Michael Roberts[1]

The factors promoting political agitation among the Sri Lankan Tamils since the 1920s, particularly the developments after Sri Lanka secured independence in 1948, have inspired a large literature.[2] Three turning points in the temporal progression of this agitation have often been marked: one in 1956 when an electoral transformation helped enshrine Sinhala as the language of administration and placed the majority Sinhalese peoples in a dominant position in the political dispensation; secondly, in the early 1970s when militant Tamils placed secession at the forefront of their demands; and, thirdly, in July 1983 when an anti-Tamil pogrom in the Sinhalese-majority regions that involved state functionaries as well as people from many walks of life alienated the mass of Tamils and sparked an expansion in the militant separatist struggle.[3]

  Bandaranaiake in rhetorical mode

Professor FR Jayasuriya’s Fast in favour of Sinhala Only Bill

The reviews invariably insert more fine-grained temporal markers in identifying specific measures of commission or omission which generated Sri Lankan Tamil anger and led the principal Tamil party called, by the 1970s, the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), to proclaim in May 1976 that their ultimate goal was a separate state, identified as Thamilīlam (Eelam in short).

Invariably, too, there is debate among analysts about the degree of discrimination that the Tamils faced in independent Sri Lanka. That the Sinhala-Only Act had a serious economic impact and reduced the opportunities for Sri Lankan Tamils to enter or advance in the administration services in subsequent decades is undoubted.[4] The political weight of this disadvantage was deepened by two factors: (a) by the pernicious influence of chauvinist Sinhala administrators (e.g. N. Q. Dias[5]) and politicians within the new administrative order, ramifying patronage actions that favoured Sinhalese personnel from their own political parties or kin networks;[6] and (b) the enormous– and quite absurd — degree to which the Sri Lankan middle classes from all ethnic groups valued jobs in the government sector – at least till the 1980s.

This culturally-rooted leaning towards governmental jobs informed popular Tamil assessments of privilege and power defined in ethnic terms. Whatever the economic indices carefully worked out by scholars (e. g. Sriskandarajah 2005, Peiris 2006, chap. 18), it was the experiential world of everyday interaction that informed perception and the political exploitation of   these sentiments. In the Sinhala-majority districts the high proportion of Tamils in high visibility departments such as Public Works, Railway and Survey,[7] the Ceylon Civil Service and even the clerical rungs of the administrative services during the 1940s and 1950s was the phenomenon that coloured comment[8] and served as the foundation for the political agitation that led to the primacy given to the Sinhala language.

One must not forget that the upsurge of Sinhala linguistic nationalism occurred within thrusts directed against the overwhelming predominance of the English language in island society and the hegemonic position of the Westernized English- speaking classes. Thus, the pressure developed within a broader movement in the 1950s by the marginalised underprivileged classes seeking to dethrone the privileges of the English-educated classes. The socialist hues within the language politics of the 1950s gave the Sinhala Only programme a wider legitimacy that it may have otherwise lacked.

The transformation effected in 1956, as we know, gave advantages to Sinhala speakers, while affirming the hegemonic position of the Sinhalese in the island polity.[9] This in turn generated Tamil grievances – not only because of the reduction of job-opportunities in the public sector, but because of the symbolic primacy accorded to the Sinhala language in a context in which “status” and “power” were intimately conjoined; and a context where the Sinhala nationalist agitation was underpinned by the conviction that they were the island’s original inhabitants so that Sinhalese primacy was regarded as a natural right. It is for this reason that the sense of “betrayal” and humiliation displayed by Tamil spokesmen during the course of political cross-talk in the period 1956-61 must be given weight (De Votta 2004: 88- 89, 109, 115, 120).

I have been among those who have stressed the significance of discriminatory policies in leading to the emergence of Tamil separatism (Roberts 1988: 43, 46). But I have also noted that the young Tamils who moved to an extreme position, insisted that the Colombo-based Tamil leaders had let the Tamils down and then concluded that the Tamils residing in the south were of no consequence to the needs of the hour were far too hasty.[10] These Tamil young men were as dedicated as they were obdurate. Hence, their stance in effect implanted a condition of polarization. That is, this tiny minority inexorably committed the Tamil people to war, aided and abetted by the remarkable indifference to Tamil sentiments and their explosive potential displayed by Mrs Bandaranaike’s government (1970-77). I stress here that the implications of such extreme militancy were clear to me (and a few others) as far back as 1973/74 and led to a pessimistic evaluation of the Sri Lankan political scene.[11]

Epilogue

One of the pieces of ethnographic information that led me towards concern and pessimism while at Peradeniya University in 1972/73 was the fact that some Jaffna youth had told Jane Russell (then a Ph.D candidate at Peradeniya University under Professor KM de Silva) that as far as they were concerned the Tamil leaders and others in Colombo could die. In brief, they had moved to the extreme pole. There were no limits to their political action. Since I knew that there were Sinhala extremists at the opposite pole, while some intellectuals at Peradeniya University with close links to the United Front government had told me the country only faced an economic problem and that there was no such thing as an ethnic problem, the conclusion I reached was straightforward: Sri Lanka was in deep shit.

A FURTHER NOTE: Jane Russell was researching the politics of the 1920s-to-1940s and spent some time in the Jaffna Peninsula in 1972/73 delving into its stores of library material and also getting info about the Jaffna Youth League of the 1920s/30s. When she provided me with that ethnographic gem, I did not seek further details because I respected her privilege. And my own soundings among Tamil students and staff at Peradeniya led me to place great weight on this ethnographic nugget. Anticipating possible questions let me stress that she did not meet Pirapaharan or any well-known youth activists. She made that clear much later (in London?) when I asked her whether her youthful informants were subsequently of some importance.

NOTE

Jane Russell: “Reflections on Caste Disabilities in the Jaffna Peninsula in 1973 and Movements towards the Present,” 19 May 2015, https://thuppahi.wordpress.com/2015/05/19/reflections-on-caste-disabilities-in-the-jaffna-peninsula-in-1973-and-movements-towards-the-present/

Jane Russell: “Jane Russell on Sri Lankan Political History in Debate with Kumarasingham’s Readings,”  24 May 2017,

https://thuppahi.wordpress.com/2017/05/24/jane-russell-on-sri-lankan-political-history-in-debate-with-kumarasinghams-readings/“Jane Russell on Nationalist Extremism on Both Sides in the 1970s et seq,” 28 May 2012,

https://thuppahi.wordpress.com/2012/03/28/jane-russell-on-nationalist-extremism-on-both-sides-in-the-1970s-et-seq/Michael Roberts: “Hardline Ethnic Mind-Sets: Jane Russell’s Findings and Reflections,” 28 April 2016, https://thuppahi.wordpress.com/2016/04/28/hardline-ethnic-mind-sets-jane-russells-findings-and-reflections/

***  END  ***

 Ponnudurai Sivakumaran with Chelva …. the former being the fits instance of cyanide suicide on behalf of the Tamil liberation cause

***  END  ***

      https://www.vijithayapa.com/product/view/29768

BIBLIOGRAPHY

De Silva, K. M. 1986 Managing Ethnic Tensions in Multi-ethnic Societies. Sri Lanka 1880-1985, Lanham: University Press of America.

 De Votta, Neil 2004 Blowback. Linguistic Nationalism, Institutional Decay and Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka, Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Jayaweera, Neville 2008 “Into the Turbulence of Jaffna,” chapter in his Reminicenses,” unpub. book in preparation.

Kearney, Robert N. 1967 Communalism and Language in the Politics of Ceylon, Durham, N C: Duke University Press.

Narayan Swamy, M. R. 1994. Tigers of Sri Lanka, Delhi: Konark Publishers Pvt Ltd.

Peiris, Gerald H. 2006 Sri Lanka: Challenges of the New Millennium, Kandy: Kandy Books. Peiris

Phadnis, Urmila 1976 Religion and Politics in Sri Lanka, Delhi: Manohar.

Rāgavan 2009a “Interview with Rāgavan on Tamil Militancy (Early  Years),” http://kafila.org/2009/02/16/interview-with-Rāgavanon-tamil-militancy-part-i/

Rāgavan 2009b “Prabhakaran’s Timekeeping. Memories of a Much-mythologised Rebel Leader by a Former LTTE Fighter,” Sunday Leader, 24 May 2009.

Roberts, Michael 1978 “Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka and Sinhalese Perspectives: Barriers to Accommodation,” Modern Asian Studies 12: 353-76.

Roberts, Michael 1979 “Meanderings in the Pathways of Collective Identity and Nationalism,” in M. Roberts (ed.) Collective Identities, Nationalisms and Protest in Modern Sri Lanka, Colombo: Marga Publications, pp. 1-90.

Roberts, Michael 1982 Caste Conflict and Elite Formation. The Rise of a Karāva Elite in Sri Lanka, 1500-1931, Cambridge University Press.

Roberts, Michael 1988 “Sri Lanka: Ethnic Conflict and Political Crisis,” A Review Article, Ethnic Studies Report 6: 40-62.

Roberts, Michael 1996 “Filial Devotion and the Tiger Cult of Suicide,” Contributions to Indian Sociology 30: 245-72.

Roberts, Michael 2006 “The Tamil Movement for Eelam,” E-Bulletin of the International Sociological Association, July 2006, 4: 12-24.

Roberts, Michael 2012 “Inspirations: Hero Figures and Hitler in Young Pirapāharan’s Thinking,” 13 February 2012, http://thuppahi.wordpress. com/2012/02/13/inspirations-hero-figures-and-hitler-in-youngpirapaharans-thinking/.

Sabāratnam, T. 2003 Pirapāharan, [a biography in chapter segments] serialised in http://www. sangam.org/index_orig.html.

Sabāratnam, T. 2009 “Beginnings of Violence,” draft chapter from his book in press — kindly sent to me.

Samaraweera, Vijaya 1974 “The Role of the Bureaucracy,” Ceylon Journal of Historical & Social Studies n.s., 4: 31-39.

Wriggins, Howard 1960 Ceylon. Dilemmas of a New Nation, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

END NOTES

1      The text below is taken word-for-word from the first three pages of a chapter entitled “Inspirations and Caste Threads in the early LTTE,” in Roberts, Tamil Person and Sfate, Essays, Colombo, Vijitha Yapa Publications, 2014 … ISBN 978-955-665-230-7. It is placed here as a separate essay so that readers can focus on its implications. It should also put to rest those views that see the roots of the present conflict in July 1983. Quite incidentally it indicates that the early currents of Tamil extremism had a chequered history in terms of continuity. In this chequered character the stream of consciousness linking the Pulip Padai to the TNT and other associations of the 1970s has some similarities to those linking the Jatika Chintanaya of the 1980s through to the Hela Urumaya, Sihala Urmumaya and BBS in the period 1980s -to-2010s.

2    This article was originally drafted in 2009 and was inspired by the writings of T. Sabāratnam, Rāgavan, Tekwāni and DBS Jeyarāj; and was materially assisted by the information conveyed by email and/or phone by the following: S. V. Kasynāthan, T. Sabāratnam, Rāgavan, Nalliah Suriyakumāran and Dayān Jayatilleka. Kasynāthan also commented on a draft paper and made valuable suggestions. All errors remain my responsibility. More recently, the improvement of this article has benefited from information and comments from (1) Robert Siddharthan Perinpanayagam, a sociologist whose experience spans the 1940s-2000s and (2) Arun Ambalavanar who brings to this topic his experience as a young man of lower-middle class status who lived in the Jaffna Peninsula in the 1980s.

3.  Kearney 1967; K. M. de Silva 1986; Roberts, Ethnic Conflict, 1988; Sabāratnam 2001; De Votta 2004 and Roberts, Tamil Movement, 2006.

4    K. M. de Silva 1986: 365; Roberts, Ethnic Conflict, 1988: 43, 46; MerrilGunaratne 2001: 18; De Votta 2004: 122-30; Sriskandarajah 2005: 350-51.

5  For a brilliant bio-sketch of   N.Q. Dias, see Neville Jayaweera, “Into the Turbulence of Jaffna,” chapter  in his Reminiscenses,” unpublished book, 2008.

6 Samaraweera 1974 and De Votta 2004: chap. 5.

7 As emphasised in Roberts, Ethnic Conflict, 1988: 46. Peiris, too, identifies “daily interactions” involving the “ordinary people,” other than perhaps the “city working class,” as the arena that generated interpretations of relative privilege (2006: 437-38). Note, too, that the Burghers were disproportionately prominent in such areas as Customs, Excise, Police, Army, etc during the 1940s and 1950s.

8 The ethnic distribution of government servants could also be counted readily by academics and others (e.g. Tambiah 1955) to highlight the large shares held by Tamils in the early years of independence, whereas the large share of coconut and rubber plantations in Sinhalese hands was not that readily measured (see Roberts 1982 and 1979 for the British period).

9 See Wriggins 1960; Kearney  1967; K. M. de Silva 1986; Phadnis 1976; and especially De Votta 2004: 128, 135, 142 & 167.

10  Roberts, Ethnic Conflict, 1988: 50-51; Biographical Epilogne, 1994b: 335; and “Tamil Movement,” 2006: 12-14. Note, too, that in retrospective and introspective analysis, Rāgavan has this to say about his universe of being in the early 1970s: “Due to the lack of political commitment from the TULF leadership a political gap was created and inexperienced adventurous middle class youths took up the role to fill the gap, which in turn created Tamil militancy” (in Kadirgamar 2009).

11 As one of the organising hands in the Ceylon Studies Seminar at Peradeniya University, I was among those who set up a whole-day seminar in Colombo on “The Sinhala Tamil Problem” in early October 1973. This event deepened my pessimism and led to a black concluding note in an essay drafted in Germany in the summer of 1976 (see Roberts, Sinhalese Perspectives, 1978a). This article has been reprinted in the collection organised in Volume II  of the five-volume series edited by Subrata K. Mitra, Politics of Modern South Asia. Critical Issues in Modern Politics, London & NY: Routledge, 2009 et seq.

Dayan Jayatilleka, Island, 24 November 2017, where the title reads “A Lankan left project: Why Sri Lanka needs a left option”

Castro , Lenin , Dharmapala , Puran Appu

“Nationalism is not our essential idea, although we do love our homeland dearly. We consider ourselves internationalists…”(Fidel Castro, Economy 98, July 3rd 1998 speech)

“…We’re not very nationalistic. We’re patriots but we’re not very nationalistic…” (Fidel Castro, Talks with US and French journalists, 1983, pp. 34-5)

“We internationalist revolutionaries always say…humanity comes before our country!”
(Fidel Castro Speaks, ed. James Petras p159)

We need a Left alternative because there are certain challenges, some tasks, some projects, crucially important ones, that no one else can be expected to undertake, be they UNP, SLFP, JO, SLPP or TNA. These are the tasks of social justice and national unification. Sri Lanka must become a country in which there is social justice and fair-play. It must also become a country in which a genuinely Sri Lankan identity is fostered and national reconciliation and integration takes place by purely voluntary means, from below. Only a Left alternative can do this because only the Left has those values.

No UNP government will stand for social justice, and even if Sajith Premadasa leads it, it may only ensure a measure of social welfare and equity. As for the SLFP, it will either imitate the UNP or the JO. Taken together or separately, the SLFP and the JO-SLPP see only the ‘national’ and not the ‘social’.

For the SLFP-JO-SLPP the ‘national’ is the social and is the sole dimension of the social. It’s all Jathika, or in its longer version, Rata-Jathiya-Aagama (country-nation-religion), and hardly Janatha/Mahajana (people/masses). The ‘national’ is defined in ethnic, ethnocentric or ethno-religious communitarian terms. Thus Southern populism is ethno-populism or ethno-religious populism.

With President Ranasinghe Premadasa long dead—something else we owe the Tigers and all those who supported and still fail to denounce them–only a Left formation will perceive things in terms of social justice, irrespective of, and cutting across, ethnicity and religion.

As for nation-building, it cannot be successfully undertaken by the UNP, because its multiculturalism, which is always a good thing, is undermined by its cosmopolitanism, minoritarianism, wartime history of appeasement of separatism and terrorism, and pro-Western imperialist stance. This whole package and profile generate a Southern backlash which makes it impossible to proceed with building a unified nation and a Sri Lankan identity.

The SLFP-JO-SLPP bloc is the flip side of that coin. It kowtows to a quasi-theocratic notion of the Sri Lankan state and polity. Its notion of multiculturalism is not one of a pluralist democracy and meritocracy, as it should be, but one of mono-cultural, mono-religious imposition on and dominance of the State, with the other ethnicities and cultures at the margins. Being Sinhala Buddhist matters more than being competent or even excelling at your job. Expertise and performance are secondary to who you are, what you are and where you come from. With this hegemonic, parochial, prejudiced mindset, a unified Sri Lankan nation cannot be built. President Premadasa was the last true multiculturalist in the political mainstream.

The Left can do the job, though, because wherever its members come from, they have transcended the parochial and espouse, however imperfectly and fitfully, a discourse and doctrine which are anti-racist, internationalist and universal.

For the UNP, the upper classes, the elites, are the nation. For the nationalist opposition, the JO-SLPP, and even the SLFP, the State is the nation. They are both wrong, though the ‘statists’ are more right than the ‘elitists’, and the elitists themselves would have a point if they were not talking about the propertied elite, the bourgeoisie, but about an educated elite.

In the final analysis, there is no nation without the people. If you construct unity among and between the people of all ethnicities and religions, you can unite the nation by constructing a multiethnic national identity. National unity can never be built by a political formation which cares more about a small super-rich urban elite, foreign powers and foreign capitalists, and is socially insensitive to the masses. It can only be built by an organic formation, rooted in the people. It can only be built by the Left.

What are the weaknesses of the Lankan Left, historically and contemporaneously, that prevent it from fulfilling its great potential?

The most basic error has been the wrong attitude and policy towards nationalism and the national heritage. A related error has been towards the nationalities question. Of course both errors have a common roots and foundation:

1. The inability to grasp the dialectical relationship between the national and the international, and more practically, the complex relationship between patriotism, nationalism, chauvinism and internationalism.

2. The inability to grasp the relationship between modernity and tradition.

The Left has swerved from ignoring the national heritage and traditions to embracing exactly the wrong ones and recoiling from them once again. Gunadasa Amarasekara and Nalin de Silva were quite wrong when they indicted the left for ignoring Anagarika Dharmapala when it should have fused with his contribution. These founders of Jathika Chinthana were half-right in their critical diagnosis of the left’s propensity for rootless cosmopolitanism but wrong in their prescription.

The heritage that the Left should have grasped was not that of, and the continuity that should have been established was not that with, Anagarika Dharmapala, nor with that of the Sinhala kings, but quite precisely with Puran Appu and the Rebellion of 1848. This would have been the equivalent of Fidel’s organic linking up with the memories and tradition of Marti, Maceo and Cespedes, the heroes of the idea and practice of national liberation and armed rebellion.

The Left ignored that linkage and then, under Wijeweera, overemphasized the Sinhala monarchic-monastic martial heritage, and flipped away from it once again. Puran Appu, the rebel from a subaltern social stratum, and the rebellion of 1848 which was part of the year of worldwide rebellions and the Communist Manifesto, lie forgotten, even in Matale itself.

The other abiding error of the Lankan Left is the failure to adopt an open and consistent stance on the Nationalities Question. It might help if all tendencies of the Left reacquainted themselves with the baseline Leninist perspective.

Marx and Lenin were hostile to federalism, which they associated with the Anarchists. However, as the renowned historian George Thomson, Professor of Greek in the University of Birmingham and author of the well-known textbooks ‘Aeschylus and Athens’ and ‘Studies in Ancient Greek Society’, summed it up in ‘From Marx to Mao Tse Tung: A Study in Revolutionary Dialectics’ (London 1971):

‘Lenin put forward the principle of regional and local autonomy. True national equality, he argued, calls for “…wide regional autonomy and fully democratic self-government…”(Lenin, Collected Works Vol. 19. p 427). “In order to eliminate national oppression, it is very important to create autonomous areas, however small, with entirely homogeneous populations, towards which members of the respective nationalities scattered all over the country, or even all over the world, could gravitate, and with which they could enter into relations and free associations of every kind.” (Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 20, p50)’ quoted in George Thomson (1971), p 64.

The other error of the Left is the refusal to embrace the anti-fascist, anti-separatist heritage. No political formation can live outside history, with an ambiguity and ambivalence about a long war that defined the country’s contemporary history. Here too the Left has overcompensated by swinging from a basically correct anti-LTTE, anti-separatist stance that deviated to the Right by colluding with Sinhala chauvinist ideology (the late 1980s DJV, and the subsequent Jathika Chinthana influence), to an embarrassed silence about the LTTE and the war, limiting itself to the apparent causative factors, the conduct of successive bourgeois governments and/or the failure to solve the National Question.

The same goes for the struggle against imperialism and for national independence and sovereignty. Having indulged in a prolonged Sinhala nationalist deviation, the Left has swung to a ridiculous position of ignoring national independence, sovereignty and liberation.

Indeed today’s Left has either thrown the baby out with the bathwater, forgetting the national dimension while avoiding the nationalist, or retained the bathwater i.e. the nationalist, while throwing out the baby, i.e. the national, which in a pluralist society can only be multiethnic and multicultural not merely Sinhala Only..

The Left must never forget that throughout the world, it won the most respect and adherents, and grew fastest, because of its vanguard role against fascism, imperialism, colonialism, neocolonialism, separatism and terrorism; and for democracy, national unification and national independence and sovereignty.

In Sri Lanka, the Left has forgotten that patriotism and internationalism are perfectly compatible and must necessarily be present in combination. It must remember that nationalism, even Sinhala Buddhist nationalism, has a progressive aspect and a reactionary one—and the progressive aspect must be utilized. It must also remember that in our country, patriotism cannot be Sinhala only!

The Left must return to its critique of the LTTE and Tamil secessionism, while combining it with a stand for equal rights, non–discrimination and autonomy/ limited self-government for the Tamil majority areas. It must also recall Lenin’s dictum that the army is the peasantry in uniform. There can be no worker-peasant alliance without the army.

The final error which impedes the Lankan Left is that the vibrant Tamil Left dating from the 1940s through the 1980s (EPRLF, EROS, PLOT, NLFT, PLFT, EPDP) has virtually evaporated at least in their left identity. Instead of deepening and developing its over two-decades long critique of the LTTE, its fascist ideology, Tamil chauvinism and the Tamil bourgeois nationalist political tradition, what was left of the Tamil Left either fell silent or joined the para-LTTE, proto-secessionist, Diaspora-driven Tamil nationalist mainstream. Douglas remained an exception, but without an explicitly left identity.

Whatever one may say about the South, it is a fact that in this centenary year of the Russian Revolution, the liberal bourgeois February revolution was commemorated by Prime Minister Wickremesinghe and supportive civil society, while Lenin’s October Socialist Revolution was commemorated by the Communist party with President Sirisena as the key speaker; the JO with Chamal Rajapaksa, Vasudeva Nanayakkara and me as the main speakers; and the JVP with Anura Kumara Dissanayake as the main speaker.

By contrast, there was no report in any English language media, mainstream or social, of any commemoration of the centenary of the Russian revolution, in the majority Tamil speaking North or East– not even in the universities!

The first death anniversary of Fidel Castro was commemorated at Savsiripaya, Battaramulla, on November 22nd, and brought together left parties who are bitter rivals in national politics, ranging from the FSP through the JVP to the JO. One rather doubts anything of the sort happening in honor of Fidel in the North or East, though doubtless Prabhakaran and his fascist storm troopers will be commemorated on November 27th.

The difference in the political cultures of Northern and Southern Sri Lanka mirrors those of Tamil Nadu and Kerala. That being the case, it is difficult for the Sri Lankan Left to be truly Sri Lankan in its composition because the South lacks a Northern Left counterpart. Thus the Left can be Sri Lankan only in its political perspective and program.

By the Left, I mean primarily the JVP and FSP, and secondarily those left currents in the JO and in the Yahapalana government. Though bitterly divided politically and ideologically, they should explore the possibilities of converging, at least for united actions if not yet as a united front, around common values and the struggle against common foes. These are:

(I) Neoliberal globalization, rampant foreignization and privatization

(II) The scrapping or dilution of labour laws and land reform laws

(III) Imperialist hegemony, intervention, intrusion into and interference in national sovereignty and

(IV) All forms of Racism, racial and social discrimination, chauvinism,xenophobia and extremism from any and all quarters (majoritarian and minoritarian; Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim; lay and religious).

The positive values should be:

(A) The defence of democracy and national independence and sovereignty

(B) The defence of rights—worker, peasant, student—and social entitlements.

(C) The forging of solidarity between all communities and provinces of the island.

(D) National and social liberation.

(E) Internationalist solidarity

There is a powerful external factor which can support a Lankan Left project. That is the increasing tendency towards the erosion of Western hegemony and the growth of global multi-polarity, which is due to the greater economic and strategic partnership of Russia and China; the world’s largest and most populous countries. Fidel, in his last writings in the series of newspaper columns entitled ‘The Battle of Ideas’, expressed great optimism about and counted heavily on the economic rise of China, the resistance shown by a rejuvenated Russia and the rapprochement between the two powers, to effect a trajectory shift in History.

**   ****

NOTE BENE

Michael Roberts: “For Humanity. For the Sinhalese. Dharmapala as Bosat Crusader,” Journal of Asian Studies, 1997, 56: 1006-1032.

A Tough Apprentiecship: Sri Lanka’s Military against the Tamil Militants 1979 -1987… by Channa Wickremesekera

TABLE OF CONTENTS

  SF troops on the way to a mission

  Special Forces Establishing a block south of Point Pedro

  Troops assembled at Palaly before the operation

Rajan Philips, in Island, 3 February 2018, where the title runs thus “Lanka at 70: Political circus interrupts the country’s constitutional odyssey”…. with highlighting here being the work of The Editor, Thuppahi

As the country marks the seventieth anniversary of independence, its principal political leaders are out-clowning one another and turning the whole political system into a circus of clowns. There is no other charitable way to describe what the President, the Prime Minister and the former President are doing in a desperate three-way shootout – to either produce the best scorecard or avoid the worst scorecard for their respective parties and alliances in the local government elections next Saturday. The scorecard that will be used for political bragging and the commentaries that will go with it will have two lines: the national tally of votes and the number of local bodies won, with special mention for trophy municipalities – Colombo being the big one.

There will be little effort to penetrate the voting results beyond these simple aggregates – to decipher and understand the many messages that the voting public might be trying to collectively convey by individual voting or, in this election, non-voting. The implications for governance – mind you, at the national level for the next two years, will depend on who finishes first, second or third overall, in the elections to local bodies. No one knows or cares as to what the implications for governance at the local level will be after the local elections. Even the supremacy of parliamentary sittings has been brought into conflict with the regulations for conducting municipal elections. How more bizarre can a polity become? The only certainty is that the party, or alliance, that finishes first next Saturday will own the bragging rights for the next two years – for the suite of elections that are to follow: provincial, presidential and parliamentary. Beyond that, it is useless speculating who will finish where. The country can only brace itself for the experience that it is going to suffer.

Besides the three main cowboy or clown contenders, the JVP and the TNA are outliers in the ongoing shootout. The JVP will try and hope to make at least noticeable inroads at the local level by capturing control over local bodies wherever it can. Whether good or bad, its performance will be duly noted. The TNA’s situation is different. Its battlegrounds are in the north and east, but it depends on its national standing, if not performance, to fend off its peninsular detractors. Nationally, the TNA’s priorities have been pushed to the sidelines in all the brouhaha over bond scam and other corruption scandals.

The project of constitutional reform remains stalled with neither the President nor the Prime Minister saying anything about it. The President reportedly remained silent, for once in recent weeks, at his monthly breakfast with the media when asked about the TNA’s new insistence that the proposed constitutional changes must be completed before the end of the year. The TNA’s constitutional deadline may not be a significant topic in the current local election campaign in the south, but it will be a key item in the long list of unfinished business that the Sirisena-Wickremasinghe government, no matter what form it takes after February 10, will have to deal with for the next two years after the local elections are over.

In his independence anniversary contribution last week (Sunday Times, January 28), Nimal Sanderatne identified ethnic conflicts as the foremost reason for seven decades of economic underdevelopment in Sri Lanka. There are other factors, plusses and minuses, with implications for economic development, all of which are neatly summarized in Sanderatne’s contribution. But to the extent ethnic conflicts are the foremost reason for economic underdevelopment, our constitutional development should equally be considered as a major reason for the deterioration of ethnic relationships. It is true that historically and even today, our constitutional discontents are not limited to ethnic considerations only. For example, the very fundamental feature of the present constitution – the presidential system, has always been a matter of vehement contention.

Constitutional Mountain or Mouse

In the 70 years after independence, the country has had three constitutions. A primary purpose of the latter two constitutions was to address the real or perceived shortcomings of the preceding constitution. Thus, Dr. Colvin R. de Silva, the voluble architect of the second of the three constitutions, spoke of the five chief ‘defects’ of our independence constitution, the so called Soulbury Constitution. And JR Jayewardene, who masterminded the third and the still current constitution, was convinced that only a presidential system would give his beleaguered island much needed political stability. Many would argue that the political system and processes have been anything but stable ever since the presidential system was introduced in 1978. Instability is now entrenched in the total nationalization of every subsidiary election – from provincial councils to local bodies, and often accompanied by a ridiculous interpretation of the franchise as being equally significant and weighted whether it is exercised to elect a village council or the national parliament.

Notwithstanding their many discontents, the three constitutions also carry strong similarities. The legacy of the Soulbury Constitution has been far more enduring than its critics may have been prepared to concede. In fact, it has been pointed out that one-fifth of the text of the first Republican Constitution is identical to the Soulbury Constitution, especially in the parts of the constitution dealing with electoral delimitation and the control of finance. Equally, JR Jayewardene was committed to retaining as much of the parliamentary system as possible and marrying it to his new apparatus of state called the presidential system. The inadvertent outcome of marrying the two systems may have been, as GG Ponnambalam said in a different context in the 1956 parliament (in reference to the then government’s implementation of Nicholas Kaldor’s economic reform measures), “to crystalize the vices of both and the virtues of neither.”

In 1957, Prime Minister SWRD Bandaranaike set up a Parliamentary Select Committee on constitutional reform. During the debate in parliament, the PM’s Oxford contemporary and caustic interrupter C. Suntheralingam poked fun at the Select Committee that “they will labour and deliver a mouse.” Recounting the exchange in his 1978 book, Sri Lanka – Third World Democracy, the Political Scientist James Jupp wrote that Mr. Bandaranaike “poured scorn” on the interruption, but it turned out to be “a very accurate prophesy.” In fairness, it must be added that although the Select Committee had its usual difficulties, what stopped the initiative was Mr. Bandaranaike’s untimely death in 1959.

My reason for bringing it up here is to let the readers reflect on what could now be said in regard to the constitutional initiative of the present government. Much legwork and labour have gone into the drafting of constitutional reform provisions, but the question is whether the President and the Prime Minister are amenable to delivering anything, jointly or severally, even if it would only be a constitutional mouse.

Apart from the government’s constitutional inertia, there are also strong currents of opposition to making constitutional changes. In fact, quite a few people expected the SLPP and the Rajapaksas to stir up the old communal pot to generate opposition to the proposed constitutional changes and garner votes at the February 10 elections. Any such plan would have been drowned out by the din of President Sirisena’s loose cannon attacks equally targeting both the UNP and the Rajapaksas. But the Rajapaksas are simply the opportunistic amplifiers of pre-existing concerns and misgivings among the Sinhalese on any matter including the constitution. Such concerns and misgivings persist, independent of the Rajapaksas, and often based on historical misunderstandings and plainly incorrect information.

For example, there are lingering questions about the legality of the present government’s constitutional reform process and its mandate, as well as fears about its intended and unintended consequences. Surprisingly, or perhaps not, such fears and concerns are being predicated on the questionable opinions of former Chief Justice Sarath Silva and former Minister of Justice Wijeydasa Rajapaksha. The latter continues to be cited, even by iconic cultural figures like Gunadasa Amarasekara, and even after Dr Nihal Jayawickrema has exposed the false premises and refuted the indefensible arguments of the former Minister.

Seen in historical perspective, questions about mandate, amending procedures and the fundamental features of the constitution have been canvassed and re-canvassed several times in our 70-year history. In fact, our constitutional odyssey goes back much farther in time to the start of the British colonial rule itself. Going by the former Minister’s argument, SWRD Bandaranaike’s Select Committee initiative and a similar initiative by the 1965-1970 Dudley Senanayake government could both be deemed illegal. They were not, just as the current initiative is not illegal or unconstitutional. It is not the question of legality that has been the problem, but the non-obtainability of critical consensus either over process or the content, or both, of constitutional reform.

Battle lines of disagreements

The battle lines of disagreements go back to the promulgation of the Soulbury Constitution on the eve of independence. Even though a State Council Minister under DS Senanayake, SWRD Bandaranaike was critical of the process of constitution making by the Board of Ministers. It was the Board of Ministers’ draft, with Sir Ivor Jennings as the chief architect, that virtually became the Soulbury Constitution. Mr. Bandaranaike openly opposed the Soulbury Commission and secured the Board’s boycott of its hearings. He also expressed several misgivings about the new constitution – its continuation of the country’s Dominion status under the British Monarch without becoming a new republic, the non-enshrinement of fundamental rights etc. Even JR Jayewardene then a firm supporter of the Senanayakes did have misgivings, especially about the non-inclusion of fundamental rights in the constitution.

To the political left, mainly the LSSP, the whole business of the granting of independence by Britain and the enactment of a Constitution by Order in Council was an exercise in fakery. To its many critics, the new Soulbury Constitution stood diminished in comparison to the grand exercise of republican constitution making that went on in India, not before but after independence. There were other voices of discontent and for more organic reasons. The Sinhala Buddhist nationalists were restive about what they perceived as the continuation of colonial rule by other means, and had their eyes set on achieving a Buddhist theocratic state. DC Wijewardena’s ‘The Revolt in the Temple’ had many recommendations for a new constitution.

The Tamils were more divided than they have been credited for. The established notables and the more conservative sections supported the leadership of DS Senanayake and went along with the new constitution. GG Ponnambalam was the radical outsider, but after his impassioned advocacy of the technically defensible but politically preposterous Fifty-Fifty scheme for representation had blown up in his face, he too joined the Senanayake cabinet as a Tamil pragmatist and an “unrepentant opponent of Marxism.” SJV Chelvanayakam saw things differently, broke ranks with Ponnambalam, and founded the Tamil Federal Party – formulating the traditional demand for representation within a regional-territorial framework.

SJV Chelvanyakam was not the first person to moot the federal idea in Sri Lanka. He was about the fourth, excluding Leonard Woolf – after SWRD Bandaranaike, the Kandyan National Assembly, and the Ceylon Communist Party (Memorandum by Pieter Keuneman and A. Vaidialingam). But the advocacy of federalism by Chelvanyakam and the Federal Party ‘ethnicized’ the idea, and made it the ‘f’ word in Sri Lankan politics. A question that does not seem have been asked or speculated upon is why given his eminence in the legal profession, Mr. Chelvanaykam did not canvas or cultivate support for the federal idea in legal circles. He had close friends among the Sinhalese in retired Chief Justice Sir Edward Jayetileke and the pre-eminent lawyer HV Perera. The former was a facilitator of the Bandaranaike-Chelvanyakam Pact, and Chelvanyakam consulted the latter for his legal opinion on the agreement.

But my point is about canvassing more broadly in the legal profession, because in addition to their dominance in politics, professional lawyers and academics were an important constituency for constitutional development.

The 1957 Sir James Peiris Centenary Lecture by JAL Cooray, then a Lecturer in Constitutional Law, was considered to be the first major critique of the Soulbury Constitution and the first call for an autochthonous constitution. Although Dr. Cooray gave the lecture at the same time as Prime Minister Bandaranaike’s Select Committee on constitutional reform, it would take another 15 years before the Sri Lankan parliament acting as a constituent assembly would draft, adopt and enact an autochthonous constitution.

The impetus for the constitutional overhaul and the First Republican Constitution came from a passing observation (obiter) by the Privy Council in the course of its ruling in a 1964 appeal (Bribery Commissioner v. Ranasinghe). The observation was that Section 29 (2) of the Soulbury Constitution, which prohibited laws discriminating between citizens, was unalterable. The legal and political opinions in Sri Lanka were divided over this obiter – whether Section 29 could be amended using the constitution’s amending procedure, or it was unalterably entrenched and therefore unamendable. The differences of opinion came to a head in parliament in 1968, when the UNP government moved to appoint a parliamentary Select Committee for constitutional reform the main goal of which was to make Sri Lanka a republic. JR Jayewardene as Minister of State speaking for the UNP government, and Colvin R de Silva for the United Front opposition respectively articulated the two opposing viewpoints.

Practically all the parties supported Sri Lanka becoming a republic. But the United Front position articulated by Colvin R de Silva was that the Sri Lankan (then Ceylon) parliament could not fundamentally change the Soulbury Constitution except by asking the British parliament to do it, or by disregarding the Soulbury Constitution and enacting new constitution based on a mandate from the people. Asanga Welikala, belonging to a new generation of constitutional scholars, has persuasively argued that Colvin R de Silva’s interpretation, which incidentally was not contested by the UNP, was erroneous. But that was the interpretation that became the basis for the constitutional revolution launched by the United Front after it won the election and the people’s mandate in 1970. The outcome was the First Republican Constitution of 1972. But there was more to the First Republic than the constitutional revolution that produced it. Much more would come five years later, in 1977, when the UNP got its steamroller chance not to repeat but to remake constitutional history. Where we go from here is an open question. What happens on February 10 is not likely to lead to any favourable answers.

SWR de A Samarasinghe, in Island, 13 February 2018 where the title is “Ups and Downs of Sri Lankan Politics and Looming Political Uncertainty. The Local Government Elections

What does it mean to be Sri Lankan?

70 years after independence, our identity is defined mostly along majoritarian lines, which can be traced back to the divisions created under British rule. These divisions have contributed to violence and war, in the years since 1948.

To this day, there are communities who feel that what is commonly projected and defined as the Sri Lankan identity does not reflect their reality, or themselves. Looking at this, Groundviews produced a series of videos exploring identity and belonging in a country emerging from war, but not yet out of conflict.

Yamini Ravindran is the Legal and Advocacy Coordinator of the National Christian Evangelical Alliance of Sri Lanka (NCEASL) She comments on the often-overlooked discrimination against the Christian community. She addresses the relationship between religion and politics, and the problems that arise when the State attempts to control or channel religious practice.

M Pradeepan is a Field Researcher and activist with the Capacity Building and Outreach Arm of the Centre for Policy Alternatives. He addresses the historic discrimination against the Upcountry Tamils, which remain one of the most marginalised communities in the country.

 Vicky Shahjahan is a visual artist from Kompanna Veediya. In this interview, Vicky talks about the stigma that persists towards gender non-conforming individuals and highlights the need to make them feel included in workplaces and society at large.

 Founder of the Vibhavi Academy of Fine Arts (VAFA) Dr Chandragupta Thenuwara stresses the importance of a better, more inclusive education system in order to move forward from the violence of the past and nurture a future generation that is socially-conscious and appreciative of diversity.

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ALSO SEE

• Krystle Reid:  “A Welcoming Nation?” Groundviews 12/2/18
• Pon Kulendiren: “Where Music transcends Ethnic Divisions: Sinhala Nona,”  21 March 2017, https://thuppahi.wordpress.com/2017/03/21/where-music-transcends-ethnic-divisions-sinhala-nona/#more-24614
• Ordinary Perera, Nadarajah and Bandara: Hands, Feet and Donations across the Length and Breadth of Sri Lanka,” October 5, 2015, https://thuppahi.wordpress.com/2015/10/05/ordinary-perera-nadarajah-and-bandara-hands-feet-and-donations-across-the-length-and-breadth-of-sri-lanka/
•  Kumar Sangakkara’s Reconciliatory Outreach across the Ethnic Divide: A Bibliography,” 15 September 2017, https://thuppahi.wordpress.com/2017/09/15/kumar-sangakkaras-reconciliatory-outreach-across-the-ethnic-divide-a-bibliography/
• Michael Roberts:  “Cricketing Outreach: Building Amity among Lanka’s Ethnic Groups?” 25 September 2017, https://thuppahi.wordpress.com/2017/09/19/cricketing-outreach-building-amity-among-lankas-ethnic-groups/
• Michael Roberts:  “Where Majoritarian Part subsumes the Whole: The Ideological Foundation of Sinhala Extremism,” 28 July 2016, https://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/where-majoritarian-part-subsumes-the-whole-the-ideological-foundation-of-sinhala-extremism/
  
• Michael Roberts:  “The National Anthem as Spearhead in Steps towards Reconciliation,” 24 January 2017, https://thuppahi.wordpress.com/2017/01/24/the-national-anthem-as-spearhead-in-steps-towards-reconciliation/

• A NOTE from The Editor, Thuppahi

  The issues raised here are important, but the first caution is to consider measures of generalization: that is, the methodological issue of reaching for broad historical assessments on the foundations provided by individual experiences with their base in subjectivity. The same issue dwells within anthropological studies of village life in Society X or Y.

  I may address this at greater length but as further caution I ask: (A) where does class position an caste background figure in the tales presented recently in February 2017 within Groundviews? (B) where does the operation of acts of vengeance among all segments of Sri Lankan society in all manner of situations fit into the surveys of the Sri Lankan world of human interaction.

  A reading of these two works should be mandatory for all those kinterested in the sort of issues raised in GV:

  • Gananath Obeyesekere: “Sorcery, Premeditated Murder and the Canalization of Aggression in Sri Lanka,” Ethnology, 1975, Vol 14: 1-25
  • Bruce Kapferer, A Celebration of Demons, 1983
  • Bruce Kapferer: Legends of People, Myths of State 1988 … with new extensions in http://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/KapfererLegends
  • Michael Roberts: “People Inbetween: Ethnic and Class Prejudices in British Ceylon,” 3 August 2015, https://thuppahi.wordpress.com/2015/08/03/people-inbetween-ethnic-and-class-prejudices-in-british-ceylon/#more-17244

Dayan Jayatilleka, in The Island, 8 March 2018, where the title reads “The instrumentalization of IslamophobiaProvoking Islamist terrorism: Who benefits?”

The recent spate of attacks on Muslims is the latest manifestation of Islamophobia in Sri Lanka. Such violence cannot but have the effect of radicalizing Muslim youth and marginalizing Muslim moderates. We have come one step closer to the emergence of Islamist terrorism in Sri Lanka.

 Pic from afternoonvoice

So far we have experienced a ghastly increase in Islamic religious fundamentalism within the Muslim community, especially but not exclusively in the East. However, there is a vital difference between Islamic fundamentalism and Islamist terrorism.

Not all Muslims are religious fundamentalists. There is also a difference between Islamic radicalism (e.g. Hezbollah, Hamas) and Islamic fundamentalism (e.g. Wahhabis). The latter is far more regressive and dangerous than the former, which has an emancipatory content. Religious fundamentalism and religious radicalism are not armed and violent, except verbally so in some cases. Terrorism is. Terrorists are Islamist, not Islamic. Islamism is their ideology, not the religion they practice. All Islamist terrorists are Islamic fundamentalists but not all Islamic fundamentalists are Islamist terrorists. Religious fundamentalism harms only the Muslim community itself, but not other communities nor the State.

If and when Islamic religious fundamentalism spawns Islamist armed extremism it will hurt other communities and the state. Nothing is more likely to generate Islamist terrorism on this island than the news, the sight and the emotions of Sinhala mobs, sometimes with Buddhist monks in their ranks, attacking Muslims.

Pic from https://www.afternoonvoice.com/sri-lanka-declares-state-emergency-following-riots-kandy.html

The Sinhala racists m ade the same mistake with the Tamils. Mob violence was visited upon the Tamils in 1956, 1958, 1977, 1979, 1981 and 1983. The Tamil Tigers were formed in 1976, with Prabhakaran taking over as Chairman in 1978. The vast expansion of Tamil terrorism, as distinct from the commencement of Tamil armed insurgency—not all insurgencies are terrorist– followed Black July 1983.

The Sinhala racists attacked the Tamils to “put them in their place” because they could, with some degree of impunity, since they were the majority. The gamble failed. It is true that the Tamils, by resorting to terrorism, lost the civil war and the South won, but the Tamil issue has been internationalized to a point that is irreversible. So, the visiting of mob violence upon the Tamils in 1958, 1977 and 1983 did not have the desired result and indeed achieved its opposite.

The story is being repeated with the Muslims. Contrary to liberal myth, contemporary Islamophobia did not commence with the BBS in 2012. Contemporary Islamophobia was the twin of contemporary Christianophobia. It started with the phenomenon of Rev Soma Thero, his sermons on TV, the correct discontinuation of them by the ITN, the switch of Rev Soma to the TNL, and the Rev Soma versus MHM Ashraff debate on television. Among Mr. Ashraff’s transgressions in the eyes of Rev Soma was that he had penned a (very respectful and celebratory) poem on Lord Buddha.

The ideological and political weaponization of Ven. Soma’s message and legacy by Champika Ranawake after the Thero’s sudden demise through medical misadventure, was the quantum leap in Islamophobia. It was in the second term of the Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga administration, and against that administration, that Sinhala Buddhist fundamentalism raised its head.

There was a spate of attacks on Christian churches, mainly but not only evangelical. X’mas 2003 had to be celebrated with armed police standing outside—and some sitting inside—churches, including mainline Catholic ones, such as the church which I visited.

Sinhala Buddhist fundamentalism developed a militant offshoot, called the National Movement against Terrorism, which expressed itself on issues other than that of terrorism. While that militant offshoot was not itself violent, there were other shadowy outfits with names like the Theraputthabhaya Balakaaya and the Mahasona Balakaaya (not to be confused with the anti-Tiger covert operations unit within the armed forces, which came later) and which used to send out death threats. The Shah Rukh Khan concert was denounced because it was scheduled on the same day as the first death anniversary of the demise of Rev Soma. A hand grenade was thrown and an innocent died, while the daughter of the highly efficient and respected OIC of the Kirilapone police station was seriously wounded. The killer was never caught. That was in 2004.

Champika Ranawake pushed for the so-called Anti-Conversion Bill in 2005, well before the Presidential election. At a discussion in the US Senate building in Autumn 2005 (on which occasion I was lucky enough to run into and speak with Sen. Edward Kennedy), I was informed by a top staffer to an important Senator that there had been an overcrowded meeting of Senators from both the Republicans and the Democrats, the biggest ever on Sri Lanka, to call for action against Sri Lanka on the issue of the Anti-Conversion Bill.

As usual, the Sinhala Buddhist chauvinists who had picked on the small Evangelical community in Sri Lanka because it is tiny and could be bullied, failed to understand its huge clout in the world’s strongest superpower! It is none other than Mahinda Rajapaksa, shortly upon election as President, who vetoed the Anti-Conversion Bill, and put a stop, temporarily, to the anti-Christian surge and saved Sri Lanka from full-on American hostility when we were fighting the war.

It was in the immediate aftermath of the war that a fresh wave of Islamophobia commenced. That was over Digavapi and was driven by Champika Ranawake. His new line in Government was that ‘the Sinhalese and Tamils fought each other but it was the Muslims who have gained ground and are the new threat.’

This new thrust of Islamophobia was further radicalized in 2012, not only with the emergence of the BBS but also with a more virulent manifestation calling itself “Dolahe Karalla” (the Revolt of 2012) , which had logos of swords and other deadly weapons. Soon, the social media was filled with hate speech directed against Muslims, especially women, even in offices. Threats of rape and killing were made, sometimes with the photographs of those making the threats.

When Dinesh Gunawardena and Wimal Weerawansa urged in Cabinet that the inaugural meeting of the BBS in Maharagama be banned, and President Rajapaksa was nodding in agreement, it was Champika Ranawake who argued vehemently against it, warned that there would be a violent backlash, and threatened to walk out and join the rally. He prevailed. The BBS held its rally with bodyguards dressed in black, looking every bit like a para-military. Champika Ranawake was a distinguished guest.

The same reversal happened after Aluthgama, when President Rajapaksa, on a flight from Japan, ordered the arrest of Rev Gnanasara. Champika lobbied the defense circles he had become acquainted with during the war years, and struck the same note that there would be a Sinhala Buddhist backlash were the BBS boss arrested. The idea was dropped.

During the Presidential election campaign of December 2014, a tape surfaced, with video and audio, which was aired on television and has never been denied by the person in it, namely Minister Rajitha Senaratne. He was in conversation, allegedly along with his son, in which he marvels at the Satanic duplicity of Champika Ranawake: “First he blocked any post war reconciliation with the Tamils by opposing the implementation of the 13th amendment while in Cabinet, then he picked on the Muslims and drove them away, and having thus split the minorities from Mahinda, he then revolted against Mahinda and split some Sinhala Buddhist votes away. What a plan! Evidently this plan had been in operation since 2010 or 2011! What a guy! I didn’t know this stuff till recently!” he said, in Sinhala.

The next phenomenon was that of the “Sinha-LEY” (Sinhala Blood), a few years back. Then came the attack on the UN safe house of the Rohingya refugees last year.

Now comes the Ampara and Kandy attacks. The timing is amazing, as is the answer to the crucial question “Cui Bono?”, “Who benefits?” Mahinda Rajapaksa has just beaten both UNP and SLFP and pretty much swept the board at the local elections. He has won back some Muslim votes and his supporters have even won Beruwela which has a Muslim majority. He certainly does not benefit from attacks on Muslims.

Meanwhile the government has been defeated and is clinging to the hope that a solid bloc of minority votes can be counted up at future elections, most importantly, late next year. Ranil Wickremesinghe is on the ropes with an imminent ‘No Confidence’ motion. And “Hey presto!’ the violent Islamophobic attacks act as a giant eraser, switching the discourse, and making the political threat go away at least for the moment.

I would not be surprised if there are attacks on Catholics too, given that the Sinhala Catholics swung back to Mahinda at the recent election.

More attacks on Muslims could eventually trigger Islamist terrorism by youths armed, trained and tested in combat on foreign battlefields, returning home, and perfectly capable of blowing themselves up in the hope of a fast-track to Heaven. This will certainly not benefit the Muslim community. Nor will it benefit the Sinhala majority because the almost inevitable Black July 83 type reaction would (a) drive the Muslims into the arms of the latently separatist Tamils, while (b) making us lose our old friends such as Pakistan and (c) generating an economic response (migrant labour markets) from within the billion strong global Islamic community.Ranawaka and the

Provoking the emergence of Islamist terrorism would however, help a Government that is in crisis to impose harshly authoritarian measures and push through a new Constitution by a referendum, sell off national assets to the Indians in the hope of securing their military umbrella for entrenchment in office, and even have a stab at postponing elections. Above all it will make way for a militarist strongman and his Sinhala Mephistopheles, the Godfather of Islamophobia, to seize power from within the Government, at first using the President as a human shield and then marginalizing him.

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ALSO SEE

BBC:  “Sri Lanka struggles to halt days of Buddhist riots,” 8 March 2018

Colombo Telegraph: “Video: STF Colludes With Goons Who Perpetrated Anti-Muslim Violence,” 8 March 2018

Michael Roberts

One image of the sene outside the hospital where Indira Gandhi lay dying in 1984 after she was assassinated by some of her Sikh bodyruards as retribution for the Indian governments’s raid ona Sikh temple in the Ounjab

PRIMARY ESSAYS

Michael Roberts: “Anguish as Empowerment … and A Path to Retribution,” 22 March 2017, https://thuppahi.wordpress.com/?p=24595&preview=true

Amarjit Singh 2014 “I lived through the Sikh riots …,” 21 October 2014, https://qz.com/289671/i-lived-through-the-sikh-riots-and-30-years-later-im-not-ready-to-forgive-or-forget/

Van Dyke, Virginia 1996 “The anti-Sikh riots in Delhi: politicians, criminals, and the discourse of communalism,” in Paul Brass (ed) Riots and pogroms, New York University Press, pp. 201-20.

Michael Roberts: “Kill Any Sikh: The Anti-Sikh Pogrom of 1984 in Delhi in Bhawan Singh’s IMAGES,”  26 March 2017 https://thuppahi.wordpress.com/2017/03/26/kill-any-sikh-the-anti-sikh-pogrom-of-1984-in-delhi-in-bhawan-singhs-images/

Michael Roberts: “Histrionic Voice As Spark For Ethnic Violence & Political Extremism,” 23 March 2017, https://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/histrionic-voice-as-spark-for-ethnic-violence-political-extremism/

Roberts, Michael 1990 “Noise as cultural struggle: tom-tom beating, the British and communal disturbances in Sri Lanka, 1880s-1930s,” in Veena Das (ed.) Mirrors of violence, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 240-85.

Roberts, Michael 1994a “The imperialism of silence under the British raj: arresting the drum,” in Roberts, Exploring confrontation. Sri Lanka: politics, culture and history, Reading: Harwood Academic Publishers, pp.149-81.

Roberts, Michael 1994b “Mentalities, ideologues, assailants, historians and the pogrom against the Moors in 1915,” in Roberts, Exploring Confrontation. Sri Lanka: Politics, Culture and History, Reading: Harwood Academic Publishers, pp.149-81… reprinted as “Marakkala kolahalaya…, in Roberts, Confrontations,

Roberts, Michael 1996 “Teaching lessons, removing evil: strands of moral puritanism in Sinhala nationalist practice,” South Asia, Special Issue, XIX: 205-20.

SECONDARY- SUPPLEMENTARY ITEMS

Roberts, Michael 1990 “Noise as cultural struggle: tom-tom beating, the British and communal disturbances in Sri Lanka, 1880s-1930s,” in Veena Das (ed.) Mirrors of violence, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 240-85.

Roberts, Michael 1994a “The imperialism of silence under the British raj: arresting the drum,” in Roberts, Exploring confrontation. Sri Lanka: politics, culture and history, Reading: Harwood Academic Publishers, pp.149-81.

Roberts, Michael 2017 “Professional mourners in Ceylon and Southern India,” 3 March 2017, https://thuppahi.wordpress.com/2017/03/03/professional-mourners-in-ceylon-and-southern-india/

Roberts, Michael 1994c “The agony and ecstasy of a pogrom: southern Lanka, July 1983,” in Roberts, Exploring confrontation. Sri Lanka: politics, culture and history, Reading: Harwood Academic Publishers, pp. 317-25. …. Reprinted in Nethra, 2003 vol. 6: 199-213.

Noel Ranjith

Regular readers of “The Island” newspaper over the twenty year period from the 1980’s will remember the almost weekly columns written by Dr. Mervyn D. De Silva, who was in those years a Deputy Director of the Ministry of Planning and Economic Affairs, followed by being appointed as the Director of the Ministry of Plan Implementation, and later becoming a Member of Parliament through the National List. His most profuse and provocative period was during the tenures of four Presidents from Mr. J. R. Jayawardene to Mrs. Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga. His writings covered a wide range of public and national concerns and took their cue from what the controversial American journalist I.F. Stone believed was the purpose of good journalism  – “to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable”.

Dr. De Silva’s critically analytical articles were about the immediate happenings in the country at the time they were written. As a well-placed “insider”, he wrote about economic policies and the shortcomings and failures in their planning, implementation, management and monitoring.  He wrote critically insightful pieces about the development strategies of governments irrespective of whether they were ideologically from the right or the left. He spoke about the weaknesses in governance, exposed corruption and was critical of failures in law and order and human rights which led to societal crises of varying seriousness.

The majority of these articles (nearly 83 out of about 100, including three creative pieces – two poems and an “imaginary speech” by a politician) have now been collected and published in a book from by the Tulana Research Centre for Encounter and Dialogue in Gonawala, Kelaniya, under their Tulana Jubilee Publications umbrella. With an Introduction by the author and a Foreword by Fr. Aloysius Pieris s.j., the founder/director of the Tulana Centre, the book is divided into six chapters. Chapter One has the collection of Dr. De Silva’s writings on “Poverty and Economic Injustice”. Chapter Two is devoted to his scathing critiques of those champions of neo-liberalism the IMF, World Bank, GATT and the WTO. The chapter on “Planning Issues – Political, Economic and Social” are well-informed pieces written by an insider. In chapter 4 he critiques a range of “Socio-Political Issues” and in chapter 5 he boldly exposes  the  mythic interconnections between “Façade Democracy and Political Parties”.

At the heart of all his writings is Dr. De Silva’s unwavering humanist “rationalism” – his constant cry for economic and social equity, for fairness in justice, for honesty and integrity in governance, and for the protection of the rights of all human beings specially the poor and the marginalized. Reading these articles today, one is struck by their continuing relevance in the questions they pose, the problems they expose and the remedies proposed. These are indeed “Prophetic Indictments”.

 Noel Ranjith is from Gampaha

Siri Gamage, courtesy of Colombo Telegraph

Emeritus Professor Laksiri Jayasuriya (Laksiri) who was Professor of Social Work and Social administration at the University of Western Australia passed away on April 20th 2018 in Perth. He was the founder of the sociology department at the University of Colombo and led an illustrious career in the Australian academia while contributing to government policy making processes in areas such as multiculturalism, ethnic affairs,migration and citizenship. He nurtured cohorts of students under his care during his long career in Australia and continued to engage in scholarly activities and publishing after retirement. Professor Jayasuriya leaves behind bellowed wife Rohini and two loving sons Kanishka and Pradeep – both professionals – one in the academia and the other in medical field. His death comes as a great loss to his academic colleagues, particularly in Australia and Sri Lanka.

Prof Laksiri Jayasuriya

Laksiri was born on 27 October 1931 in Ceylon during the late British colonial period. His father was a prison medical doctor. He was the eldest in a family of three.  His mother came from a wealthy family. He obtained primary and secondary school education from Royal College, Colombo (1945-1951). Among others, it was an institution that trained civil servants for the colonial government of Ceylon. Thus, he grew up with the English educated elite in Ceylon and had access to a privileged background even though he did not belong to the highest caste. He participated in the debating team in the Royal College which included figures like Felix Dias Bandaranayake (later a Minister of Finance and Public Administration) and Mervin de Silva (later a reputed journalist). During the War, the school-named Glendale- moved to the hills and he was schooled in a residential facility for four years. It instilled British tradition and values in him while affording the opportunity to participate in sports. There he edited Glendale Gazette and took part in a mock parliament (David Walker interview 2012).

Following the trend at the time among the English educated elite to send children for higher studies in Cambridge or Oxford, he also wanted to follow the same path. However, through an encounter with Professor A.P Elkin – father of Peter Elkin an English professor at the University of New England, Australia – on his visit to Colombo, the opportunity arose for Laksiri to go to Australia for tertiary study. He proceeded to Sydney on the ship Himalaya in 1951 to begin his degree course as a private student  and became a resident of the Wesley College. At Sydney, he was with a cohort of students who occupied influential positions later in Australia and overseas (David Walker interview 2012). He studied for a Bachelor’s Degree with Psychology (Hons) between 1950-54 at the University of Sydney obtaining the degree in 1954 with first class and the University Medal.

Laksiri studied subjects such as history, psychology and anthropology. After completing the Bachelor’s degree in 1954, he was offered a Teaching Fellowship in the same year by the Sydney University. He became the first or second Asian academic at Sydney University. Laksiri was 23 years of age then Most students he taught were returned servicemen who were in a different age group. He taught a first-year statistics course. Teaching lasted until the end of 1955 (David Walker interview 2012).

Laksiri brought with him a left orientation and political consciousness from Royal College days. Sri Lanka had a strong Trotskyite group at the time. He had a close relationship with David Ross –a senior student at Wesley and the son of a Communist Party Trade Unionist. His contemporaries included Hedley Bull –later to become Professor of International Relations and Jim Wolfensohn who became President of the World Bank. His teacher Prof. W.M O’Neil had much influence on him in terms of ‘scholarship and academia than anyone else’ (David Walker interview 2012).

The class of people Laksiri interacted at Sydney University was well aware of the need for Australia to engage with Asia. Rev. Alan Walker was a critique of the White Australia policy. Laksiri Jaysuirya gained considerable understanding through involvement in university life. e.g. President of the Sydney University Psychological society (1953), secretary of the Sydney University International Club (1953), President of Sydney University Anthropology Society (1952-53). He organised one of the initial Sydney film festivals. Later, he was to continue this interest in film when he took up his appointment at the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka as it was then called. His work for Radio Australia called ‘Diary of an Asian Student’ which documented his response to or reflections on Australian life was exemplary. In the 1950s, he received several prizes including Frank Albert Prize and a University Gold medal.

Laksiri accepted a fulltime, permanent academic appointment at the University of Ceylon, Peradeniya in 1956. Having trained as a social psychologist, he joined the Sociology Department which at that time included Ralph Pieris, Stanley Thambiah and Gannanth Obeyesekere. At the time, the department was  the best within the Faculty of Arts – an institution that was very well regarded in Asia. The campus was a site of creative intellectual endeavour as well as of robust debate over academic and political issues. Laksiri built strong friendships with reputed academics such as K N Jayatilleke – Professor of Philosophy and J E Jayasuriya – Professor of Education. He was an active participant in the academic debates and remembered fondly by his colleagues and students.

Laksiri pursued postgraduate study at the London School of Economics and Political Science between 1957-60 securing his PhD in Social Psychology. In 1969, he became the foundation professor in the Department of Sociology and Social Welfare, University of Colombo and developed the academic program. He was particularly proud of establishing the workers education program in Colombo. Laksiri returned to Sydney in 1969 on a Leeverhulme Fellowship to the University of New South Wales. He lectured in the departments of Psychology and Social Work. This was after his time at Berkley on a Fullbright Scholarship. In 1974, Laksiri was appointed as foundation professor in the department of Social Work and Social Administration (later social work and social policy) at the University of Western Australia, Perth. He was the first Asian professor there and one of the first Asians to be appointed to a professorial position at an Australian University.

During his academic career in Perth, he held the positions of head of department (1971-90), Director, Centre of Asian Studies (1989-92). Between 1970-71, he was the Dean of Social Sciences faculty. He was a Fellow of the British Psychological Society, and the Australian Academy of Social Sciences and an Honorary member of the Australian Association of Social Workers. He became an Emeritus professor and a senior honorary research fellow at the same university in 1993 marking the end of his full-time teaching and research career. Between 1993-94, he served in the capacity of a senior fellow, development studies at Edith Cowan university, Perth. Laksiri was never one to slow down. He continued his academic work after retirement in association with the University of Western Australia in an honorary capacity until his health started to deteriorate. The energy and enthusiasm he showed on the subjects that he grappled with was extraordinary. He was truly blessed with an intellect and a vast reservoir of knowledge covering both the Eastern and Western social philosophies.

In the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s Laksiri played an active role in various State and Federal Government advisory bodies and reviews in Australia dealing with areas such as multicultural education, language services, and ethnic affairs. He was appointed to the Immigration Advisory council by the Whitlam Labour government. During 1973-75, he was on the Federal Government Committee on Community relations as well as the Migrant Taskforce, West Australian Government. He was the chair of the National Advisory and Coordinating Committee on Multicultural Education(NACCME) (1984-87), and the National Multicultural Advisory Council (NMAC) (1996-97). Laksiri served on the Anti-Racism Reference Group of the West Australian Government(2001-2007). These roles highlight some of the key points of his significant contribution to policy making, review and advisory services. Through these roles he elevated himself to be a spokesperson for the immigrant and ethnic communities whose needs and interests had to be looked after by way of government policies and programs. He was one of the key architects of the multicultural policy in Australia. His policy and academic contributions emphasized the importance of a political conception called ‘pluralistic citizenship’ as opposed to a narrow and tokenistic conception of ‘cultural diversity’ associated with cultural, linguistic or ethnic identity.

Laksiri’s Academic career at the University of Western Australia was a highly productive one in terms of teaching, supervision of postgraduate students, research and publications (1971-1993). He served on various Editorial Boards of reputed journals such as the Australian Journal of Social Issues, Contemporary Social Work Education, Journal of Multicultural Social work, and the Journal of Population. He was a member of the Australian Population Association, British Sociological Association, Australian and New Zealand Sociological Association, Australian Association of Social Workers. He was an elected fellow in the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, and The British Psychological Society. In recognition of his community and public service, he received Member of the Order of Australia Award (A.M) from the Government of Australia in 1984.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Laksiri published papers and books on contemporary policy issues. He co-edited a book on Legacies of White Australia Issues of Racism and Immigration (2012). There are a significant number of book chapters, occasional pape  focusing on Race, Culture and Nation (2005), and another book titled Transforming a White Australia:rs and journal articles to his credit. During his long and fruitful career, he published books, monographs and articles focused on Sri Lanka dealing with social development, as well as Welfarism and politics (2000). The latter is a book used by postgraduate students researching about the way Sri Lanka turned away from Welfare government to one based on a neoliberal, free market economic paradigm.

In the later stage of his life, Laksiri focused on Buddhist Philosophy which his father also had shown a keen interest by publishing a book. He published an article on Buddhist Humanism for the Asian Century in the International Journal of Buddhist Thought and Culture (2011) and a book titled Reflections on Buddhist Social Philosophy (2014).  He had a keen interest on electoral politics in Sri Lanka also and analysed election results after national elections and published papers in 2001 and 2002.

A significant part of his academic work examined issues of social policy and electoral politics in Sri Lanka and comparatively. He was particularly interested in the way social policies helped to shape new patterns of class formation and conflict in Sri Lanka. His book ‘Taking Social development seriously’ (2010) was a synopsis of many of his key ideas on these issues. He was interested – and disappointed in the way neoliberal policies over the last decades dismantled or impoverished some of these welfare programs.

Laksiri was asked to give the prestigious guest of honour address on the sweeping victory of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP),Sri Lanka  in 1970. This led to a very productive series of publications on Sri Lankan elections until 2010 and its broader social context. He published a book on the Changing Face of Sri Lanka’s Electoral Politics. He was the founding President of West Australian Buddhist Society and assisted Asian students through Australia-Asia House at the University of Western Australia.

His published work is available online through the National Library of Australia for anyone to access. It is a fitting tribute to a tireless academic, advocate on immigrant and ethnic rights, policy advisor, a humanist and influential figure in the Australian policy context. Condolence messages received from the WA Government and former ministers of Multicultural Affairs etc. reflect his standing in the Australian community. He was a giver as one of his friends has remarked in the Guest Book maintained by the West Australian newspaper.

Laksiri is fondly remembered as an intellectual rooted in Sri Lanka and nurtured in Australia writing with high degree of integrity representing the interests of those on the margins in Australian society in the context of social theory, government multicultural and social policy, ethnic rights, equity and social justice.

May he rest in Peace!

Sources

2012. Conversation with Professor David Walker.https://laksirijayasuriya.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/lj-david-walker-interview1.pdf
2013. Laksiri Jayasuriya Personal Biography.https://laksirijayasuriya.com
2014. Personal Communication with Professor Kanishka Jayasuriya, Perth.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/laksiri-jayasuriya-27453834/

Extracts from the Dr. Gamini Haththotuwegama Memorial Lecture delivered by Nihal Rajapakse at OPA Auditorium on the invitation of Richmond 60-70 Group.

Wikipedia describes Dr. Gamini Haththotuwegama in the following manner. “He was a Sri Lankan playwright, director, actor, critic and educator. He is widely known as the father of modern street theatre. He is among the most influential directors of post independent Sri Lanka.”

 Dr. Gamini Haththotuwegama … GK to us Galileans and to the occupants of Ramanathan Hall at Peradeniya in the late 1950s

Therefore it is quite obvious that it was with considerable trepidation that I accepted the invitation because I am neither an academic nor a playwright nor anyone who has anything do with “DramSoc” viz drama and theatre and much less an orator! The only oratory I’ve ever practised was in 1970 when I was appointed as Senior Lecturer of the Staff Training School of my former employer, People’s Bank. That too was for a period of less than one year. As lecturing was not my forte, I asked for a transfer which was granted.

G.K. was about four years my senior in school and therefore I do not consider myself as one of his ‘mango’ friends. However, we have one thing in common. He was a student at Richmond for 13 years (from 1942 to 1954) whilst I was a student there for 12 years (from 1947 to 1958.) Therefore, both of us are full blooded products of that famous institution called Richmond College. Further, among my peers in the banking sector, I was often categorized as a “rebel without a cause.” The only difference between G.K. and myself is that G.K. is “a rebel with a cause!” For those in the audience who do not know me, I am a Chartered Banker having spent almost my entire working life in the banking industry.

Charismatic personality

As many of you know, banking and drama do not go together. The only time in my living memory that drama and banking got mixed up were the recent drama over the Treasury Bond issue involving the Central Bank of Sri Lanka which in my view was much more than just a drama! Coming back to the life and times of this charismatic personality called G.K. de Silva or simply as G.K. as he was popularly known in school, it was in or about 1960, while attached to the tutorial staff at Richmond after his graduation, that he decided to shed the last vestiges of colonialism from him and decided to revert to his ancestral name, Haththotuwegama.

Hereinafter, with due respect to him and for purposes of simplification, I shall refer to him simply as G.K. as he was better known to us in school. I shall concentrate mostly on his school life because these are the areas I have a first-hand knowledge of him.

Had G.K. been alive, he would have been 79-years-old today. I am not going to dwell at length about his family background except to add a few anecdotes. This area was already been covered by the Chief Guest in her lecture. G.K’s initials stand for Gamini Kalyanadharsha. His family comprised of eight children- two boys and six girls. G.K. was the third. According to his own confession, he was by far the most mischievous of the children so much so that during school holidays, his father used to carter him away from home and place him under the care of his relations in Akuressa or Matara so that the parents could give due care to his other seven siblings.

His father used to bring him back home only after school holidays are over. Singing was the passion of the entire family. Even without a radio, the family used to sing regularly so much so that those neighbours who had radios, used to switch them off and listen to the music emanating from the Haththotuwegama household! I knew both boys; his younger brother Srinivasa or “Jeffrey” as he was popularly known, was a contemporary of mine and a brilliant science student who entered the University in 1959 and qualified as an engineer.

He has been domiciled in New Zealand for quite some time. I have never met him since leaving school. To me, the most inspirational member of the Haththotuwegama family is G.K’s elder sister, Iranganie.

She had a profound influence on my education. Out of the four subjects I studied for the University Entrance and H.S.C. Examinations of 1958, she tutored me in three of them, viz; Ceylon History, European History and Government. She had throughout been a very dedicated teacher. Her tutoring was of such high quality that I was quite confident that I’ll gain admission to the University without much difficulty. Therefore, in 1958 after sitting for this examination for the very first time, I left school and was preparing to enter the University. However, when the results were announced lo and behold! I had failed in one subject thereby failing to gain admission to the University but passed the H.S.C. Examination.

However, less than six months later in May/June 1959, when I sat for the G.C.E. (Adv. Level) Examination of the University of London, which is equivalent to University Intermediate level, I passed in all three subjects and became eligible to proceed with the Degree course of study. All I used for this examination was the study material provided by Miss Haththotuwegama at Richmond which speaks volumes about the quality of her teaching skills. I shall make use of this opportunity to pay my homage to her for the immense contribution she has made to my life although it is more than half a century late!

Great teachers

Coming back to the subject under discussions, like his father and uncles, G.K. had almost his entire education at Richmond from 1942 up to the time he entered the University of Peradeniya in 1955. During this time, his first love, outside his family, of course, was Richmond.

During his early days at Richmond, he came under the benign influence of great teachers like Major Adhihetty, a strict disciplinarian, who always insisted students to have a short cropped hairstyle and walk with chest forward. Then there is that much-respected Principal, E.R. de Silva who will walk into a class without any notice and deliver a short lecture, be it English, Sinhala, Maths or Science.

Towards the latter part of his student days at Richmond G.K. came under the tutorage of Clara Nanayakkara, Daphne Dissanayake (whose daughter incidentally is a leading Cardiologist and mine as well, named Naomali Amarasena), Then there was that debonair trio of Messrs. J.H. Ariaratnam, Walter May and, Shelton Abeysuriya all of them straight from the university. G.K’s tutors at HSC level was probably Thampoe, Daphne Dissanayake, J H Ariaratnam, Walter May and that fiery S.K. Goonawardene (brother of the LSSP ideologue, Cholmondeley Goonawardene of Kalutara).

There is no doubt that G.K.’s love for music was largely influenced by iconic figures like Shelton Wirasinha and Ivor de Silva. In my view, his leaning towards the left and his anti-colonial beliefs coupled with his critical and inquiring mind may have been greatly nurtured by some of these teachers in his Upper School at Richmond. This also would have paved the way for the development of his creative thinking abilities which blossomed in him after he joined the University. By his very nature, until his death in 2009, he remained a non-conformist and a maverick. To what extent Richmond contributed to such a development is a matter for debate.

I have to mention another important facet of the life of G.K. There is no doubt in my mind that he remained an avowed anti-imperialist and anti-colonial throughout his life but was NOT anti- West. Let me elucidate this point. Firstly, G.K. remained faithful to his original dress code which was shirt and trouser throughout. He never changed his attire to Ariya Sinhala or Kapati Suit worn by politicians.

Secondly, the inspiration for most of his works originated from Western Literature. For example from Greek mythology, (Agamemnon), Checkov and Dostoyevsky of Russia, Brecht of Germany and above all, Shakespeare of England and even Tennessee Williams of the U.S. Thirdly, in one of his interviews, he articulated that the J.V.P. Insurrection of 1971 failed because they neglected and/or failed to enlist the support of the English educated middle-class elite towards their cause. Take the people who were charged with the Insurrection. They were all Sinhala educated youth. On this score, history was on G.K’s side.

Major upheavals in world history

Take the major upheavals in world history. The French Revolution of 1789 was successful because its inspiration and leadership came from the intellectual community from persons like Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau and Robespierre. It was Montesquieu who propounded the doctrine of separation of powers which later remained the bedrock of the U.S. Constitution. Then came Rousseau’s famous publication, “Social Contract,” which hit France like a time bomb and gave the much-needed impetus for the Revolution. This book starts with the famous words, Everyman is born free but is everywhere in chains.” Then look at the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was led by intellectuals like Lenin and Trotsky.

Even the more recent Cuban Revolution of 1957 was also led by intellectuals like Dr. Fidel Castro and Ernesto Che Guevara. Therefore there is considerable truth in G.K’s assertion that the JVP Insurrection of 1971 failed due to their failure to entice the English educated middle class for their movement. After all, he was a Lecturer in English in both Universities of Kelaniya and Peradeniya. He was thinking probably in English. Therefore, G.K. somewhere in his heart has had some soft corner for the English educated middle class of the country and certainly not anti-West in his outlook. That is my candid opinion. I leave it entirely to the audience to decide whether or not G.K. was anti-West.

G.K. got involved in most of the extracurricular activities in school, viz; the Debating Team, School Choir and Theatre, the Cheering Squad etc. In sports he never went beyond the Cheering Squad and as an announcer in sports meets but remained a keen cricket enthusiast.

During his young days, he used to walk up to the house of our mutual friend, Ananda Jayasinghe who is here with us today, to listen to the cricket commentaries of Christopher Martin Jenkins in the Ashes series.

Further, when he joined Kelaniya University as a Lecturer, he not only introduced cricket to the University but even became their cricket coach! He was in the S.S.C. Prep Form when he was selected for the College Debating Team along with youngster Stanley Wickremaratne. As a junior, I remember having seen “Merchant of Venice,” which was produced and directed by Ariaratnam and Tampoe. In this play, he gave a stellar performance as Shylock. He was also the Editor of the School Magazine for three years. Following his brilliant academic career, he was made a Prefect in or about 1953.

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PART TWO

 A snap that is typically GK**

Tisaranee Gunasekara in The Sri Lanka Guardian where the title runs thus: “Blood-and-Faith Populism and Sri Lanka’s Future””

“As the great reformers of the 19th century well knew, the Social Question, if left unaddressed, does not just wither away. It goes instead in search of more radical answers.””……Tony Judt (Reappraisals)

This month, the populist wave suffered two critical defeats. In France outsider-candidate Emmanuel Macron beat Marine Le Pen. In Iran, reformist president Hassan Rouhani trounced Ebrahim Raisi, a religious hardliner backed by Supreme Leader Khameni and the Revolutionary Guard. These defeats come in the wake of other electoral setbacks for populists, especially in Austria and The Netherlands. Despite these welcome-defeats, the current wave of populism is far from spent – and would continue wreak havoc, until the forces of moderation manage to create a new synthesis between pluralist democracy and progressive economics.

Populism is hardly a new phenomenon. It flourishes best where there is economic loss and pain. Populist leaders succeed in their power-grabs by harnessing that economic pain to their political projects.

Historically many (if not most) populist projects contained a fairly prominent economic content, starting with redistributive measures aimed at alleviating more extreme inequalities, at least to some degrees. This progressive component is totally absent in the current wave of populism. At its heart is not economic class but race/religion. Today’s populism is blood-and-faith nationalism in a slightly different, semi-modernist, guise. It has no redistributive intent, no measures aiming at alleviating economic or social injustice. Its economic programme is neo-liberal with one exception, the advocacy of a degree of protectionism. Its redistributive agenda consists of dispossessing aliens.

Populism always needed a heavy dose of ‘alternate-facts’, but in its current manifestation it operates solely within a universe of ‘alternate-facts’. Every economic problem besetting the People is attributed to rapacious foreigners who take our jobs, our money and our land and undermine our age-old culture in a thousand insidious ways. In this rhetoric, fear is substituted for reason or logic. When facts stand in the way, they are derided and rejected as fake-news.

In Orwell’s Oceania, ignorance is strength. Populism in its current incarnation openly glorifies ignorance. Donald Trump, speaking after the Nevada caucus, hailed the poorly educated as the smartest and most loyal people. Thus a new notion of a model citizen is created, someone who is happily uneducated, proudly ignorant and boastfully uninformed. Lack of education or information is not seen as a problem to be remedied but as necessary virtues to become a good citizen in the new populist utopia. The proud-ignorance of their followers is indispensable to the success of the leaders.

The Murder of Yameen Rasheed and Blood-and-faith Populism
Five years before he was stabbed to death, Maldivian blogger Yameen Rasheed wrote an analytical piece in the Himal magazine about his country’s gradual descent into the mire of Islamic fundamentalism. A Tool for the Atolls details the weaponisation of Islam by Maldivian rulers to gain and consolidate political power. The practice began with Abdul Gayoom who captured power on an Islamic platform. In 2012, a virulent oppositional campaign led by fundamentalist parties forced the democratically-elected president Mohamed Nasheed to resign.

Yameen Rasheed points out that Mr. Nasheed was, to some extent, the author of his own political demise. He made the cardinal error of trying to neutralise the growing fundamentalist forces by accommodating some of them in his cabinet. His argument was that an oppositional policy would drive the extremists underground. Unfortunately, the induction of the Adhaalath Party into the cabinet did not stem the tide of extremism; instead it gave extremists legitimacy, a slice of formal political power and a foothold in the system.

Traditionally, most Maldivians followed a moderate form of Islam influenced by Sufism. This liberal faith was slowly undermined by hardline influences coming from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Yameen Rasheed used his writings to oppose and ridicule the growing fundamentalism in his country. His writings, especially his popular blog, The Daily Panic, earned him the wrath of the authoritarian government and the hardline Islamists alike. Barely a month after he and a friend won an international award for developing an app to connect patients suffering from blood diseases (ex. Thalassemia) with hospitals and blood-donors, Mr. Rasheed was murdered.

The opposition movement which ousted Maldives’ democratically-elected President Nasheed was an early manifestation of the populist wave which is currently threatening democracy and pluralism across the globe. This wave marked its next significant victory in India. In 2014, Narendra Modi and his BJP won power in the world’s most populous democracy on a populist platform which combined rightwing economics, social-conservatism, political illiberalism, Hindu extremism and anti-environmentalism.

It was thus unsurprising that many Hindu fundamentalists (like many Sinhala-Buddhist supremacists) supported Donald Trump against Hillary Clinton. It is also not surprising that one of the first victims of the post-election racist resurgence in the US was an Indian-American. Srinivas Kuchibhotla, an engineer, a legal immigrant and a product of American universities, was killed by a white Navy veteran who, minutes before the fatal shooting, told his soon-to-be-victim, “Get out of my country.”
That statement encapsulates the essence of the current wave of populism: ethno-religious racism. The declared aim of this populism is to protect the chosen people and their homeland from encroaching aliens and emasculated elites. The People are seen as homogeneous, virtuous and perpetually threatened from within and without. The People can win if they “make their voices count through the populist leader/party…. In this way populists play on the idea of communities which had lost what they once had and will lose everything if they do not find their voice now and make it heard.”

Populism always had a knack to inveigle the populace to support projects which went against their fundamental interests. The current wave of populism excels at it. The American rightwing (especially the Ult-right) depict any increase in the minimum wage as a measure aimed at conferring special benefits on migrant workers. According to latest research, 50% of white-American working class males are opposed to an increase in the minimum wage. That is an example of how effectively racism can be used to stupefy entire communities and make them oppose policies which are in their own interests.

In Sri Lanka, a facebook post (in Sinhala) claiming that Islamic State (IS) operatives, disguised as health workers, are wondering from house to house injecting householders with the aids virus has gone viral. As a result, health officials in many areas are being prevented from carrying out an anti-filarial campaign, according to a Health Ministry complaint to the police. This facebook post is a translation of one which similarly went viral in India. That post seems to be a spinoff of a 2014 facebook post which claimed that the IS was injecting AIDS virus into oranges! The fact that there are people out there who can take such a canard seriously creates understandable fears about the future of democracy and civil-peace in Sri Lanka.

Snaps are from previous agitation a few years abck during the SINHA-LEYcampaign and other like moments

Sri Lanka’s Unintelligent Government and Unreconstructed Opposition

Wimal Weerawansa’s plan to hoist black flags on Wesak Day failed abysmally, but the wave of anti-Indian hysteria rides high, with audible undertones of racism targeting North-Eastern and Upcountry Tamils (This Sunday’s Divaina carries an op-ed piece claiming that Mr. Modi was trying to stir separatism in the plantations; the writer, a medical doctor, even criticises the upgrading of Norwood hospital!). The fact that Mahinda Rajapaksa sought and had a (reportedly bon-homos) meeting with Narendra Modi has made no dent in the anti-Indian hysteria of Mr. Rajapaksa’s acolytes. These followers see nothing contradictory in Mr. Rajapaksa’s romantic powwow with Mr. Modi, anymore than rank-and-file JVPers in the 1987-89 period (such as Wimal Weerawansa) saw anything amiss in an anti-Indian war which killed Sinhalese by the thousands but caused not a scratch to a single IPKF soldier. As Prins Gunasekera, a prominent JVP fellow-traveller of that time, revealed, “But the evidence that has started trickling in, in recent times, makes me wonder whether their anti-Indianism was really so… Many student activists of the IUSF, in sympathy with the JVP, had been seen visiting the Indian High Commission in Colombo, even telling them that they had nothing to fear from the JVP, that the Indian Embassy officials need not be evacuated to the security of the Taj-Samudra Hotel.”

In the flurry of arguments and counterarguments about numbers, what is being ignored is the kind of rhetoric which dominated the JO’s platform. There are plenty of fact-based criticisms to be made against the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration, starting with a distressing inability to understand, acknowledge or address the growing economic pains of ordinary people. Instead of showcasing these failures, the JO leaders indulged in racist and religious scaremongering on May Day. Nothing has changed from the time they made such preposterous claims as ‘SLMC now a LTTE’ or ‘Maithri-Prabha Mugs appear in London, Toronto.’

In 2013, the Fashion Bug outlet in Pepiliyana was attacked, consequent to a rumour of a 15 year old Sinhala-Buddhist employee of being raped, within the premises, by a Muslim fellow-employee. Less than a fortnight before this incident, Bhikku Galagoda-Atte Gnanasara had accused the Muslim owners of Fashion Bug of conspiring to turn pure Sinhala-Buddhist maidens into harem-inmates. When the then President Mahinda Rajapaksa was asked about this and other anti-minority incidents during a 2013 Al Jazzera interview, his response was not condemnation, but justification based on lies as insane as the one about the IS injecting oranges with the Aids virus. “What was in the background? Why were they attacked? Now see a girl was raped. Seven years old girl was raped. Then naturally they will go and attack them whether they belong to any community or any religion… There were incidents like that. All incidents have some background to that.”

Bhikku Galagoda-Atte Gnanasara is stirring the mire again. He wants to launch a campaign against Niqab. He is also challenging the primacy and authority of the Mahanayakes, whose relative moderation is a bar to his attempts to create a Wahabi-Buddhism. He wants the government to stop dealing with the infinitely more moderate and rational Buddhist hierarchy and deal with “monks and officials at ground level” – him and others of his ilk. The comments might seem like ravings of a madman, and indeed they are. But they need to be taken seriously because they also mark the first step in a planned ‘reformist’ movement from below, which aims at systematically eliminating every iota of moderation and tolerance in Sinhala-Buddhism and turn it into another Wahabism or Salafism. If this plan is even ten percent successful, the damage it can do to Sri Lanka and all its people, especially the Sinhala-Buddhists, would be incalculable.

The Joint Opposition’s spectacularly successful May Day seemed to have given the government a necessary jolt. But whether this will make the government deviate from its path of economic and political inanity is uncertain. For example, the plan to impose a huge tax on the EPF is still on track. If the Cabinet approves of it, the President will find himself facing a situation worse than what the Rajapaksa government did when it tried to impose a Kleptocratic pension plan on the private sector. The fact that the government cannot understand that a measure like this can turn the entire private sector workforce, from top to bottom, against it, indicates a terrifying absence of basic commonsense and enlightened self-interest.

History warns that political democracy and cultural-liberalism cannot flourish – or even survive – in the absence of socio-economic democracy. It is a lesson which is of paramount importance to post-Rajapaksa Sri Lanka.

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NOTE these strands of “populist practice” — pursued by politicians, businessmen and ordinary people alike -when venturing into uncertain pathways and imagined dangers

ALSO SEE

Michael Roberts: “Mahinda Rajapaksa — Cakravaarti Imagery and Populist Processes,” 28 January 2012,https://thuppahi.wordpress.com/2012/01/28/mahinda-rajapaksa-cakravarti-imagery-and-populist-processes/

Michael Roberts

The four volume Documents of the Ceylon National Congress produced by the Department of National Archives in 1977 runs into 3208 pages. In keeping with bureaucratic rigidity, the four volumes are still sold at some Rs 250. The give-away price has not enabled it to reach the public. The treasure trove of documentary data within these four volumes –  encompassing LSSP and Communist Party meetings in their early days — remain unknown and unseen. How many scholars, let alone armchair historians, know that FC “Derek” de Saram, Oxford Blue and Ceylonese cricketer of note, was among the ginger group (identified as “Young Turks” by me as the editor of the documents) who attempted to rejuvenate the CNC in 1938/39 by converting it into a party that could contest elections?[1]

Along one dimension the Documents of the Ceylon National Congress produced in 1977 is nevertheless a testament to the assiduous labours of numerous personnel in the Department of National Archives during its enforced peregrinations from Nuwara Eliya to Gangodawila and Cinnamon Gardens between the 1950s and 1970s. That is why this present book is dedicated to those who staffed the DNA in the 1960s and 1970s and particularly to GPSH de Silva, its Deputy Director. It so happened that “Haris” de Silva was my senior at Ramanathan Hall in Peradeniya University and among those who ragged me (mildly) … and then became a good friend and ally in my research endeavours after we moved beyond our undergraduate years.

Along another dimension the Documents of the Ceylon National Congress is an accident – a kind of fairy tale.  So, folk, sit back and absorb this tale of how I stumbled into this enterprise unforeseen and by chance.

How the Documentary Book Came into Fruition

My training in the discipline of History at Peradeniya University in the 1950s was fostered by such teachers as W.J. F. Labrooy, Sinnappah Arasaratnam. Karl W Goonewardena, Shelton Kodikara and Kingsley M. de Silva. The disciplinary leanings were, by and large, in the British empiricist tradition. That leaning was also fostered when I pursued my dissertation work on British agrarian policy in nineteenth century Ceylon under the guidance of Professor Jack Gallagher at Oxford University in the years 1962-65.

This research involved many hours of labour at the Public Record Office in Chancery Lane, London. At that site, I got to know Lal Jayawardena and thus his wife Kumari Jayawardena who had been a friend of my sister Audrey at Ladies College, Colombo. Lal’s dissertation work was in economic history and involved a macro-survey of the growth of plantations in the island[2] and engaged the slashing criticism of the British “Waste Lands Ordinances” of 1840 and 1897 by Ceylonese nationalists. So, our discussions in the tea rooms around Chancery Lane were as earnest and convivial as highly profitable for my intellectual development.

My empiricist leanings were consolidated yet further when I returned to Peradeniya University in 1966 as a lecturer and widened by research interests directed towards exploring (a) the origins of “Ceylonese nationalism” and (b) the growth of the Ceylonese middle classes during the colonial period and especially in the 19^th and 20^th centuries.[3] These two strands of interest were intimately connected because “Ceylonese nationalism,” as well as the parallel Sinhalese and Tamil nationalisms,[4] were nourished within the middle and lower middle classes (who can also be identified in Marxist terms as the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie).

 The gentlemen of the Orient Club outside their premises [then at Lindon Hall, Flower Rd] in the early 1900s. This cluster includes leading Ceylonese poltical activists such as Frederick Dornhorst, HJC Pereira, FR Senanayake, James Peiris and EJ Samerawickrame. A great deal of the planning on how to tackle the British colonial order was conceived and discussed within these premises — with EJ Samerawickrame among the most assiduous workers in the cause.

My previous work on agrarian transformation was of material assistance in my new engagements in these fields because the development of coffee plantations and the opening-up of the highlands to trade and capitalist development was the path of economic advancement for many Sri Lankan families, especially from the low-country areas of the south west.

In pursuing this research trajectory in the manner of an empiricist historian, I did not adhere to the Marxist framework of class favoured by such friends and colleagues in research as Kumari Jayawardena.[5] Rather, I chose to deploy the concept of “elite” (subdivided into “national elites” and “local elites”). This leaning therefore colours the interpretations of my writings in the 1970s on the  CNC and may provide grounds for critical assessment.

Be that as it may, this line of research meant considerable “oral history” where I met descendants of families who had garnered wealth in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Elderly womenfolk were among the best informants in this field. This is what can be termed “ethnographic research work” which became my initial steps towards anthropology. It also meshed neatly with another project that is now identified as the “Roberts Oral History Project” or ROHP.

ROHP

The inspiration for this project arose from my familial background. My father Thomas Webb Roberts (1881-1976) had been a “Ceylon Civil Servant” (CCS) in the British era[6] – working as one of the administrators from 1901 to 1935 before retiring as a pensioner to settle down in his beloved town of Galle (where I grew up and attended St. Aloysius College). He had moved to England[7] in 1961 to live out his life with one of my elder sisters in Streatham, London. Driven by my absorption in the history of the island, I asked him to write an account of his administrative experiences. He duly did so in 1963 by penning his “Memoirs of …”.

This moment stimulated me to consider recorded interviews with him and British CCS men as well as other administrators who were living in retirement in the United Kingdom. A British public service organisation provided me with access to the names and addresses of these personnel. I prepared an oral history research scheme involving a tape-recorder (the old spool type), monthly expenses and travel support for a period extending from circa October 1965 for five months or so and then presented this scheme to the Asia Foundation in Colombo with the strong backing of Professor Karl Goonewardena who headed the Department of History at Peradeniya.

The Asia Foundation endorsed the project. I completed my dissertation by the beginning of summer in 1965 and after short tour of Scotland as part of the Oxford Authentics Cricket Team and a two-month spell earning some cash as a bus conductor on the Isle of Wight, I returned to our semi-detached cottage at Bath Place, Oxford (rented from Merton College). This became my base for a number of trips to different parts of England to interview those administrators who had not only agreed to help me with my quest, but often provided me with bed and board on the occasion.[8]

 at matriculation in 1962 …  and at Bath Place near New College with daughter Kim in 1966

Franklin Gimson Leonard Woolf

I interviewed 32 personnel in late 1965 and early 1966; while also sustaining a correspondence with a few that yielded information, particularly on land policy and the Land Development Ordinance of 1935. Most of these interviews were recorded on spool, though a few (including Sir Peter Clutterbuck[9]) did not wish to have the talks recorded.

I carried my tape-recorder and tapes back with me when I returned to the island in March 1966 with my wife and child to resume my job at Peradeniya University.[10] It was only natural that I was moved to consider the continuation of this project by probing the experiences of retired Sri Lankan administrators. The Asia Foundation was more than ready to provide me with monies to cover travel expenses and other ancillary needs, while I had two married sisters in Colombo whose houses were home-from-home during week-end research trips or longer stays in the vacation months.

It so happened that I was interacting closely with Kumari and Lal Jayawardena who were back in Colombo at Gregory’s Road. Kumari’s line of research into the history of the labour movement[11] meant that the aging AE Goonesinha was one of the first persons I interviewed in Sri Lanka on 12^th May 1966.[12] In brief, my compass now embraced politicians as well as administrators. Colombo was the location of most of these endeavours and my trips there were usually on a Vespa scooter with the tape-recorder between my feet and my luggage strapped on the pillion. In sum, another 118 personnel were interviewed, of whom 39 could be described as politicians.

A E Goonesinha Kumari Jayawardena Leslie Goonewardena

MD Banda SA Wickremasinghe Edmund Samarakkody

These researches into the island’s history and politics through the experiences and readings of administrators and political activists of all types were a learning curve for me as a young callow researcher. They sometimes brought new friends (for e. g. Vernon Gunasekera of the LSSP now resident in Kandy[13]). On the odd occasion they generated ‘new finds’. That is, I came across new documents of historical value such as the Minutes of the Ceylon Reform League 1917-19.[14]

Given my archival orientations, I invariably encouraged those holding such material to loan it to the Department of National Archives so that copies could be made; and sometimes mediated the physical transfer of such material. One political activist who readily cooperated in this ‘exchange’ was Gilbert Perera, who had been one of the Secretaries of the Ceylon National Congress in the late 1940s.[15]

Perera indicated that JR Jayewardene may have lots of the CNC documents. So, one day – I forget when, but it is likely to have been late 1969 or early 1970 – I made an appointment to see JR who was the Minister of State in the ruling UNP government led by Dudley Senanayake.

Led into his study by an attendant and facing JR at his desk, I remarked that Gilbert Perera had indicated that some Congress documents were in his possession. He answered in the affirmative, summoned an aide and gave instructions. As his aides brought box upon box – umpteen boxes and yet more boxes — into the room, I was gobsmacked.  Plucking up courage I asked him if he could loan them to the Archives for copies to be made.

JR remained poker-faced. I could not decipher any receptiveness to this idea. He then turned pensive: “Koatte [Koattegoda] and I thought of continuing Banda’s work[16] and producing another volume on the organisation.”

He then looked at me and asked: “Will you undertake the job?”

Volāre! Cantāre! What to say!

Like a bloody fool, I said “Yes” because that was one way of getting the material into the island’s archival stock.

What I did not know then was that at that point of time the Department of National Archives fell within the jurisdiction of the Minister of State – JR’s domain.[17] So his wish was his command. The Archives was commissioned to assist me in taking on the project. Since I had secured a Fulbright Fellowship for 1970/71, this meant that the organisation of this project only commenced when I was ready to take it up on my return to teaching work at Peradeniya University in late 1971.

Mr Amarawansa Dewaraja, Director of the Archives, sent the voluminous body of documents to the University of Peradeniya library premises and hired Sriyani Bernadette (now Sriyani Goonewardene) to work under my instructions in preparing the material. We had a space in the basement of the library and I went through the boxes of document and made certain  choices. Sriyani’s willing industry was one pillar in the process that eventually led to the four-volume Documents of the Ceylon National Congress and Nationalist Politics in Ceylon 1928-1950 (1977) running to 3208 pages in total.

The printing and editing of the documents in the years 1974/75 was also a tedious and slow process involving several trips to Colombo. When I headed to Germany on a Humboldt Fellowship in July 1975 the Archives informed me that the final book form would be delayed because of printing backlogs. It was a pleasant surprise when the four volumes appeared out of the blue in early 1977 to coincide with Independence Day. This was because a change of government had taken place and JR Jayewardene, now the President of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, could take centre stage at a media event involving the presentation of de-luxe copies of the four-volume work to him. C’est la Vie.

In contrast with the Indian National Congress in British India, the Ceylon National Congress did not spearhead the last stages in the battle for independence. The key roles in that struggle were played out behind the scenes by DS Senanayake and his aides, Oliver Goonetilleka and Ivor Jennings, with the newly-established United National Party led by DS Senanayake as the front ‘portal.’[18]

Jennings at work DS Senanayake & OE Goonetilleka with a British VIP

Senanayake had moved away from the CNC  during the 1940s – in part because of the influential positioacquired by the Ceylon Communist Party within that body in the years 1943-44.[19] Senanayake eventually created the United National Party on the 6^th September 1946 as a broad coalition directed towards winning the General Elections under a new constitution. The CNC, as well as the Sinhala Maha Sabha led by SWRD Bandaranaike, were incorporated as loose affiliates within his umbrella party.

So, what one sees in the period 1945-50 was what I have designated as the “Congress Rump.” Note the end-point: 1950 … not 1947 or 1948.

Few scholars have attended to this ancillary dimension of Sri Lankan political history – largely because few are aware of the Documents of the Ceylon National Congress.[20] In addressing this issue (briefly and inadequately) in 1977, I had this to say: “[t]he Congress-Rump of the years 1946-50 was not without political significance in the light of subsequent developments. It provides heralds and antecedents of the ideological and social forces that went into the social and political upsurge of the year 1956 (page clxi in original book).”[21]  

     Jayantha Weerasekera

George E de Silva  P de S. Kularatne

In briefly depicting the meetings of the Congress in the period May 1946 to January 1950 which addressed central political issues, I presented indications in support of this tentative thesis. I also marked individuals who were unhappy with the subordination of the CNC within the UNP favoured by JR Jayewardene and associates. These included Peter Galoluwa and DM Manoratne of the Maradana National Congress Association; Gilbert Perera (advocate and businessman), Jayantha Weerasekera (journalist and writer –also spelt as Wirasekera), PP Siriwardena (landed proprietor & teacher in Veyangoda) and P. de S. Kularatne (a school principal from a well-endowed Karāva family).

It is the task of the new generations of scholars to test this little thesis amongst others spawned by the arguments in the introductory book that I fashioned in 1977 by delving into the mass of CNC documents as well as other pertinent data.

Fare thee well.

    ***  ***

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Note that this list is meant as an aide to readers. I have not necessarily studied all the items here before penning this prefatory essay; but will certainly work on them before writing the projected “Postface” for the new version of my 1977  Ïntroduction”.

Bandaranaike, SWRD (ed) 1928 The Hand-book of the Ceylon National Congress, Colombo, HW Cave & C o.

De Silva, Chandra R. 1997 Sri Lanka. A History, 2^nd Edn. New Delhi, Vikas Publishing House.

De Silva, Kingsley M. n. d. The Second World War and the Soulbury Commission, 1939-1945 … The Stationary Office. AT …………………………………………………………….. http://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/6132/2/vB2_Sri_Lanka_Part_I.pdf

De Silva, Kingsley M. 1993 Sri Lanka. Problems of Governance, Kandy, ICES.

Jayawardena, V. Kumari 1972 The Rise of the Labor Movement in Ceylon, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Kumarasingham, Harshan 2013 “ ‘The Jewel of the East yet has its Flaws’ – The Deceptive Tranquility Surrounding Sri Lankan Independence,” Heidelberg Papers in South Asian and Comparative Politics … also at https://thuppahi.wordpress.com/2014/03/11/the-jewel-of-the-east-yet-has-its-flaws-the-deceptive-tranquillity-surrounding/

Kumarasingham, Harshan 2013 “The ‘Tropical Dominions’ – The Appeal of Dominion Status in the Decolonisation of India, Pakistan and Ceylon,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Dec 2013

Roberts, Michael

1973    “Elites and Elite Formation in Ceylon, c. 1830-1930” in History of Ceylon, Vol. III, pp. 263-84.

1974    “Problems of Social Stratification and the Demarcation of National and Local Elites in British Ceylon”, Journal of Asian Studies, August 1974, 23: 549-77.

1974    “Fissures and Solidarities: Weaknesses within the Working Class Movement in the Early Twentieth Century”, Modern Ceylon Studies, vol. 5: 1-31.

1974    “Labour and the Politics of Labour in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries”, review article, Modern Ceylon Studies, 5: 179-208.

1989    “The Political Antecedents of the Revivalist Elite within the MEP Coalition of 1956” in K.W. Goonewardena Felicitation Volume, ed. by C.R. De Silva & Sirima Kiribamune, Peradeniya University, pp. 185-220.

2015    “TW Roberts and His Cricketing Moments,” 12 April 2015, https://cricketique.wordpress.com/2015/04/12/tw-roberts-and-his-cricketing-moments-2/

Rusesll, Jane 1983 Communal Politics under the Donoughmore Constitution, Dehiwela, Tisara Prakasakayo.

Rusesll, Jane 1981 Our George. A Biography of George Edmund De Silva, Sri Lanka.

Rusesll, Jane 2017 “Jane Russell on Sri Lankan Political /history in Debate with Kumarasinghma’s Readings,” 24 May 2017, https://thuppahi.wordpress.com/2017/05/24/jane-russell-on-sri-lankan-political-history-in-debate-with-kumarasinghams-readings/

END NOTES

[1] See Roberts, Documents, 1977: pp. clv-clviii. Speculatively, I note that FC de Saram would have been debarred from political advocacy once he became a reserve Army officer during the war. Fortunately, he was not b debarred from playing cricket for the Sinhalese Sports Club and Ceylon. It is no accident that the de Saram family, JR Jayewardene and Dudley and EL Senanayake – all from roughly  the same generation –were stalwarts of the SSC during the mid-twentieth century..

[2] Jayawardena’s dissertation at Cambridge, entitled “The Supply of Sinhalese Labour to Ceylon Plantations (1836-1930) The Study of Imperial Policy in a Peasant Society,” was completed in 1963. It is a pity that it has not been turned into a book by any organisation in Sri Lanka. Some indication of its value can be gleaned from my references to its findings in Roberts, “The Impact of the Waste Lands Legislation and the Growth of Plantations on the Techniques of Paddy Cultivation in British Ceylon: A Critique,” Modern Ceylon Studies, 1970, vol 2: 157-96.

[3] This line of research was signalled by my Ceylon Studies Seminar paper on “The Rise of the Karavas,” on the 4^th March 1969. See Chapter 2 in this book as well as my substantive work Caste Conflict and Elite Formation: The Rise of a Karava Elite in Sri Lanka, 1500-1931 (Cambridge University Press, 1982);

[4] The latter have usually been referred to as “communalism,” but I have always been attentive to the overlaps of meaning in the two concepts in the indigenous languages Sinhala and Tamil. I do not see why a Sinhala (or Tamil) nationalism cannot nestle within a “Ceylonese nationalism” as a segment within a larger whole. See chapters 3 and 4 in this book.

[5] Note my critical engagement with her approaches in “Problems of Social Stratification,” 1974 and “Labour and the Politics of Labour,” 1974.

[6] See my “TW Roberts and His Cricketing Moments” (2015) for some biographical facets.

[7] My pater had an abiding interest in race horses and their form …. and in betting wagers. He was disgusted to his marrow when Mrs Bandaranaike banned horse racing in the island and since I had, by then, finished my education and got a job, he was free to migrate (since he had no property in Sri Lanka anyway).

[8] Note that I had to travel the length and breadth of England in order to meet hose who were ready to oblige my pursuits. This was in stark contrast with Sri Lanka where most of the retired administrative personnel resided in Colombo.

[9] As a young public servant, Clutterbuck served as Administrative Assistant to the Donoughmore Commission when it went out to Ceylon in the late 1920s.

[10] During spells when she was not working, my wife Shona typed up some of the interviews, so a few are available a as documents. The University of Adelaide funded the transmission of all the recorded interviews from spool to cassette in the late 1980s. More recently, the Special Collections Unit under Cheryl Hoskin at the Barr Smith Library at the University placed all the recordings on internet. They  can be accessed at http://www.adelaide.edu.au/library/special/mss/roberts/

[11] This work resulted in an important book: see Jayawardena 1972.

[12] Kumari was present and participated in the questions presented to old man Goonesinha.

[13] Vernon Gunasekera was interviewed on four occasions: 7^th & 22^nd July 1988, 29^th March 1967 and 18^th December 1967.

[14] These were handed over to me by Mrs G. L. Cooray whose deceased husband had been the Secretary of the Ceylon Reform League. They were the parents of Mark Cooray, a bosom friend from Peradeniya days – whose home at Dharmapala Mawatha was also a home-from-home to me when I visited Colombo on my research work.

[15] Gilbert Perera was interviewed on the 2^nd August 1969.

[16] JR Jayewardene was referring to SWRD Bandaranaike, Hand-Book of the Ceylon National Congress, printed in 1928 by HW Cave & Co.

[17] I suspect that the Minister of State in that government did not oversee powerful administrative arenas and that it was a sinecure meant to sideline a potential threat to Dudley Senanayake’s sway.

[18] The British documentary trove relating to these negotiations is now accessible though the monumental labour of Professor KM de Silva in association with the Royal Commonwealth Institute and other organisations at BDEEP at http://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/6132/2/vB2_Sri_Lanka_Part_I.pdf. Analytical survey can begin by consulting KM de Silva’s books on the topic and by attending to the more recent studies by Harshan Kumarasingham.

[19] The Communist Party’s entry into the Ceylon National Congress was obviously directed by the Soviet Union’s association with the Western nations in the struggle against the fascist states of Germany and Japan.

[20] KM de Silva and CR de Silva have consulted this set of books; but few other political surveys of the 20^th century undertaken in the last forty years seem to have done so. In part this is because the volumes have not been advertised. The Archives building is certainly within easy reach and the four volumes cost only a few dollars.

[21] In this connection, see Roberts, “Political Antecedents,” 1989.

Rajan Philips, in The Island, 26 May 2018, where the title is  “The Shangri La tamasha: Neither presidential nor parliamentary, it’s Port City politics now

After a week in Cuba, I am late in gate-crashing the Shangri La party, the onset of the newest political tamasha in town. Calling it a tamasha is not to belittle the political potency of the event, but to highlight its ideational bankruptcy. No one took Donald Trump seriously when he slid down his gilded Trump Tower escalator, in January 2016, and announced his candidacy to become President of the United States of America. Look where he landed before the year was over and where he is dragging by its nose the world’s so called sole superpower. The Sri Lankan contrast is glaring.

GR making Viyath Maga speech at Shangri La

Everyone in Sri Lanka takes Gotabhaya Rajapaksa seriously. The President and the Prime Minister are seriously scared of him. They will not let anyone, especially the forces of the law, touch him. And he is the only Sri Lankan to have publicly declared that Sri Lanka needs a Trump-like leader to liberate the country from the clutches of traditional politicians. The same way, or maybe not, the Tamils were liberated from the claws of the LTTE. He even said in November 2016, that he was making a study of Trump’s path to power. On May 13, 2018, the ides of May and not March, Shangri La marked the graduation ceremony for Mr. Rajapaksa’s self-teaching labour.

Serious politics is usually born when those in intellectual ivory towers take to city streets and village homes to marry their ideas with the energies of ordinary people which are suppressed under their efforts to barely survive. Fascist politics invariably takes the reverse route – when disgruntled and misguided middle classes throng the political towers to capture total power and put in place the animal farm under military uniform. Therein is the difference between Sri Lankan politics of earlier times that cut its teeth and had its baptismal fires at Galle Face, in Hyde Park, and even earlier in the village huts among shivering malaria patients and on the plantations among the toiling tea pickers – and what now passes for politics at the Shangri La. In one fell swoop, the grand debate between presidential and parliamentary forms of politics has been overtaken by what can appropriately be called Port City politics.

Talking about Port City, a passing swipe at our Prime Minister will not be out of order. In what will go down as the great betrayal in his small footnote to history, Ranil Wickremesinghe after making the grandest of promises in January 2015 to cancel the Port City project made the most ungallantly somersault to keep the project going under a different name called Western Megapolis. The significance of this broken promise is that it was never meant to be kept. Therein is the heart of the country’s political culture that has now spurned Ranil Wickremesinghe and found a new tribune in Gotabhaya Rajapaksa.

On the economic front, Mr. Wickremesinghe’s beef with the Rajapaksas was not any major disagreement with what they were doing but only how they were doing it. He was annoyed that the hoi polloi from Hambantota were stealing his pet urban projects and making a mess of them. They needed a city sleek like himself, a fourth generation bourgeois – a rarity in the upstart Sri Lankan society, and his Royal College classmates to turn things around for the good of everyone including, yes, the masses. To silence the Sinhala Buddhist clamour, he assigned his pet projects to Champika Ranawake with strong credentials on the urumaya front.

The Prime Minister waved the magic band of free trade hoping to create in Sri Lanka in what remains of his lifetime, that Lee Kuan Yew took all of his life’s prime time to achieve in Singapore. The dream was a non-starter for two reasons. One, an omission, a grave one at that, and one that ignored the entire agricultural sector and its ten million dependents and left them helpless victims to the wild vagaries of weather. Two, an act of commission, and one that directly and indirectly fostered state corruption the utter lack of which was LKY’s principal ingredient for the regulated success of Singapore. So the economic goose was cooked even before Ravi Karunanayake and Mangala Samarweera began their untutored apprenticeship in the hallowed halls of the Ministry of Finance. The upshot is that the new-rich classes of Sri Lanka have lost all patience for yahapalanaya, more so when they have a dressed up Messiah at the Shangri La who can take them to the promised land of development – much faster and much richer.

Politically, RanilWickremesinghe had an unpredictable partner in power in Maithripala Sirisena. Together, they broke the other great promise of their common platform – to bring to book the corrupt miscreants of the Rajapaksa regime. Instead, they broke ranks and in their own ways protected the Rajapaksas from the forces of the law. Ranil Wickremesinghe tried to undermine Sirisena by keeping the Rajapaksas as a political counterweight. Maithripala Sirisena was more specific in protecting Gotabhaya Rajapaksa to spite the other Rajapaksa brothers whom he did not like. Between them, they have succeeded in keeping the Rajapaksas legally safe and politically relevant and in creating out of Gotabhaya Rajapaksa a viable presidential candidate.

A candidate without a party

For all the hype, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa is not a unifying figure even within the (joint) opposition forces. His ‘arrival’ at the Shangri La was not organized by any political party. As of now, he is a candidate looking for a party ticket. The old Left comrades in the JO know that supporting Gotabhaya Rajapaksa would be worse than voting for the 18th Amendment – as a matter of principle, so to Vasu-speak. They may still end up supporting him. For now, their preferred choice for candidate is Chamal Rajapaksa. There is also much blame going on about the 19th Amendment that closed the door on a third term or unlimited tenure for Mahinda Rajapaksa. It is only because Mahinda Rajapaksa is constitutionally barred from running again for president by 19A, the blaming argument goes, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa is being enabled to put himself forward as a presidential candidate. Put another way, we should blame 19A if the former army officer becomes the next Sri Lankan President.

The Shangri La event might be causing unease even within the family. The younger Rajapaksa may seem to have jumped the gun on his two older brothers, and the still younger brother, Basil Rajapaksa, may not be too pleased to see his army brother vying for the highest political office after all the political legwork he (Basil) has been doing. Mahinda Rajapaksa knows a thing or two about the fate of parachuted candidates from Colombo, no matter what the initial euphoria is. He handily defeated one of them, Sarath Fonseka – whose military bubble burst no sooner than the war hero entered the electoral fray. Mahinda Rajapaksa and Basil Rajapaksa know that the UNP and Ranil Wickremasinghe are hoping that the 2010 history will repeat itself in 2020, albeit in their favour this time. For all its fancy fluff, the Shangri La shindig may turn out to be a political albatross in a national election.

That Gotabhaya Rajapaksa is an aspiring candidate looking for a party ticket is only one side of our current political story. By the way, the name abbreviation GR has a nice ring to it, and may rhyme well or ill, depending on where you stand, with the more famous initials – JR. That JR was also known as “Yankee Dick” is not relevant here, but it won’t take long before the wags come up with a “Yankee Goat” bumper sticker for the Rajapaksa bandwagon.

GR’s emergence only shows how political parties have been made irrelevant by the cumulative effects of the presidential system, proportional representation, the abolition of electoral candidates in favour party list of candidates, and the virtual elimination of by-elections to fill member vacancies between general elections. Historically, Sri Lanka is not the first country where a political party has its members divided between the government and opposition in the national legislature. It happened in the mother of parliaments, in Britain, at the very beginning of political parties, and it has happened elsewhere since. But nowhere has political opportunism and not principled differences have resulted in the fragmentation of parties without anyone actually leaving, let alone being expelled from, a political party.

In the run up to the last presidential election the Secretaries of the two major parties, the SLFP and the UNP, left their respective parties without resigning from them. One of them went on to become President of the country and then the President of the Party he had left. Neither of them was challenged or faced expulsion. If they were, they would have taken refuge under the principles of Natural Justice – to give the leaving party member a fair hearing, inasmuch as the maxim “Audi Alteram Partem” has become the basis for Sri Lankan case law on political party expulsions. However laudable the courts’ enshrinement of the old maxim may be in defence of the rights of individual members, no one seems to have assessed its disruptive effects on the functioning of parliament (and cabinet government), where much of the nation’s sovereignty is supposed to reside.

Political fragmentation has also given the license for fake loyalties and informal alliances. A cabinet minister may have much more in common, including the sharing of cabinet secrets, with opposition members than his own cabinet colleagues. The current President took it to the highest level in reaching out to the opposition to get rid of his own ‘national government’ partner, the Prime Minister. If the presidential system has contributed to the disarraying of political parties, the disarrayed parties are now influencing, rather, not influencing, the selection of presidential candidates. The Shangri La event was not a political party convention to select a presidential candidate, but a gathering of political busybodies to exert pressure on the SLPP to nominate Gotabhaya Rajapaksa as its presidential candidate. Donald Trump did it himself, but GR has a whole entourage to do it for him.

Rescuing politics from the Shangri La tamasha

Gotabhaya Rajapaksa is not an egotistical phenomenon, unlike Trump whose ego is his politics and whose politics is all about his ego. In any event, GR cannot afford to show much ego in the shadow of his older brother and former President, Mahinda Rajapaksa. Nor can he afford to say that Sri Lankan history has been all “carnage” until now and he has arrived to stop it as the next President, the way Trump declared in his ‘fire and fury’ inaugural address with three former presidents seated behind him. Trump’s slogans were: “Make America Great Again”; and “Drain the Washington swamp.” GR cannot plagiarise either of them, because, unlike Trump, he is not a newcomer to the state and government establishments and the Colombo swamp. He was very much a part of the Mahinda Rajapaksa presidency and the Colombo swamp and that is in fact his only claim to fame and his only qualification to be President. The essence of the Shangri La political tamasha is the rush to restore undivided control over the Colombo swamp after its mismanagement under the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe diarchy.

Again, it is not GR who is spiriting away the business classes from the UNP and Ranil Wickremesinghe. The political appropriation of the business classes was already much accomplished under Mahinda Rajapaksa. Demographic and political changes have created a new generation of Sinhalese business classes who are more at home with the Rajapaksas than they are with anybody in the UNP. Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe is neither unaware nor unmindful of this shift in class allegiance and loyalty. In fact, during the 2014-15 presidential election campaign, Mr. Wickremesinghe pointedly warned the new rich that they do not have to worry about anything if they have not broken any law while making money. That moral high road has since vanished under the clouds of the Central Bank bond scandal and everything else.

The Prime Minister’s new warning is to the journalists that they do not know what they are bargaining for in giving excessive coverage to the political emergence of Gotabhaya Rajapaksa. Really? The only people who bargained with the devil and who are now about to reap what they sowed are Prime Minister Wickremesinghe and President Sirisena. Strangely, if not stupidly, the two men still entertain hopes that they have a fair to good chance of making another run in the next presidential race. Mr. Wickremesinghe is trying to counter the GR phenomenon by promising a UNP of ‘new faces’ as opposed to the SLPP of the same old faces and military retirees. Mr. Sirisena, on the other hand, seems to be relying on his own ‘charisma’, which he apparently thinks won him the presidency in 2015, and amateurish machinations to disrupt the SLPP. To wit, the SLFP-16 is supposed to be a Trojan horse in the opposition benches. But everybody knows it, so there is nothing Trojan about the 16 SLFPers. If at all, they sheep in wolves’ clothing.

Like addicted political gamblers, Sirisena and Wickremesinghe seem set on playing for broke by running again in a presidential election. They have an alternative way to save their political bacon and derail the GR bandwagon. And that is to seriously and jointly support the 20th Amendment proposals that the JVP has now formally submitted to parliament for review by the Attorney General before being gazetted as a bill. There is no other way for the two men. They may get still direct or indirect support from even within the Rajapaksa family who may not be too pleased with the showmanship at Shangri La.

Tamara Kunanayakam, from Island, in Three Parts with title “Sri LankJune 2018, an sovereignty, non-negotiable!”

Sri Lankan sovereignty – its supremacy in domestic policy and its independence in foreign policy – is under a two-pronged attack. In Sri Lanka, the neoliberals seek physical appropriation of territory and all that it contains, targeting the very substance of sovereignty and independence – the inalienable right of the people to full and permanent sovereignty, including possession, use and disposal, over all their wealth, natural resources and economic activities. Without permanent sovereignty, there can be no independent domestic or foreign policy; without it, independence and sovereignty are but empty shells.

At the UN Human Rights Council, their ideological counterpart, the US neoconservatives lead the attack. US-led resolution co-signed by the Sirisena-Wickramasinghe Government legitimises unilateral intervention in its internal affairs and permits instrumentalisation of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to draft laws that facilitate appropriation and provide a long-term guarantee.

The larger objective is gaining control over the strategically located island to maintain US global hegemony by combatting the reemergence of a potential rival identified in the 2018 US National Defense Strategy as the reemergence of long-term, strategic competition by China and Russia, not terrorism.

Sri Lanka is fast losing its economic sovereignty. Policy choices are being ceded to the US Administration, IMF/World Bank, Western aid agencies, corporate-backed think tanks, transnational corporations, and a small clique of legal and financial consultancy firms in the multimillion-dollar privatisation business, giving advice, then profiting from that advice. People and nation have become dispensable commodities; their labour, wealth, natural resources, economic activities are on auction with foreign bidders determining their worth.

Sri Lanka is meekly following Washington further down the destructive path of neoliberalism, which, four decades later, has failed to bring about the promised wellbeing for all. According to the 2018 World Inequality Report, global inequality has grown since 1980 with the top 1% increasing their annual income by 205% and the top 0.001% by 636%, whereas average annual wage of the bottom 50% has stagnated. A 2017 Oxfam index ranks Sri Lanka 138th out of 152 countries in terms of relative commitment to reducing inequality, worse than Haiti.

Even ardent promoters of neoliberalism admit it has failed. On the 2008 financial collapse, David Rothkopf, a former senior US Commerce department official said, “This is a watershed. This is the end of 25 years of Reagan-Thatcherism, ‘leave it to the market, less government is better government’. That is over – period.” Martin Wolf, economic guru of Financial Times, called the day Bear Stearns collapsed “the day the dream of global free-market capitalism died.” French President Sarkozy agreed, “(The) idea of an all powerful market without any rules and any political intervention is mad. Self-regulation is finished. Laisser faire is finished. The all-powerful market which is always right is finished.”

The myth of the private sector being more efficient than the public sector has also exploded. The most important study on the efficiency of all European State enterprises privatized between 1980-2009 revealed they performed worse than those that remained public. A 2015 UNDP study found no model of ownership (public, private, or mixed) intrinsically more efficient than the other. iA telling case is British Metronet Rail, a Public Private Partnership (PPP), which became insolvent before the 5-year deal ended and was brought under court administration, costing the public over £400 million.

The role played by the Yahapalana partners in this onslaught is not a matter of bad management, bad governance, incompetence, incapacity, or an absence of vision. They have been placed in the positions they occupy precisely because of a shared vision.

The neoliberal project

The neoliberal project, a revival of 19th century laisser faire ideology, has its origins in the Mont Pelerin Society (MPS), a secretive organization founded in 1947 by Friedrich von Hayek of the Austrian School of Economics, with Milton Friedman of the Chicago School, later Economic Adviser to US President Reagan, Allan Walters, who became Chief Economic Adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, other neoliberals, members of the US oligarchy and European aristocracy.

Its project is Hayek’s globalist vision – an end to the constitutional nation-State and the global expansion of the oligarchy’s interests unhampered by State sovereignty. A supranational world government, as expressed in the International Paneuropean Union, would replace the nation State, a vision shared by the Nazis. Deregulation and liberalization will render impossible any State action on behalf of nation and people, giving free rein over the national economy to global corporate interests. It will no longer have control over the value of what the nation produces, its wealth, natural resources, economic activities, workforce, currency, or even be able to fulfill its international human rights and labour obligations.

The State will be transformed radically from an entity in which popular sovereignty is vested and duty-bound to protect the interests of people and nation into one that serves the interests of a small oligarchy, becoming more not less authoritarian. Its role will be to deregulate all legal and administrative controls that interfere with their operations, and then re-regulate to protect them from popular anger. The most discussed solution is imposing constitutional limits to popular power as best guarantee. The terms “rule of law” and “good governance” in HRC Resolution 30/1 and in IMF/World Bank/Western conditionalities refer to this new system of law and government. In Sri Lanka, it is known as Yahapalanaya.

Civilising mission

The project is advanced as a civilizing concept, associating Western civilization with progress and development, equating “big government” with totalitarianism. Today, in the human rights language, this civilising mission is translated as Responsibility to Protect. Legitimising their worldview as “common sense,” neoliberals have imposed the meaning of terms such as productive, progressive, scientific, modern, independent, freedom, etc. from the point of view of the key actors in global markets.

Infiltrating Government

MPS shapes economic policies by infiltrating and controlling governments through a powerful elite-led global policy-planning network of over 500 think tanks and numerous business schools, corporate-backed Foundations, media, and University economics departments transformed into ideological centres of neoliberal strategy. Funded mainly by US corporates and North American Governments, they produce neoliberal ideas and language under cover of supposedly impartial hubs of expertise propagating them through the mass media; training of business, political and social leaders, economists, journalists, and other professionals; drafting laws for parliamentarians, ministers, and heads of State; preparing publications for conferences and seminars; and introducing speakers for meetings and social encounters.

Transfer of power from public institutions to global corporates

Past decades have seen a massive transfer of wealth, resources, and power from public institutions to foreign corporates. Studies show the most significant shift has not been from public to private, nor State to market, but from local and national political agencies to global concentrations of economic power. In 2016, the 10 largest TNCs earned more than all countries in the world, their total worth US 285 billion equivalent to the wealth of 180 countries;ii and, 737 global banks, insurance companies and industrial groups controlled 80% of the value of all the world’s companies.iii

Corporate influence especially over countries of the South manifests itself through its sheer economic power; its ability to manipulate transfer prices through intra-company trade, inflating import prices and underpricing exports also to avoid taxation or circumvent limits to profit repatriation; its ability to wield influence in the political affairs of sovereign States – directly or indirectly, and when necessary, even obtain Western intervention to further or protect their interests. As a result, States’ ability to protect and promote the public interest has been significantly undermined, and citizens’ authority usurped.

MPS influence in Sri Lanka

An eminent Sri Lankan MPS member is Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, under whose influence it held a Special Meeting in Kandalama in 2004, when he was Prime Minister.  His influence over policy needs no comment.

The two most visible MPS linked think tanks in Sri Lanka masquerading under the guise of impartiality, providing cover for the political establishment and profoundly influencing policy changes and far- reaching reforms – including Constitutional – are the Institute for Policy Studies and Advocata Institute. They illustrate how Western governments, corporates and their think-tanks function together to hijack State sovereignty; how foreign-funded, foreign-controlled entities unaccountable to people and State penetrate Government and work from within – without any impediment – to implement an alien agenda. They highlight the importance of knowing the sponsors and donors of reports from alleged think tanks that advocate sale of the country, and the lobbying connections of its authors.

*** ***

IPS, Sri Lanka’s main economic policy think-tank claims it is “independent,” but only from the Sri Lankan State, not Western governments or their oligarchs. When established by an Act of Parliament in 1988, it was located in the Finance and Planning Ministry, but co-financed by the Dutch Government and run by a Resident Coordinator from the Dutch Institute for Social Studies. In 2006, it announced it was moving to full financial independence, but signed an agreement with the Dutch Government to finance construction of a new office building. Today, its direct and indirect donors have expanded to include Canada, the UK and Norway, US corporates, banks and equity funds channelled through the Hewlett Foundation and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. They finance its core activities via The Think Tank Initiative, a project of the Canadian government-owned International Development Research Centre to influence policy changes in the South by promoting the establishment of think tanks.

IPS plays a critical role for the Government, providing cover for unpopular policies and external involvement. In April 2015, only three months after his own appointment, Prime Minister Wickremesinghe appointed co-Mont Pelerinist and Hayek Medalist Singapore-based Professor Razeen Sally as IPS Chairman. Sally is Adjunct Scholar at Cato Institute, the most prominent US neoliberal think-tank founded by MPS member Ed Crane. He is also Founder/Co-Director of the Cato-related European Centre for International Political Economy linked to the most influential US neoconservative think tank Brookings Institution.

Sally and other Members of IPS Governing Board simultaneously hold key positions in Government. In July 2017, Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera appointed Sally Senior Advisor. Indrajit Coomaraswamy is Governor of the Central Bank; M.I.M. Rafeek is Secretary, Policy Planning and Economic Affairs Ministry; and S.S. Mudalige is Director General, National Planning Department. Connected to the apex of State power is Sarath Rajapathirana, President Sirisena’s Economic Advisor, a Visiting Emeritus Scholar at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute regarded as the “intellectual command post of the neoconservative campaign for regime change in Iraq.”

IPS was involved in organising the January 2016 Sri Lanka Economic Forum under the patronage of President and Prime Minister, bringing together – directly or indirectly – the Harvard University’s Centre for International Development, which works with the PM’s Office, BOI and the Development Strategy and International Trade Ministry, George Soros and his Open Society Foundation, the US Administration, and Corporates to prepare the Government’s three-year economic development plan that became Vision 2025. The PM’s Office declared it set the stage for in-depth analysis and discussion on developing government policy along areas identified by the Harvard team led by the Director Prof. Ricardo Hausmann. Subsequently, the PM’s Office and Finance Ministry reportedly sent teams to Harvard for a study course.

The Harvard operation, kept secret until the last minute, was funded by multi-billion dollar hedge-fund crook George Soros, whose “spiritual mentor” Karl Popper was an MPS founder. Soros became known as the world’s premier currency speculator after demolishing the British monetary system in 1992 in a single day and pocketing more than US$ 1 billion at the expense of the British taxpayer.

IPS aggressively promotes the sale of public assets and State owned Enterprises (SOEs) to Western corporates and replacement of Public Utilities Commission Board members with so-called “independent directors,” meaning foreign, because according to Sally, “having independent anybody in Sri Lanka is very difficult at the moment.” In an interview to Advocata Institute, Sally declared that the “first best solution to the running of SOEs in Sri Lanka is to have a timetable to privatize.” To combat popular opposition, he recommended starting with partial privatization putting into a holding company enterprises that operate in a commercial sphere, then “gradually” increasing private sector stakes until “the time is right politically” to move into majority private ownership.

Advocata Institute

Advocata, another influential think-tank linked to MPS and the US Administration, was launched in May 2016 at the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute with as Chief Guest the then Deputy Minister of Public Enterprise Development Eran Wickramaratne, today State Minister of Finance. Its inaugural report, The State of State Enterprises written before the institution existed, disclosed the Advocata project – sale of all SOEs, non-strategic and strategic. It argued reform should go beyond the 55 strategically important SOEs, which, it claimed, had made enormous losses; a comprehensive productivity study should determine whether to shut down, privatise or hold under a holding company.

Three months later, Development Strategies and Trade Minister, Malik Samarawickrama, used Advocata findings to justify “far-reaching privatisation plans.” Atlas Network, founded by MPS member Antony Fisher to which Advocata belongs, declared it was a commitment to privatise strategic and non-strategic SOEs despite “immense political risk.” It claimed Advocata was “widely influential in this ongoing reform process” and had “spurred” the move to privatise, its report becoming the Government’s “go-to reference” on SriLankan Airines giving “the final push needed to get the government to put the struggling business up for sale.” Sri Lanka was among 10 countries Atlas considered it had “invested successfully” and won.

One month later, Cabinet approved the Prime Minister’s proposal to hire the US firm McKinsey and Company for US$ 2,3 million to establish a Central Programme Management Unit in his Office for “accelerated economic transformation” to monitor projects fast-tracked under a new Development (Special Provisions) Bill that would give sweeping powers to restructure and transform the economy. He proposed that Nika Gilauri, former Georgian Prime Minister under the pro-Washington neoliberal regime, be senor expert on the project.

Advocata recommendations for Budget 2017 included ‘reactivation’ of so-called Dead Capital, a doctrine articulated by Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto, MPS member associated with Advocata partner, Property Rights Alliance. It was referring to the some 987,000 acres vested in the Land Reform Commission with special mention of “prime real estate blocks” in major cities like Colombo occupied by schools, government ministries, and other facilities, which “greatly outweigh their economic value.” Foreign takeover would include fixed assets occupied by the military through downsizing.

‘Reactivation’ would involve obtaining the value of Dead Capital through accounting property rents at market value and establishing a Land Asset Sales Programme “to dispose of surplus or underutilised land” to be run by “an independent body free of political influence to minimise corruption.” Vision 2025 outlines a programme of legal reform on the lines proposed by Soto.

Tamara Kunanayakam  = Economist, Chairperson – UN Working Group on the Right to Development (2011 – 2015), and former t Ambassador/Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the UN at Geneva …………….. ALSO SEE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamara_Kunanayakam

  Penance on road, Sri Maurpthy Pathirikaali Temple, 2009

This book is both a display and a reflective exercise on the power of imagery, whether from camera or painting or etching. Images can be as captivating as seductive as misleading.  They can serve as raw data that provides glimpses of facets of life lost to the modern generations. They must, of course, be deployed by social scientists with attention to context and in association with other forms of data.

This collection was initially spawned as one part of the collection that was incorporated within Ismeth Raheem’s Images of British Ceylon; but lay dormant. The photgraphs have now has been extensively expanded and revised in ways that engage events in Sri Lanka and abroad in recent years. Readers will therefore have their contemporary experiences as an aid when they critically interpret the more modern photographs in this collection.

My explorative essay within these covers is incomplete. It does not explore the manner in which both government agencies, media outlets and LTTE arms manipulated the placement of photographs [sometimes undated] to drive home some of their arguments. Fabrications and half-truths are an integral aspect of agit-prop activity in heightened conflicts. This is a netherworld, underworld, dirty world. Even moral crusaders resort to such selections or choose to see only what they wish to see.

  5 = A raffish British hunting party

POTENCY, POWER & PEOPLE IN GROUPS, Colombo, Marga Institute, 2011

ISBN 978-955-582-129-2 … containing 78 pictorial ilustrations and 100 pages otf text supported by Endnotes..

1= “Native types” as a collage ……. 2 = A Moorman ….

3 = A native woman depicted by artist  Hippolyte Sylvaf

 61 = International cricket, upcountry, 1892

64= Calverley House Verandah

 43 = A Govenment Agent and his kachcheri staff

44 = Houseboats at Ratnapura

12= NM Perera addressing a crowd during 1953 hartal

 31 = LTTE leaders on platform at Sudumalai, 4 August 1987

74 = SriLankan supporters target Darrell Hair, Lahore, 16 March 1996

  75 = Tamil activists target Sri Lanka, Manuka Oval,12 February 2008 

 76 = Tamil activists target Ajantha Mendis and Lanka, Toronto,October 2008

   *** ***

LIST OF PLATES

1. “Native types” as a collage

2a. A cocky Moorman [identified as a “A Moorman Tamby”]

   2b. A “Madras Merchant”

13. Hippolyte Silvaf’s paintings of colourful dress styles
14. Hunting trophies
15. A raffish British hunting party [Palinda 300 check]
16. Governor Gordon with Kandyan chiefs [Palinda 75]
17. Kotahena disturbance, 1883
18. August members of the Orient Club, circa 1907 [Wright ]
19. Colombo Municipal Councillors, c. 1907 [Wright ]
20. Temperance agitation: mass gathering
21. Bracegirdle affair: Bracegirdle with LSSP leaders at Horana
22. Hartal in 1953: NM Perera announces decision to have an island wide hartal in protest against the budget proposals, Galle Face Green
23. Bandaranaike & masses for Sinhala Only, 1956
24. Fasting for Sinhala Only: FR Jayasuriya, 24 May 1956
25. Mettananda addresses Sinhala crowd at Galle Face Green, 1956
26. Colombo fort & moat in the 1860s – eastern face
27. Jaffna fort & moat [134]
28. Galle Fort, 1890s
29. Galle Fort rooftop scene, 1890s
30. The western seaside of Galle Fort [A 126]
31. Galle Fort entrance today
32. Jetavanarāmaya in 19^th century ruin
33. “Festival day crowds” [Palinda 66]
34. Äsēla Day Perahära
35. Hindu festival, Eastern Province
36. Kappalodiya Pillaiyar Festival, VVT
37. Ammān water-cutting festival, Trincomalee, 2004
38. Rolling on road during chariot festival of the Sri Mayurapathy Paththirakaali Temple, 26 July 2009
39. JVP rally at Colombo Town Hall, 1977
40. LTTE rally at Sudumalai Ammān Temple hears Velupillai Pirāpaharan speak,  4 August 1987

31. LTTE ‘directorate’ at Sudumalai platform, 4 August 1987 [Ivan 374]
32. Colvin R. de Silva stirs the crowd
33. “A group of Ceylon coffee planters, 1868”

34a. A British Planter and estate workers

       34b: Coffee plucker [Palinda 295]

35. Workers drying coffee [Palinda 434?]
36. “Native coopers” [Palinda O=04]
37. Harbour workers [Palinda 310]
38. Graphite sorting yards [Wright 616]
39. Tea plantation labourers [Palinda 360]
40. Tea estate workers [Palinda 433]
41. Houseboats, Ratnapura [Palinda T=156]
42. Lewella ferry [Palinda 360]
43. A Government Agent and his kachchery officials
44. A classroom and its teacher [Palinda 460]
45. Teachers at the Ceylon Government Technical College
46. A body of Christian priests ?? [Palinda 139]
47. A soldiering reserve of Ceylonese Volunteers
48. His Majesty’s subjects: outdoor reception for a VIP
49. Elephant carrying religious icon of tribute [Palinda 316]
50. A body of Buddhist monks [Palinda 132]
51. A cremation of a bhikkhu [Wright 291]
52. Muslim men preparing for worship [Palinda 380]
53. Hindu devotees [Palinda 134]
54. Boer POWs assembled for worship
55. “Kandyan children”­
56. A body of leading graphite entrepreneurs
57. The Jayewardene legal luminaries
58. Colombo Racecourse, Galle Face Green
59. Darrawella races, 1890
60. International cricket, up country, 1892
61. Planting fraternity watch cricket [Palinda 442]
62. Colombo Lawn Tennis Club [Palinda 450]
63. Middle class life style [Wright 750]
64. Calverley House verandah
65. Bandaranaikes of Horagolla

    66a. Don Spater Senanayake and family 

         66b. Senanayakes and friends relax at Botale family home            

67. Warusahännädigē de Soysas of Moratuwa
68. Temple wall mural: Panadura Debate of 1873 commemorated

69a. Chelvanayakam and others at satyagrāha, Galle Face Green

       69b. Chelva addresses crowd, n. d.

70. SLFP and Leftist leaders enjoy symbolic burning of copies of the DC Bill, 1967

70. Local crowd watch Aussie cricketers play in Colombo, 1938
71. Sri Lankan cricket team at prayer before World Cup, 1996
72. Sri Lankan supporters at Lahore in 1996 target Darrel Hair

74a, b. Sports nationalism: Sri Lankan supporters at World Cup in West Indies, 2007

75. Tamil protest group, Manuka Oval, Canberra, 12 February 2008
76. Tamil demonstrators target Ajantha Mendis, Toronto, October 2008
77. Tamil demo & symbolic battle, October 2008
78. Tamil demonstration in London as LTTE slides to defeat, 2009

And here is a photograph that should have been there …. BUT is NOT.

 Mariamma, that legendary groundswoman at the Oval seen here in 1948

Tariq  Ali’s essay entitled THE UNSEEABLES  in the London Review of Books Vol. 40 No. 16 · 30 August 2018   …. reviewing  Ants among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India by Sujatha Gidla Daunt, 341 pp, £14.99, May, ISBN 978 1 911547 20 4

This is a family biography that encompasses a history rarely told: despite its longevity, caste, and caste oppression, is not a popular theme in India. Sujatha Gidla writes of poisoned lives, of disillusionment, betrayed hopes, unrequited loves, attempted escapes through alcohol and sex. What distinguishes her book is its rich mix of sociology, anthropology, history, literature and politics.

Gidla’s great-grandparents were born in the late 19th century in the Khammam district of what is now Andhra Pradesh. They belonged to a clan of pre-agricultural, forest-based tribal nomads. Hunting and gathering supplied basic necessities; they worshipped their own forest gods. When the occupying British cut down forests and replaced them with teak plantations, the clan was forced out. They found a large lake with no villages nearby and settled on its shores. The soil was rich. They took to agriculture and produced much more rice than they needed. They found a market for the surplus, which meant that they caught the attention of local landlords and their agents: they were forced to pay taxes and dragged into the caste-based Hindu world.

As landless agricultural labourers they were the lowest of the low, classed as untouchables, ‘outcastes’. They carried on as normal, until one day they provided shelter, as was their custom, to a fugitive from the Yanadi clan who was on the run from the police. (He was a burglar: the Yanadis rejected all private property rights and it was their ‘sacred duty’ to violate them.) When a few policemen arrived, the villagers drove them away. But then Gidla’s clan encountered modernity in the shape of a hundred baton-carrying colonial policemen, who destroyed their goods and food, harassed the women and took every male into custody. ‘The villagers did not know what to do,’ Gidla writes.

They did not know about jails, bail, courts or lawyers. By luck, some Canadian missionaries active in a nearby town learned what had happened. They sent a white lawyer to defend the villagers and win their release. In gratitude, the villagers started to give up their old goddesses and accept baptism. They began sending their children to attend the schools set up by missionaries.

Untouchables had long been forbidden from learning to read or write. But when the missionaries arrived, they opened schools that, to the horror of the Hindus, welcomed even the untouchables … caste Hindus often refused to send their children, unwilling to let them sit side by side with untouchable students.

The stigma extended to animals. Gidla’s uncle K.G. Satyamurthy, later one of the founders of the Maoist People’s War Group, was startled at the age of ten to discover that ‘untouchable buffaloes were not allowed to graze in the same meadows as the caste buffaloes.’

Gidla’s maternal grandparents, Prasanna Rao and Maryamma, lived after their marriage in a village called Adavi Kolanu, where they taught in a mission school. But they moved to the city after Maryamma was insulted by some local upper-caste men who had seen her wearing a new sari the missionaries had bought her as a Christmas present. The two groups – untouchables and caste Hindus – had gathered in the village square when a brahmin intervened: ‘Kill me first before you kill each other,’ he challenged them. To kill a brahmin is the sin of sins. First the untouchables backed down, then the caste Hindus.

The nonviolent brahmin then counselled the untouchables to never again try anything that might provoke the caste Hindus. This was the way his idol, Gandhi, always resolved caste disputes.

When they arrived in Visakhapatnam (Vizag in British shorthand), their two sons, Satyamurthy (‘the wise one’), henceforth known to all as Satyam, was five and his brother, William Carey, was two. Their sister, Mary Manjulabai, was born in Vizag. The parents got jobs as teachers in Christian schools and earned enough to rent a modest apartment. The landlord was a caste Hindu and so they lied, claiming they had converted to Christianity from middle-caste Hinduism. The landlord was suspicious, but their status as teachers clinched the deal.

A few years later an orphaned niece of Prasanna Rao’s caught tuberculosis. He brought her home with him from the village and she was admitted to hospital and recovered. But Maryamma caught the infection and died on 5 October 1941. This is what it meant for the children: ‘One afternoon, not long after, their father bathed them and dressed them up in their best clothes. He had them sit on the steps of the school where their mother used to teach. “Just wait here, like good boys and good girl,” he told them. Hours passed, night fell. Their father did not come back.’

Prasanna Rao could not imagine life without Maryamma or deal on his own with the debts he owed for her medical care. He fled. The flight was, in its way, a tribute to the role she had played in the household and a subconscious self-indictment. Years later he returned, but it was too late. They didn’t need him any more. The boys had been taken in by an aunt and the girl had gone to live with her grandmother. Of the boys, Satyam was cleverer, a dreamer whose discovery of modern Telugu verse inspired him to write. Carey was tough, a natural street fighter. The intersection of their lives with British withdrawal from India and the eruption immediately after Independence of a huge peasant uprising in the state of Telangana, which borders Andhra Pradesh, helped shape all their lives. In Telangana, which had its own feudal ruler, ‘every untouchable family in every village had to give up their first male child as soon as he learned to talk and walk. They would bring him to the dora[landlord] to work in his household as a slave until death.’

Other castes suffered too. This wasn’t, as Gidla writes, ‘a traditional system’, but one instituted in the late 19th century to allow the large-scale cultivation of tobacco and cotton. The peasants, aided by the Communist Party, rose up and fought this servitude. By now the brahmins were in power in Delhi. No untouchable or low-caste Hindu harboured many illusions. Some even feared that after the British withdrawal things would get worse for them. They did. The Indian army invaded the city of Hyderabad in Telangana, deposing its rulers, but then turned its guns on the peasants, detaining, torturing and raping thousands and evicting them from the land. The more progressive elements in the Congress Party may have believed that with industrialisation and modernisation the problem of caste would solve itself. It never did. Capitalism itself may be caste, colour and gender-blind but the dominant classes utilise these divisions to preserve their own rule. As Gidla recounts, the 1928 general strike in Bombay was defeated thanks in part to caste divisions within the workers’ movement. This isn’t the only example.

Christianity could not provide social upward mobility, but it ensured that Satyam and his siblings received a proper education, despite taunts from caste Hindus. Because they were educated, Gidla’s relatives could get jobs in Christian schools and hospitals. But a brown-skinned Christian was still treated very differently from a white-skinned one, and brahmin converts to the imperial religion refused to marry untouchable Christians. Conversion didn’t erase the stigma of untouchability. As a teenager, Satyam was hostile to Nehru and Gandhi – he saw them as products of British rule and tied to it in too many ways – but sympathetic to the militant, secular nationalism of Subhas Chandra Bose.

From here, Satyam moved the short distance to the Communist Party, inspired by the accounts that student CP members gave him of the Telangana peasants’ struggle. Until a few years before his death in 2012, Satyam was engaged in the peasant resistance in Andhra Pradesh. After the Communist Party split in 1967 he became involved in the Naxalite, Maoist wing of the party, backing an armed revolt.

After its failure, and the killing of many Naxalite leaders, he cofounded the People’s War Group, which Gidla describes as the ‘most notorious, famous and successful Naxalite party, a thorn in the side of the Indian rulers’. He was eventually expelled from it after complaining about the party’s treatment of untouchables. ‘Talk of caste feeling within the party had always been taboo,’ Gidla writes, but young untouchables were beginning to see it as a political issue. They told Satyam that ‘when they joined, they were not given a gun. Instead, they were handed a broom and told to sweep the floors.’ For a long time, too long, he’d preferred to believe that caste prejudice was false consciousness and would disappear in time. It never had. Even in the People’s War Group, members of the barber caste shaved their comrades, washer-caste members washed the clothes and the untouchables ‘were made to sweep and mop the floors and clean the lavatories’. This was life in a revolutionary group committed to an armed struggle to liberate the poor.

Satyam can’t have been too surprised by this. He had suffered many insults from upper-caste members of the party, some of whom would leave money in the lavatory in order to see if he pocketed it. Feeling that the question of caste had now reached a new stage (there had been massacres of untouchables and angry responses), he confronted his comrades on the Central Committee. Their response was ‘swift and ruthless. He was expelled on the spot for “conspiring to divide the party”.’ The news of his expulsion became public when Gidla’s mother wrote a letter to a newspaper explaining what lay behind it. That was when most people found out that the founder of the People’s War Group, whom they knew as a revolutionary and a poet, publishing under the pseudonym Siva Sagar, was also an untouchable.

Gidla, born in appalling conditions in an untouchable ghetto in the city of Kazipet in Telangana, now works as a conductor on the New York subway (she lost her job as a software programmer in a bank after the 2008 financial crash). Her experiences in the United States pushed her to write this book, an attempt to explain to her new friends and colleagues the difference between caste and race. Race is visible. Caste is a hierarchy established more than 2500 years ago. ‘What comes by birth and can’t be cast off by dying – that is caste,’ Arundhati Roy describes it in an essay introducing B.R. Ambedkar’s 1930s classic, The Annihilation of Caste:

Sujatha Gidla was born in Andhra Pradesh and raised in the Dalit community of Kazipet, a small town in present-dayTelangana. Her parents were college professors. While in a Masters’ program in Physics in Regional Engineering College, Warangal she participated in a strike against an upper-caste professor who was deliberately failing students from the lower castes. The protestors were all jailed in an undisclosed location and Gidla was detained for three months, during which she was tortured and contracted tuberculosis. Gidla later worked as a researcher in the Department of Applied Physics at theIndian Institute of Technology Madras,  on a project funded by Indian Space Research Organisation. She moved to the United States in 1990, when she was 26 years old, and worked as a software application designer at the Bank of New York, but was dismissed in the global financial crisis and recession in 2009. She says that she then wanted to do a manual job and became the first Indian woman to be employed as a conductor on the New York City Subway. “Because I am a Marxist and Communist, I have these romantic feelings about being a working class person. So this job attracted me. Secondly, I wanted to do something that men are supposed to be doing.”

What we call the caste system today is known in Hinduism’s founding texts as varnashrama dharma or chaturvarna, the system of four varnas. The approximately four thousand endogamous castes and sub-castes (jatis) in Hindu society, each with its own specified hereditary occupation, are divided into four varnas – Brahmins (priests), Kshatriyas (soldiers), Vaishyas (traders) and Shudras (servants). Outside of these varnas are the avarna castes, the Ati-Shudras, subhumans, arranged in hierarchies of their own – the Untouchables, the Unseeables, the Unapproachables – whose presence, whose touch, whose very shadow is considered to be polluting by privileged-caste Hindus … Each region of India has lovingly perfected its own unique version of caste-based cruelty, based on an unwritten code that is much worse than the Jim Crow laws.

Unsurprisingly, Gidla’s tone in her portrait of everyday social and political life in India over the late 19th and 20th centuries is defiant, sometimes angry: Gandhi is portrayed as a hypocrite, Nehru as a conscienceless Kashmiri brahmin who was happy to send troops to crush the Telangana peasant uprising and remained unaffected by the resulting thousands of deaths. Unlike his many apologists, Gandhi never concealed his views on the caste system. He was opposed to treating untouchables badly, but defended the system itself: ‘I am one of those who do not consider caste to be a harmful institution,’ he wrote in the journal Young India in 1920. ‘In its origin, caste was a wholesome custom and promoted national wellbeing. In my opinion, the idea that inter-dining or intermarrying is necessary for national growth is a superstition borrowed from the West.’

Contrary to the radical slogans of the late 1940s, India’s wasn’t a ‘fake independence’. Self-rule was achieved at a high price and it meant something, but it incorporated many colonial practices. The new masters benefited, but for the untouchables, tribals and others conditions remained the same or got worse. According to recent estimates by India’s National Crime Records Bureau, every 16 minutes a crime is committed by caste Hindus against an untouchable – or Dalit, as they prefer to be called. The figures are horrific: every month 52 Dalits are killed and six kidnapped; every week almost thirty Dalit women are raped by caste Hindus. This will be a serious underestimate. Most victims of caste violence don’t report the crime for fear of reprisals, notably death by burning.

In 2012 the Indian and Western media extensively covered the gang rape and murder of a single woman in Delhi, largely because students and feminist groups had protested on the streets and made it an issue; that same year 1574 Dalit women were raped and 651 Dalits murdered. Add to this the regular mob punishment of Dalit and low-caste women: they are forcibly stripped then paraded through villages to humiliate them further. Politically a democracy, constitutionally secular, India has, since 1947, been a caste Hindu dictatorship. During the run-up to independence, B.R. Ambedkar pinpointed the futility of ‘rights’: ‘If the fundamental rights are opposed by the community, no law, no parliament, no judiciary can guarantee them in the real sense of the word … What is the use of fundamental rights to the Negro in America, to the Jews in Germany and to the Untouchables in India?’ He also advised the leader of the Muslim League, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, not to place any trust in the brahmin-dominated Congress and to fight hard for a Muslim state. Ambedkar considered demanding a separate status for untouchables, slicing them away from Hinduism. This would have given them separate electoral representation as was the case with Muslims and other minorities. Gandhi talked him out of this by flattery, and by arguing that since Ambedkar would be drafting the new Indian constitution he could write in all the safeguards he wanted. This did happen, but had little impact. ‘Implement the Constitution’ remains a Dalit demand to this day.

In the post-independence period, the political choice was essentially limited to Congress or the main opposition force, the Communist Party of India. Gidla recounts what life was like for those below the lowest rung of the caste ladder and for local communists during Congress rule. The Dalits were left to rot, while the communists were targeted by Congress goon squads. Nehru visited Andhra Pradesh before the first post-independence election at the end of 1951, intending to drag middle and low-caste Hindus back to the Congress fold. He was seriously worried, wrongly as it turned out, that the CPI might win the province. They had, after all, led the Telangana peasant revolt that had inspired and radicalised Satyam and many others and that Nehru had crushed.

The evolution of caste in India remains a subject of heated debate. In its earliest forms it must have been in existence at least 2500 years ago, when Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) began a reform movement to purge the brahminical religion of its impurities. The hierarchical caste system was a principal target. After he failed his followers were driven out of India to Sri Lanka and further east. The untouchables, pushed out of the officially designated caste system, remained silent. There isn’t a single recorded account of a Dalit rebellion. The repression was systemic: worse and more effective than that imposed by slavery and making it unnecessary. Three medieval mystic poets spoke for them. In the 15th century, Ravidas, a tanner (hence low-caste), imagined Be-gham-pura, the city without sorrow, a place without caste segregation, ‘where there is no affliction or suffering, neither anxiety, nor fear, taxes nor capital, no menace, no terror, no humiliation. One who shares with me that city is my friend.’ Kabir, a weaver, writing in the same period, was more aggressive. His poems (badly translated into English by Rabindranath Tagore) are still sung in many parts of India. One of them, not a Tagore translation, reads:

Cow dung’s impure

the bathing-square is impure

even its curves are impure

Kabir says: Only they are pure

Who’ve completely cleansed their minds.

A century and a half later, the Punjabi Sufi poet Bulleh Shah lamented, ‘Come Bulleha, let us go/to the land where all are blind/where none can recognise our caste/or a sage in me find,’ and later speaks on behalf of an untouchable cleaner:

I’m a sweeperess,

I’m untouchable,

They avoid me,

I don’t care.

My pay after a long day’s work?

A stone pillow and what you leave behind.

My life?

Cold and sickness and scorn

Empty stomach,

Clothes always torn.

The straws of my broom are all I own

I’m a sweeperess.

These poems are still sung at rural concerts, especially those marking the anniversaries of the poets’ deaths. It’s difficult to believe (and I don’t) that the oral culture of the Dalits did not produce laments and vicious anti-brahmin songs and satires or jokes. Some of these must survive. But in Satyam’s era poets and short-story writers didn’t write about caste: it was considered divisive. Muslim progressives ignored the theme, as did many leftist intellectuals of Hindu and Sikh origin. The publication of two books within months of each other during the 1930s was the first sign of some movement on this issue. The first was a novel by Mulk Raj Anand, Untouchable, a social-realist depiction of the Dalit condition. The second was Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste, the transcript of a speech he was not allowed to read at a conference of anti-caste Hindu reformers in Lahore in 1936: the text was too much for the organisers and the event was cancelled. In his collection Vindication of Caste, Gandhi wrote that while the ban had been a misjudgement, Ambedkar’s ‘utopian’ hostility to Hinduism was unacceptable.

I met Anand for the only time in 1965 at the World Peace Conference in Helsinki. He was born in Peshawar, but Lahore – where I grew up – had been his favourite city, though he had not returned there since Partition. After discussing family friends we had in common, he asked whether I’d read any of his novels. I had, all of them. My favourite was Untouchable. He smiled. ‘That one will last as long as untouchability. Eternal.’ He had read Ambedkar’s essays and journalism and met the man himself. The extract below is a fictionalised version of a real event. Ambedkar’s father worked for the British Indian Army, but even in army schools, untouchable children were not permitted to study in the same classroom as other Indian children.

They sat outside in the heat of the dusty courtyard. Anand offers a memorable account: “The outcastes were not allowed to mount the platform surrounding the well, because if they were ever to draw water from it, the Hindus of the three upper castes would consider the water polluted. Nor were they allowed access to the nearby brook as their use of it would contaminate the stream. They had no well of their own because it cost at least a thousand rupees … Perforce they had to collect at the foot of the caste Hindus’ well and depend on the bounty of some of their superiors to pour water into their pitchers … So the outcastes had to wait for chance to bring some caste Hindu to the well, for luck to decide that he was kind, for Fate to ordain that he had time to get their pitchers filled with water. They crowded round the well, congested the space below its high brick platform, morning, noon and night, joining their hands with servile humility to every passer-by, cursing their fate and bemoaning their lot if they were refused the help they wanted.”

Anand asked me many questions about northern Pakistan. We shared a love of what was then a tiny hill station called Nathiagali that served as the summer capital of the North-West Frontier Province, usually administered from Peshawar. I told him of my first encounter with the Christian untouchables there. There was no sewage system, and excrement was collected from wooden thunder-boxes by these Christians three times a day. We went to Nathiagali for two months every summer and I got to know some of them reasonably well. In June 1962 all the other local council workers were given a pay rise, but not the shit-collectors. They were despondent. I asked their leader, Abdul, the reason. He said they had not received a pay rise the year before either, unlike everyone else. I suggested a strike. ‘Listen,’ I said to him. ‘Most of the people whose toilets you clean are senior civil servants, government ministers and the like. Let them smell their own shit for two days. You’ll win.’ The strike was a huge success. Within 48 hours they got a backdated pay rise. Anand laughed. ‘If only it was so easy all the time.’

The far-right BJP government led by Narendra Modi deliberately misinterprets and distorts India’s ancient history to justify its cultural offensive against Islam and other minorities, aiming to create a monolithic Hindu narrative and an official Hinduism. School textbooks, university education, what is and what should not be stocked in public libraries are policed. The Hindu epics, long read and appreciated as literature, are now being characterised as history. When asked to explain the elephant god, Modi responded: ‘We worship Lord Ganesha. There must have been some plastic surgeon at that time who got an elephant’s head on the body of a human being and began the practice of plastic surgery.’ The new monolithism confronts a giant obstacle in the shape of the caste system. Last month, at a huge gathering of the party faithful in Meerut, Mohan Bhagwat, the leader of the RSS – effectively the BJP’s parent organisation, a movement influenced by European fascism that was founded in 1925 to preach the superiority of Hinduism – stressed the importance of Hindu unity:“Say with pride that you are a Hindu. As Hindus, we have to unite because the responsibility of this country is upon us … The roadblock to being united is that we are fighting on the lines of caste. We have to say that all Hindus are brothers irrespective of their community. Those who believe in Bharat Mata, her culture, and are progeny of India’s forefathers are Hindus. There are Hindus in this country who do not know they are Hindus.”

Here, Bhagwat is referring to those whose forebears converted to Islam many centuries ago.

The message that all Hindus are brothers hasn’t percolated very far. Rohith Chakravarti Vemula, a PhD student at Hyderabad University, was the author of a well-regarded book called Caste Is Not a Rumour. He was active in the university’s Ambedkar Students’ Association, formed by untouchable students in 1993. In July 2015 the university authorities abruptly suspended him. It emerged that an investigation had taken place and he had been found guilty of ‘raising issues under the banner of Ambedkar Students Association’. Punished for defending Dalit students against caste Hindus, he felt completely isolated and committed suicide on 17 January 2016.

The BJP/RSS veneration of the epics is another huge obstacle to unity: they easily outpace the Old Testament and the Quran as far as gender oppression is concerned. The ‘self-immolation’ of caste Hindu widows was ordained by brahmin patriarchy. A number of poems praise the ‘sacrifice’ of a woman ‘voluntarily’ climbing onto her husband’s funeral pyre. The British made it illegal in 1829, but widow remarriage has continued to be regarded as unacceptable by caste Hindus. Attempts by some BJP supporters to revive the burning of widows haven’t succeeded, yet dowry deaths, where parents, desperate for dosh, marry their son for a large dowry and at the first opportunity set the young wife on fire, with her mother-in-law playing an active role in the process, do still occur, even if they aren’t much written about these days.

How the BJP will create a single Hinduism without abolishing the caste system is unclear, but the BJP should not be underestimated. In 1989 it formed an alliance with socialists and the CPI(M) which, its key organiser claimed, ‘increased our legitimacy in the eyes of backward communities’. Simultaneously, the party claimed to represent Hindus ‘hurt’ by the 1981 Meenakshipuran conversion, when several hundred Dalits publicly converted to Islam. The aim of winning the support of Dalits and low-caste Hindus wasn’t supported by senior brahmins in the BJP leadership, who were publicly critical of the ‘social engineering’ envisaged by their opponents. The upper caste Hindus won the day, but the BJP suffered badly in subsequent elections, failing to win Uttar Pradesh (the most important state in the country) in 2007, 2009 and 2012. Enter stage further right, Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, the current BJP party president. The upper-caste rebels were sidelined and Shah renewed the appeal to lower castes and Dalits by setting up social programmes and opening schools, health clinics and so on. The model here was the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and its commitment to provide to the poor what they were denied by the state. A decade earlier, when Modi was chief minister of Gujarat, he had effectively justified the massacre of more than a thousand Muslims in 2002. Many thought this would finish him off as a politician, but his support of the rioters was used by Amit Shah to make him seem a plausible national leader. In 2017 the BJP won a huge majority in Uttar Pradesh and a spectacular victory in the Indian parliament. For the first time in thirty years, a single party had triumphed. No need for coalitions. The Congress Party, incapable of dumping a dynasty long past its sell-by date, is in a severe crisis. The CPI(M) has not been the same since it lost its stranglehold in West Bengal, though with at least half a million members nationally it remains in a strong position to challenge the BJP. But this will require it to dump the bankrupt strategy of forming indiscriminate electoral alliances in the hope of defeating the main enemy. Few believe this will happen.

Satyam would be horrified by the number of Dalits voting for the BJP. He decided to work in the countryside not simply out of Maoist convictions. He used to explain that two-thirds of the population is rural and a quarter landless, a majority of them not Dalits. A firm believer in cross-caste alliances of the poor, he argued for the creation of new movements and parties to embody this reality. His niece’s book shows how much such change is needed.

*** ***

ALSO SEE

Amit Chaudhuri: “Ants Among Elephants by Sujatha Gidla review – life as an ‘untouchable’ in modern India” in The Guardian, 2 August 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/aug/02/ants-among-elephants-sujatha-gidla-amit-chaudhuri

Wikipedia: “Sujatha Gidla” …. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sujatha_Gidla

YOU TUBE: AAWWTV: Breaking Caste with Sujatha Gidla, Neel Mukherjee & Gaiutra Bahadur

Michael Roberts, courtesy of The Sunday Island 16 September 2018

Recently an anonymous hand writing as “A Dharmapala Devotee” presented a sarcastic opinion piece in the Island of the 5^th September targeting myself, Gananath Obeyesekere and HL Seneviratne. My immediate response was short and rushed. This essay is a more considered set of comments.

Reflecting on “A Dharmapala Devotee’s” letter to the Island can be a fruitful exercise, even though the full benefits cannot be reaped because he has not revealed his name – thereby shutting off the path for analysts to place him in sociological space constituted by class, education and geographical location.

This “Devotee” is simple-minded: it is deemed impossible for Anagārika Dharmapāla to be both an earnest missionary seeking to spread the Dhamma and Buddhist philosophy in the big wide world and a staunch Sinhala chauvinist protagonist in the circuits within British Ceylon. Such a reading is simply ridiculous and is directed by a rigid either/or modality of assessment.

The evidence for the latter-day assessment of Dharmapala as a chauvinist voiced by Obeyesekere, Seneviratne and myself comes from his public interventions in word and deed. Thus, for instance, in an article entitled “Kocci Demala” in the Sinhala Bauddhaya on 14^th January 1910 Dharmapala indulges in a diatribe against the kocci demala (the Malayalam Tamils). Within his diary entries too one sees an uncompromising language of rebuke with some frequency, rebuke directed at the Sinhalese themselves (for their slothfulness for example). This was the vocabulary and intent of a teacher attempting to reform his charges –namely, the Sinhala Buddhists (for he could not comprehend how “Christian Sinhalese could love their country” – see diary/entry 24 Feb 1898).

The confrontation with the prominent Christian dispensation in British Ceylon is highlighted in a diary entry from 26^th January 1902 when he spotted a Christian street preacher in the Pettah market area. He immediately got down from his rickshaw. He listened for a while. He then intervened thus: “Then I began the lion’s roar and called the para sudda dogs, asses, etc. Exhorted the Sinhalese to be good Buddhists.” As the metaphor of the “lion’s roar” suggests, he saw himself as a preacher-enforcer pursuing the path of the Great Teacher.[1]

Furthermore, as Dharmapala understood the Buddha’s message, religious syncretism of the type that had taken root in Asia over the centuries was also anathema – something to be exorcised. When he discovered that a party of music-making Muslim Malayālis were regular participants in the annual religious pageant (perahära) of the Kelaniya temple, he intervened forcibly and drove them out: “The pagan Mohammedan should not be allowed to enter the Buddhist temple; nor should the Christian (diary entry: 10 August 1905).

These Moor musicians were not a threat to the Buddhist order and were but one sign of the vibrant inter-faith exchanges one has seen over the decades and still witnesses in such spots as Kataragama and the Hindu temples at Munneswaram. Lunawa and Dematagoda. So, what we see here is Dharmapala’s Buddhist fundamentalism.

These examples have been presented in some of my essays in the 1990s and 2000s. They emerged from my studies of Dharmapala as well as the political climate that fostered the marakkala kolahālaya of 1915.[2] However, well before this detailed work, I had addressed the significance of Dharmapala’s line of thinking during the anti-colonial movements of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries; and, thereafter, during the Sinhala Buddhist upsurge by popular electoral process during the 1950s.

Anagarika Dharmapala’s line of thinking and his legacy was an influential current in that political upsurge. As one hand among the forces generating this political thrust, in 1965 the public servant and scholar Ananda Guruge (1928-2014) produced a large tome Return to Righteousness devoted to Dharmapala’s legacy — an expression of the significance attached to Dharmapala’s ideological input by activists of that time.

As a student at Peradeniya University in the late 1950s and as a Lecturer in History thereafter (1960-62 & 1966-76), I was exposed to the intellectual ferment associated with what has been sometimes called “The Revolution of 1956.” Return to Righteousness was part of the fare that I studied once my attention turned – as it did in the early 1970s – to the various strands of nationalist challenge directed against the British.

Around 1972/73, ferment within Peradeniya campus, my conversations with Bishop Lakshman Wickremasinghe[3] and a range of political developments raised concerns in my mind about the ferment prevailing among the SL Tamil intelligentsia and youth. A few of us in the Ceylon Studies Seminar circle at Peradeniya went so far as to organise a whole-day conference in Colombo on “The Sinhala-Tamil Problem” in early October 1973. That discussion only deepened my pessimism – pessimism that had also been nurtured by the political analyses provided by such individuals as Howard Wriggins, Robert N. Kearney, BH Farmer, S. Arasaratnam, Ananda Wickremeratne and Donald E. Smith in the 1960s and early 1970s.[4]

In my reading then, an ideological transformation had taken place as the result of the political transformation via ballot and parliamentary action in 1956-and-therafter. Prior to that, and especially in the first four decades of the 20^th century, the concept of a single-nationality nation nourished by the prevailing tendencies in Western Europe held sway in vocal English-speaking circles among the Ceylonese middle classes. In the result, political thinking which we can call “Ceylonese nationalism” held centre-stage and pinnacle position. This meant that the forms of subjectivity centred on the Sinhala people or the SL Tamil people were deemed “communalist” and inferior, if not abhorrent.

However, from 1956 the democratic foundations associated with the Sinhala collective identity embodied in Bandaranaike and the SLFP provided “Sinhaleseness” with legitimacy.[5] From 1956 it was dubbed a “nationalism” and thereby vested with sanctity in many quarters. This was a major line of argument in an article that I composed in 1976 and which appeared in print in 1978 in Modern Asian Studies as “Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka and Sinhala Perspectives: Barriers to Accommodation.”[6]

Deploying an article by Ananda Wickremeratne as well as my own work on the Sarasavi Sandaräsa and other newspapers of the early 20^th century, I referred to the expressions of economic nationalism that prevailed in British Ceylon then. These currents railed against the European interests as well as the non-Sinhalese who dominated the import trade.[7] Dharmapala was a prominent figure in this campaign. I noted that “Dharmapala’s inclination to use ‘Ceylon’ and ‘Sinhala’ synonymously comes through clearly. At one point in 1922 he even tilted at people who used the word “Ceylonese” rather than “Sinhalese.” Perhaps the most significant document that reveals his thinking is the English pamphlet he produced in 1922 entitled A Message to the Young Men of Ceylon.”

Here, he is speaking in pontifical tones to the Sinhalese. The concepts “Ceylonese” and “Sinhalese” are merged in seamless fashion.[8] My interpretation of this text – reproduced in Guruge’s Return to Righteousness (1965: 501-18) – was a critical element in the argument spelt out in that essay in 1976/78. I foresaw danger for the polity in the emerging Tamil backlash.[9]

That problem remains as potent as ever today because of the continuing merging of the collective identity “Sri Lankan” within the collective identity “Sinhalese.” I have recently pinpointed its insidious thread within the Victory Speech of President Mahinda Rajapaksa in May 2009.[10] It is my suspicion that the confusion and cross-fertilization in the way in which the English terms “nation” and race” are rendered in Sinhala[11] deepens the impact of this act of subsummation. Indeed, I speculate that the earnest efforts to promote reconciliation in Sri Lanka today will be hindered if this ‘hidden problem’ is not addressed.

***  ***

 A CORRECTION: I did havea question mark about the bespectacled Dharmapala photograph which I came across in my files (source unknown) …and HL Seneviratne has indicated it is probably one Dharmapriya. So I have now removed it and placed it here 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Arasaratnam, S. 1967 “Nationalism, Communalism and National Unity in Ceylon,” in Philip Mason (ed.) India and Ceylon. Unity and Diversity, Oxford University Press, pp. 260-78.

De Silva, K. M. 1973 “The Reform and Nationalist Movements in the Early Twentieth Century,” in History of Ceylon Volume III, Colombo, University of Sri Lanka, pp. 381-407.

De Silva, Mervyn 1967 “1956: The Cultural Revolution that shook the Left,” The Ceylon Observer Magazine Edition, 16 May 1967.

Farmer B. H.  1964 “The Social Basis of Nationalism in Ceylon,” Journal of Asian Studies, vol 24, pp. 431-39

Kearney, Robert N. 1964 “Sinhalese Nationalism and Social Conflict in Ceylon,” Pacific Affairs, vol 37, pp. 126-36.

Kearney, Robert N. 1967 Communalism and Language in the Politics of Ceylon, Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press.

Kearney, Robert N. 1974 The Politics of Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Ithaca, Cornell University Press.

Roberts, Michael 1978 “Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka and Sinhalese Perspectives: Barriers to Accommodation,” Modern Asian Studies, vol 12, pp 353-76.

Roberts, Michael 1994 Exploring Confrontation. Sri Lanka: Politics, Culture and History Reading: Harwood Academic Publishers.

Roberts, Michael 1994 “Mentalities: Ideologues, Assaialanst, Historians and the Pogrom against the Moors,” in Roberts, Exploring Confrontation Reading: Harwood Academic Publishers, pp. 183-212

Roberts, Michael 1994 “The 1956 Generations: After and Before,” in Roberts, Exploring Confrontation, Reading: Harwood Academic Publishers, pp. 297-314.

Roberts, Michael 2009 “Some Pillars for Sri Lanka’s Future,” Frontline, vol. 26/12, June 06-19 …… also reproduced now at https://thuppahi.wordpress.com/2018/07/04/profound-flaws-in-mahinda-rajapaksas-victory-speech-in-may-2009/

Roberts, Michael 2012 “Mahinda Rajapaksa as a Modern Mahāvāsala and Font of Clemency? The Roots of Populist Authoritarianism,” 25 January 2012, http://groundviews.org/2012/01/25/mahinda-rajapaksa-as-a-modern-mahavasala-and-font-of-clemency-the-roots-of-populist-authoritarianism-in-sri-lanka/

Roberts, Michael 2012 “A Man inspired, A Man who inspired: Bishop Lakshman Wickremasinghe,” 18 April 2012, https://thuppahi.wordpress.com/2012/04/18/a-man-inspired-a-man-who-inspired-bishop-lakshman-wickremasinghe/

Smith, Donald E. 1966 “The Sinhalese Buddhist revolution,” in Donald E. Smith (ed.) South Asian Politics and Religion, Princeton University Press, pp. 453-88

Wickremeratne, L A 1969 ‘Religion, nationalism and social change in Ceylon, 1865-1885’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, GB & I, LVI: 123-50.

Wriggins, W. Howard 1960 Ceylon. Dilemmas of a New Nation, Princeton University Press.

END NOTES

[1] These details are mong a whole array taken from my Journal of Asian Studies article of 1998 –an essay which is perhaps more easily accessible in its Sri Lankan printing in Roberts, Confrontations in Sri Lanka, Colombo, Vijitha Yapa Publications, 2009, pp. 237-74.

[2] These “disturbances” or “riots” have been deemed a “pogrom” in my presentations. I adhered to this verdict in 1994 against KM de Silva’s deployment (1988: 87). of the archaic definition in the Oxford Dictionary. I see no reason to change the stance taken then with reasons specified (Roberts, 1994: 185). 

[3] Bishop Lakshman was the Protestant Chaplain at Peradeniya University in my time as student and one of my mentors. We continued to meet in the 1950s and 1970s and he was among the keynote speakers at a seminar on the !972 Constitution held at Peradeniya Campus in 1972 as well as the conference on “The Sinhala-Tamil Problem” held in Colombo in October 1973. He had inside information on the concerns of the SL Tamil leaders and the negotiations leading to the Republican Constitution. Note my article “A Man inspired, A Man who inspired: Bishop Lakshman Wickremasinghe,”

[4] See the bibliography in this article.

[5] Note especially Mervyn de Silva 1967; but also the assessments of Kearney, Smith et al.

[6] The essay was composed while I was a Humboldt Fellow at the Sud-Asien Institute, Heidelberg University and was presented in Heidelberg and at an international conference in Holland and at SOAS in London. Article commonly took one-two years before they negotiated the refereeing process and reached print.

[7]  Wickremeratne 1969: 135-39.

[8] See Guruge 1965: 501-19.

[9] The factors that had promoted the SL Tamil identity and its political expressions were many  and have to be dissected separately.

[10] See Roberts, “Some Pillars for Sri Lanka’s Future,” 2009.

[11] This is a complex issue. A few years back I collected a range of Sinhala definitions from several friends from diverse generational cohorts. The variation in answers is striking. A few were (are) unaware of the diversity and seem to think their answer is the cat’s whiskers.

Michael Roberts

The years 1966 to 1975 were heady days in Ceylon. Especially so for some of us in Peradeniya Univeristy where the CEYLON STUDIES SEMINAR was launched in November 1968 by a few members of the Arts Faculty assisted by the facilities provided by Professor Gananath Obeyesekera at the Sociology Department – located then on Lower Hantane Road away from the centre of teaching. Not least among these facilities was the service provided by the Sociology Department peon Sathiah[i] who cyclostyled the written seminar papers beforehand for circulation so that those who were keen could read any presentation beforehand if they so wished – a procedure that also maximized discussion time. This background service was seconded by the typing services of Mrs Hettiarachchi in the History Department and Mr Kumaraswamy in the Sociology Department.

A . Jeyaratnam Wilson  Gananath Obeyesekera

This momentous series the Ceylon Studies Seminar was launched on 20^th November 1968 by Professor AJ Wilson’s presentation of a paper on “Sinhalese-Tamil Relationships and the Problem of National Integration.”  In the course of 1968 and 1969 these were followed by papers presented by Gananath Obeyesekera (2), Kitsiri Malalgoda, Rainer Schickele, Michael Roberts (3), Shelton Kodikara and DM Kannangara.

At the same time in the late 1960s Gerald Peiris and Leslie Gunawardena kicked up a fuss at the Arts Faculty sessions about the moribund state of the University of Ceylon Review and the University’s publication record. They were able to activate the Faculty and the Senate to support the launching of a new journal called the Modern Ceylon Studies. Peiris and PTM “Tissa” Fernando were its first Editor and Managing Editor respectively… and had to labour intensely to overcome arcane printing processes that lacked word-processing.

Vijaya Samaraweera marshaled the CSS meeetings when I was away from Peradeniya on a Fulbright Fellowship from September 1970 till August 1971. The CSS activity seeded some of the articles that went into Modern Ceylon Studies. Ananda Wickremeratne (at Vidyodaya University) and I joined the Modern Ceylon Studies team in 1971/72 and my role increased when Tissa Fernando migrated to Vancouver.

At about the same time, in the early 1970s several of us were also marshaled and dragooned by Professor Kingsley de Silva in the Department of History at Peradeniya to write chapters for the History of Ceylon (Volume 3 on the British Period). This large tome appeared in 1973 – and involved research endeavours that stimulated thought and guided the direction of our scholarship.

As central to the lively intellectual activity of Peradeniya University Campus was the architecture of the place – not least the Staff Common Room servicing the lecturers in Arts with tea and providing a meeting point for teachers from different disciplines

Cross-disciplinary exchange was the nuts and bolts of the CSS exchanges – sometimes involving individuals from the Agriculture, Engineering and Science Faculties (especially when it involved “politics” or “Marxism”).

The political turmoil of the late 1960s and early 1970s, needless to say, was one grounding for the excitement and sharpness of debate. Further spice and variety were injected by the periodic visits (both brief and longer term) of such foreign scholars as Rainer Schickele, Robert Kearney, Patrick Peebles, Hans-Dieter Evers, Ronald Herring, Dennis McGilvray, RL Stirrat, Tom Barron, Bryce Ryan, James Jupp, etc, etc.

By the early 1970s, this climate of debate amidst sharp tensions fed into my developing interest in the study of nationalism in its worldwide context as background to my own researches on the subject within Sri Lanka over time. I had returned from a year at Chicago in late 1971 and launched a course on “Nationalism and Its Problems” in the Arts curriculum in 1972 with every encouragement from my head, Professor Karl W Goonewardena.

The ideological climate in Sri Lanka in the first half of the 20^th century was such that any corpus of thought favouring the Sinhala collectivity or the Tamil collectivity or the Muslim Moor collectivity was deemed “communal” rather than “national/nationalist” – and thus denied legitimacy. However, the upsurge of the Sinhala Buddhist movement and its commanding electoral triumph in 1956 quickly provided a legitimacy to the Sinhala movement that converted that ‘formation’ into a corpus crowned with the cap of ”nationalism” – that is, gave it a legitimacy that was denied to the political claims of the other communities.

By way of illustration let me note that in 1970 Shelton Kodikara (a colleague in the Political Science section of the Economics Department at Peradeniya at one point) was able to present a sympathetic review of the grievances of the “Sinhala nation” at the same moment that he referred to the “Tamil communal programme.”[ii] Again, no less a person than A. Jeyaratnam Wilson, the son-in-law of SJV Chelvanayakam,[iii] referred to both the Sinhala and Tamil programmes of the mid-twentieth century as “sub-nationalisms.”[iv] These yardsticks signal issues of political legitimacy.

The point, here, is that we are considering sensibilities and ethics which attributed different values to collective subjectivity. In the Indian and Sri Lankan context of the first half of the 20^th century “communalism” had been deemed bad and divisive; whereas the all-island Ceylonese loyalties or pan-Indian sentiments were a GOOD.

In contemplating this issue, and the different grades of legitimacy attached to group identities, I crafted the term “Collective Identity” during the 1970s  to embrace subjectivity attached to a body of people linked by kinship or caste or ethnicity or political affiliation. This was a catch-all omnibus term and thus not tarnished with value.

It was this all-embracing concept that I eventually used when the Marga Institute financed and produced a collection of essays on the ethnic politics of Sri Lanka in 1979 under my editorship. That book had a long gestation period and was but the stub of a much larger enterprise that I initiated in early 1973 in tandem with a bosom pal[v] and fellow historian, Ananda Wickremeratne (who was lecturing at Vidyodaya University then in 1973). This was entitled “Nationalisms and Nationalist Movements in Sri Lanka” and envisaged 32 articles as chapters (all listed below).

The list of potential authors and potential titles is highly significant and heightened further by the revised lists compiled by me (acting alone now[vi]) on the 25^th June 1974 and then again in early 1975. They indicate the range of scholarship in History and Politics reposing in the four universities of Sri Lanka then. That several of these personnel have not produced any essays and others just one or two generates sadness: what a waste. Each of these intended chapters rested on dissertation work that is buried in university libraries or stores.

The project launched by Wickremeratne and Roberts was meant to promote the work of these individuals in ways that sharpened the debate around “collective identity” in Sri Lanka studied in the light of trends in the world at large. This issue, needless to say, is still with us: “Oh Yes! And How!” one might exclaim.

Political Division in the Peradeniya Fold in the 1970s

The campaigns leading up to the General Elections in Sri Lanka in May 1970 were marked by sharp rivalry and considerable hostility. Party loyalties had an impact on academic exchanges at Peradeniya campus though a few firm friendships cut across party lines. Several Peradeniya dons moved into high positions in the new United Front government, while several others were staunch supporters.

These UF activists in the 1970s (for example, Wishwa Warnapala, Ranjit Amerasinghe, WI Siriweera, PVY Jayasekera) looked upon the Ceylon Studies Seminar circle with some suspicion and most of them (but not Siriweera)  rarely attended seminars if my memory serves me right. At one point in 1973 their pressures were such that we permitted one or two of them to become part of the planning core. It was at one such planning session in 1973 that I suggested the organisation of a conference in Colombo on the “Sinhala-Tamil Problem” because relations were moving into a danger zone. At this point, Siriweera actually stood up and presented a conclusive diktat: “there is no Sinhala Tamil problem. Our problems are economic.”[vii]

Siriweera was not alone in misreading the swirling political currents in the country at large. A few years earlier, as Gerry Peiris recalls, “at the end of a highly successful CSS presentation and discussion AJ Wilson declared THAT ‘ethnic conflict in Ceylon could well become a thing of the past.’ This was in jubilant anticipation of a Leftist government following the union of the SLFP and the main Marxist parties. In hindsight now, Peiris adds: “So much for his ‘political science’.”

Siriweera’s assertion is but one example of the closed minds encouraged by the forms of Left thinking prevailing at Peradeniya then in the early 1970s (though that charge does not embrace all those on the Left). Another instance – an “ethnographic encounter – was more striking because quite unexpected and emanating from one of our brightest intellects and distinguished scholars: Ian Goonetileke, who had been one of the inspirations behind the launching of the journal known as the Ceylon Journal of Historical and Social Studies in 1958 and had encouraged and participated in the Ceylon Studies Seminar in its early years.[viii]

ian Goonetileke in his later years

Ian was one of the Assistant Librarians and a friend. As one of the principal hands in the CSS, I used to deliver the cyclostyled CSS papers to him from time to time. When I did this one day, placing the documents on his desk and sitting down to chat, he addressed me sternly and raised objections to the string of foreigners “invited” to present talks and/or papers at the CSS. I forget precisely when this was, but believe it was around 1972 or 1973 and one of the talks had been by Bryce Ryan.[ix]

I dissented immediately, though I cannot recall precisely what I said. I remember his reaction vividly. Ian stood up, grabbed the CSS papers and threw them into the corridor.

That was that.

It was Marxism and United Front loyalty in the early 1970s become xenophobia.

There is something about the phrase “frog in the well” that illuminates such actions as well as the astounding blindness displayed by Siriweera – who was unaware that we were sitting on an ethnic time-bomb ticking away among the Sri Lanka Tamils.[x] They were not alone. When around 1972, as an active worker for the journal Modern Ceylon Studies, I asked my colleague PVJ Jayasekera to convert one of his dissertation chapters, say on the temperance movement or the 1915 anti-Moor riots, into an article for consideration by the MCS referee process, he confessed to me: “I do not believe in that sort of thing.”

That was another stunning ethnographic moment: here was the rejection of earnest empirical research pursued in good faith in the archives in the United Kingdom by new-found political bondage.

The presentation of these details on the planning that went into the 1979 Marga book  has been facilitated by Iranga Silva’s (ICES, Kandy) ready cooperation in scanning and typing up the original plans as well as the final chapter list of Collective Identities, Nationalisms and Protest in Modern Sri Lanka, (Colombo, Marga, 1979) as well as the information provided by CR de Silva, Gerald Peiris and SWR de Samarasinghe.

CR and Sam took charge of the Ceylon Studies Seminar when I left the island in mid-1975 and sustained its operations till 1988 or so. All the CSS papers were deposited in the Department of National Archives by CR when he left the island for USA in 1989. A separate essay will be presented soon on the workings of the CSS enterprise from within Peradeniya Campus from 1975 till 1988 together with a complete bibliographical list of paper titles.

****  ***

INITIAL DRAFT PLAN, 20 APRIL 1973: “Nationalisms and Nationalist Movements in Lanka”

THE NUMBERING HAS GONE HAY WIRE   …. titles in Bold did not eventuate; whereas those in blue font did appear in the 1979 production

Kandyan Patriotism and British Policy …………………                                                               K.M. de Silva

Stimulants and Ingredients in the Awakenin of Nationalism ………………….                   Michael Rob

The Origins of Sinhala-Buddhist Revivalism    ……………                                     Kitsiri Malalgoda

Buddhist Revivalist Nationalism   …….  ………                                                         L. A. WickremeratnePressures on the White Bastions of the Administrative Service    …..            P. T. M. Fernando

Protest in the Legislative Council1890-1910   ………….                                       Nirmala Labrooy

The Burgher Elite, Burgher Identity and  the Nationalist Movement …                                                                                                             Donovan Moldrich   & WJF  Labrooy       

Radical Shades of Nationalist Activity: 1892-1931   …..    …….                         Kumari Jayawardena

Nationalist Associations and the Question of the Franchise  ……  ….           K. H. Jayasinghe           

 Sir Ponnambalam Arunachalam and the Nationalist Movement ….           K.M. de Silva

Problems of National Identity in a Plural Society: Sectional Nationalism vs Ceylonese Nationalism …  Michael Roberts

Social Segmentation and Political Protest in the Early 20th Century                        P.V.J. Jayasekera

Kandyan Sectionalism in the Twentieth Century …………………………………….     L.A. Wickremeratne

Conflicting Political Claims, 1918-1928 ……………………………..                                  L.A. Ariyaraatne

Ceylon Tamil Political Associations, 1906-1948………………..                                      C.R. de Silva

A Babble of Sectionalist Claims and …  the Donoughmore Commission                 Tilaka Mettananda

The Indian Immigrant Question and the Nationalist Movement                                  S.U. Kodikara

Revolutionary Socialist Nationalism, 1931-1948  ……………….                                      Kumari Jayawardena

Revolutionary Socialist Nationalism, 1931-1948   …………….                                               M.U. de Silva

Perspectives on the Movement towards Independence, 1931-48 ………….                            K. M. de Silva

Contrasting Political Styles: D. S. Senana­yake, S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike and G.G. Ponnarnbalam  ……………                                      K. M. de Silva

The Buddhist Resurgence and Sinhala Nationalism in Independent Ceylon          Tikiri Abeyasinghe

Sinhala Nationalism in Independent Ceylon …………………….                                      W. Warnapala

Tamil Nationalism in Independent Ceylon ………………………………………………….A. J. Wilson

Tamil Separatism and Ceylonese Nationalism ……………………………………………..S. Arasaratnam

Language Rights and Sectional Conflict………………………………………………            Robert  N.Kearney

The Search for Power & Nationalist Rhetoric ………………………………………..    W. H. Wriggins

Post 1948 Retrospect: Attitudes towards the British Raj …………………………………………………………….   no name

The Realities of’ Independence: A Shrinking Economy   ……………………………………………………………… no name

Nationalism vs Neo-Colonialism  ………………………………………………………………………………………John White

The Search for International Security: The Concept of an Indian Ocean Peace Zone  ….Vernon Mendis

The Search for International Security: The Concept  of an Indian Ocean Peace Zone: An Evaluation     …………………………………………………..   …………………………………………………                Michael Roberts

                  Signed: Michael Roberts Ananda Wickremeratne 20 April 1973.

This was the preliminary plan. On this foundation the individuals named were approached and the plans that followed were based on their responses and our own revisions.

      ******

REVISED DRAFT PLAN, 25 JUNE 1974 “The Origins and the Growth of Nationalism in Sri Lanka”

1. Kandyan Patriotism and British Policy …………………………………………………………………………..K. M. de Silva
2. Elite Formation and Elites in Ceylon c.1832-1931  ………………………………………………………….. Michael Roberts
3. Stimulants and Ingredients in the Awakening of Nationalism …………………………………………Michael Roberts
4. The Buddhist-Christian Confrontation in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: Its Implications for the Nationalist Awakening     …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. Kitsiri Malalgoda

5. The Role of the Buddhist Theosophical Society in the  Buddhist Revival  …………………………   Sarath Amunugama

6. Dharmapala, John de Silva, Piyadasa Sirisena and the Beginnings of Modern Sinhala Nationalism …..      Sarath Amunugama

7. Social Segmentation and Political Protest, 1880s-1921 ……………………………………………….. P. V.J. Jayasekara
8. Pressures on the White Bastions of the Administrative Service …………………………………….P. T. M. Fernando
9. The Temperance Movement in the Early Twentieth Century ………………………………………P. V. J. Jayasekara
10. The Emergence of Working Class Agitation ………………………………………………………….. Kumari Jayawardena
11. Sir Ponnambalam Arunachalam and the  Nationalist Movement                                                K. M. de Silva

12. Problems of National Identity in a Plural Society:  Sectional Nationalism vs Ceylonese Nationalism    Michael Roberts

13. The Burgher Elite, Burgher Identity and the Nationalist Movement  …    Donavan Moldrich & WJF Labrooy
14. Ceylon Tamil Political Associations, 1906-1948 ……………………………………………………………James T, Rutnam
15. Ceylon Tamil Political Associations: Ideology   ………………………………………………………………Jane Russell
16. Kandyan Sectionalism in the Twentieth Century ………………………………………………….Ananda Wickremeratne
17. Conflicting Political Claims, 1918-1928  ………………………………………………………………….. R.A. Ariyaratne
18. A Babble of Sectionalist Claims and the Response of the Donoughmore Commission ……….Tilaka Mettananda
19. The Indian Immigrant Question and the Nationalist Movement  ……………………………………. S. U. Kodikara
20. Sectional Interests and the Politics of Land Reform. …………………………………………………… Vijaya Samaraweera
21. Missionary Organisations and the Nationalist Movement …………………………………………………….. K. M. de Silva
22. European Mercantile Organisations and the Nationalist Movement  ………     Donaovan Moldrich & K. M. de Silva
23. Radical Socialist Nationalism, 1931-1948      ………………………………………..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,………       M. U. de Silva
24. Radical Socialist Nationalism, 1931-1948                ………………………………………………………….. Kumari Jayawardena
25. Perspectives on the Movement towards Inde­pendence and the Transfer of Power ………..         …………K. M. de Silva

26. Buddhist Revivalist Nationalism  ……………………………………………………………………………       Ananda Wickremeratne
27. Contrasting Political Styles: D. S. Senanayake, G. G. Ponnambalam and S. W. R. D.Bandaranaike  … K. M. de Silva
28. Sinhala Nationalism in Independent Lanka ………………………………………………………………….W. A. Wiswa Warnapala
29. Language Rights and Sectional Conflict Bishop ………………………………………..               Lakshman   Wickremesinghe
30. Nationalism and Political Mobilisation in Sri Lanka …………………………….                                       Robert N. Kearney
31. The Realities of Independence in Sri Lanka: A Shrinking Economy  ……………………………           Godfrey Gunatilleke
32. Sectional Conflict and National Unity in Lanka: A Survey ………………..     …………………………….  S. Arasaratnam

33. Problems of Nationalism in the New States with special reference to Sri Lanka     ………………            A. J. Wilson

34. The Search for International Security: The Concept of an Indian Ocean Peace Zone ………………….   Vernon Mendis

35. The Search for International Security: The Concept of an Indian Ocean Peace Zone: An Evaluation… Michael Roberts

The scheme remains tentative and should not, therefore, be circulated or canvassed. As the writing progresses and essays come in, it is likely that some titles will be changed and the order of chapters re-arranged. It is also possible that a few individuals listed in our initial plan who failed to respond, or could not commit themselves, may yet join us in this venture. Again, additional essays might be included…………………..                                                                                                           .Signed: Michael Roberts

   **** **

FINAL DRAFT PLAN, EARLY 1975 :“Collective Identities, Nationalisms and Protest in Sri Lanka during the Modern Era”  … … … with the items in bold marking those essays that DID NOT eventuate

I.   BACKGROUND AND ROOTS

1. Identities and Ideologies in Sinhala Literature      Frank Perera
2. Sinhala Patriotism in the Pre-British Era              C. R. de Silva
3. The Sinhala Buddhist Identity and the Nayakkar Dynasty in the Politics of the Kandyan Kingdom, 1740-1815……………………………………………………………………………………………………………. K. N. O. Dharmadasa

4. Resistance Movements and British Policy………………………………………………………                  K. M. de Silva
5. Elite Formation and Elites, c. 1832-1931  ……………………………………………………………….                 Michael Roberts
6. Stimulants and Ingredients in the Awakening of Latter-Day Nationalisms   ……………………….     Michael Roberts

7. The Buddhist-Christian Confrontation in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: Its Implications for the Sinhala Nationalist Awakening  …………………………………………………………………………….  Kitsiri Malalgoda

8. Buddhist Merchants, Olcott and the Buddhist Revival in the 1880’s    ……………… L. A. Wickremeratne

9. Navalar, Ramanathan & the Hindu Revival   …………………………………………..       V. Ramakrishnan

II. CONFLICTING IDENTITIES IN MORE RECENT TIMES

10. Some Leading Ideologues and the Beginnings of  Latter-Day Sinhala Nationalism  ………………….. Sarath Amunugama
11. The Vicissitudes of the Buddhist Identity througNATKIONA;LISMS & PROTEST  h Time and Change      ………………………         Gananath Obeyesekere

12. Problems of National Identity in a Multi-­Racial Society:Sectional Nationalism vs Ceylonese Nationalism    Michael Rober

III. SECTIONAL INTERESTS, NATIONALISMS & PROTEST  IN EVOLUTION & INTERACTION

13. Social Segmentation and Political Protest, 1880’s-1921  ………………………..        P. V. J. Jayasekera
14. Temperance and Nationalism………………………..                                                          P. V.J. Jayasekera
15. Pressures on the White Bastions of the Administrative Service …………………  P. T. M. Fernando
16. The Emergence of Working Class Agitation  ………………………………..            Kumari Jayawardena
17. Arunachalam and the Nationalist Movement …………………………..            ……..         K. M. de Silva
18. Conflicting Political Demands, 1917-1932   ……………………………………..                  R. A. Ariyaratne
19. The Donoughmore Commission: A Babble of Sectionalist Claims   ………..         Tilaka Mettananda

21. Ceylon Tamil Political Associations in the 1920’s and 1930’s   …….                                    Jane Russell
22. Kandyan Sectionalism in the Twentieth Century  ………………………                   L. A. Wickremeratne

        **** **

A NOTE BY Michael Roberts:

The first article to reach me was that by Sinnappah Arasaratnam in 1974, In July 1975 I left Peradeniya for West Germany on a Humboldt Fellowship at the Sud Asien Institute, Heidelberg Univerisity, with a four month period learning German at the Goethe Institutte on Boppard-am-Rhein before my move to Heidelberg where my family joined me. My own researches were on themes encompassed within the design of the Humboldt Fellowship and I was fortunate to have Professor Dietmar Rothermund and several Indian history specialists as colleagues at the South Asia Institute. It was in this environment that I cast the first draft of an article that was presented at an European Conference in the Netherlands and then  at the SOAS in London  before eventually making the grade as an article entitled “Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka and Sinhalese Perspectives:: Barriers to Accommodation” within Modern Asian Studies in 1978 — embodying a pessimistic appraisal of the  situation in Sri Lanka and anticipating Sri Lankan Tamil challenges of a violent character.

While at Boppard and Heidelberg I continued to nag most of the participants who had been lined up for the edited book –depending here on slo-mo airmail. Some manuscripts trickled in. Shona and I had known when we left that we could not survive economically in Sri Lanka on my lecturer salary and I was fortunate in 1976 to secure a job in Anthropology at the University of Adelaide beginning in the academic year 1977. We sojourned in Colombo on the way to Australia in December 1976 and January 1977 — tidying up our affairs. It was probably then that I secured support for the enterprise from Godfrey Gunatilleka and the Marga Institute. The collection of essays — far fewer than originally hoped for — came out in print in 1979  with the title COLLECTIVE IDENTITIES, NATIONALISMS and PROTEST in SRI LANKA.

Keen eyes will take note of the plural “Nationalisms.”

Observant  purchasers of this book will also note the parlous state of the local newsprint industry and the variation in its paper colouring when they flip through the book. More significant, however, is the contrast between, say the design   envisaged  in early 1975 and the final lot of articles(chapters). They point to good intentions unfulfilled ….. and much research work that has died with their beaerers or remains unknown as dissertatkion work in dusty/musty university libraries. Schaade.

                                 TABLE OF CONTENT

 PREFACE                                                                                                                         v

LIST OF TABLES, FIGLRES, CHARTS                                                                     xi

LIST OF MAPS                                                                                                              xiii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS                                                                                        xv

CONTRIBUTORS                                                                                                   x vii

ERRATA                                                                                                                       xix

                                                        Introduction

Chapter 1:   Meanderings in the Pathways of Collective Identity and Nationalism        Michael Roberts                1-97

                                                       Section I          BACKGROUND AND ROOTS

Chapter 2:  The Sinhala-Buddhist Identity and the Nayakkar Dynasty in the Politics

of the Kandyan Kingdom, 1739-l815      K. N. O. Dharmadasa                                                       99

Chapter 3:   Resistance Movements in Nineteenth ­Century Sri Lanka        K. M. de Silva                                          129

Chapter 4:    Elite Formation and Elites, 1833-1931                               Michael Roberts                                              153

Chapter 5:    Stimulants and Ingredients in the Awaken­ing of  Latter-Day Nationalisms  Michael Roberts    214

Chapter 6:    The Muslim Revivalist Movement, 1880-1915                                    Vijaya Samaraweera              243

                                            Section II              COLLECTIVE IDENTITIES

Chapter 7:  Vicissitudes of the Sinhala-Buddhist Identity through Time and Change   Gananath Obeysekera      279

Chapter 8:   Ideology and Class Interest in One of Piyadasa Sirisena’s Novels:

The New Image of the ‘Sinhala-Buddhist Nationalist                                    Sarath Amunugama

Chapter 9:  Problems of Collective Identity in a Multi-­Ethnic Society: Sectional Nationalism vs

. Ceylonese Nationalism, 1900-1940                                                    Michael Roberts                                                   337

      Section III        THE BRITISH AND THE CEY­LONESE: POLICIES AND PERSPECTIVES

IN INTER­ACTION AND EVOLUTION

Chapter 10:         The Empire at Bay: British Attitudes and the Growth of Nationalism

in the Early Twentieth Century                                     Charles T. Blackton                                                                  363

Chapter 11:   Nationalism in Economic and Social Thought. 1915-1945 Michael Roberts                                  386

Chapter 12:  The Transfer of Power in Sri Lanka: A Review of BritisH Perspectives, 1938-1947  K. M.. de Silva  420

                                                     Section IV             TOWARDS THE CONTEM­PORARY SCENE

Chapter 13:      Nationalism, Modernisation and Political Mobilisation in a Plural Society

                                                                                                                            Robert N. Kearney                                           440

Chapter 14:  Race, Religion, Language and Caste in thea Subnationalisms of Sri Lanka A. Jeyaratnam Wilson       462

Chapter 15:      The Impact of Nationalism on Education: The Schools Takeover  (1961) and

the University Admissions Crisis 1970-1975                                                                                                 C. R. de Silva        474

Chapter 16:            Nationalism in Sri Lanka and the TamilS                                                              S. Arasaratnam          500

Amalgamated Select Bibliography                                                                                                                                                     535

Index of Names                                                                                                                                                                                     559

Subject Index

     *************************

END NOTES

[i] Sathiah was as genial as steady in his services. I recall that I dedicated my Congress documents book to him.  He hailed from the Indian Plantation Tamils in the Kandy-Peradeniya locality and I was subsequently informed that his younger brother entered the Engineering Faculty of Peradeniya. Such tales are elevating: amidst the various strands of pollical madness and economic chicanery that has been a part of Sri Lanka’s history, they evidence the opportunities of social mobility that are some recompense.

[ii] See Kodikara, “Communalism and Political Modernisation in Ceylon,” Modern Ceylon Studies, 1970, Vol !: 100-03.

[iii] The venerable founder and leader of the ITAK or “Federal Freedom Party.” (for the text of the p original ITAK founding statement, see Roberts, Tamil Person and State. Pictorial, Colombo, Vijitha Yapa Publications, 2014, pp. 271-92.

[iv] See Wilson, “Religion, Language and caste in the Subnationalisms of Sri Lanka,” in Roberts, Collective Identities, Nationalisms and Protest in Modern Sri Lanka, Colombo, Maga, 1979, p. 462.

[v] Ananda Wickremaratne was a batchmate at Ramanathan Hall in the late 1950s and I often stayed at his place in Kandy during my undergrad years because he was also an Honours course batchmate in History.

[vi] My memory on these events is blank and I was not even aware of Ananda Wickremeratne’s collaboration at the outset or the various details till I came across the chapter listings at the back of the 1979 Marga publication.

[vii] The key members of the CSS waited a while for Siriweera and Company to lose their vigour and organised such a conference in Colombo in October 1973 with aid from the Marga circle and Mark Cooray at Law College.

[viii] This line of information is largely from Gerald Peiris as my memory is blank (perhaps because one of the incidents took place when I was in USA. This tale is when Ian Goonetileke had raised a storm at a verbal CSS talk by the University of Sussex Professor, Michael Lipton, – challenging the latter’s stance and contending that Ceylon was no longer “Lipton’s tea garden”.

[ix] Bryce Ryan had authored the book Caste in Modern Ceylon. The Sinhalese System in Transition  in 1953 (Rutgers University Press) and was visiting the island after a long absence. His presentation at the CSS was verbal and not a written paper. Given the limited research in this field, it was a rare opportunity for us in Peradeniya.

[x] Several of us in Peradeniya University were alive to the undercurrents of ferment among the SL Tamils because of (a) the vibes in Peradeniya Campus circles; (B) the widely-displayed dissent among Tamils during the making of the 1972 constitution and, (c) in my case, information conveyed to em by the Bishop of Kurunegala, Lakshman Wickremasinghe who had many fingers on the political pulse. Moreover, a young historian working on her Ph.D in the archives at Jaffna, Jane Russell had told me that she had met some youth in the Peninsula who informed her that “as far as they were concerned, all the Tamils living in Colombo could die.” That piece of evidence was momentous: some Tamils had moved to the polar extreme and there was no limit on their course of action.

These readings on our part induced CR de Silva, myself and others at Peradeniya to combine with Godfrey and Chandra at Marga and Mark Cooray at the Law College and proceed with the organIsation of an all-day conference in Colombo on the 6th October 1973 focusing on THE SINHALA-TAMIL PROBLEM.

Stanley Samarasinghe aka “Sam”

ONE =  MEMO Sent to The Editor, Thuppahi

Unfortunately the present government has discredited the concept of Good Governance and many voters have become cynical. But Sri Lanka has no alternative but to think afresh and make an effort to convince at least 50%+1 of the voters that Good Governance must be given another chance. If not we will elect another set of corrupt politicians.  My argument is that this time the younger politicians must take the lead and not Civil Society leaders. For sure Rev. Maduluwave Sobitha played a decisive role in 2015. But civil society leaders have no power to deliver. Recall that before his death Rev. Sobitha himself expressed his frustration a few months after the new government was elected.

Sirisena and Wickremesinghe won in 2015 riding on the on the back of Rev. Sobitha and the 47 or so civil society groups that he mobilized. The public got the impression that Rev. Sobitha and his backers were responsible for delivering “Good governance.“ Of course they never have had any power to do the job. Power rested with president Sirisena and prime minister Wickremesinghe. Both found it convenient to encourage the public that Good Governance was the responsibility of Rev. Sobitha and his supporters. They (President and PM) not only failed to keep their promises but also severely compromised themselves by indulging in corrupt practices themselves and by allowing their supports to do the same.  This is not the first time that this happened.  JR, Sirima B, CBK, R. Premadasa and even Rajapksa came to power promising good governance. But none really delivered. Some were not interested but in some cases they did not have a viable strategy. The result is a 60+ year vicious circle of broken prmcies of good governance. The basic challenge for Sri Lanka in 2020 is to break this vicious circle.  

The country can’t manufacture new politicians. Voters have to choose from those who are available. Nobody is perfect. But there are a significant number of younger politicians/parliamentarians in ALL parties who are well educated, and do not have much baggage. If they can unite there is hope. Countries such as France, Canada and New Zealand have shown that younger politicians can convince the electorate to give them a chance. For sure these are “mature” democracies. But so is Sri Lanka’s. We have been electing governments for the last 88 years (three generations). If today’s younger politicians have the courage to challenge the old guard the vicious circle can be broken. But I am not sure if politicians such as Sajith Premadasa, Anura Dissanayaka, Champika Ranawaka, Sumanthiran, Hasheem, Harsha de Silva, Thigambaran and many others have the political courage to take the required risk, challenge the status qua, make some compromise in their own ideological preferences for the sake of the country and move forward.

The most difficult issue facing them is to agree on some major structural changes the way the country is governed. My hunch is that if they do come up with a viable strategy, the voters will respond positively.

*** **

TWO = Professor “Sam” Samarasinghe in Q and A with Editor, Silumina, 21 October 2018

“2020 දීත් පොදු අපේක්ෂකයෙක් ආවොත් වාසිය වැඩියි“