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Presidential Candidate Malinda to Putin and Trump: The dead don't blink, boys

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Malinda Seneviratne, likely presidential candidate in 2020, wrote to US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on the subject of Syria.  The following is the full text of the letter:

April 17, 2017


TO: 
President Vladimir Putin
Through
His Excellency Alexander A. Karchava
Russian Ambassador to Sri Lanka
404 Bauddhaloka Mawatha,
Colombo 7

and

TO:
President Donald Trump
Through
His Excellency Atul Keshap
US Ambassador Extraordinary to Sri Lanka
210 Galle Road,
Colombo 4


The dead don’t blink, boys



Let’s cut to the chase.  It’s not about right and wrong.  It’s not about joy and sorrow.  It’s not about the living and not about the dead either.  Syria is a stage and its players, the citizens I mean, are dispensable.  

Now there are theories about how this is a win-win situation for both your countries and in particular for the two of you, politically.  There are theories about oil and other strategic ‘interests’.  Then there’s the United Nations, the Security Council and relevant protocols.  

Let’s face it, the world is not flat.  Multilateralism is not about one country having one vote and the triumph of the numerical majority.  I need not tell you boys about the history of voting patters in the UN.  I am sure you would have heard of the speech Ernesto Che Guevara delivered on  March 25, 1964 at the plenary session of the now defunct United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) where he talked of numbers, integrity and how power works in these so-called august chambers.

We know how legitimacy is manufactured and made to stick.  We’ve heard the tunes of justification, the expressions of horror, the firm lip-lines of indignation.  They are old songs lipped ad nauseum by your predecessors.  We know what’s what in Syria.  We are not impressed, boys.  

Now let there be no illusions about the sizes of boots and the incongruent nature of alluding to David and Goliath.  The world is not flat.  And equality is a lie.  We know all this, boys.  

But let me say it as it is.  We know that you know that we know that you don’t give a damn about the people of Syria, just like your predecessors didn’t give a damn about people in countries you’ve waged proxy wars.  

We must say it nevertheless.  You can play ‘let’s see who blinks first’ until the cows come home, but this you must know that we know: the dead don’t blink; not in Syria and not anywhere else.  


Sincerely and with much compassion,


[Signed] Malinda Seneviratne



High time for 'Right to Recall' legislation in Sri Lanka!

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Pic: www.newsradio.lk
The stench from Meethotamulla, metaphorically speaking, is being matched by the stench of political rivals lobbing chunks of political garbage at one another.  The politically dispassionate pointing out that there are countries where such disasters resulted in the resignation of relevant subject ministers or officials, called for the resignation of those responsible.  The most uncomfortable thing about all this is that people don’t have any position to resign from; they can’t give up their citizenship.  

Much has been written about waste management over the past few days.  Hopefully outrage and cheap politicking will give way to sober reflection, self-criticism, responsible citizenship and a scientific approach to the resolution of the problem at all levels which also eliminates the corruption that has made garbage disposal a lucrative business for some while bringing death to others.  For now, let us consider the larger issue at hand, that of responsibility and therefore accountability, especially on the part of representatives.  

We can always reject erring politicians at the polls.  That’s the only option we have.  Either we think this is enough or we are hampered by ignorance or impotency to come up with a better system.  It’s a bit like waste management.  The authorities have for years talked of the 3 R’s (reduce, reuse and recycle).  They have tried to educate the public.  They’ve set up various sorting mechanisms.  The response has been poor.  We expect our representatives to deliver and if they don’t we just grin and bear, and even re-elect them after playing a game where relative merits and party loyalty outweigh performance.  In other words we essentially assume that politicians have a sense of responsibility. 

We have to come to terms sooner or later with the fact that we just can’t expect people to do what’s right and leave it at that.  We don’t worry whether candidates declare assets or not and no one bothers to demand an asset declaration from politicians at the completion of their terms.  That’s how complacent we are.  We are kings and queens until the polls close and are slaves thereafter until the next election.  And even if we punish wrongdoers and the incompetent, they can still creep in through the backdoor called the ‘National List,’ a devise used by even the lords and ladies of the Yahapalana Project.

Accountability is a tough issue simply because it is the currently unaccountable who have the authority to script it into law.  This is clear when we consider the fortuitous circumstances which made for the 17th Amendment, the ease with which it was done away with, the difficult passage of the 19th, the foot-dragging that preceded the Right to Information Act being passed and the strange silence about the 20th Amendment, i.e. on electoral reform, although it was screamed about by chest-thumping yahapalanists in the run up to the January 8 ‘Revolution’.  

Without electoral reform and given the escape clause in the 19th Amendment pertaining to cabinet size the accountability measures currently in place are at risk.  There’s no harm, however, in proposing additional measures, especially one that few have talked about, namely the right to recall.

It’s not a novel idea.  Voters in British Columbia’s Legislative Assembly, for example, can petition to have their parliamentary representatives removed from office and can enforce it through a by-election (Sri Lanka’s Proportional Representation system forbids such procedures obviously, another reason why Electoral Reform should precede recall legislation). Several states in the USA permit recall on grounds such as misconduct or malfeasance.  Even the ancient Athenians had a recall option, ostracism. In India it operates at local level bodies in Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Chhattisgarh.  We live in a hire-and-fire system and as such we have the moral responsibility to affirm the political equivalent, elect-and-recall.

Feroze Varun Gandhi in an article published on the subject in ‘The Hindu’ has offered some caveats which would be good to keep in mind. 

“While it is necessary to ensure that a recall process is not frivolous and does not became a source of harassment to elected representatives, the process should have several built-in safeguards such as an initial recall petition to kick-start the process and electronic-based voting to finally decide its outcome. Furthermore, it should ensure that a representative cannot be recalled by a small margin of voters and that the recall procedure truly represents the mandate of the people. To ensure transparency and independence, chief petition officers from within the Election Commission should be designated to supervise and execute the process.”

As things stand we can’t expect resignation.  Politicians are not into self-flagellation, they don’t self-immolate.  They justify action and inaction (like everyone else).  It is not that they are all dishonorable and have no notion of dignity, but such things are usually produced by a society that has high moral standards.  Ours does not.  It also follows that those who won’t hear of resignation will probably not want to talk about recall.  This doesn’t stop the people from talking about it, however.   

But let’s begin with the 20th Amendment.  It is exactly two years (731 days) since the 100 days within which yahapalanists promised to institute electoral reforms.  Was that project dumped and is it to remained buried in the Meethotamullas of Political Distraction?  Shouldn’t this alone warrant a call for recall?    

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

Repeating the error of self-inflicted torture

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Any conflagration and especially one marked by the clash of arms that lasts over several decades can be defined in multiple ways.  For some, the conflict in Sri Lanka, was a matter between the Sinhalese and Tamils.  They call it ‘Ethnic Conflict’.  Others could say that it was a battle between state entities and a terrorist outfit or one between democracy and insurgency.  

Portrayal is naturally informed by ideological bent and of course, since identity is involved, the play of communal angst often decides the issue of definition.  

Emotion typically bests reason in the process.  To the extent that the protagonists were to a large extent identifiable in terms of a particular community and since the conflict was framed emphatically (at least by one party and often by the other) in communal terms, the ‘ethnic’ label is not without logic, although the complexity of it all rebels against such convenient descriptions.  

There could be one area where there’s agreement.  It was a tragedy.  Lives were lost.  Properties were destroyed.  An economy was strangled, development arrested.  People were maimed and displaced.  There was despair and gloom, fear and foreboding. 

Only the obdurate afflicted with strong identity fetishes would claim absolute innocence on behalf of his or her community.  Even if that weren’t the case afflictions of such nature do inform exercises in ‘rational’ apportionment of blame.

One thing that has been left out of the entire ‘in retrospect’ business is the self-inflicted.  Just the other day,  Lord Justice Sales, one of Britain’s most senior judges, in what could be a landmark 22,000-word appeal ruling, has observed that a Sri Lankan had allowed himself to be tortured with iron bars to support his bid to stay in that country.  The court ruled that the man probably consented to the torture as part of a ruse called “Self-infliction by proxy” or SIBP to buttress a case for asylum.  

KV, as the claimant is identified, is not a one-off asylum-seeking Tamil from Sri Lanka and neither is Britain the only country where his ilk have applied for asylum.  Asylum seekers are required to submit solid evidence and in a world where the visual dominates testimony inscribed on body can be quite compelling.  There’s enough evidence to prove that ‘torture-marking’ is a lucrative business, run of course by ‘well-meaning’ Tamil expatriates.  There are agencies that ‘take care of things’.  For a price.  And part of that price can be self-inflicting torture.  

An investigation launched by the Sri Lankan military a few years ago unearthed a lot of information regarding the process.  One woman who was asked to follow a ‘rape-script’ to secure asylum in the UK refused because the objective was outweighed by the shame of ‘admitting’ have been raped even if it was just theatre.  Self-respect counted.  In the course of that investigation, it was found that a veritable army of operators were involved in the ‘asylum business’.  

There were torture-artists, lawyers who argued ‘torture,’ physicians who would affirm ‘torture’ and handlers who had profiled courts and judges and figured out which were ‘easy’. There still are, apparently.
   
All this could be dismissed as ‘constructed propaganda by the Sri Lankan government’.  At the time, for reasons that had nothing to do with immigration policy or upholding the dignity of judicial processes, the submissions from Sri Lanka were ignored.  Lord Justice Sales, however, is not ‘in the pay of the Rajapaksas’ (as has been the excuse for summary dismissal of such claims).  

Britain’s Home Office will have to act, sooner or later, especially in a context where terrorism (a menace selectively spawned, nurtured and apologized for) has secured a kind of residency that was unanticipated but impossible to ignore.  

The relevant question here is this: ‘Why would anyone suffer the shame of lying about being raped or submit him/herself to being torture-inscribed unless he/she believes it is a better option than living in their home country?’  One could argue that the truth or otherwise of torture-claims, submission to such pain is a superior choice to suffering the ‘hurt’ of discrimination.

The key issue is that once a certain threshold of escalation has been crossed the claim is legitimate regardless of who did what to whom and when.  People flee conflict for a reason, to put it simply.  What’s important is to understand that the true self-infliction of torture preceded cases such as the one on which Lord Justice Sales deliberated.  

Let’s ask ourselves some questions to drive home the point.  Who wanted a 50-50 split for a community that made just over one tenth of a total population? Who created and/or played on the nationless-angst of a particular community, drawing inter alia, a nation-map traced on the arbitrary exercises in cartography indulged in by the British? Who interchanged (often inflated) grievance and (ridiculous) aspirations easily and frequently enough to legitimate a demand unsupported by history, archaeology and demography?  When such sentiments as were generated found articulation in an election result in 1977, why did not the Government of the time call for a historical audit?  When extremism reared its ugly head why did successive governments respond with utmost brutality that conflated ‘Tamil’ with ‘Terrorist,’ especially in the 1980s?  

Who dropped parippu and effectively postponed by twenty years the eradication of the terrorist menace and therefore paved the way for tens of thousands of deaths and other destruction?  

Why did those who claimed to stand for a negotiated settlement give credence to that conflation (which had been un-tangled to a large extent) by legitimating terrorism and 'conceding’ that the LTTE was indeed the sole representative of the Tamils?  Why wasn’t what was essentially a hostage-rescue operation named as such (Read about 'The wretched of the Wanni Earth'by D.B.S. Jeyaraj)?  Why (let us ask again) is no one calling the Tamil nationalist bluff by commissioning a historical audit?  

There was a turning point in 2009.  History however is not rolled out in a bell curve.  There can be other twists.  Tragedy is a visitor who does not require a formal invitation.  Escalation is easily orchestrated.  In all this there’s self-inflicted torture.  ‘KV’ is, in this sense, an embarrassment to Tamil chauvinists but all things considered, nothing more than a distraction.  This country has let itself become a classic case of self-inflicted national torture.  A re-definition is needed not just for national dignity but national survival. 




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

Yahapalanaya moves to besiege freedom

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Avantha Artigala says a lot here.  But Maithripala's move is also a 'Maithri-Ranil'.  This classic 'imperative' of coercion when ideological sway has been spent is not new though.

‘At least there’s freedom now!’  This has been the stock (consolation?) response of those who defend the yahapalana regime whenever it is pointed out that corruption, nepotism, abuse of state resources for political purposes and other wrongdoings have not ceased after the January 8 ‘revolution’.   No more white van abductions, true.  Journalists have not been beaten up, true.  Demonstrations and marches organized by the Opposition have not been attacked, this is also true.  Does this mean there’s ‘freedom’ or that ‘relative merits’ is what counts? Not necessarily.  

Not necessarily, because things are getting bad. And not necessarily, because playing relative merits is a cop out.  There are signs to be read and nothing stands in-your-face as the disarray, confusion and clowning with respect to law and order; in particular the issue of putting Saraath Fonseka in charge. 

There was talk that Fonseka would be put in charge of the Army.  A politician in charge of the Army would of course be a disaster not to mention that small detail of it going dead against the yahapalana spirit.  Fonseka, thankfully, has shot that idea down, as he shot down (he says) the presidential offer of a post called ‘Security Division Head’.  Fonseka however stated that President Sirisena had made a request and that cabinet had approved it.   The request is this: ‘taking over the responsibility of carrying out duties when essential services were disrupted.’  Fonseka has said that a mechanism to implement such a programme would have to be drafted, implying that Parliament would have to approve it. 

Fonseka, clearly, has taken it seriously. Minister of Social Empowerment and Welfare S.B. Dissanayake objects, though.  He says ‘the President was joking’.  The joke, according to SB, was about making Fonseka the Army Commander.  He implies thereafter that the President was not joking about ‘the post,’ presumably the one Fonseka referred to which, according to SB, would ‘streamline the services of the Army’.  

All this comes after Cabinet Spokesman Minister Rajitha Senaratne stated that ‘President Maithripala Sirisena had requested Minister Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka to quit the ministerial portfolio and take up the post of Army Commander or Overall Commander for two years to discipline the country.’  Senaratne, like SB, alluded to a Special Act of Parliament and slipped in the caveats about the primacy of operating within the existing laws.  

Minister WIjith Wijayamuni Zoysa sang a different tune.  Maybe SB and Rajitha are mouths whereas Fonseka and Zoysa are tongues following the Sinhala dictum kata boru kiwwath diva boru kiyanne nehe (although the mouth may lie, the tongue will not).  Whereas Fonseka may have been, as per his style, said it as it was, clinically and dispassionately, Zoysa’s was a blurting out: “Several underhand forces are operational to hinder the development of the country [and] for that there should be special forces to suppress them.”

Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Development Minister Mahinda Amaraweera had a sober take on the affair.  He told a news conference that the President only asked whether Mr. Fonseka could help implement a mechanism to ensure uninterrupted supply of essential services for which Mr. Fonseka agreed.  Here’s the reasoning: “It was discussed during the cabinet meeting that people had to face inconveniences due to the strike launched by trade unions without prior notice. It was said that the situation had arisen due to the overuse of freedom given by the government. The President said a special mechanism should be set up to provide essential services without any disruption.”  He adds, “there were such mechanisms even during the war.”

So what do we have here?  Simply put, things have gotten out of control.  The allusions are to some ‘sinister hand at work’.  The concern is about ‘misuse of freedom’.  The answer then is about ‘streamlining freedom,’ if we were word it mildly.  The different takes of the worthies mentioned above clearly indicates confusion.  Shed the whole thing of hilarity and we are left with a proposal for a mechanism relating to law and order.  This means that either the existing mechanisms are inadequate or else the personnel in charge are incompetent.  A third, if you will, is that the Government has proven to be utterly incompetent in handling issues, which can be put down to several possible factors such as a) lack of policy-coherence, b) abysmal skill in handling objection, c) poor communication and d) poverty of ideas and imagination.  This is the obvious conclusion when a regime gets to a point where it is forced to talk about ‘lurking evil’ and the need to exorcise it by any means necessary — which, by the way, is what all these statements collapse into.  

So what of ‘freedom’ now, ladies and gentlemen, especially those of you for whom ‘more freedom’ has been the last line of defence of the yahapalana regime? This regime has seamlessly picked up the baton of everything-that-was-wrong-about-the-Rajapaksas.  If regime change euphoria yielded a window of opportunity, it’s almost closed now.  If ‘change’ prompted a freedom-honeymoon, it’s almost done.  It took the previous regime at least 6 years to lose the professionals, the academics and the artists; the yahapalanists have beaten the Rajapaksa by several years in this aspect.  The most telling ‘drop out’ is the business community, traditionally a UNP bastion; their dismay is less about policies that are detrimental to their interests but the lack of clarity in policy.  

The ‘solution’ says it all.  The ‘solution’ is a clear vote of no confidence on both system and personnel.  More than that, it is an acknowledgment of failure on the part of the regime.  It has boiled down to a game of political survival.  Ideas, clearly, are not swaying anyone and when that happens it’s the batons that are swung.  The yahapalana regime has come to this point just a little over two years into its term (or less than two years, if you take August 2015 as the true ‘Beginning’).  

The freedom-argument has all but run its course.  The yahapalanists have essentially got freedom by its metaphorical throat (what irony!).  So let’s hope that somewhere in the corridors of power there is sanity that can be gathered in adequate quantities to counter the insane and the stupid.  If not, ‘crack down’ will be on the cards and what ensues when that happens can be easily imagined if we turn the pages of post-independence history back to 1988-89.  

Post May Day blues (for the blues and greens)

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Hard times made harder by the errors of omission and commission
May Day (in Sri Lanka) is not about workers.  It’s about show.  This time it was about challenges thrown and accepted, oneupmanship and bragging rights.  

The regime-thinking was abvious.  They believed the JO could not fill Galle Face Green.  They did.  Although the Joint Opposition (JO), perhaps in the permissible magnanimity of euphoria, thanked the regime for providing Galle Face Green for its rally, the tongue-in-cheek is unmistakable considering the challenge, ‘let’s see if you can fill up the place!’  If May Day shows allow for an assessment of regime-approval, we have to conclude that disillusion is the word on the street.  Local Government Elections, if held soon, would put the issue beyond doubt.  

Pandula Nayana Bandara, a prolific and colourful political commentator on Facebook captured ‘May Day’ thus:  “They didn’t catch the thieves. They mollycoddled them. They made deals.  Bigger crooks were birthed.  The practice of offering contracts to the near and dear didn’t stop.  It continued.  The people were not heeded when they voiced grievances.  They were ignored. The Rajapaksas were continuously vilified, but for two years they failed to prove they had a cogent programme.  They were unable to manage natural disasters.  They couldn’t resolve urgent issues following disasters.  They compromised the trust in the Police.  The law bent only to punish the Opposition.  Forget making the state media independent, they didn’t even come close to doing it.  Journalists were subjected to veiled threats.  The people were asked to tighten belts, but it was made possible for ministers to enjoy luxurious lives.  They couldn’t secure the confidence of investors, but there were many joy rides abroad.  Those who criticized nepotism paved the way for family members to make big money.  There were band-aid solutions for the problems faced by  farmers.  They couldn’t take the country one step forward from where it stood when the Rajapaksas were defeated.  In fact they went backwards.  This is the result.”

Today, SLFP and the UNP spokespersons are in damage-control mode, fiddling with numbers to counter the JO claims including the hilarious claim by Bandula Gunawardena that 2 million came to Galle Face.  The truth is that Campbell Park was full, as were the BRC Grounds (JVP rally) and the Getambe Grounds (SLFP rally).  The telling stat, then, is the respective areas.  Getambe is 2.4 acres, Campbell Park 3.8 and Galle Face Green 18.7.  Says a lot about who won and lost the game of mobilizing supporters.  If we factored in the obvious advantages of incumbency (advantages unabashedly used by both the SLFP and UNP notwithstanding this running counter to yahapalana rhetoric), it makes the JO show even more ominous.  

Not ‘ominous’ in terms of imminent regime change of course.  Ominous, mostly, for the political project of the yahapalanists.  ‘Political project’ as in pacts with India, the Eelamist embrace via federalism etc., but not the bread and butter of yahapalanaya or ‘good governance’ which is about democratization, transparency, accountability and showing the door to things such as nepotism, cronyism, political patronage, corruption and the abuse of state resources.  Such things, we can forget because the regime is no longer interested.  

The coverage of May Day rallies by the state media should convince the doubters that the yahapalanists weren’t really serious about yahapalanaya.  The silence of the most ardent advocates of good governance who announced their objection with shrill howls of horror during the Rajapaksa years also shows that they weren’t serious either.  

What’s most important is that these realities would considerably hamper the pernicious moves by this government or rather the UNP faction of the yahapalanists to push through agreements with India and legislation to concede political ground to the Eelam Project via federalism.  This is not because the objectors are cognizant of the theoretical arguments against such projects and are empowered by relevant knowledge of history, the ‘objections’ posed by geographical, demographic and economic realities, but the simple ‘need’ to trump any big move by the regime.  It’s just like dressing an economic grievance in ethnic garb in order to grab more visibility.  It’s politics.  

Politicians recognize all this, even though not all of them respond with reason.  Fear, often, is a better driver even though emotion increases the probability of error.  The President, it is reported, has spoken about appointing a committee ‘to iron out differences between the SLFP and the UNP’.  It was also reported that overtures are being made by the SLFP leadership to the JO.  On the face of it, then, it is the SLFP that seems to have been most disturbed by the JO’s May Day show.  However it is the UNP that has shown the greater irritation.  

Rajitha Senaratne was, true to form, agitated.  He let slip that the late Lasantha Wickramatunga, celebrated in some circles as a principled and indefatigable campaigner for media freedom, was in fact a Sirikotha lackey.  We have to believe that Senaratne was lying if not for anything but the fact that Lasantha is not around to defend himself.  He ranted against the Rajapaksas, quite forgetting that he was a minister in Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government.  He swore to bring wrongdoers to book (did someone scream ‘b.o.r.i.n.g!”?).  Sarath Fonseka, also speaking for the UNP swore that Mahinda Rajapaksa would not be sent to the electric chair but would be hanged by his own ‘saatakaya’.  Quite yahapalana-like, what?  Champika Ranawaka, for his part, was adamant that there’s a job for Fonseka to do.  Fonseka can and must be allowed to crush trade unions, Ranawaka said.  

What is all this if not brave chest-beating by the politically beleaguered?  These UNP politicians are essentially acknowledging that they’ve lost faith in ‘due process’.  They are talking as if they are fighting for their political lives.  Ranawaka, most of all, should know how the 1980s unfolded, from the July 1980 strike to the 88-89 bheeshanaya unleashed by the party he now represents and its companion-of-sorts, the JVP, and the escalation that took us from the one to the other.  

The tempting option for both the SLFP and the UNP would be to go for an 88-89 repeat.  Maybe it’s too late to consider any other option or (hopefully) maybe it's just they are not able at this point to think of anything else. The ‘other option’ is to summon whatever residual intellectual and ethical resources at their disposal and revert to the original yahapalana project with quantities of energy and commitment unlike anything they’ve so far demonstrated they’ve possessed.  It could be called a tall order, but then again, it could be the one thing that will save both regime and project because, at this point, it is hard to imagine that even cold-shouldering India and shelving constitutional reform would blunt the momentum of the JO.  

As for the ‘Fonseka Option,’ those who are advocating it would do well to remember that although the vast majority of those who were killed in 88-89 were unarmed young people unfortunate to have been born in the sixties and early seventies, many high-rankers of the then UNP regime also perished in the fires ignited.   


Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer.  Email: malindasenevi@gmail.com.  Twitter: malindasene.  This article was first published in the Daily Mirror (May 4, 2017)


Save the Sinhala Program at Cornell University

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Deepthi Kumara Gunaratne once alleged that I never studied at Harvard University.  He said that I might have been eating hoppers in some boutique somewhere near Harvard, at best.  He was essentially claiming that I had learned nothing at Harvard.  Someone else asked me once what I had brought back from Harvard and I said ‘Harvard was too big to carry back to Sri Lanka,’ and, after a pause, added, ‘Harvard was too small too.’  

Not true, strictly speaking, but I was using a broad brush and alluding to alleged superiority of certain knowledge systems, just like Deepthi.  Big or small the institution, big or small the individual, we leave something behind and we take away something too.  True of Harvard and true of Cornell University.  

When I entered the doctoral program in Development Sociology at Cornell in 1995, I didn’t know that Sinhala was taught in that school.  The ‘Sinhala Program’ was housed in the ‘Department of Modern Languages’. Ironic, considering the history of the language; strictly speaking English should also have been located in Morrill Hall (as well), but then again, these things are largely arbitrary despite the appearance of classification logic.  

I got to know about it at a function welcoming students organized by the South Asian Program of the university.  My advisor Prof Shelley Feldman introduced me to Milan Rodrigo who taught both Sinhala and Tamil at Cornell.  Perhaps at that meeting or at a subsequent function I met Professor Emeritus James W. Gair (who passed away last December), a linguist in South Asian linguistics specializing in Sinhala, as well as in Pali, Tamil and Dhivehi.  Jim was a wonderful teacher and a great human being. He was quite the Santa Clause, with his white hair and beard, twinkling eyes and a year-round smile. Jim bailed me out.  

It happened in the Summer of 1997.  I had obtained a Summer research grant the previous year and had decided to stay on in Sri Lanka until Fall 1997.  Before coming to Sri Lanka I had a assistantship to teach ‘Introductory Sociology’.  I had erroneously assumed that my slot would be there for me when I returned.  When I made inquiries, I was informed that they had been filled.  So I wrote to Jim Gair detailing my predicament and asking if there was some research or teaching position in the Sinhala Program.  Jim wrote back immediately saying that Milan had retired and that he had been looking for someone to teach Sinhala.  It worked for both of us.  I was able to survive the next four semesters thanks to the Sinhala Program.   

Today, I heard that Cornell is planning to scrap the program, supposedly for cost-cutting reasons.  It’s a pity if this is done for several reasons.  First of all, considering the wealth of the university the Sinhala Program costs next to nothing.  There’s just one teacher, Prof Bandara Herath, and not much space is taken for his office or his classroom.  More importantly, Cornell University is the only university outside Sri Lanka offering a full curriculum in Sinhala and is the global leader in Sinhala language teaching materials.

Sinhala has been taught at Cornell for more than 50 years ever since it was established by Prof Gair, a PhD holder from Cornell and who got a DLit/Sahitya Chakravarti from Kelaniya Campus. Scholars such as Gordon H. Fairbanks, M.W. Sugathapala De Silva, W.S. Karunatillake and John Paolillo have produced rich teaching material which have been regularly upgraded by those who came later, including Bandara Herath and Liyanage Amarakeerthi.  

Typically, there are three broad categories of students who enroll in the courses offered during the regular academic year as well as the Summer Program: linguists, heritage students (with Sri Lankan ancestry) and those who wish to do fieldwork in Sri Lanka.  ‘Sinhala’ is an integral part of and affirms the multi-disciplinary ethic of the university’s South Asian Program, and is moreover a program that has been excellently complemented by arguably the best South Asian collection in North America.  Cornell’s Kroch library holds a world-class collection related to Sri Lanka, including holdings in Sinhala, Tamil, Pali, and Sanskrit. 

The courses provide a unique  opportunity for students to acquire basic competence in the language thanks to materials developed at Cornell.   And it’s not just about picking up enough of the language to get by.  Colloquial language skills are of course emphasized during the program, but these are complemented by introduction to the writing system and colloquial reading materials.  Upon successful completion students are ready to study literary Sinhala while the more advanced students, if they so wish, can work in literary Sinhala and/or to develop more advanced colloquial skills. Doing away with the program would be an insult to and negation of considerable efforts of a fine set of academics who worked diligently and tirelessly to make all this possible.

So no, my ‘angst’ is not reducible to gratitude alone, but nevertheless I must mention another reason to be thankful.  

There are two periods in my life when I read voraciously.  To put things in context, I am a slow reader and large books intimidate me to the point of avoiding them studiously.  The first was when I was detained for three weeks by the Police for suspected insurrectionary activity (successfully challenged in court) and the second was when I was a graduate student at Cornell University.  I am talking here about literature and not strictly academic ‘required reading’.  I spent many hours browsing the Kroch library collection.  I was surprised to find that even books that had been published as recent as the previous year had been purchased by the library.  I was pleasantly surprised to see a copy of a collection of short stories written by my friend Liyanage Amarakeerthi.  he had gifted me a copy of that book just before I left Sri Lanka for my graduate studies.  I still remember what he inscribed on the first page of that book which has since gone missing: “barasaara buddhimatheku vee yali mavbimata peminenna” (return to the motherland after becoming an accomplished academic).  Never happened, but that’s another story. Amarakeerthi would later teach Sinhala at Cornell, having obtained a doctorate from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.  

Amarakeerthi is also associated with the other story that saddens me about the possible fate of the Sinhala Program at Cornell.

It was at Cornell that I first laid my hands on Simon Navagaththegama’s celebrated novella, Sansaraaranyaye Dadayakkaraya (roughly translatable as ‘The Hunter in the Sansaric Grove’).  As part of an exercise for a class on Marx, Nietzsche and Freud taught by Prof Geoff Waite I translated a passage from that book.  It emboldened me to try my hand at translating the entire book.  I sent the first two chapters to Amarakeerthi and he urged me to complete it.   I did and it eventually won for me the H.A.I Goonetilaka Prize for translations offered by the Gratiaen Trust.  The universe has a strange logic.  A few years after I left Cornell, my friend Liyanage Amarakeerthi was hired by Cornell to teach Sinhala.  

Again, I must emphasize that all this nostalgia is only of incidental worth to the story here.  There’s a fine program at Cornell that is in danger of being scrapped.  The children of many expatriate Sri Lankans have benefited from the program, either by enrolling in the various courses or by access to the excellent course material developed by those who ran the program over the past 50 years.   

There’s a fine program at Cornell that is in danger of being scrapped.  As a former teacher, a former student of sorts (of Jim Gair), a beneficiary in multiple ways, and someone who is cognizant of the worth of that program, I can but urge the relevant authorities to revisit the proposal.  

Yes, there’s a lot I brought back from Cornell and there’s stuff I’ve left behind, but all that is incidental, I must repeat.  There are more important and compelling reasons to resist this move. 

‘The SAITM Issue’ and the politics of misnaming

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SAITM: Means different things to different people on both sides of the divide
Whoever is against SAITM should also be opposed to fee-levying institutions such as private nurseries, tuition classes, outfits that offer all kinds of certification and practices such as channeling services.  This is an argument that is widely tossed around by those opposing opposition to SAITM.  The flak that Dr Anuruddha Padeniya of the GMOA has got over the past few days has been liberally padded with such logic.  His detractors have roundly castigated him for offering consultancy services in private hospitals even as he spearheads the agitation against SAITM.  

The cause of the GMOA has not been helped by the fact that some of its fellow-travelers have waved the anti-privatization flag.  In other words, the ‘SAITM issue’ for them is but an expression of a process or even an economic policy preference they oppose, namely privatization.  

All causes have to deal with different stakeholders who have diverse outcome preferences.  The opponents have the option of picking out one or more of the claims or parties and target these.  That’s politics.  Misidentification, mislabeling, misrepresentation and such are part of the game. 

There are therefore people who are calling for the blood of the movers and shakers of GMOA, especially Dr Padeniya.  Naturally ‘the sick’ are used as grist.  The pro-SAITM or let’s say the anti-GMOA lobby would have us believe that no one cares more about the poor and the sickly of this country than them.  That again is politics.  It is useful, after all, to have the key issues shoved out of the debate.  Indeed, part of the story is to define ‘key issue’ in ways that make for easy engagement.  Everyone involved in this drama does this.

What all this helps displace is the important (let’s not say ‘THE key issue’) matter of a coherent policy with respect to education in general.   It is easy to say ‘we need more doctors’.  Of course we need more doctors, there’s no question there.  It’s easy to ask ‘if you are raising concerns about quality, can you give any guarantees about the quality of doctors produced by the state universities?’  It’s a valid question of course.  

It’s easy to take medical mishaps, inflate them, display them, throw them in the face of those who bring up the issue of standards (pertaining to SAITM) and scream ‘you don’t have a case, hoo-hoo’.  

It’s easy to say such things and raise such questions as long as you desist from talking about the realities in our hospitals — the congestion, the financial constraints, under-staffing across all categories, the consequent stress and say nothing about the incredible services rendered therein.  Easy and irresponsible.  

“The SAITM issue” is a book that has not yet been written, or rather is a book whose pages are all over the media, including Facebook, Twitter, the blogsphere and elsewhere on the internet.  This is not an abridged version of that book and neither is it a review.  What’s written above is preface and what follows will be a short note on the seeming contradiction of GMOA members engaging in ‘private practice’ with a view to separate the issue of privatization or private income-earning practices from that of regulation and accreditation.  

One of the most sober comments on this element of the debate was offered on Facebook by Dr Waruna Jayasinghe.  It is worth translation.  He called it ‘From nurseries through SAITM to channeling….”

Montessori Schools: Whether or not a child has attended a Montessori is irrelevant when being enrolled in a school. The particular child is not required to have obtained instruction on any elements of the primary curriculum.

Tuition: Tuition gives students preparing for exams a boost.  However it is not the tutor who sets and conducts the exam, but the state.  Those who attend tuition classes and those who do not are assessed by a single institution and process.  (We can define the SAITM situation as one where the tuition master himself conducts an exam and produces doctors according to a Montessori system).  

Private degrees (e.g. IT) and private medical colleges: Since many don’t see a difference, let me use an example.  I obtain an IT degree of forgettable quality.  You give me a job.  I write software programmes at a rate.  You realize that they are useless.  You sack me.  In other words, the consumer, the quality controller and the boss are all one person and someone who knows the subject well.  Now assume I get a degree from SAITM.  Even if the quality controller, the Sri Lanka Medical Council, says ‘poor quality,’ the law forces recognition. Accordingly I am recruited and sent to serve in Wanathavilluva.  I prescribe medicines like crazy.  I also engage in private practice.  The patients’ conditions get worse courtesy my treatment and prescription, but they wouldn’t know I am the cause.  Since there are very few senior doctors in such facilities they too wouldn’t notice my idiocy.  So I will remain secure and happy.  Here the consumer, the quality-controller and the boss are independent of one another.  The quality controller has been crippled.  The consumer has no knowledge of quality and no authority either.  The boss doesn’t have the means nor the mechanisms to assess the work of junior physicians.  I continue to practice.  One day you come to me for treatment.  I prescribe. You die.  Your loved ones complain to the SLMC and my registration is cancelled.  This is of no use to you, since you are dead.  My friends will continue to treat and prescribe medicine to their patients.   

Channeling: I work in a government hospital.  After I clock-out, I have the freedom to make koththu or engage in channeling.  Since I am a doctor, I choose private practice.  I have knowledge and training to offer for a price.  You come to purchase these because you find it more convenient or of greater value to obtain these in this manner rather than getting it free at a government hospital.  You have the complete freedom to obtain treatment from a government hospital or from some other individual should you feel that I am expensive or that you would not get value for money from me. 

What this shows is that although people try to put everything in one heap, it is SAITM that disempowers people from choices and that if the quality of medical degrees is not strictly monitored the outcomes could be disastrous. 

Now some may argue that (say in the USA) universities offer their own degrees.  The issue there however is that there is assessment, there are ratings, there are minimum standards that have to be met for purposes of accreditation.

‘The SAITM issue’ is about accreditation.  It’s about quality control.  One can vilify the SLMC and argue about the quality of doctors produced by state universities, but one cannot shove under the carpet the issue of coherent and comprehensive assessment.  There has to be a single authority in the business of regulation or else a coherent and comprehensive process of evaluation.  

Someone can claim that the SLMC is not perfect.  That’s fine.  The solution would be to improve the institution and the processes therein.  The Government, as of now, appears to be ill-equipped intellectually and politically to sort out the mess to which it has contributed (as did the previous regime) by being frivolous and arrogant.  

What’s evident is a scandalous disregard for regulation and a bastardization of accreditation.   The Government should rise about the politics of  misidentification, mislabeling and misrepresentation because a) it is unhealthy, and b) as things stand it could maim or kill a lot of things, including the Government itself.

This cannot be healthy. 



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

President Macron: congratulation and good luck in finding the voice of sanity

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This is the English version of a letter sent to Emmanuel Macron, President of France. Scroll down for the French version.







March 11, 2017


TO:
His Excellency Emmanuel Macron,
President,
Republic of France

THROUGH:
His Excellency Jean-Marin Schuh
The Ambassador of France to Sri Lanka and the Maldives 
89 Rosmead Pl, Colombo 00700


Dear Mr Macron,

Greetings, congratulation and good luck in finding the voice of sanity

This is not the moment to talk of ideological issues.  This is the moment to acknowledge and celebrate a historic victory, more for the people of France than for you, I am sure you’ll agree.  

This is a moment when the dominance of mainstream parties was shattered.  Some would call it a revolution for this reason alone.  As you’ve pointed out, in this sense, a new page has indeed been turned in the history of your country.  

You’ve spoken of hope and trust.  You’ve spoken of fighting the divisions that undermine France. I wish you all strength, courage and humility in securing these important things for your people.  With the people, needless to say.  

We too, in Sri Lanka, have learned the worth of hope and trust, more so in their absence.  We know how divisions undermine our nation.  We have also suffered under the tyranny of mainstream political parties.  We too want it ended.  

François-Marie Arouet, bettern known as Voltaire, the great French writer, historian, and philosopher once said that “no problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking”.  That, and solidarities that matter, I would add.  And so I wish you and the people of France the necessary wisdom and relevant solidarities, now and always, and hope that sanity will prevail over all insanities that divide and cause blood to be shed.   

Sincerely,




Malinda Seneviratne 



If you are from Ellagaava, say it with pride!

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In October 1985, a fresher at Dumbara Campus was quizzed by his seniors.  It was what might be called mild ragging.  The conversation took place in Sinhala and this is a rough English translation. 

‘Where are you from?’

‘Colombo.’

‘Where in Colombo?’

‘Horana.’

‘Where in Horana?’

‘Bulathsinhala.’

‘Where in Bulathsinhala?’

‘Yatigampitiya.’

‘Ah…..that would be Colombo 60!’

The fresher was probably trying to make things easy.  Sunil Udukala, now a senior officer at the Central Environmental Authority, is in fact quite proud of his roots. It was for him a convenience to answer this way.  Sometimes it is more than a convenience, for in these matters there’s also the play of shame and pride.  Here’s a proud story. 

It was during the reign of King Rajasinha the First, also known as Sitawaka Rajasinha since he ruled the Kingdom of Sitawaka and had won the name after a fierce battle against Portuguese forces.  

The Portuguese were from the get-go determined to ‘save the heathens’ (to put it mildly) and long before annexing territory were making ideological inroads.  It was known that they were making their way inland along the Kalu Ganga.  They had to be stopped.  

Now the narrowest spot on the river was actually a waterfall called ‘Penigala Ella’.  This was at one end of what is now demarcated as the Sabaragamuwa Province.  Apparently traders in juggery and treacle from upstream would meet potential consumers from downstream at this spot.  One day a flood had taken all their wares down the river.  That’s how the name ‘Penigala Ella’ was coined.  

There’s another coinage.  ‘Ellagaava’ or ‘By the Waterfall,’ by the waterfall Penigala Ella, that is.  Rajasinha I did not just want the invader stopped, he wanted to destroy the Portuguese.  It was decided that the best strategic point for this purpose was Ellagava.  A fort had been set up at the point.  The enemy advancement was duly destroyed by Manamperi Disawe, who had been tasked to lead the battle.

Now around this time, one of his favored concubines had died.  Rajasinha wanted a temple built in memory of the lady.  It was built at Ellagaava and dedicated to the Goddess Pattini.  A priest was needed to handle the affairs of the temple and a man from the Lewella Korale was duly picked, trained and sent to Ellagaava.  He came to be known as Elle Kapurala.  The title and the name was passed down from generation to generation and that’s how more than 450 years later there came to this earth a child who was named Elle Kapuralalage Jagath Kumara Wijesiri.  

That was in the year 1959.  Twenty years later, Jagath Kumara Wijesiri was recruited as an Army Officer Cadet.  When he was asked where he was from, this boy who had been educated at both Ellegaava Vidyalaya and Taxila Maha Vidyalaya, said ‘Horana’ since he thought no one would know ‘Ellagaava’.  During their training in Diyatalawa, a fellow officer cadet by the name of Geetha Atapattu, better known as ‘Geeth,’ had died. Geeth had been Head Prefect at Sripalee Maha Vidyalaya, Horana. 

Since people thought he was from Horana, he had been warned not to say anything ‘unnecessary’ regarding Geeth’s unfortunate death.  Young Wijesiri apparently didn’t even know where Geeth lived.  Anyway, word had got out, and it was suspected that Wijesiri had something to do with it.  He was a victim of circumstances.  

Wijesiri would retire as Major General and the first one from the Sabaragamuwa Province.  Today he is proud of his name and his history.  If someone asks him, he would say ‘I am Elle Kapuralalage Jagath Kumara Wijesiri’.  There’s pride when he recounts his family history.

“My father joined the Army and he went on to become a Commissioned Officer.  From our early days he inculcated in us a sense of history and love for our country.  My grandfather was adamant that the family should put in at least 100 years of service for the country.  In 1991 my youngest brother joined the Army.  Father retired, was recalled and served until 1994.  Together, we have  completed 100 years of military service.”

Names have histories.  People too.  Some want to forget histories, some do not.  Some are pressurized not just to forget but to ridicule their past.  Then there are people like Alle Kapuralalage Jagath Kumara Wijesiri.  He’s not from ‘Kolamba Heta’.  He’s from Ellagaava Eka, so to speak.  And he’s proud of the fact.  

The commonalities of celebration and grief

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When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was re-elected, BBC just couldn’t get enough of the protests.  Wiliam Bowles, in an article titled ‘The nerve of these guys!’ quoted the BBC back then: ‘Millions of Iranians simply did not believe the result. The main demand of the protesters has been an annulment of the result and an election re-run.’  The very same BBC, Bowles noted, had ‘no wall-to-wall coverage of Afghan outrage over a stolen election’.  Instead, the BBC had noted, ‘There was no further reference to fraud. It was pointed out that the figures were more or less in line with the opinion polls.’


That was in November 2009.  According to BBC the Iranian election was fixed but in Hamid Karzai’s case, the ‘election’ reflected ‘more or less’ the will of the Afghan voter.  

There’s a lesson here.  People see what they want to see and look the other way when the sight does not please.  

And so one memory is privileged over another, one element of a story underlined while other strands, less palatable, are ignored or erased.  

Today, exactly eight years after a thirty year long conflict was brought to an end, at least in a military sense, people are playing BBC, so to speak, one way or another.  To some, there’s reason to celebrate and for others it is a moment for mourning.  


The end of a war, regardless of who or what emerged victorious, is a blessing in some aspects at least.  No bombs, no bullets flying around, no checkpoints, no need to be wary of the person next to you, no abduction of children, no forced conscription, no need for young girls to be impregnated so that conscription can be avoided, no anti-personnel mines crippling combatants or civilians, no need to wonder at point of morning parting whether loved ones may not ever be seen again and no need for certain politicians to pay salaams to armed men.  These are blessings.  These are all reasons for celebration.  

If there’s a thing called opportunity cost, there has to be something called opportunity benefit.  

A sober reflection, say on the part of those held hostage in Vellimullivaikkal on the 17th of May, 2009 (or in fact anyone who survived that ‘historic’ hostage-taking exercise that began when the security forces secured Silavatura) on those last days as an element in a thing called ‘human shield’ and the lived reality of the 18th of May, 2017, would yield in the very least a sense of being blessed in some small say.  

On the other hand, the end of armed conflict, is a moment to reflect and such reflection gives rise to innumerable reasons to grieve.  A destroyed political, social, economic and environmental landscape, for example.  Lost opportunities, arrested development, livelihoods that were shattered and difficult to rebuild, and most of all the fact that someone that someone loved is lost forever give enough reasons to grieve.  


Of course there will be other reasons to celebrate, and naturally reasons to mourn as well.  Those for whom it was all about the character of the state, i.e. unitary, federal, confederation of separation, can celebrate or mourn as per preferred outcome.  

And so, that moment when separatism’s military persona was defeated, we can conclude eight years later, yielded a mixed bag.  We are all in that bag, huddled together in varying degrees of happiness and/or sorrow about that entire history and its part-denouement on May 18, 2009.  There’s some talk, there’s silence as well.  There’s recognition of common humanity and an inescapable sense of difference and separation as well.   

The 18th of May means different things to different people simply because there are battles, as my friend Thrishantha Nanayakkara once said, that continue to be fought in the alleyways of memory.  

Celebrators we are and so too are we grievers, separable in sentiments pertaining to outcomes.  

It is easy to dismiss relief as ‘triumphalism’ and equally easy to dismiss mourning as ‘sour grapes’ or mourners as ‘sour losers’.  However, since we have an 18th of May and since it is historic, one way or another, it is a moment good enough to reflect on.  

Let me mark this day by recounting a visit to the Menik Farm IDP facility in Cheddikulam in July 2009.  This is an extract of something I wrote back then:

“I realized that had it not been for the discipline and structured authority of the Army, things would have been far worse.  By that time, there was order.  The day-to-day was streamlined.  Conditions in these facilities were not ideal, but still better than in some other parts of the country. I was impressed by the untiring efforts by the security forces to make sure that everyone had food to eat, that the sick were taken care of, that families were reunited etc.  I was impressed by the volume of relief items that were pouring into the area.  I was impressed by the fact that there were dozens of doctors who had volunteered to work round the clock attending to the sick. 

“I remember being horrified by some of the stories these unfortunate people related.  I was impressed that despite all the trials they had been put through, most of them retained their dignity, self-respect and humanity.  Thinking back, I believe that nothing impressed or inspired me more than how these people asserted their will to live and prosper.

“I visited all the relief facilities. In each unit, regardless of size and population, I encountered ‘education’.  There were hundreds of teachers among the IDPs and many principals as well.  Naturally, there were thousands of children. Each and every one of them had ‘returned’ to school, so to speak, almost all of them after many months.  The authorities facilitated it all.  The largess of their fellow-citizens and well-meaning non-governmental organization had ensured they would not lack in stationary.  

“The people themselves, despite all the trauma they had been through and indeed had not yet overcome, had decided that the children must learn, even under the harshest of conditions. 
There were ‘classes’ under the trees and inside tents.  They were organized according to age.  The children were being taught English, Tamil, Mathematics and Science.  Some of the instructors were teachers attached to the Education Department. Some were older students or adults who had been trained in other professions.  I was impressed by the enthusiasm of the teachers and the students.  I remember thinking, ‘this country has reason to hope’.” 

I also wrote the following, a couple of years later: “The rains that will slake our national thirsts have to fall from our own skies. No one can make us smile, except ourselves. No one can make the harsh earth yield flower and grain, except ourselves.”

I still believe.   

You can be like Kobe Bryant and like Isaiah Thomas

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Kobe Bryant is a basketball legend.  Having played for the Los Angeles Lakers throughout his 20-year career, Kobe led his team to five NBA championships from 2000-2002 and 2006-2007.  He has secured numerous scoring titles and MVP awards. He has had 1 eighty-point game, 6 sixty-point games (including his final game), 26 fifty-point games, and 134 forty-point games in his career. In his final game on April 13, 2016, he became the oldest player to score 60 in a single game (37).  Sure, he had his ups and downs, often caught flak for being selfish, had personal issues (who doesn’t?) but few would deny that he was one of the most fearsome competitors the league has ever known.  

Kobe Bryant. A legend, certainly.  Isaiah Thomas is a star.  Not a legend.  Not yet, anyway.  

Isaiah  is only in his 6th NBA season, hasn’t won any championship rings, doesn’t own any scoring titles and in a league dominated by the likes of LeBron James, Stephen Curry and James Hardin, is just one of several ‘second rung’ names.  True, he has led the Boston Celtics to the top of the Eastern Conference regular season standings and has inspired his team to make it to the conference final against defending champions Cleveland Cavaliers.  Not a legend though.  Not yet, anyway.

Kobe Bryant led the Lakers.  Isaiah Thomas currently leads the arch rivals of the Lakers, the Celtics.  So what’s the Bryant-Thomas story?  It began or it could be said to have begun when Bryant called him to offer condolences over the tragic death of Isaiah’s sister Chyna in a car accident the day before the playoffs began.

Later, Isaiah would recall that Bryant had told him that it is up to him, Isaiah, to decide whether or not to play in that first game, but had added 'The one bit of advice I would give you is, if you are going to play, then you gotta play; maybe you can find some peace in moments out there.’  Kobe had also said ‘if you ever need anything, just reach out; I’m here for you.’

And Isaiah did reach out.  This was when the Celtics fell behind to the Chicago Bulls 2-0.  He called Kobe and asked if he’d mind looking over some of the game film and help him figure out how to unshackle himself from the Chicago defenders.  So the two players had set up their laptops and done a video tour of the game action together.  The Celtics went on to beat the Bulls and then the Washington Wizards in the Eastern Conference Semi-Finals.  The Celtics were creamed by the Cavs in Boston no less, in the first two games, but bounced back in Cleveland to win Game 3 even though they played without the injured Isaiah.  The result of the series is not relevant here.  It's the lesson that counts.  A lesson of reaching out. 

Kobe said he was happy to help Isaiah: ‘He had the courage to ask. I did the same thing with Michael Jordan when I was a young player.’  And he had learned the importance of reaching out from another legend, another Michael but in a different field, music.  Apparently during a visit to Neverland Ranch in his rookie season, the pop star had told him to reach out to all the greats in his profession and learn from them.  Kobe had done just said.  Over the years, basketball greats such as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Jerry West and Magic Johnson (all Lakers) as well as Bill Russell, Hakeem Olajuwon, Larry Bird and of course his childhood idol Jordan had been generous with advice whenever it was solicited.  Bryan had decided that one day he would do the same, mentoring any young player who came to him. 

Not everyone is a legend but there’s no harm in aspiring to be one or at least wanting to be the best that one can be.  This involves a lot of hard work.  Talent helps of course but it is the commitment, unforgiving hard work, the ability to overcome adversity, the will to win and the humility to acknowledge frailties that makes ordinary people great and great people legends.  

Two things are necessary.  First, the accessibility to the greats.  Secondly, the courage to ask.  Kobe was ready, Isaiah had the courage.  

In all of us, there’s a potential Kobe (the Mentor) and a potential Isaiah (needing guidance).  Isaiah Thomas may or may not end his career as a legend, may or may not make it to the Basketball Hall of Fame, but he certainly has the talent, the humility and the courage to learn from those who came before.  There are dozens of basketball legends and many of them have mentored younger players, in official as well as in unofficial capacities.  Some seemed to have been happy enough to let footage of their greatness do the work.  That’s all available in the public domain, true enough, but then again the right word at the right time and in the right tone can add that much more to such kinds of ‘learning material’.  In short, there are people like Kobe.  And there are people like Isaiah.    

You and I may not ever be like Kobe or like Isaiah, not in basketball or in any other field.  There’s nothing to stop us from trying though.

Malinda Seneviratne's trysts with the political

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Since there are all kinds of claims about my political history, I am posting this article, based on a recent interview by Uditha Devapriya, published about a month ago in the Colombo Telegraph.  The original article was also posted by Uditha in his blog, 'Fragmenteyes'.

After months, years, and decades of engaging with and writing on the political, Malinda Seneviratne has decided to contest at the 2020 Presidential Elections. His is a candidature that merits scrutiny before endorsement, if at all because he has a history not many know and consequently deserves assessment. He is an egghead with both feet planted firmly on the ground, minus those pretensions to intellectual supremacy that continue to mark many others in his fields of study. Rare. This is an attempt at unearthing his political experience.

I've been accused of generalising too much. That’s my way though, a habit that has stuck to me for so long that it’s become my “leopard's spot”. Sometimes this blinds me to the truth, sometimes I refuse to see the truth, but thankfully I’ve never obfuscated it. Naturally then, in this universe we paint in black and white, where shades of grey are almost never tolerated, it’s refreshing to come across a man who’s engaged with the political and the aesthetic, and who’s come to appreciate that essentialism and reductionism will never EVER help us by way of progress.

It takes a reductionist to appreciate a universalist, after all.

I don’t remember reading newspapers in school. But I do remember columnists and I remember Malinda Seneviratne. I also remember reading INTO him. Like every other man who comes and leaves his mark in our political firmament, however, he's best viewed and judged by the standard he’s created for himself. He is and has always been an indefinable political commentator.

Indefinable, and misunderstood. Explains why he continues to receive vitriol from both sides of the political divide. I hence believe it’s time to set the record straight, get a biographical sketch, and drive home the point that men are least understood by those who insert political frill into them.

Malinda’s first tryst with politics had been with the conversations he had with his father, Gamini, who had been a Trotskyite as an undergraduate. “He explained the Labour Theory of Value to me when I was about 15 in a matter of minutes and I haven’t since heard as lucid an exposition as his. One of his batch-mates at Peradeniya, Nanda Wickramasinghe (Podi Wicks) of the Revolutionary Communist League, would turn up off and on and leave a copy of the party newspaper ‘Kamkaru Mawatha’. I read it. He was the first ‘political activist’ that I spoke with. I wasn’t impressed by the JVP and in Peradeniya I was never seen as a friend of the JVP-run student movement. Neither was I impressed by the UNP and the SLFP, for that matter.”

Both his father and mother, Indrani, were English honours graduates from the University of Peradeniya. His father was a civil servant while his mother taught English literature in many schools, her longest stint being at Royal College. Malinda himself is a Royalist. Having done his A Levels in the Mathematics stream in 1983 and having secured results good enough to be accepted by the Science Faculties of the University system, he opted to offer Arts subjects in 1984 and, again having secured good enough results, was selected to the University of Peradeniya. While studying at Peradeniya, he had also attended Carleton College, Minnesota for a Trimester on a student exchange program in 1987.

“Towards 1987, the situation in the country was getting worse. The JVP was heading towards fascism. The SLFP under Sirimavo Bandaranaike was neither here nor there. The UNP government had signed the Indo-Lanka Peace Accord. At this juncture, there was a need for a candidate who could reckon with both sides of the political divide. Inevitably, I felt the Old Left met this challenge well, and supported Vijaya Kumaratunga and, after he was assassinated, Ossie Abeyagoonasekera, with the United Socialist Alliance.”

Around that time, he had applied for a scholarship from abroad, having done both the TOEFL and SAT exams. In the end he “got” Harvard, after seeing the collapse of the University system in his country. “I was required to contribute 1,000 dollars towards covering expenses, but because I saved whatever money they gave me, I didn’t need to. It was essentially a 100% scholarship.”

I don’t think anyone can write about the Malinda who emerged at this point without taking two people into account. Malinda agrees. “Patali Champika Ranawaka and Athuraliye Rathana Thero were responsible for my political resurrection. They saved me from the fallacies of Marxism and the allure of the whole modernist discourse on development. Not surprisingly, I was able to 'rescue' myself from Marxism by 1990. I am and have always been grateful.”

What happened next was inevitable: Rathana and Champika wanted to build a political organization, Malinda became one of several recruits in this project, and with other like-minded activists the Ratavesi Peramuna was inaugurated to talk about human rights abuses by the State, the LTTE, the IPKF, and the JVP. The movement attracted its share of attackers of course, which Malinda remembers all too well.

“We organised an exhibition in Matara. It displayed photographs and paintings of human rights abuses across the country. It was attacked by UNP thugs who also kidnapped two of our members and released them later. We wanted to discuss what we’d do next, as in where we’d have to go from here and what we could do to counter state propaganda, and we held a meeting in Wadduwa in February 1992. That meeting was disturbed by the police, who on a tip-off came and arrested us, initially believing that we were associated with the JVP, which of course had been crushed by that time.”

What happened next? “We were held for three weeks, but our movement wasn’t finished. Immediately after we were released, most of the group joined the ‘Pada Yatra’ organised by the then Opposition and led by Mahinda Rajapaksa. As time passed by, the Ratavesi Peramuna, or rather the group that continued to identify with it after the Wadduwa incident, “morphed” into the Janatha Mithuro in 1993.

Meanwhile, Malinda continued with his personal life. “I was recruited as an ELT English teacher at the Medical Faculty in 1992, but when I was imprisoned that was the end of my job there. I was then hired as an Editor at the Agrarian Research and Training Institute somewhere in March 1993, but left in 1994 after I was interdicted following a run-in with the person in charge of maintenance.”

He also tried to pursue his studies, applying for various postgraduate courses in the hope that a scholarship would greet his way. “I wasn’t lucky at first, but a friend of mine told me to apply to the University of Southern California’s School of Urban and Regional Planning. He said I had a good chance of getting a scholarship. I did this and went there, but after a year applied to Cornell University where I wanted to read for a PhD in Development Sociology. In 1995 I went to Ithaca in New York. “

Surprisingly, he never really completed his degree there. “My Master’s thesis was titled ‘Journeying with Honour: In Search of the Vague and Indeterminate’. Some told me that it delved into anthropology and ethnography. It was a study of how honour and dignity are negotiated in a multi-caste social environment. But although I wrote it, the University wanted me to revise it. They gave me a conditional Masters.”

That was 17 years ago. “I still haven’t revised it,” he tells me, “Which means I haven’t completed my Masters.” I ask him whether he’d like to have a shot at it one of these days, and he says, “I don’t think so”.

The Malinda Seneviratne story could have ended there, but it didn't. In October 2000, he was recruited as an "understudy" (his term, not mine) to the Editor of the Sunday Island, Manik de Silva. "I left 'The Island' in April 2004 following an unpleasant encounter with some senior journalists of ‘Divaina’ to which I was at the time writing a weekly political comment and because I wasn’t too pleased the way the management handled it. After leaving ‘The Island’, I did some part-time work as a copywriter at Phoenix Advertising. I continued to be ‘part-time’ but would spend the entire working day there. When 'Rivira' started 'The Nation’ in 2006, I was taken in as Deputy Features Editor and editorial writer.”

How did his journey at “The Nation” begin? “Krishantha Cooray, the first CEO of Rivira Media Corporation, upon the recommendation of Upali Tennekoon, the first Editor-in-Chief of ‘Rivira’, invited me to be the Editor-in-Chief of the English weekly paper they planned to publish. I told him that I didn’t have the experience and suggested that he find a senior person for the job. I said I would be happy to be a Deputy Editor. I recommended Rajpal Abeynayake for the senior position. The company finally hired Lalith Alahakoon, who was the Editor of the ‘Daily Mirror’.”

Soon thereafter, he ran into disagreements with company editorial policy and politics. "Essentially I was an outsider to the editorial team of ‘The Nation’. Krishantha had hired me, but the rest were all handpicked by Lalith and most of the senior people more or less shared his convictions.”

How exactly did he feel this though? “Well, my designation was Deputy Features Editor. One of my tasks was to write the editorial. One day, they replaced the editorial I had written with another, which was clearly written while I was still in the office. It’s the Editor’s prerogative but I think it was common courtesy to inform me. I found out only two days later when I bought the paper in Kegalle. This was in December 2006. I returned to Colombo the following day and handed my resignation. "

His brief stint at “The Nation” would be followed by stints as Assistant Communications Director of the Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process (for three months in 2007) and Consultant Director of the Special Media Unit at the Government Information Department (2007 November to 2008 November). After leaving it in 2008, “I worked as a freelance journalist writing 10-11 articles a week to six different newspapers until October 2011, when I was offered the post of Editor at ‘The Nation’.” That many articles a week to six different newspapers is of course an accomplishment, but Malinda being Malinda says, “That was my only source of income. I didn’t have a regular job.”

His Editorship at “The Nation” was I believe the beginning of his best years yet, which sadly ended in 2015 when he had to leave. “What happened was that the owners of the paper accepted a letter of resignation written several months before, which was no longer valid. It was essentially a case of constructive termination. I said I would challenge them in court. So we reached an agreement and I left with reasonable compensation. ‘The Nation’ was of course shut down and re-launched a few months later as a tabloid.”

All this is history, of course, and they merit recounting for the simple reason that they offer much by way of painting a colourful personality. I doubt Malinda would use the "colourful" tag on himself, but to me that's what sums up the man. It's a sign of his humility that he never balloons himself, which is what makes his political history all the more palatable. That doesn't make him an idealist though, and for this reason he's cautious in both praise and vitriol.

Before he joined "The Island" in 2000, both Champika Ranawaka and Rathana Thero had helped form the Sihala Urumaya. Malinda supported them and contested on the party ticket in Jaffna.

Perhaps it's my naiveté at work here, but I ask him whether he actually won. "Are you crazy?" he asks me cheerily, "The Sihala Urumaya got more votes than the JVP and the Nava Sama Samaja Party. I got seven preferential votes. The point we were trying to drive across wasn't to do with votes. We were basically saying that even the Sinhalese had a heritage claim on every inch of this island. This was a time, we should not forget, when to affirm that one was Sinhalese was to invite a lot of bad-mouthing.”

Having contested and "lost", Malinda’s next formal political association was with the National Movement Against Terrorism (NMAT). “The NMAT was dominated by many who were with the Janatha Mithuro and the Sihala Urumaya. I agreed to work with them after 2006, on condition that it would operate independently of the Jathika Hela Urumaya. The JHU campaigned on a nationalist platform, but the NMAT worked on combating terrorist propaganda. I think Anuruddha Pradeep Karnasuriya put it best when he said that the NMAT was a petrol shed, not a supermarket, and that what we ‘sold’ was objection to terrorism.”

The organisation, which chiefly combated the myth that the LTTE couldn't be militarily defeated, was vindicated in 2009. This we know. What we don't know, and what Malinda tells me, is its association with the nationalist politics rampant at the time. "During Chandrika Kumaratunga's time, we had federalists telling us what to do and what not to do. They were running the government, basically. We had a difficult time back then, but that's not to say we thought of giving up. And so, even though the likes of Ranawaka are vilified and marginalised today, the truth is that we all played a role in birthing May 2009."

Here I ask him about his “association” with Mahinda Rajapaksa. "I can understand why people still think I supported him unconditionally, because I was almost always the defender of the State whenever the West took it to task over the way the issue of terrorism was handled by that regime. However, just because I defended the State – which I did because I felt the West had no moral right to vilify us over war crimes – that doesn’t mean I was behind Mahinda Rajapaksa."

So what were the ideas and ideals he stood for? "Back when the Sihala Urumaya was formed, you couldn't say you were Sinhala or Buddhist. You'd be taken as a racist if you did. We were against that. We felt that the voices of the majority of this country were being silenced. If you think that makes me or those who stood with me chauvinists, that's erroneous." I tell him that the "chauvinist" tag was used thanks to misconceptions about the party's positions on democracy, equity, and social justice, and he agrees.

"We never affirmed a ‘Buddhist hegemony’. To be honest, that term is a myth. There is NO Buddhist hegemony. Look at history, at the wars we had to fight. Who made up the majority from among those who suffered? Yes, you can talk of numbers and say, ‘The Sinhala Buddhists were anyway in the majority even then.' But then who got the benefits? The Sinhala Buddhists? Certainly not! That's what the SU was arguing, and that’s what formed the political content of the very many back-and-forth debates I was engaged with, inter alia, Dr Dayan Jayatilleka in ‘The Island’.”

Malinda also argues against "misconstrued multiculturalism". "A multiculturalism that doesn't take note of historical realities and percentages is misconstrued. Federalists and those who vociferously support the 13th Amendment ‘talk’ multi-ethnic and multi-religious without talking numbers and percentages into account. They use terms such as ‘North’ and ‘South’ and immediately offer a picture to the ill-informed, especially abroad, of an island divided in the middle according to ethnic identity. They are content in drawing a boundary between North and South. But think of the map of Sri Lanka they use to support their thesis. That map (used by Eelamists and devolutionists) was drawn by the British, based on imaginary boundaries that had and has no scientific basis. Looking at this, you're telling me that half the coast and one-third of the land in this country must be given to less than 10% of the population? Absurd!"

Sociologists here and elsewhere have frequently commented on the social content of the Buddhist revivalist movement. I bring this up because Malinda, when talking about the role of Buddhism in Sri Lankan history, talks of Anagarika Dharmapala rather warmly. "We articulated and have been articulating what the likes of Gunadasa Amarasekera and Professor Nalin de Silva have stood for. They have been affirming what the Anagarika stated a century or so ago: that we must stand on our own feet and stop mimicking the West. People love to vilify us as racist, but that's crass."

To which I put my two cents: "If the Buddhist revivalist movement, of which the Anagarika was a leading figure, was so concerned about this, why then was it housed by people whose conduct was so antithetical to the spirit of what they were espousing?"

Malinda's reply is quick and concise: "People aren't saints. However, I believe that the revivalist program suffered on two counts. Firstly, it separated 'Sinhala' from 'Buddhist', which is basically what Professor Nalin states. Secondly, the revivalists failed to take stock of what breathes life into any nationalist project: an engagement with history and heritage. When it comes to the great debate between Colonel Olcott and the Anagarika therefore, I wouldn't take sides, but I would argue that (and I am no expert here) the Anagarika was the more wholesome of the two." I deliberately try to generalise this as a comment on the inadequacy of Olcott's program, and he laughs: "That's what YOU people do. Pick, choose, and generalise. The world doesn't operate that way."

Which is where he comes to the present. "People think I am against the separation of temple and state. How? By my (alleged) support for the Jathika Hela Urumaya. First of all, far from being an unconditional supporter of the JHU, I was one of the first to write against its decision to let monks contest. When Athuraliye Rathana Thero confirmed this to me, I told him then and there, 'You'll find me your biggest opponent. My column in the Sunday Island of that week (in February 2004) denounced the JHU.” But this does not mean I support a non-existent separation between temple and state." I tell him that the West may be drawing closer to achieving such a separation, and he disagrees: "The West never sustained that separation in the first place."

I can't quite explain it, but I find in Malinda the union of democrat and nationalist. The fault must be mine, because to this day I can't think of how the two can come together. "I have always stood for citizens' rights. I don't look at them on the basis of race or religion. On the other hand, I have always believed that if ever a community was ‘deprived’, that was the Sinhala Buddhist community. Again, look at history. Look at the leaders we had from 1948. NONE of them acknowledged Buddhism."

There's something missing in Malinda's argument though, and I am confused what it may be. I put to him that the ideology he's still articulating has more or less been accepted by the majority, even in a nuanced way, and that there's little more that we actually need to achieve. He disagrees. "Now you're implying that we don't need to demand. Of course we're not demanding. We're asking for representation. Let's not forget that Sri Lanka isn't a mono-religious state, that it does recognise other communities, and that it gives more space for religious holidays. We're way ahead of the West here and we accept that." To the point that he's being vilified for "mollycoddling" extremism, he replies, "Who hasn't been vilified or misread?"

I broach the subject of secularism again, and he grows impatient. "There's no secularism in this world. You talk secularism in the West to me when there are no Christian holidays, there's no 'In God We Trust' in the US dollar bill, and they don't impose bans on the burqa in Europe!" Malinda is for identity-assertion for EVERY community: "If we are not Sinhala or Tamil in the first instance, our being Sri Lankan becomes less meaningful. There are those who talk about 'One Nation, One Race, One Blood'. All poppycock.”

We then delve into political reforms. "I was writing about good governance, the shortcomings of the 17th Amendment long before November 21, 2014, followed by the dangers inherent in the 18th. Like I said before, I defended the State against the West, but this didn't mean I was complacent. I supported Rajapaksa in 2005 because I felt that Ranil Wickremesinghe, given what he did from 2001-2004, would have been a disaster in terms of dealing with the LTTE.”

There's always been a question I've wanted to ask this one-time sociology student, and I ask it now. "Do you think the intelligentsia in this country is responsible for how the West misinterprets us?" He asks me to elaborate on what I mean by "intelligentsia". "Anthropologists, sociologists, academics," I hastily say. He is cautious in his reply. "See, I wouldn't generalise like that. Of course some of them are responsible for creating and sustaining the image of Sri Lanka as the Tear or the Blood Drop of the Indian Ocean, but there are many fathers and mothers to this situation.”

"What of the ‘Sinhala Nation’ they think Sri Lanka is construed as?" I ask. "Again, that's poppycock. What that term presupposes is that the Sinhala Buddhists usurped other communities of their rightful place in the country. You go to the North and East and you’ll see archaeological evidence of Buddhism. There are people, including academics, who talk of a Tamil Buddhist culture in the North. If so, since Buddhism is eminently a scholarly religion, where is the Tamil Buddhist literature?”

Is there then a reason for why this collective is being attacked? “The Sinhala Buddhists of this country have always been accommodative of other faiths. When the South Indians invaded us, we took Hindu gods to our temples and worshipped them. We didn't do that with Jesus Christ when the Portuguese, Dutch, and British invaded us, maybe that's why some of those who profess their faiths are grinding axes with us."

Malinda is probably the most down-to-earth in his profession, and also the most frank. Words and sentences come easily to him. He writes with conviction. Given his background, that’s no surprise. Perhaps this is what has made him "respectable" in the eyes of the English-speaking, rootless elite in our country, for whom identity has become amorphous. He has certainly stood for the rights of the vernacular (he is a bilingual), and has frequently written on the originality of those who choose to write, read, and live their lives without any of those habits inculcated by lotus-eaters.

In the final analysis, then, that’s probably the best way to sum him up: that he’s no lotus-eater.

Uditha Devapriya is a freelance writer who can be reached at udakdev1@gmail.com

Cabinet re-shuffle: the cards that keep floating to the top

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President Maithripala Sirisena was hopeful.  He said the Cabinet reshuffle will provide a new impetus to Sri Lanka's development.  Prof G.L. Peiris was generous.  He said that it is unfair to blame Ravi Karunanayake for the economic failures and fiscal shortcomings of the government since he operated with clipped wings considering that the Treasury was under the Prime MInister and the banks with Kabir Hashim.  

Dullas Alahapperuma was cute.  He wonders why the government shifted Karunanayake after he had been named the best in the business of ministering finance just a few months ago. He also asked why Mangala Samaraweera who was showered with praise for his diplomacy was removed from the Ministry of External Affairs.  Valid points, these.  

While we wait on the relevant gazette notification there’s speculation about demands being made for control of various state institutions.  The Development Lotteries Board, SriLankan Airlines, the Colombo Stock Exchange and some sections of the Plantations Ministry have been mentioned in pound-of-flesh terms.  Apparently Karunanayake wants these.  Of course it would look utterly silly for such institutions to come under the purview of the Ministry of External Affairs and therefore there’s talk of an additional tag being conferred on Karunanayake.  It could very well come to pass because all it takes is to come up with some economy-related name and a ‘state minister’ label.  Job done.  

Let’s leave speculation aside. Let’s go with the real.  

Dullas has a point.  Prof Peiris has a point.  The President cannot but utter something optimistic.  However, as has been pointed out and not too kindly, booru kuttama mona vidihakata anuvath booruwomai enne.  ‘Booruwa’ is Sinhala for donkey (and booru would be donkeys) but in the context of the kuttama (deck of cards) it refers to the Jack.  The proper transliteration would have ‘joker’ instead of booruwa.  Well then, this is how it would go: whichever way one shuffles a pack of  jokers, jokers are what you would get.  

It’s a tad harsh but if it points to a certain dilemma.  There can be many reasons for a cabinet reshuffle.  If there was a loyalty-shift in Parliament and some ministers crossed lines, then of course empty portfolios would need filling.  Death also necessitates shift, depending on the size and importance of the particular ministry.  In this instance, the only possible reason is incompetence.   

Is the government telling us that Karunanayake did a bad job, as did Samaraweera?  What guarantee is there that either would handle a different subject better?  If removal from one ministry indicates inability, inefficiency, corruption etc., then shouldn’t the wise course of action be to appoint better people to these positions?  If Karunanayake cannot handle money, why is there talk of offering him some bucks-related institutions?  Weren’t there better people? 

From the point of view of the political project of this government it is hard to find fault with Samaraweera.  One may find the project itself to be sophomoric and even disastrous in terms of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the country, but if portfolios are about briefs and delivery, he has got a pass mark.  Not so Karunanayake.  All the indicators add up to an F, even if one were to give some compensatory brownie points for ‘inheritance’ (i.e. from the previous regime — provided of course that all the horror stories told over and over again are defensible).  

If the Finance Manager of a corporate is found to be incompetent would he or she be moved into HR and the HR head be made Finance Manager?  No.  The Finance Manager would be hoofed out, with or without compensation, depending on whether his ‘incompetence’ included hanky-panky.  In this instance, incompetence seems to have been established, but Karunanayake is still a member of the cabinet and the portfolio he now holds is as important as the one he lost, one can argue.  It’s not even a punishment transfer then!  

There seems to be the mistaken notion that party seniority or political clout is cause enough to demand portfolios and control of institutions/sectors.  We seem to have developed a political culture where the decision-makers have to make sure that every district, every ethnicity, every religious community, every constituent party in the case of a coalition government and even certain castes have to be represented in Cabinet.  Add to this the need for some gender-balance cosmetics and a bit of youthfulness and one cannot envy the task of the President and Prime Minister, especially since they have their own party-problems to sort out at least in part through portfolio-offer.     

They cannot complain though.  The President and Prime Minister did themselves in when they came up with the 19th Amendment which included a neat escape clause for them to go around the size-limit pertaining to the cabinet.  The kind of horseplay we have witnessed over the past few weeks could have been effectively prevented had they played statesman instead of politician, especially given the yahapalana rhetoric they indulged in and the political momentum they had.  

Make no mistake, this side of radical constitutional reform, we will continue to see these kinds of reshuffles by this and subsequent regimes.  Whichever way the reshuffling is done, it will smack of pound-of-flesh demands, trying to balance necessity with the need to retain political stability by the purchase of loyalty, and ultimately a musical chairs game among the incompetent, greedy and corrupt except that the number of chairs will be a constant.  

Things can be done differently.  While conceding that different political formations with different histories and predilections produce different systems, the Swiss example does have some lessons which unfortunately our constitution-makers either ignored or were ignorant of.  Switzerland, since 1948, has had just seven ministries which together are broad enough to cover all subjects.  The titles of the ministries themselves are enshrined in the constitution.  

There are no escape clauses such as those embedded in the 19th Amendment.  There are no ministerial goodies to be offered in return for switching political loyalty.  The incompetent and corrupt cannot hide, if such be the case.  There’s no frenzied shuffling.  The competent are known and are appointed.  They have to work hard.  They can’t pass the buck.  They can’t say ‘I couldn’t do it because such and such institutions were not under my control.’  And, if anyone is found to be out of order, he or she will not be accorded the out of switching ministries with a colleague.  

We are not Switzerland.  However, since there’s a lot of talk about reforms and constitutional amendment, and since the entire cabinet reshuffle has taken the appearance of a circus, the sober thing to do would be for the President and the Prime Minister to revisit the clauses pertaining to the cabinet.  Numbers matter, of course.  Subjects however are more important.  The reshuffling exercise has established this beyond a shadow of doubt.  


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

Royal’s legendary rugby team of 1988

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Which was the best team ever?  That’s a question that comes up frequently in all sports.  It’s a question that’s asked with reference to countries, clubs and schools.  The Trinity team of thirty years ago, for example, was the best ever, according to some.  The 1987 team, led by Tyrell Rajapakse, incidentally, was the Trinity team to win the schools’ rugby league, a feat that this year’s outfit was determined to emulate but was stopped by an equally determined bunch of Royalists led by Ovin Askey.  Royal won the first leg and thereby emerged league champs.  Two weeks later, Royal beat Trinity 13-8 to retain the Bradby.  

Tyrell’s team was awesome.  They won it all that year when twelve rival teams could only cross the Trinity line once.  Legends, certainly.  Will there be another Trinity team that will do better?  Only time can tell.  The Royal team of 1984 led by Sampath Agalawatte won the league, the sevens and the knock-out tournament, and that’s a record that remains to date. 

The Royal team led by Manik Weerakumar in 1976 defeated Trinity in the first leg (Longden Place) 35-0 and many thought the margin would stand the test of time.  I’ve heard tell that the Trinitians who were in the team that was mauled by Royal in 1976 dreamed of a day when Royal would better that score just so they would be divested of the ignominy of being ‘the worst drubbed team’.  I don’t know if this is really true, but if it was, then that loss must weigh less on their minds now.

We all want the ‘greats’ to be the greatest for all time.  Time passes and things change.  The school-game played over 60 minutes in the seventies and eighties is now an 80 minute affair.  Different rules call for different strategies and comparisons are beyond a certain point merely academic.  

Nevertheless we like to be nostalgic about teams we’ve known and/or admired.  The Royal College team of 1988 for example, led by Lasitha ‘Bonsa’ Gunaratne.  After Agalawatte’s ‘invincibles’ won the Bradby, Trinity won three years in a row. The teams led by Chiro Nanayakkara, Manjula Peiris and Suren Madanayake were roundly beaten in 1985, 1986 and 1987 respectively, the last being the low point.  And the fact of that ‘low point’ made Bonsa’s year especially sweet.     

Royal had a brilliant line that year and there were amazing moves originated by scrum-half Chanaka Seneviratne, put into play by Sanjeewa Abeysinghe and finished by the likes of Anura Dhammika, Bruce Cameron, Somesh Selvaratnam, Tilak Silva and Shantha Fernando.  Maybe they weren’t as fast or penetrative as Shah Dole and Imthie Marikkar of Trinity who had humiliated Royal in the previous year, but they were pure eye-candy for rugby enthusiasts nevertheless.  

The forwards were as formidable.  Bonsa, was a tall, powerful and highly mobile Number Eight with great footwork.  He was so good that he was recruited into the national team even while a schoolboy and went on to lead Sri Lanka.  Royal had the heaviest pack in the schools that year, thanks to the other two fat boys Mahima Wijesinghe and Madhawa Chandrasekera.  Janoda Thoradeniya and Thilina Balasuriya were solid in the lineouts and Niroshan Jayasinghe while  reliable Niroshan Jayasinghe out-hooked his counterparts throughout the regular season and during the Premadasa Trophy, ensuring that Royal had a massive possession-edge.  Alfred Hensman and Ruwan Jayasuriya were wing-forwards who constantly harassed the opposition in attack and defense.  

Royal’s season extended to include a two-match tour of Hong Kong.  The boys won both games and thereby remained unbeaten over 16 matches.  That’s rare.  Very rare.  

Was that the best ever team?  Who knows and who cares? What matters is that they were great.  They were great as were the teams led by Manik Weerakumar, Sampath Agalawatte and Tyrell Rajapakse and I am sure there are other teams which fit the ‘great’ bracket and who knows, may be considered to have risen above all the ones I’ve mentioned.   We remember for many reasons and some of the reasons are highly personal.  

For example, when the referee blew the long-whistle in Pallekele signaling that Royal had won the first leg as well as the league, all Royalists past and present privy to that moment would have felt they were over the moon.  How much higher can one get?  


Time and distance put things back into their proper perspective. On the 3rd of June, 2017 the batchmates of Bonsa, Mahima, Thora, Tilak, Madhawa, Shantha and of course Druvi Perera (who did not play that year but got colours in 1987) gathered as per custom on the evening of the Colombo leg (this time at the Orient Club).  The fate of the Bradby had already been decided.  The match, among other things, would have been discussed, but there’s no doubt that many of them would have revisited those heady second-term months of 1988.  And for a moment, Bonsa and his men probably grew taller and as tall as they were 29 years ago before time, event and personality brought them back to their true dimensions.   ‘The greatest ever,’ someone among them would surely think. And Tyrell Rajapaksa, if he heard about it, might smile but will not object, I’m sure.  

See also: Bonsa's incredible run in 1988 and MY most memorable Bradby moment

Those bloody Gunasekaras!

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A couple of weeks ago, Sampath Agalawatte, who was sharing a room with me at the Mahaweli Reach Hotel, told me of someone he wanted me to meet: ‘’your mother’s friend”.  That night, after Royal had beaten Trinity and secured the League Championship, I was introduced to a man with white hair and a white beard.  

“He knows your mother.”

I couldn’t recognize him.  Agale continued, “He was a visiting student from India.”

After a few minutes I realized that they were both conning and said so.  A few more words and I said “The tone, eyes and smile….you must be a Gunasekara!”

“Suraj, machang,” the ‘stranger’ said.  We talked.  And I remembered all the Gunasekaras of my time at Royal College.  I remembered an incident which I had not witnessed but was described vividly by a friend.  

The light was fading. The First XV of Royal College were going through a regular drill.  Giving them opposition was a ragtag bunch of second string players which included some junior players to make up the numbers.  On the sideline one of the coaches was keeping an eye while chatting with some friends, all Old Royalists.  Royal had a strong team that season and would go on to win the Bradby Shield.  The forwards were tough and the line was fast.  

It was a regulation move - slick hooking, quick feeding of the ball to the Fly-Half and then to the line.  Now we must keep in mind that in school rugby there’s a pretty wide chasm in terms of quality between the First XV and the rest of the squad.  Typically, in practices, the forwards would bulldoze their way and the line would penetrate the defence easily.  Not on that occasion though.  One of the centres sold a dummy to his counterpart and sliced through.  But he was brought down by a wing three-quarter who appeared to have come from nowhere.  

That happens sometimes of course.  Here’s the difference.  The boy who tackled the coloursman (and tackled him hard, let us note) was one of the several who ‘made up the numbers’ that evening.  He was not in the Second XV.  He wasn’t even an Under 17 player.  He was just 14.

The coach saw it all.  He didn’t know the junior players.  He is reported to have muttered, ‘must be another one of those bloody Gunasekaras.’

Which bloody Gunasekaras, though?  Gunasekara is a common name after all.  Well, in the late seventies and eighties among all the Gunasekaras, Gunasekeres, Gunasekeras, Goonesekaras, Goonesekeras etc. of the varied spelling there was one lot that was noticed for skill, spirit, incorrigibility and also for a strain of decency that seemed to be a pronounced element of their DNA.  

The first Gunasekara I met was Suranjith.  He played George Bamberger in Royal’s production of Peter Shaffer’s ‘Black Comedy’ in 1973.  My mother was in charge of the school’s dramatic society, Dramsoc, and she would often take myself, my brother and sister for rehearsals at the ‘Little Theater’.  It was a supporting role that Suranjith played.  I only remember that he blustered in and out.  The only line I remember is the following aside by Brindsley Miller (played by Mahen Perera) “I hope Carol’s monster father likes my culture and buys some!” (Carol was his fiance).  I didn’t know that he was a Gunasekara.  And the name meant nothing to me.

In the years that followed, that name came up many times, primarily through the Royal College souvenir put out for the Big Match, again an exercise my mother of many interests and responsibilities was involved in.  They came up in the stats section or rather the relationship-segment of that part of the souvenir.  They came under ‘Fathers and sons who played for Royal’ and ‘Brothers who played for Royal’.  I noticed that there were several generations of Gunasekaras who had played in the Royal-Thomian, several captains and many remarkable performances with bat and ball.  


Suranjith didn’t play cricket.  Neither did his six brothers.  There were only one Gunasekara who played cricket during the time I was at Royal, Lionel (in the mid seventies).  I ought to have been intrigued by the fact that there were no Gunasekaras playing cricket in the eighties but wasn’t because of a chance remark that I had overheard.  I can’t remember when or where it happened, but again it was my mother who said it.  

She was repeating, I believe, something that Suranjith’s brother Rabindranath (‘Raba’) had told her.  Apparently Raba had taken up rugby simply because there were too many cricketing pundits in the family.  He felt that he would be overloaded with advice from so many people that it would have been counter-productive.  Made sense. His father Valentine captained Royal, as did father’s cousin, Channa.  In fact all of Valentine’s brothers played for Royal: DB, Lionel, Harry, Christie and.  ‘HT’ coached the junior cricketers at Royal and ‘EC’ (‘Kataya’) acted as though he was convinced he could coach anyone in any sport.  Add to this illustrious bunch all the descendants of their grandfather, D.B. Gunasekara (snr) and that’s a pretty formidable and intimidating set of advisors to contend with.  Rugby must have appeared attractive to Raba. 

Anyway, Raba played rugger.  He captained Royal in 1979 and under his leadership Royal retained the Bradby Shield that Rohantha Peiris’ boys had secured the year before.  I am not privy to the conversations that may have taken place in the Gunasekara household about sports options, but the younger boys all followed Raba.  They were all fit, lean and fast.  Some were more fearless than the others, maybe because they were more inclined to rebel or to be naughty.  

They were all impish and always ready to laugh, sometimes at themselves.

Mohammed Haseeb (one of the best actors that the school produced) once told me how he and Raba became best of buddies.  They were among dozens lined up before Raba’s uncle, Kataya, the Vice Principal.  It was the annual interview of potential prefects.  The phone had rung and Kataya had reached behind his chair, picked up a bottle of Dettol and said ‘hello’.  The boys before him had been amused but their fear of the man bested their amusement. Only two had broken into guffaws, Raba and Haseeb. Kataya had answered the phone and curtly pointed to the two and said ‘get out’.  They had gone out, convinced that they had said goodbye to prefectship.  They were the only two who were appointed sans an interview!   

Suraj (known to the family as ‘Devo,’ short for Devendranath — yes, they were either ‘Naths’ or ‘Jiths’), who was next in line, was mild.  He was fast and was a winger.  Ajith, my batchmate, was the naughtiest of the lot and I know that his skipper of 1984, Sampath Agalawatte, and coach, Malik Samarawickrema had a hard time keeping him in line.  But he was an excellent centre.  

In later years Ajith would sober up and prove how good he was with his hands.  He’s a man of few words now, but in him is a poet who will probably remain unknown to the world.  

Suren (Surendranath) was like Suraj, soft in his ways, but fast.  Another winger.  Injo was a less incorrigible version of Ajith.  Amrith, the youngest, was in the rowing team I believe but must have played a bit of rugger in the junior teams.  He is not a ‘Jith’ nor a ‘Nath’ and therefore the exception to their parents’ fixations when naming their children.  The last two completed their secondary school education in the USA where by that time their father Valentine, one of the best architects the country has produced, was teaching.  

Ajith, as I said, was my batchmate, but I really got to know him only after he left school and was studying for his A/Ls.  He was at the time staying with his coach Malik.  My mother asked me to help him with his English Literature.  Ajith was not known for his academic work, but I quickly found that he could do well if he put his mind to it. 


Suren used to come home often.  My mother, who had retired by then, taught him English Literature and I believe Greek and Roman Civilization.  Whenever she couldn’t make it to class, my sister taught him GRC.  I would meet him in Boston not too long afterwards where he visited a friend who happened to be my roommate.   Always with a smile, that’s what I remember.  I last saw him more than 10 years ago.  That was again around the time of the Bradby.  Raba had come for the match and quite unexpectedly took ill and passed away.  Suren was accompanying his mother, Ranee, a lovely and indefatigable lady who, along with Uncle Valentine very kindly took care of me for two months before classes began in the school I had enrolled in (my parents had ‘packed me off’ fearing that I might become a victim of the bheeshanaya that was sweeping across the length and breadth of the country; this was in December 1988).  

I have only one recollection associated with Suranjith after his Bamberger days.  I still remember Uncle Valentine throwing a fit listening to a message his eldest son had left on the answering machine. “Hi Valentine and Ranee….” was how it began.  Uncle Valentine was and I believe still is a God-fearing Catholic (he would go to church everyday with Aunty Ranee, sometimes taking me along as well — “not to convert you,” he always assured).  He was strong in his faith and had strong opinions too, on almost every subject.  He was assured.  He was kind.  Aunty Ranee too.  

Injo and Amrith were so much younger that I never got to hang out with them.  The only girl in the family, Nashtaka, was the quintessential Akka, taking care of the kid brothers, sometimes taking 2 or 3 of them to school on her push bicycle.  

I asked Suraj about all of them.  That’s how I heard that Suranjith had died of a heart-attack a few years ago.  The entire family is living in various parts of the USA.  Wherever they are, there must be laughter.  The Gunasekaras of my generation didn’t come off as philosophers when in school, but they were all philosophical.  They knew when to be serious and when to be light.  Obviously they must have all slowed down over the years and made their mark in their respective fields.  

What counts for me and for many in my generation, is this: if there was one family that added a little something to whatever is essentially ‘Royal,’ it has to be the Gunasekaras.  The Rugger-Gunasekaras, as far as our time is concerned.  



And they are still dropping parippu even 30 years later

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First India dropped dhal (Parippu), then they dropped the IPKF and ensured 22 years more of death, destruction and displacement
Exactly thirty years ago something happened which altered the course of history in Sri Lanka.  Wrong.  ‘Happened’ is a bad word for it implies an agency-less occurrence.  It’s like saying ‘it rained yesterday,’ which of course is different from ‘there was a flood’ since the latter phenomenon at least in the case of Sri Lanka over the past few days can be directly linked to human arrogance, ignorance and rank stupidity.  

Something was done, then.   Thirty years ago.    Does anyone remember?  Perhaps not.  I did not remember either; not until Jayasuriya Wijedasa sent me a cryptic email under the following subject line: “First invasion of independent Sri Lanka 4th June 1987.  And this is what he wrote: “30th anniversary in 5 days... Hope you are planning to highlight this tragedy and ensuing calamity to us.”   Clicked.  Had to be what has since come to be known as the “Parippu Drop”.  

We have better recollections of the 29th of July, 1987 because that’s when Rajiv Gandhi and J.R. Jayewardene signed the infamous Indo-Lanka Accord.  We know of the ‘first invasion’ but few would remember the date.  Operation Poomalai, as it was called, is something we should not forget, though.

The Indian Air Force airdropped 25 tons of food and medicine into areas held by the LTTE at a point when the security forces had essentially corralled the terrorist outfit in Vadamaarachchi.  It could be called the  Nandikadal of 1987 and to ascertain the significance of that lost opportunity all we need to do is to take note of the gains of defeating the LTTE 22 years later.  Let’s first do that.

There will be those who claim that ‘the problem’ is still unresolved.  There’s some truth in this.  The demands made by Tamil nationalists (and chauvinists) are still out there.  ‘Normalcy’ is yet to be obtained.  Then again we are talking of a 30 year war and one which exacerbated mutual mistrust among communities, caution on the part of successive governments given that close friends and indeed former members of the LTTE are using the very same rhetoric of that outfit.  On the other hand, one could argue that things are no better and no worse than they were, say, before 1977 and the Batakotte (Vadukoddai) Resolution of the TULF in the seventies.  However, if we take May 18, 2009 as a point of reference, we have to acknowledge the following: a) no war, b) no abduction of children and forced conscription, c) no terrorist attacks, d) no Tamil politician enslaved by the LTTE, e) no threat of hostage-taking for purposes of creating human shields, f) no major obstacles for people to engage in livelihoods, g) no waylaying of supplies.  

June 4, 1987.  Historic for all the bad reasons.  That nevertheless was a landmark but not necessarily the beginning.  India’s direct and indirect support of the LTTE from arming to funding and training insurgents predates 1987 and is well documented.  

The Parippu Drop precipitated the dumping of the Indo-Lanka Accord and with it the conferring of a certain respectability to the myth of a ‘historical homeland’ with well-demarcated boundaries.  Tamil nationalism is still squeezing juice of that particular rotten orange.  

The Indo-Lanka Accord allows India (and others) to keep harping about the 13th Amendment as though it was cast in stone when in fact it was obtained through an agreement which was observed in the breach, india being the major transgressor.  

India agreed, for example, to oversee the surrender of arms by all militant groups.  We know what happened.  Quite interestingly (and this I chanced upon only a few minutes ago), the Accord has this: “These proposals are conditional to an acceptance of the proposals negotiated from 4.5.1986 to 19.12.1986.”  In other words, ‘July 29, 1987’ was in the making from May 4, 1986!  What these ‘proposals’ are weren’t mentioned in the agreement.

India embarrassed itself in Sri Lanka.  First of all, the reasons offered were ridiculous.  Twenty five tons was just not enough to feed a ‘starving’ population.  The ‘hurt’ of Tamil brethren in India being the prompt was as silly an excuse as any.  There would have been more people starving in Tamil Nadu on June 4, 1987 than in Vadamaarachchi or in the entire Jaffna Peninsula,  I am willing to wager.  In any event, India helped create the conditions for the operation that the Parippu Drop was designed to stop and therefore the moralizing was melodramatic and little else.  

The Parippu Drop was followed by the Indo-Lanka Accord and that brought the IPKF to Sri Lanka.  It would be good to recall that less than three months later, on October 21and 22, 1987, the Indian Army entered the premises of the Jaffna Teaching Hospital in Jaffna and killed between 60-70 patients and staff. One can’t draw a straight line from June 4 to October 21 and 22 of course, but there are things we know which force us to conclude that India was bad news back then.   

We know that Rajiv Gandhi described the process as ‘the beginning of the Bhutanization of Sri Lanka’.  We know that for India, it was a coup (and this too has been admitted) to get the LTTE to agree that Trincomalee would be the capital of the merged Northern and Eastern provinces. 

Admittedly, India has helped Sri Lanka on occasion but probably not due to ‘lessons learned’.    India sent three ships filled with relief items for flood victims.  India, according to some, helped the Government by sharing intelligence on the LTTE during the last stages of the war.  Some would argue that India’s interventions cushioned some of the blows aimed at Sri Lanka by the USA and the European Union.  These are initiatives that are not uncommon.  There have been times, we must not forget, when India zipped-up when Sri Lanka needed military help whereas Pakistan responded immediately.

Today, India appears to have dropped the kind of schoolmarmish devolution rhetoric that was a staple for Indian diplomats and foreign ministers for more than two decades.  Nevertheless, India has not called for the scrapping of the 13th Amendment.  It is pertinent to point out here that Col. R. Hariharan, Head of Intelligence, IPKF, openly admitted ‘The Accord retains the potential as an instrument of Indian influence in the region’.  This he said five years ago.  He is correct.  

We have to keep in mind that through it all, i.e. the friendship-claim, largesse-show and other such tokenism, India has insisted that Sri Lanka play within the parameters of ‘Indian Interests’.  Not that it is wrong because that’s what countries do.  However, for all the history associated with June 4, 1987 (and that includes the before and after), Sri Lanka should never drop her guard not least of all because India would not drop her guard either (although she shot herself in the foot with unpardonable incompetence with respect to reading the LTTE between 1987 and 1990).  

There’s a simple reason: Parippu is being dropped even now, except it is being called different names.  And not just by India, of course.


This article was first published by Colombo Telegraph on June 4, 2017.  
Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer.  Email: malindasenevi@gmail.com.   Twitter: malindasene.

The nation rises…

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Calamity is responded to with horror.  It produces grief and helplessness. It prompts anger and finger-pointing.  The blame game is a constant undercurrent which gradually rises to the surface, often obliterating tragedy, the need to address post-tragedy relief and rehabilitation issues and the ultimate need to ensure there’s no repetition.  There’s blame for flawed or absence of policies, for  being unprepared, for being slow, for non-delivery etc., and a manifest non-acknowledgment of contribution.  We’ve seen all this before.  Calamities are painted by these things.  And yet, they also bring out the best in human beings.  This too we’ve seen before.  

It would be impossible to enumerate all efforts great and small to rescue people, and provide food, water, clothing, shelter, medicine and where necessary medical treatment.  It would be impossible to name all the good people who, individually and collectively, did the little they could to help their fellow citizens.  We can speak only of things generally.

First, let’s leave the negatives aside. For now.  People stood up.  Regardless of where they were from, what their vocations were, preferred and ascribed identities, age, gender and so on.  I can only speak of people I know personally or are known to me in social media or those involved in rescue and relief work whose contributions slipped into the forums I inhabit.  In a word, inspiring.  


They were tireless.  They were on the ground.  They moved and they moved others to move.  They used all communication technologies at their disposal and networks they were part of.  They created new networks when such were required to deliver and to ensure the process was efficient.  When things went wrong, they innovated.  They used whatever information they had, verified whenever this was possible, warned people who were in danger and alerted people in a position to help.  Naturally there were frayed tempers, there was frustration and disgust, but they did not allow themselves to be distracted too much by such things.  

Naturally, too, one can say ‘they could have done better’.  That goes without saying. They did and are still doing their best.  Amidst the cheers, not forgetting the inevitable jeers, one must add.  

No one asked them to.  No one demanded that they step in.  Aggregate all that and among other things we get a thing called hope.  Some may call it a resilient strain in the ‘National DNA’.  This should not surprise because it is ingrained in the vast majority that they have to put aside all difference, past animosities, egos and such and rejoice at the magula and be there at the maranaya.  Metaphorically of course.  


It is hard, as pointed out, to name them all, these national heroes who are not taking ‘selfies’ of heroics to advertise heroism.  There are however some observations (again, of thousands of observations impossible to gather) that say something about the last few days.  
Someone wrote and others shared the following: "මම"තේමාව කරගත්ත සමාජයේ......"අපි"තේමාව කරගත්ත උන් තමයි මිනිස්සු” (“Those who made ‘us’ the theme in a society that has ‘I’ as its theme…they are the truly human”).   That’s a quality that is deeply resident, I like to think.  We call upon it in moments such as this and it always our call, every single time.  Of course it would be presumptuous to say that it is a quality peculiar to Sri Lankans.  It’s just good, however, that it exists.  

There were more directly political observations.  Jonathan Frank reflected on volunteerism and came up with some conclusions: “1. We don't need a centralized, authoritarian state, 2. People can manage/ govern their own affairs in their communities through mutual, collectivist association, 3. Given the circumstances the people triumphed and exemplified egalitarian principles [and therefore] an Anarchist/Socialist society is possible, [so] don't stop believing!”

I would say that’s easy extrapolation but I will not say ‘stop deluding yourself’ for there’s spirit there which, at least in times of calamity, makes a difference and in its aftermath prompts us to revisit and evaluate the structures of governance.  

What we can definitely observe is the energy and innovation that this country is endowed with.  The citizens were able and more importantly, willing.  We have no way of predicting when and where natural tragedy will strike, but here’s an initiative based on the thinking that it is best to be ready. 
   

Sudara Pathirana, Saranga Anjana Wijerathna, Dr Pathum Kemer and 24 others are thinking ahead (as perhaps we all should and should have after what happened a year ago!). They are starting a ‘Rapid Deployment Unit’.  Here’s the gist of the announcement posted by Sudara:  

“This is an initiative that anticipates future floods. This team will have doctors and ex-military guys. We have got a Kayak and some medical equipment already.  Pathum Kerner will be the head of medical team and coordination will be done by Saranga and I. We need of your help to buy boats. We have got donations of about 2 lakhs through our friends and we need some more. Also we would like to have volunteers (prefer if you have been trained for disaster management or have experience, but not a must).”

I am sure there are not the only bunch of young people who are thinking along these lines.   They are thinking ahead, all of them.  They are not only anticipating calamities but are operating on the assumption that whoever or whatever fails those in distress their fellow-citizens should not and will not.  From there, it seems logical that they will go on to disaster mitigation.  Of course there’s very little you can do with a few hundred thousand rupees and two or three dozens of volunteers.  However, if we’ve learned anything from the past few days it is that people come together fast and collectives grow in numbers.  

There’s, then, a state of citizens that is in the making.  They are not calling for insurrection, but what they’ve done so far shows that they can resurrect a system that is clearly showing signs of collapse or rather, replace it with something that actually works.  Sooner or later they will encounter the illicit timber feller and all relevant accomplices.  They will confront legislation and institutions that stand in the way.  They may encounter the perverse ways of a mode of development and how certain state actors who are comrades in arms in rescue and relief operations are then called upon to defend these destructive institutional, legal and political structures processes.  They will be tested, this generation that has carried the nation over the past few days.   They have generated a lot of hope.  Let’s hope they will prevail.  

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

Siri Gunasinghe left behind light and warmth

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TRIBUTE




When I heard that Siri Gunasinghe had passed away, I posted on Facebook an article based on an interview I had done with him more than 15 years ago by way of tribute.  My friend A.S. Fernando wrote a short response: “I think the last link of a great generation is gone!”  

When did that ‘great’ generation begin and who made it ‘great’?  H.L. Seneviratne gives a clue in an article published in Colombo Telegraph:


One of the semi official tasks that the University of Ceylon undertook as it established itself in the new campus at Peradeniya in the early 1950s, was the regeneration of national culture in the form of the arts. This was reflected in a seminar held at Peradeniya in 1956, whose proceedings were published in the same year under the title Traditional Sinhalese Culture. Prominent among the scholars who succeeded in that endevour were Siri Gunasinghe and Ediriweera Sarachchandra. While Sarachchandra’s work was confined to literature and drama, Siri Gunasinghe stood out for his versatility, his interests covering every field of the arts. So much so that his adversaries who had embraced a different kind of cultural resurgence – a militant, prudish and philistine Sinhala Buddhist nationalism—derisively called him sakala kala vallabha, “the husband of all the arts”. 

H.L. Seneviratne’s almost customary broadsides against anything associated with Sinhala Buddhist nationalism notwithstanding he does capture stature and locates Siri Gunasinghe in the relevant history.     

It took me back to an afternoon in early February 2002.  Peradeniya.  He was visiting a friend and it was at the friend’s house that I interviewed him as per instructions from my boss, the Editor-in-Chief of the ‘Sunday Island,’ Manik De Silva.  Listening to him, I still remember, was like witnessing a documentary on the literary history of the University of Ceylon in particular and the evolution of the Sinhala poem in general. 

There was some personal history involved.  Back in the late sixties when my mother decided to do her teaching diploma in Peradeniya, we stayed in the official quarters of Dr Gunasinghe who was on sabbatical leave that year. Years later I would come across his first collection of poems "Mas le nethi eta" (translatable as ‘Bare Bones”) at home.  So the name ‘Siri Gunasinghe’ which I had heard off and on, got a tag, ‘poet’.  

That day, on my way to Meevatura, I ran into a campus mate who was then an instructor of physical education in the university. When I told him that I was going to meet Siri Gunasinghe, he regretted that he had some urgent work to do, and that otherwise he would have loved to accompany me. He mentioned the book and said "mata mathakai potha, satha panahay neda mila?" (I remember the book, it was 50 cents, right?).

That book, worth fifty cents, was a landmark in modern Sinhala literature, so much so that it would be meaningless to assign a value to it.

Dr Gunasinghe told me his story and I wrote it for the ‘Sunday Island’ of February 10, 2002.  Here are some excerpts:

He was born in Ruwanwella, his mother’s hometown, in 1925 and was the fifth in a family of five brothers and two sisters. His father, a businessman, was from Galle. He had his early education in the Akmeemana Sinhala School and then moved to Mahinda College, Galle. From his early days, Siri had developed a love for English poetry. The Silumina had actually published a couple of his early experiments in Sinhala free verse. Gunasinghe acknowledges that these were "not serious".

I asked him about his teachers and who among them influenced him. "Actually I can’t think of a single individual who was critically important.” While acceding that this might sound ungrateful, he went on to mention Mr. Handy, who taught Pali at Mahinda, explaining that ‘his style of teaching had a kind of impact’.  Mr. Edirisinghe (who later became principal of Dharmapala) had taught him history.

He also mentioned Mr. Thanabalasingham as the teacher who fuelled his interest in literature and in particular his fascination with free verse. "Thanabalasingham had been a recent graduate from Peradeniya. He was different and this may have been because he would have come under the tutelage of people like Ludowyk, Passe and Souza. He liked poets like Pound, Eliot and Auden." Gunasinghe himself admits that Yeats, Lawrence, Eliot, Joyce and later on Lawrence Durrel were among his favourites.

Gunasinghe had entered the University of Ceylon in 1945 and studied Sanskrit, Pali, Sinhala and History, specialising in Sanskrit in the Faculty of Oriental Studies. In addition to his studies or perhaps as a part of it, Gunasinghe had experimented with the free verse form. 

"I found the traditional 4 line stanza very limiting and in contrast the free verse form was liberating. The 4 line stanza frustrated me. It typically led to soppy language. In fact it crippled the language. I realised that there was a lot of natural rhythm in the Sinhala language which could be creatively exploited in free verse."

After graduating he had joined the faculty at Peradeniya. In 1950 he had been awarded a government scholarship to London to do his PhD. However, he had had disagreements with his professor at the London School of Oriental Studies. "We could not agree on a topic. He was a grammarian and wanted me to work on Panini. This is usually the case. Professors want their students to do research on the topics that interest them. I wanted to study the techniques of painting. There was a whole body of literature on this subject in Sanskrit. Maybe he was not aware of it."

Around that time, Gunasinghe had gone to Paris for a week, where he met with Prof. Renou whom he had got to know in Ceylon. "I told him about my situation and being a Sanskritist, advised me to move to Sorbonne. Prof. Dupont, an art historian, and Prof.Filliozat, a student of Indian culture, along with Renou were my teachers. I would say that Prof. Dupont had the most influence on me, maybe because of his interest in Eastern Art and Architecture."

Upon completing he returned to the Sanskrit Department at Peradeniya.

Before mas le nethi eta, Gunasinghe had a couple of poems published in the Sinhala Society Magazine. This was around 1946. He had also written some critical essays on modern Sinhala poetry. Mas le nethi eta came out in 1955. The book had got a lot of publicity. Since it constituted a radical departure from the traditional verse form, it had come under severe attack at the hands of the Colombo poets. Gunasinghe said that G.B. Senenayake has also published a couple of poems in this form. However, it was Gunasinghe’s book and the storm it generated that made people consider free verse as a viable and indeed liberating form of poetry.

All that happened afterwards is now well known. In a sense, Parakrama Kodituwakku, Monica Ruwanpathirana, Ratna Sri Wijesinghe and of course Mahagama Sekera owe a lot to Siri Gunasinghe. I told him that some people have criticised him, arguing that his style is a mere anukaranaya (imitation) of a western verse form. 

"It depends. Poetry is not just about form, it is about language use and subject as well. Therefore I disagree".

He recalled that Peradeniya at that time was a seat of learning. I asked him about his relations with people like Sarachchandra and Gunadasa Amarasekera. "I was often at odds with them both when we discussed art and literature. Sarachchandra was a Romantic in outlook and was not a student of modern literature. He considered Gunadasa a disciple. He liked disciples, in fact. So he boosted Gunadasa. I didn’t want to be anyone’s disciple. We had heated arguments, especially on matters of form and criticism. We remained friends, nevertheless. In fact I did the first set of costumes for ‘Maname’ and the make-up too."

Actually it was during this time that he met his wife Hemamali. She was the first Maname Kumari. I laughed and observed, "Doing the make-up would have brought you close". He laughed with me, agreeing, and said that the relationship grew thereafter. She completed a PhD in linguistics in the University of Victoria and now teaches English at Camosun College.

In the late sixties he got a one-year appointment at the University of Victoria, Canada. He went on no-pay leave. "At the end of the year, the students wanted me to stay for another year. I contacted the Head of the Department at Peradeniya and asked him, informally, if my leave could be extended. He said yes, to I agreed to stay on.

"I developed the syllabus, prepared the course material and started teaching. Then I asked for leave, officially. I was refused, and was told that Mrs. Bandaranaike had wanted all professors abroad to return to Sri Lanka immediately. I appealed for a reconsideration of my request. There was some correspondence, but at one point I got angry because I heard that another professor in Canada was given an extension.  In January 1971 I got a letter asking me to return by the end of December 1970! I wrote back saying I am not resigning, but I am done!"

Before leaving for Canada, in which country he has spent over 30 years now, Gunasinghe brought out two collections of poetry, "Abhinikmana" and "Rathu Kekulu", as well as a novel "Hevanella" ("Shadow" later translated in English by his wife). Since then he has written another collection of verse, "Alakamanda" (roughly, a beautiful, paradisial place) and another novel "Mandarama". His third novel, "Miringuva Elleema" (Capturing the mirage) is to be published by S. Godage.

"I now write in spoken Sinhala. It has been a conscious decision because it is the language of the people. In fact I once wrote an essay titled ‘Isn’t there a grammar for the spoken language?’ in a collection edited by Ajith Thilakasena called ‘Language suitable for modern times’. I have argued for the dropping of the ‘na-na la-la’ distinction because we don’t adhere to this in the colloquial form. I have been bothered by the classical-colloquial distinction. Even J.B. Dissanayake who writes extensively on language usage, prefers to be ‘academic’ rather than expressing himself in the colloquial form.

"There seems to be a general fear about language. This should not be so. Language does not control you, you control language. There’s a thing called ‘vyaktha’ language, i.e. erudite language. The vyaktha part should not be in the grammar but in the vocabulary."

Unlike those who ‘derisively called Gunasinghe a sakala kala vallabha’ and those who saw in him a warrior against any and every voice that refused to salaam anything and everything the country and its people were not, Gunasinghe did not get entangled in the traps of false dichotomy.  He was a scholar, a free thinker and one, one might say, who embodied in approach and practice recommended in the Kalama Sutra, the Buddhist Charter of Free Inquiry.  

He’s gone now.  The tributes will pour from all quarters.  Uvindu Kurukulasuriya offered some early observations.  This is what he wrote:

Nirvana!

This is something that was released on the Colombo Telegraph youtube channel a few years ago.  It was penned and sent to me by Siri Gunasinghe’s wife Hemamali on the occasion of her 90th birthday.  My son added the visuals.

Hemamali was the first Maname Princess.  She was with Siri Gunasinghe until the very end.  Was the sword offered to the Veddah or did the Veddah grab it?  Are women fickle? Opportunists?  What is the difference betwen goodness and fickleness?  Are they binary opposites?  Is there fickleness that is entwined in goodness?  Is there goodness that cohabits with fickleness?  I feel these are the questions that Sarachchandra raised.  Although Ediriweera Sarachchandra’s work was tied to his personal life, the lives of his players were not necessarily similar.  It would be good if those who spin stories about actors and actresses think again.  

You.  You are the nirvana that I seek!

Krisantha Sri Bhaggiyadatta made a sober observation a few minutes ago, “...and yet the free verse remained enslaved….’  He is correct.  There’s a tendency to confuse the advent and embracing of free verse with emancipation.  Freedom of/from structure is one thing, its employment is another in terms of intended ends.  There are, as Pierre Bourdieu said ‘structuring structures and structured structures’.   Structure and agency in a dialectic if you will.  The character of any particular exercise is evidenced by the nature of the engagement, the objective and of course color, tone and music.  Poor prose (or indeed good prose) cut into lines to yield a ‘poetic structure’ as per the visual of ‘free verse’ is not good prose.  And neither does it fuel emancipatory projects. Siri Gunasinghe never made the kind of wild claims that those who revere him often make.  He was a scholar.  A sober human being.  He did not confuse poetry and scholarship with rhetoric, or poet and scholar with rhetorician.  

When an individual as accomplished as Siri Gunasinghe passes on at such a ripe old age after outliving all outstanding men and women of his generation, it is customary to say ‘he was the last of the greats’.  A.S. is correct.  But then, the man himself, one feels, would dismiss such tags, not least of all because he knew enough history to understand that there are no great or lesser ages or generations.

My last Siri Gunasinghe moment was one where this incomparable man who was at once a Sanskritist, an art historian, poet, novelist and film-maker was absent.  He would have been 91 then and was bedridden, I was told.  Siri Gunasinghe was present in tribute and recollection that afternoon.  It was at the Colombo University.  It was a modest celebration where his collection of books was formally gifted to the University.  The great man was represented by his brother.  

But then again, how can there be a final Siri Gunasinghe ‘moment’ this side of death to anyone who is interested in the Sinhala language and the enormous and varied literature of that language?    

Perhaps his family, in a short note, said it best: “Today the world is a dark and cold place, but  his light and warmth are still with us.”


A separate state, anyone?

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Just before sitting down to write this morning (June 7, 2017), I received a notification on social media. It was about a panel discussion at the Public Library to be held later in the afternoon.   The title was in Sinhala.  It read as follows: ‘Let us defeat the constitution, let us get rid of Ranil.’

It implies on first reading a call for anarchy, but the organizers/publicists were probably referring to the proposed new constitution, the A-Z of which has not exactly been shared with the general, by the way.  The other call is for the (political?) defeat of the Prime Minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe.  The identity of the speakers (Ven Bengamuwe Nalaka Thero, Ven Omare Kassapa Thero, Dr Nalin De Silva and Rear Admiral Sarath Weerasekera) gives us some clues when dissecting ‘true intent’.  

Their (collective) concern, going by what they’ve said and done over the past several decades, is not hard to obtain: constitutional reform that amount to wrecking the unitary character of the state and conceding ground to Tamil chauvinism on the one hand, and a leader who is at odds with the country’s interests.  It is not about anarchy.  It is about regime change, but not necessarily one that seeks the ouster of President Maithripala Sirisena; after all the legend doesn’t say ‘Let’s get rid of Ranil and Maithripala.’

We have seen all this before, except that objection to constitutional reform has been about different elements and with different personalities being targeted for ouster.  When the 18th Amendment was brought, there was also a hue and cry.  The call was for its defeat and for the removal of those in power at the time, particularly Mahinda Rajapaksa.  

Is it simply a matter of getting the ‘right guy’ (read ‘our guy’) to rule us?  Is it simply a matter of tweaking the constitution (or not tweaking it) so that our political preferences are served? 

Dhamma Dissanayake,  Department of Political Science, Colombo University, who has written much on issues of governance, constitutional reform and political culture shared some interesting observations in an article titled “රාජ්යකරණයේ ආඩම්බරය සහ ආපදා රාජ්යය (‘Statecraft(ing) and the disaster state”) in the Lankadeepa (July 2, 2017).

“The state apparatus set up by the British to suit their colonialist plundering purposes, in other words the political and administrative as well as structures pertaining to justice, education, health etc., still remain.  The rulers of this country have not demonstrated the will, the wisdom, the need or a program to adjust all this so there is even some degree of relevance to the local context and aspirations, never mind a restructuring that yields a quality product.  What was done was what should not have been done.  They went along with the same state apparatus, the same economic system and same methodologies.  The rulers did not suffer, it was the nation and the people who did.  This is how the rulers laid the foundation to produce a “disaster state” or facilitated such a construction.  There were some laudable efforts, true, but since 1948 what we’ve had is a “disaster state.”’

Dhamma is obviously riding on the topical here, but he is clearly faulting the structure of the state, the institutional apparatus, the political culture and the ’imperatives’ flowing from a particular economic system for the overall disaster which is no longer possible to sweep under the carpet. He poses some interesting questions: “Why didn’t the rulers have a plan to manage disaster? Were they incapable?  Are the state and the rulers inadequate?  Were the rulers simply lazy?  Was it because they didn’t are about the country or the citizens?  Is it that the people are stupid?”

All these questions lead to another which, again, Dhamma had asked in a previous article also published in the Lankadeepa.  He has essentially said that the issue is not about regime-change, not about replacing one party with another, one leader with another, but the construction of a different state which, let us add, is not a proposition that speaks to or of the tired and lie-infested debate over ‘unitary’ and ‘federal’.  A different order, no less, is what Dhamma has proposed. A ‘separate state’ that is also separated from the much-hyped debate about traditional homelands, ethnic enclaves, frilled grievances and inflated aspirations.  

That’s where we are at right now.  We are not mis-labeling here as has been done in the past where antipathy to a particular government the prompts shrill exclamation ‘failed state’.  The issue is not about constitutional-tweaking to favor a particular outcome preference or about faith in a leader or set of leaders or a political party or a political coalition.  It is about re-haul.  It is about revisiting the current branches of the state which any objective assessment would deserve nothing more than a failing grade.  The legislative, judiciary and executive have separately and together failed.   The fault is with the structure and also lies with the personnel who prop structure even as they are produced by the structure.  

The political parties have failed us, all of them and not just the two main parties which directly or indirectly carry the smaller entities.  They will not give us a separate state because, as Dhamma observes, they are not motivated to do so, do not have the wisdom to see the need, and certainly lack the competence even if they had those other rare qualities.  

What needs to be recognized (and fast) is that we have all to lesser or greater degrees believed that the state (as it exists) will correct its flaws or have the flaws corrected rather and eventually deliver.  We have believed that there will be leaders and parties that will rise above the political culture and set things right.  We have all got to acknowledge that we were wrong.  That we were and are deluded.  

We have to start from scratch.  And let us be clear that what is being proposed is not bulldozing existing structures and building anew.  That is for later.  For now, it is imperative that we shed our illusions about this state.  It is imperative that we entertain the idea of a ‘separate state’.  



Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance journalist. Email: malindasenevi@gmail.comTwitter: malindasene

Is the Government pressing the ‘Snooze’ button on arson?

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Inaction on ‘Aluthgama’, near silence on Bodu Bala Sena (BBC) rhetoric and a government servant (Gotabhaya Rajapaksa) not being taken to task for accepting an invitation to open the office of a political organization (BBS), and other acts of omission and commission raised the ire of Muslims in Sri Lanka.  That was during the tenure of Mahinda Rajapaksa and some claim that all this pushed the Muslims of the country to vote for Maithripala Sirisena en bloc.  

Crime and punishment, one can call it.  Not through accepted legal processes but through the vote; the crime being complicity by way of silence/inaction.  

But that was a long time ago.  That government was defeated.  The new government, the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe outfit I mean, vowed to end all that. For a while it seemed that they were half way serious.  Not any more.  

Ven Galabodaaththe Gnanasara Thero, the voice of the BBS is still at large although there’s a warrant for his arrest.  Is this purely incompetence on the part of the police or is there some truth in the rumor that a powerful minister in this government is protecting him?  We don’t know.  

Meanwhile, Colombo Telegraph puts the problem in graphic terms: ‘

A shop, a day’.  That’s one Muslim-owned shop being torched every day.  That’s a rate of violence.  That’s a rate of violence that has a communal signature.  

Let us not be hasty and point fingers just yet.  We cannot say ‘the BBS did it’ although their rhetoric and past record clearly indicates ‘incitement’ which could have spurred someone or several people or even an organized group to indulge in arson.  ‘Incitement’ is not a crime since we don’t have anti hate speech legislation and probably cannot have such ‘safeguards’ without also banning religious texts such as the Old Testament and the Quran. We can ask why the Mahanayaka Theros have been silent on Ven Gnanasara Thero because they are mandated to apply the vinaya rules on the bikkhus, but non-application (for whatever reason) is no crime.  

We an leave all that aside if we want, but it is still a discussion that needs to take place.  

However, if we stick to the basics of law and order and choose to be blind to the communalist mark of these violent and increasingly disturbing acts, we still have to ask ‘what is this government doing about all this?’  

As of now, the only logical answer to this question (What is the government doing?) is, ‘nothing’.  

When ‘Aluthgama’ happened, in an editorial published in ‘The Nation,’ I made certain observations where I blamed the then IGP for irresponsibility and called for his resignation.  A quick recap could be useful and for this reason I reproduce the following sections of that piece:

If there was convoluted justification of last Sunday’s violence and if justification spurred further violence the blame falls squarely on the IGP for making the following (irresponsible) statement: ‘Three Muslims in a trishaw assaulted the driver and the Buddhist monk. The Buddhist monk was in hospital receiving treatment for two days and then discharged.  He was to be taken to the temple in a procession when the incident occurred.’ 

The IGP offered speculation as fact. That’s incompetent and irresponsible. Yesterday the Muslim-owned ‘No Limit’ outlet in Panadura was torched.  While it is not clear how it all happened, it is clear that the sequence of events prompt people to connect dots and reach conclusion, wrong though they may be.  Tinkering with the truth and lying outright causes friction, throw out sparks and cause infernos that are hard to put out.

It is wrong to blame it all on one person, but it is equally wrong not to point out those who provided fuel and matchstick, tossed in extra firewood and refused to douse it even though they had all the water necessary to do the job.  We have to take issue with the IGP.  He must resign forthwith.

There are dots here and they will be connected.  Wrong perhaps, but disturbingly, perhaps correctly too.  All the more reason to err on the side of caution. All the more reason to spare no pains to ensure that culprits are brought to book not because this is the most effective way of insuring against future attacks of this kind (it may be or it may not be) but because it is the right thing to do and what this government solemnly pledged to do.  

We can of course debate about one extremism feeding off another and ponder the chicken-or-egg conundrum.  One could argue that this is a relevant discussion and I will not disagree.  One can say that extremism should be objected to and insist that such objection should be lawful.  That is however a different matter as far as the rights of citizenship and the responsibilities of relevant state agencies are concerned.  

The Police must act.  The Ministry of Law and Order must act.  The Minister must act.  The primacy of the law should be clearly evident.  This is not the moment for sloth (if that’s the case).  It is certainly not the moment for sweeping things under the carpet (as seems to be the case) and especially not for purposes of political convenience (a government with an abysmal performance rating needs distraction — this we know).  Failure to do so would see ‘useful distraction’ bleeding into inter-communal violence and eventually to anarchy.  

Alright, let’s say ‘that’s going a bit overboard’.  Fine.  Still, if are required to be stone cold sober and leave ‘the political’ out of it, we still have a question of blatant disregard for the law.  Arson is a serious matter.  Destroying private property is a serious matter. When the destroyed properties happen to belong to members of a particular community it is an even more serious matter.  

“Arrest this!” 

This is what we have to demand of the government at this point, even as we (as citizens) remain alert and support all efforts to a) prevent such acts and b) support the law enforcement authorities in their work.  

“Tomorrow, where?” is a question that many are probably asking.  If it is not answered, tomorrow we will see a report saying “here”.  Surely, this government can do better?  It must. Or else, its complicity will be suspected.



This article was first published in Colombo Telegraph on June 9, 2017
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