is suppressed in the politics of color. Beauty is made of many things, colour is just one of them. If it is all about attracting someone then the following brag by Voltaire should provide food for thought: ‘give me five minutes to talk away my face and I would bed the Queen of England’. The more we engage with a person the less we see the person’s skin, or even that person’s shape or size or perfumes or other accessories. None of these things, by themselves, are able to sustain a relationship.

And yet we cannot get enough of color. We see color but we cannot ascertain texture as quickly and sometimes it’s impossible since consent is required by social norm. But then again texture aside, we can with the naked eye obtain the nature of the skin, whether it is healthy or otherwise. It’s easy on a face, which can have all kinds of ‘blemishes’ although there have been and probably will always be ‘hot’ serial killers.

We don’t ask ourselves, do we, when we see someone ‘pretty’, ‘could this person be wicked?’ We don’t second guess what’s beneath the skin. We are conditioned to equate ‘pretty’ with ‘good’ or worse, ‘fair’ with ‘good’.

Skin color lends to distinction of various kinds. It is political. Violently political even, if we consider the various and lengthy histories of apartheid. Here it’s more subtle and the violence leaves scars not on skin but mind.

Maybe there’s nothing which is as symptomatic of this malady is the fact that we don’t have much of a vocabulary in either Sinhala or Tamil to describe skin apart from the color aspect.

It is in this context that a recent advertising campaign constitutes an interesting and important intervention in the politics of skin. Velvet, a personal care brand, has proposed a fresh set of one-word skin descriptives in both Sinhala and Tamil.

Interestingly this campaign, which was unfolded in the print media, goes beyond the usual ‘black is beautiful’ (an important ideological statement) discourse. ‘Beauty beyond color’ is the title of a petition that did the rounds recently. Nandita Das, the Indian actress who signed the petition observed in an interview conducted around the time that obsessions with fair skin is not unrelated to concerted campaigns by the cosmetic industry to market ‘whitening’ products. If one checks all the ads of the cosmetic industry here in Sri Lanka you’ll find it’s all birthed in the womb of white-promotion.

Of India’s white-obsession, Nandita says the following:

‘The cosmetics business thrives because the aspirations exist. The two feed off each other. All the beauty magazines are designed to make you feel ugly and want to change your features and skin color. During my field work in Orissa’s Kandhamal district, when it was called Phulbani, I went to areas where there was no electricity and people did not even have food to eat, and I saw women using fairness creams that were well past their expiry date. These had obviously been dumped here. So this obsession with fairness cuts across class. The cosmetics companies only capitalize on it.’

It is probably true of Sri Lanka as well. This is why Velvet’s campaign is important. Velvet is not even talking about color. Velvet, in this campaign at least, is going beyond colour, essentially saying ‘take care of your skin and be proud of your skin; you are Sri Lankan, don’t try to be who you are not’. Sure, the campaign does not venture as far as to state that beauty has little to do with color, texture or skin-health, but we can applaud Velvet for taking the initiative to open a debate on the subject.

The terms proposed are obviously unfamiliar. They can impact only if they gather currency. They have to get ‘picked up’ in all media, especially television, radio and of social media. It’s hard, terribly hard to oust the eye from the privileged position of appraisal. However, until such time that we get there, we will continue to discriminate, continue to scar and continue to succumb to the nonsensical notions of human worth that have knowingly or unknowingly inscribed themselves on our thinking.

One hopes that this is not a campaign that plays on the politically correct. That would be a pity. Velvet, however, has put itself in a position that in all commercials it has to affirm the ideology that has been spelled out in this campaign. Painted into a corner, one might say, but then again it’s a decent and civilized corner to inhabit, all things considered.

We are still quite a distance away from that happy day when cosmetic-peddlers will not bombard us with beauty-definitions and ‘ugliness’-removers. One day, perhaps, the truths that all of us as individuals affirm, i.e. the truths of love and wisdom being the superior cosmetics, will become that is collectively affirmed and therefore the prime informer of cosmetic-marketing. Until such time, though, it is good to have a discussion that puts color in its place and moves on to talk about other things related to skin.

Ruwan Karunaratne’s journey can be traced by the educational institutions he attended, the certificates he secured, the companies that employed him or the positions he’s held. St Mary’s College (Veyangoda), Bandaranayake Central College (Gampaha) and the Technical College (Warakapola). That’s one way. Console Electronics, Image Advertising, Minds FCB and Phoenix O&M. That’s another.

He began as a child artist and progressed/degenerated into an electronic technician, a paste-up artist, and illustrator and lettering artist, an airbrush artist and visualize, an art director and now a creative group head. That’s yet another way. And it’s all caricature.

Ruwan was 15 years old when he won the first prize in the Children’s Drawing Competition run by the now defunct but then quite popular ‘Weekend’ newspaper. Sinha, now the Chief Editor of the ‘Sunday Times’ was at the time the Deputy Editor of the ‘Weekend’. Just another routine letter for Sinha, but it was a landmark moment for young Ruwan. The prize was a gift voucher to the value of Rs 25.00. For Ruwan, the value, even if correcting for inflation, is much more.

Back then all he heard about arts was that it won’t get him a job. That’s why he studied electronics and got a job as an apprentice technician at Console Electronics. It is hard to picture Ruwan the Creative Group Head working with wires and switches, but then again he once said “I want a world where everything can be done using just fingertips”.

Persevering. That’s Ruwan. Some co-workers who knew of his talents persuaded Ruwan to apply to advertising jobs. This he did and that’s how he discovered that it was not just about watercolors, crayons and pencils. He saved money, bought the materials and taught himself. Ruwan was never one to give up. What did not come easy to him he secured the hard way, and that’s how it has always been since then.

Once when he went for an interview at Image Advertising, he had got very nervous seeing the other candidates all dressed up. He had a simple request: “Sir, I don’t need a salary…I just want to learn about this thing called advertising….give me an opportunity.”

The statement marks Ruwan. He used the opportunities that came his way.

It was a simple greeting card. The cover draws from the John Keells logo and intrigues with the simple picture of the butterfly. Open it and you get a riot of delight. What’s remarkable is the meticulous effort. Even the writing has been ‘drawn’. And this is just a ‘dummy’ for client-appraisal! The finish product, if it had been made today, would not draw oohs and aahs because of the ease that advanced software has gifted today’s artists, but back then, this would have been roundly ‘wowed’ everyone.

“I did everything. Illustrations. Paste-up. The Bromide Machines. Image Advertising handled the lorries belonging to Reckitt and Coleman. We drew everything that went on the stickers. I learnt from everyone, but especially Lionel. When I figured there was nothing more I could learn, I decided it was time to leave. This is because I never had any formal training.”

His time at Minds (and indeed his entire career) was marked by an insatiable thirst for knowledge, a drive to perfect new techniques and an excellent work ethic. He worked hard, even during the lunch hour. He even spent the night in office since it often got too late for him to catch the last bus home. The seniors would get him to do some of their work as well. Ruwan did not mind. All this earned him the tagline: වැසූ මොහොතක් නැති රුවන් (Ruwan, whose shop never closes). In fact this was officially recognized; Ruwan was adjudged ‘Workhorse of the Year’ in two consecutive years. He work was also rewarded. He went from Paste-up Artist to Visualizer and finally to Art Director.

When it became clear to Ruwan that the doors to formal education would be hard to open, he decided to teach himself. He bought books. He spent most of his earnings on books.

“I have purchased hundreds of books over the years. I went through all of them. I wanted to see the difference between my work and their work. I tested myself. That’s how I learnt.”

After working for more than 12 years at Minds, Ruwan decided he needed a change and perhaps a bigger challenge. He joined Phoenix in 2003 as an Art Director. He was later promoted to Senior Art Director and is currently Creative Director -Art and Design. As always a new agency was a new learning experience, working with different brands and different creative people. But it was more than that, says Ruwan.

Once again a simple but elegant cover design for a brochure. The client was the Metropolitan Group. Again we see how attentive Ruwan is to detail. Remember that this was the time when computers were being marketed in Sri Lanka for the first time as essentials of an office environment.

“I advanced my knowledge. I was among creative people who were very senior. I had to work on a wider range of brands and on various kinds of campaigns. Phoenix is where I was able to fine-tune my skills. If I was an apparently discoloured and nondescript piece of stone, at Phoenix I was cut and polished or rather I am being continuously cut and polished. It is impossible to mention all my ‘teachers’, all those who helped shape me professionally into who I have become. Suffice to say that I am grateful to them all.”

He is quiet. Courteous to a fault. But Ruwan thinks. Deep. He observes. When he does speak he has useful and important things to say. When he offers a comment, it is intelligent and witty. And he’s always ‘new’, indeed he gets more fresh the older he becomes.

“This model of a motorcycle (top) was done for a recent exhibition organized by Phoenix titled ‘The Other Side’. I collected all kinds of metal parts without thinking of the model itself. Then I looked for the appropriate piece for the appropriate part. It was quite time-consuming. My son’s approach (top) was very different. He didn’t take a lot of time. He looked for and found the pieces he wanted and put them together. His model is marked by simplicity. Beauty is of course in the eyes of the beholder, but I must confess that if I was given the materials he used I would never have been able to come up with such a lovely model.”

“I do not have a style. No rules. I’ve never had rules, not even as a child. And I always wanted to do something different. Even if I was working on the same brand for a second time, I approached the brief like someone who had never encountered the particular brand. There’s something that I have determined to always be: a child. I am a child. I’ve always been a child and will be a child until I die. Children are imaginative and their imagination has no limits.”

When he was at Minds, there had been an exercise where everyone in the office had to write short notes about everyone else. While there was the random admonishment for keeping to himself, most said what anyone at Phoenix would probably say if a similar exercise was done today.

“I appreciate your calm and gentle nature. I wish you would never change. I like the careful and painstaking ways you treat your work. Don’t ever change.A quiet, efficient presence.I like everything about you. Don’t change a thing! [I like] Your quiet and humble manner, the way you mind your own business and get on with your work.”

So Ruwan Karunaratne is all about being a child. He was all about art as a child and as an adult too it’s art that he does. As is all adult about exploring the frontiers of his vocation but he’s all child in his curiosity, the will to learn and the delight in knowledge acquisition. He’s adult enough to understand difference and prejudice but he’s child enough to brush such things aside and focus on the wholesome commonalities. Maturity they say compels you to speak less and listen more; Ruwan is a mature adult but the superior worth of observation is almost like a childhood remnant that he dragged along from pre-school, through high school and professional work.

Ruwan Karunaratne is adult enough to know that learning is a lifelong thing, but he embraces education of all kinds with the confidence of a child who knows not his or her limits. Play is all the work a child knows and in this sense all children are workaholics. Ruwan’s shop never closes.

There was a time when victory over enemies was about bashing heads in, seizing their women and enslaving their children. It still happens of course. The cost-effective way is for the powerful to dictate, the weak to submit, hands to be shaken with the key representatives of the respective parties facing the camera, a show of bonhomie and crisp statements about long-standing historical friendships. Heads don’t get bashed in, but enslavement is what it is all about.

Well, ‘enslavement’ might be too harsh a word actually. But let’s say “privileged access to resources, terms of exchange skewed in favor of the mighty, drafting or vetting policy regimes or rather using the word recommendation for what is really directive, and a general do-as-I-please on all matters”. Students of politics would call it colonialism or, in the poli-speak of diplomacy post-colonialism, the ‘post’ affix being sweetener.

This, however, is not a comment on the nature of subjugation or the exercising of hegemony. It’s about India. India, we know. Only too well. We need not enumerate the many instances when India demonstrated friendship. Just mentioning the acronym IPKF would do to nudge memory of all the politics that came before and after that noun entered the political discourse of this country.

And yet, as they say, beggars cannot be choosers. Pride needs to be swallowed. Most importantly, self-aggrandizement aside most political leaders in this country have had little qualms over pride-guzzling, especially since they stood to lose very little. And so, as per the ideological predilections and political maturity/naivete of the particular set of people running the country, both in the name of expedience as well as for the most frivolous of reasons, we’ve seen ‘the robber barons’ being invited (that’s J.R. Jayewardene’s pithy capture of his government’s thinking by the way). Again, as per preference, the enemies of the particular friends of the moment, were cold-shouldered or vilified. When reality knocked on the door of course, there was a lot of stammering and stuttering, the giving of assurances and an embarrassing re-submission. That’s China, by the way.

But this is about India. The Government has clearly indicated that despite running to China (‘looking East,’ it said when Brexit burst the bubble of delusion about the West’s ability and willingness to help) India’s interests will not be ignored.

Interests. Interesting word. In bilateral relations that are marked by a power imbalance it refers to two things: business and strategic imperatives. The encomiums notwithstanding it’s not about those lovely little things such as love, friendship, shared histories, good neighborliness etc. Business and strategic imperatives, let us repeat.

Just consider the draft MoU between the governments of India and Sri Lanka. The objectives are spelled out in the language of give-and-take and signatured with notions of equality: “…To achieve greater economic, investment and development cooperation in a progressinve manner, through joint ventures and other cooperative activities that will ensure the well being of the people of the two countries on the basis of equality and mutual benefit.’

There’s nothing about any projects on India in which Sri Lanka is to get involved. So what’s the benefit to ‘the people of India’? Profits and strategic advantages, what else! The entire document is about Indian involvement in key sectors such as energy and entrenchment in key strategy locations such as Trincomalee.

Smuggled into a bunch of line items related to power plants, storage facilities and refineries is India’s long-standing interest in securing a lot more than a foothold in Trincomalee by way of taking over the oil tank farms. Here’s the wording: ‘to form a Joint Venture to develop the Upper Tank Farms in Trincomalee, while signing a land lease agreement for 50 years in favor of Lanka IOC Ltd. for the Tank Farm’. Need we say more?

Throw in Indian ‘largesse’ in ‘fostering better understanding between the two militaries’ (note the ‘neutrality’ and the ‘equality’ implied!), the ‘generosity’ in undertaking a hydrographic survey for Sri Lanka, the supply (they don’t use the word ‘sale’) of Indian helicopters and other lovely things, and we are essentially talking about a patron-client relationship in the making.

The key advisor to this government on economic affairs, R Paskaralingam has revealed that India wishes the said MoU to be inked during the forthcoming visit to that country by the Sri Lankan Prime Minister.

To his credit, Paskaralingam has stated that ‘after discussion it was decided to consider the proposals of India initially.’ That's diplo-speak of a kind. The easy-read version is this: 'I don't think it is a good idea!'

India’s High Commissioner, Taranjit Singh Sandhu, in a speech made recently, has said that Sri Lanka can sign agreements at its own chosen speed. He’s a diplomat, let’s not forget. Paskaralingam has put things as bluntly as his bureaucratic training permits. Reading between the lines, as we must, we have to conclude, ‘bad news’.

The Sinhala people always knew what’s what of ‘bilateral relations’. They laughed it off with adage but the wry humor said it as it is. For example, the well-known saying ‘inguru deela miris gaththa vagei’ (it’s like exchanging ginger for chillie), meaning ‘an injudicious exchange’.

That’s about ditching one invader for another. There is that play in the game involving the West (led by the USA), China and India, and it would be useful to assess the most favorable terms of enslavement (beggars can’t be choosers, we already said that). We’ve had a bellyful of Indian chillies. That much can be said.

The following is a letter sent to British Prime Minister Theresa May following the recent attack on Westminster Bridge, London.

Dear Ms Theresa May,

I am deeply pained by the horrific act that terrorized London and no doubt shocked everyone in Britain. First of all, please accept my heartfelt condolences and please convey the same to your people. While condemning without reservation this horrific act, my heart goes out to all those who suffered injury, all those who grieve the loss of loved ones and all those who are shocked by the attack. And, as Britain looks for answers to the questions that this attack obviously raises, please be assured of my unstinted support to whatever measures Britain chooses to take in order to be rid of the scourge of terrorism.

As a citizen of a country that successfully defeated a ruthless terrorist organization, indeed the only country that has done this, I assure you that nothing can derail your efforts more than the doctrine of appeasement. This can come in the form of urging you to consider ‘root causes’. It can also come in the form of sustained calls for ‘negotiation’. Negotiation, we learned the painful way, only postpones resolution and in the interim a county suffers death, dismemberment, displacement and destruction. Trust me, Ms May, terrible though this attack has been, what you’ve seen is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg of tragedy.

I am heartened by the bold words you’ve uttered following this attack. It is good to stamp one’s foot and tell the enemy, ‘thou shalt not succeed.’ I have no doubt that your response will not be limited to the bravado of words. Anything less than an all out, no holds barred, effort to defeat terrorism will leave your nation scarred, as much on its corporeal elements as its psyche. It’s no fun when fear is a constant companion.

In the coming days, if things get worse and I hope they don’t, you will no doubt be hounded by bleeding-heart liberals calling for restraint. You can listen to them at your peril. On the other hand, your country enjoys a position of privilege in the political economy of human rights and happily will not have to suffer the insults, knuckle-raps and such as did the leaders of my country when they decided that terrorists are mono-lingual. I need not spell things out to the leader of a nation whose ‘Mother Tongue’ is English.

Ms May, this is a testing hour for your nation and your people. That hour, sadly, often has more than 60 minutes. I sincerely wish it will pass. And until it does, on this particular issue, i.e. of the security of ordinary citizens, I will stand with you.

In solidarity and grief

[Signed] Malinda Seneviratne

Malinda Seneviratne is a likely presidential candidate in 2020. email: presidentmalinda@gmail.com

There’s saber-rattling in Washington. There’s saber-rattling in Moscow. Tit-for-tat talk. Rattle-for-rattle. Neither the USA nor Russia is under attack. Neither country can claim that there is a threat to its security. It's all about a country that is located almost 11,000km from the USA and about 5,500km from Russia. Syria.

It all followed a chemical attack which Washington blamed on the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and then proceeded to launch some 60 Tomahawk missiles on the al Shayrat airbase. US Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson warned that Russia was at risk of becoming irrelevant in the Middle East if it continued to support Assad.

Damascus has denied US allegations, noting that the targeted area may have been hosting chemical weapons stockpiles belonging to Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) or Al-Nusra Front jihadists. Moscow, in a wry dismissal, has alluded to the ‘events of 2003’ when the US representative (Colin Powell) insisted at the UN that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Russian President Vladimir Putin observed that ‘the military campaign was subsequently launched in Iraq and it ended with the devastation of the country, the growth of the terrorist threat and the appearance of Islamic State [IS, formerly ISIS] on the world stage.’

They can laugh about it and they will

Just because the USA lied in 2003 does not mean that it will always lie and has done so in this instance. On the other hand, that 2003 lie has given cause for any allegation to be properly investigated before any action is taken. Russia in fact has called for such an investigation.

Bolivian Ambassador to the UN, Sacha Llorenti lambasted the USA for its unilateral response, pointing out that the principle of multilateralism has been violated. He added that following the 2003 lie, the UN had set up modalities for dealing with such situations which included in the first instance independent and comprehensive investigations.

But Washington does not care. Washington rattles sabers. Washington has promised to repeat military action in response to any possible new chemical weapon attacks. Moscow has not blinked. Russia (along with Iran) has responded likewise, telling the US to expect ‘response with force’ if ‘red lines are crossed in Syria’.

There are no diplomatic niceties in the joint communique issued by the two countries: ‘What America waged in an aggression on Syria is a crossing of red lines. From now on we will respond with force to any aggressor or any breach of red lines from whoever it is and America knows our ability to respond well.’

It is hard to argue with Llorenti when he asserts that ‘the United States believe that they are investigators, they are attorneys, judges and they are the executioners. That's not what international law is about.’ The problem is that when any law is violated with impunity, that law ceases to be effective. The problem with Llorenti’s argument is that it makes sense only if the UN makes sense (when it comes to multilateralism). What we have is a monumental hypocrisy, a lie which makes it laughable when a liar is called out.

If the UN cannot rein in the rogue state that is the United States of America, then we have to accept that Washington’s do-as-we-please ways in fact invite do-as-we-please from Russia, Iran or whoever. It won’t take too long before we get to that terrible point where the question ‘who started it all?’ ceases to matter.

Well, what’s new? Isn’t this what ‘multilateralism’ has always been about? Huff, puff, hot air and not much else? Lovely words that get lost in the misery? Well, should we then shrug shoulders, raise and then lower eyebrows and wait for the next great example of hypocrisy?

Perhaps we should use it to call to question certain groups and certain assumptions. The International Crisis Group, for instance, has issued a statement following the US attack. It is ‘an opportunity’ (yes, those words!) they say. An opportunity to jumpstart diplomatic efforts, they say. No mention of the legality of that attack. Nothing on investigations. The ICG takes the US narrative as valid.

‘If regime chemical attacks were to continue (perhaps employing chlorine instead of the much deadlier nerve agent sarin), the U.S. might find itself compelled to launch additional, more significant strikes,’ ICG states. Now this is certainly a cute license to trigger-happy Donald Trump.

What needs to be understood is that while these games are being played with Trump and Putin trying to out-stare one another and while outfits like the ICG tosses out character certificates to preferred aggressors, there are people who cannot stare, cannot blink and in fact are dead.

This forces us to ask, ‘what happened to all those who were waving a flag called Responsibility to Protect?’ Is it about protecting Syrians from Assad? How about the risks that Syrians face at the hands of the ISIS and a global thug wearing a Good Samaritan name-tag?

But wait, why should we even bother about these rag-tag outfits who are operating as approvers for the actions of preferred parties who don’t do too much apart from constructing legitimacy for aggression against the chosen enemies (of their chosen buddies), when the United Nations itself does just that when it is divested of the somber architecture and established procedures for the conduct of discussions?

The UN’s impotency has been revealed once again. It is not a forum that can do anything of significance to prevent wars. It can only pick on weaker nations that have for one reason or another fallen out of favor of the favored member states.

Just imagine if Bolivia had taken the kind of initiative that the USA took in Syria. The UN Security Council would not be discussing the legality of the particular action. We won’t hear impassioned speeches of past errors, the reiteration of established procedures, calls for investigations and so on. They would be discussing sanctions. That’s if they didn’t authorize the USA to bomb the Bolivian capital.

It’s all happening in Syria, folks. For now, maybe we can call it ‘a show’ and watch from the sidelines. After all Syria is more than 5000km from Sri Lanka. But what if Sri Lanka became tomorrow’s Syria? Sacha Llorenti may lash out at the USA at a hastily arranged emergency meeting of the UN Security Council. The ICG would bend over backwards, touch its metaphorical heels and salute the USA for ‘opportunities produced’. Trump and Putin would indulge in a game of who will blink first. There would be Sri Lankans who won’t be watching though. They won’t be able to blink. They’d be dead.

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer. Email: malindasenevi@gmail.com. Twitter: malindasene.

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