LTTE, JVP AND CAMPUS POLITICS

Though it sounds as a banal statement, it is not a tautology to say that the LTTE and the JVP has differences as well as similarities. The LTTE is a product of Tamil racism that was created by the Dutch and the British and nurtured by the latter while JVP is a product of the Marxist movement in Sri Lanka. Both the LTTE and JVP have been established in order to fight for the “downtrodden” as recognised by their parental movements namely Tamil racism and Marxism. They both thrive on lies and it is difficult to say which organisation has the better machinery to create lies. The LTTE has been sponsored by the western countries (including Japan) and India, but the JVP not only does not get that sponsorship, it is opposed by the same countries. The LTTE though may not be speaking for the Tamils now, at one stage it was thought to be the “boys” who represented the Tamils by the leaders of the so called Tamil moderates. On the other hand the JVP does not represent the working class or the proletariat though the Party has some trade union leaders at least in their inner bodies such as the central committee.

The Marxist movement in Sri Lanka at least in theory wanted to establish a socialist state and was “preparing” for a revolution to defeat the capitalist class. They were mainly influenced by the Trotskyite movement and the leaders were trained in the tradition of the trade union movement in Britain, though there were exceptions from the very early beginnings. The Marxists in Sri Lanka and elsewhere in Asia, Africa and South America were not nationalists as such but were internationalists. In Sri Lanka these internationalists when fighting against the western colonialism of western Christian modernity appeared to lead national independence struggles in the eyes of a few nationalistic personnel such as the Sangha, the village teacher, the physician. However, in general the people who belonged to this category did not consider the “Marxists” to be nationalistic and thought that the UNP of the Senanayakes represented the nationalist movement.

The Marxists in general were doomed after the nationalist parties were established in the non European countries. They had an existence only until at least a section of the people considered these parties as nationalistic forces. It was also clear that in Sri Lanka the LSSP and the CP were not interested in a revolution. However only a few were interested in a revolution and once the nationalistic parties were formed most of the people who had supported the Marxist parties left them and joined the former. In Sri Lanka the support that the LSSP and the CP had among a section of the population began to wane after the SLFP became a nationalistic party around 1954. Some “revolutionists” may still think that it was the coalition politics of the LSSP and the CP that brought the downfall of those parties but then the fact that the parties formed by these anti coalition “revolutionists” have not been able even to take off has proved that coalition politics is not the reason for the former to lose their attraction.

In the sixties the Maoist movement gained currency and the Maoist parties were able to attract people in the non European world with its nationalistic outlook. In Sri Lanka some of those who had been dissatisfied with the LSSP and CP for not being revolutionary and/or nationalistic joined the JVP that was established along Maoist lines. The JVP was not interested in Marxist purity and was prepared to “adopt” Marxism in the context of the Sri Lankan situation. It was consistent with Maoist politics and JVP was able to be more nationalistic than the Stalinists and especially the Trotskyites who were incorrigible internationalists. The JVP diluted or distorted most of the Marxist concepts in order to adopt them to the Sri Lankan situation. The proletariat that cannot be found anywhere in the world became the “nirdhanin” (those without wealth or money) and the youth in the villages were able to understand those diluted or distorted concepts easily. It does not mean that the Marxist concepts had been understood properly by the youth of the previous generation. I know that most of them do not know what dialectics is all about and they go on referring to a so called dialectic method without realising that this method has been imprisoned in a formal framework. Those who are interested may refer to “Apohakaye Rupikaya” (Formalism of Dialectics) that remains to be answered seventeen years after it was published.

The class struggle had been turned to a “panthi vairaya” (hatred) among the village youth and they were ready to take up arms against not only the state but the “rich” individuals in the villages as well. The village youth believed in the simple slogans of the JVP that mixed a vulgarised form of Marxism with nationalism and were convinced after five classes that they could transform the society in a one day revolution. The JVP leadership oscillated (vacillated) between their version of Marxism and nationalism and on occasions worked with the “Jathika Vyaparaya”  as well. They could form an alliance with the NSSP and two years after form a front with the nationalistic forces. However the underlining feeling and hence the driving force among the members of the JVP was “vairaya” whether it was against imperialism, non national forces or the village mudalali. It was not only the mudalali that became their target but anybody who had a better social status than them. Though the LSSP and the CP may disown the JVP it was conceived in the womb of Marxism. The leadership of the JVP was against the leadership of their parent parties (Vijeweera had been a member of the CP before he joined the Maoist CP of Shanmugadasan and he had apparently been disillusioned with the latter due to the latter’s racist policies.) and it turned out to be a “vairaya” against them.

The Tamil racism at the beginning was against Sinhala Buddhist culture and the leaders had been influenced by the British since the nineteenth century. The Tamil leaders with the connivance of the British governors and other officials had wanted to become the rulers of the entire country staying in Colombo. When Chelvanayakam found that it was an impossible dream to realise he founded his Illankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi or Ceylon Tamil State Party to establish a separate state. He went round campaigning for a Tamil Eelam and in the early seventies Tamil youth probably having taken a leaf from the JVP strategy took up arms against the state and also the Sinhala and Tamil individuals. They were also beginning to be disillusioned with the old leaders and Chelvanayakam in 1976 with the Tamil youth adopted what was to be called the Vadukkodai resolution.

The western Christian modernity that teaches to separate issues had been successful in training the older generation who had their education in elite schools to separate politics and policies from personalities. Even today one finds people who had their education in the elite schools taking pride of the fact that they studied together with students from other communities and with other political views without losing their friendship. However over the years something went wrong as far as western modernity is concerned and the separation of political and other views from personalities became almost impossible for some students. This has nothing to do with segregation of students into different media of instruction but reflected a problem that modernity encountered with education in the country.  This phenomenon could be found among the Sinhala as well as Tamil students. The majority of these students who were attracted to the JVP and the LTTE found it almost impossible to separate their views (political as well as other) from personalities.

The early Marxist movement did not do much to establish a communist state or a socialist state (forget the withering away of the state in Classical Marxism), and in the eyes of the JVP which was a party in the Maoist tradition with a so called nationalistic outlook the old left had been a traitor. The JVP as we said last week vacillated between the internationalism of Marxism and nationalism, and reduced Marxism to a few slogans and five classes. However the party undertook to carry forward the class struggle though not in the name of the proletariat but of nirdhanin (those without wealth), and establish a socialist state taking up arms against the bourgeois state.

The LTTE on the other hand was a product of Tamil racism and separatism, and was disillusioned with the old Tamil parties that did not do much to establish an Eelam in the opinion of the former. In the eyes of the LTTE the old Tamil racist parties were traitors just as much the old left parties were reckoned so by the JVP. The LTTE (and the other parties of the Tamil youth) ironically learnt from the JVP and took up arms to establish a separate state in the early seventies. The LTTE unlike the JVP did not have to vacillate between separatism and any other “ism” and the political outfit and its leader Prabhakaran from the very beginning had only one objective which was to establish a separate state in the northern and the eastern provinces. However it could be said that the westerners and the LTTE would have been thinking of establishing the Eelam in the entire country not confining to the northern and the eastern provinces. If UK and USA had continued with supplying so called developmental material through Norway and if the humanitarian operations were delayed by an year or two nobody could say exactly what would have been the outcome of the “struggle” of the LTTE.

The LTTE carrying on a struggle against Sinhala Buddhist culture on behalf of western Christian modernity had the support of the west from the very beginning (in fact Tamil racism was created and nurtured by the west from about the seventeenth century) but the JVP with traces of Sinhala nationalism was opposed by the west from its inception in the sixties. It should be remembered that in 1971 as well as in 1989-92 the west gave all the support to the Sri Lankan government to defeat the JVP. During the periods when the JVP activities had reached the zenith there were no human rights organisations to campaign on behalf of the JVP, and so called unbiased media such as BBC had no hesitation in calling the JVP a terrorist movement though they do not refer to the LTTE as a terrorist outfit. For these media saints the LTTE is a liberator of the Tamil people.  In general to the west an organisation becomes a terrorist outfit only if it is against western Christian modernity and/or Judaic Christian culture. Thus for them Al Quaida is a terrorist organisation but the LTTE per se is not.

Both the LTTE and the JVP have fascist tendencies. Though only a very few people will agree with me, fascism is capitalism attempted in a Catholic Chinthanaya. Capitalism is a mode of production that can be implemented only within the western Christian modernity based on the Greek Judaic Christian Chinthanaya, and any attempt to execute capitalism in any other Chinthanaya is doomed to fail. Even Communism and utopian Marxist socialism are theoretical results of trying to work out schemes to accomplish capitalism (in this case state capitalism) within the Catholic Chinthanaya with its three fold logic, and cannot succeed. As we have seen communism of Stalin was not much different from fascism in practice, and communism under any other person would not have been much different. Though the LTTE is not a Marxist party it is based on Catholic Chinthanaya and the mode of production it advocates is nothing but capitalism.

The western Christian modernity knows how to separate issues (subjects from one another, individuals from other individuals etc.,) and for persons who have been given a “good” education under modernity it is not difficult to separate policies of an individual from the individual himself. Thus those who were educated in elite schools, and central schools before the educational system embarked on its downhill path somewhere in the early sixties knew in general how to separate an individual from his policies, ideologies etc. The modernity education was diluted and nobody knew how to replace/amend it with the educational system we had in the country before the introduction of the western Christian modernity education or even to absorb the western system to our culture. The Vidyodaya Vidyalankara Pirivenas were given some form of the western university structure around the same time and the pirivena system in general was tinkered with simultaneously. It is wrong to say that Vidyodaya and Vidyalankara Pirivenas were given university status in 1959 as it is said that the education given in these two institutions in what could be called oriental studies (praceena adhyapanaya) was of a higher standard than that was given in the universities including University of London. What really happened was to bring the two Pirivenas under some form of the structure of the western universities, and the graduates under the cloaks of the western Christian universities. What was given was not university status but a western university structure to the two Pirivenas.

The “new” education given to the students in schools was substandard from the point of view of the western Christian modernity education in pre sixties and the students began to identify individuals with their policies, attitudes, politics etc. It is not a result of the change of the medium of instruction nor segregation of students into different media. The students on the other hand were not given a holistic education in a subject as separation of units of a subject was given priority. It was a complex process that took place under the influence of the American new education introduced after the Russian satellite was launched in 1957, and  we tried to divide subjects more and more into units, modules etc., and at the same time could not cope with the separation of the policies of an individual from the individual. This was reflected in the students who entered the universities and in general the new generation of students was satisfied with pieces of knowledge rather than holistic knowledge. They were slogan shouters and were satisfied with knowing some terms rather than what the terms meant. If the older generation was able to discuss and debate among themselves the intricacies of Marxism, though they did not fully understand the concepts, without losing the friendship among them, the most of the new generation was not capable of doing so. They did not have any understanding of the concepts and were satisfied with shouting slogans that the others had written for them. They did not make any distinction between the individual and his views. Thus instead of attacking the ideas and points of view they attacked the individuals.

The campus politics at present is based on this principle. The students who are manipulated by the JVP do not know how to engage in a debate with the other students. They attack not only the other students but the buildings that accommodate these students. They threaten staff members who do not see eye to eye with them and attack the police forgetting that they had only the other day put up posters appreciating the services of the armed forces including the police.

However, they have another characteristic other than what were mentioned above, that they share with the LTTE. They are lie machines capable of creating lies. They pretend as if the police had attacked some innocent students. The police action of dragging a female student cannot be condoned but at the same time one cannot turn a blind eye to female students attacking and abusing police officers. The LTTE which has no respect for human rights turn to international and local human rights organisations whenever they are attacked by the armed force, creating lies in collaboration with the human rights industry.  There was a time when the Sri Lankan forces were intimidated by the “intellectual thugs” in the human rights movement local as well as “international”. In the case of the JVP only some of the local human rights people are agitated as the “internationals” knowing that the JVP is useless as the latter does not attack the Sinhala Buddhist culture as such in public.  The JVP in the universities adopt the same policy that the LTTE adopts with respect to the Tamils. There may be a few who would say that the JVP has no right to engage in politics in the universities, but what a large majority has to say is that while the JVP has a right to express their views, they should allow the others to express their opinions without fear. The LTTE wanted to be the sole representative of the Tamils. Similarly the Inter University Student Federation instigated by the JVP wants it to be the sole representative of the university students.

ELECTIONS EXPLODE MORE MYTHS

Not many years ago it was stated by the political science pundits that it was impossible to win an election without the support of the so called minorities a term coined by the British. In addition the pundits pointed out that devolution of power was essential, as Prabhakaran and the LTTE were invincible and hence to attract the so called moderate Tamils a devolution package was necessary. All the wisdom of the pundits was associated with the “injustices” to the Tamils by the Sinhalas, and prevention of partitioning of the country. The myth of the invincibility of the LTTE and Prabhakaran has been exploded and the myth of the injustices to the Tamils is being gradually exposed. The Vayamba and Central Provincial Council elections have exploded the myth that the minorities would always vote as a bloc with the UNP.

When the pundits were arguing that elections could not be won without the support of the “minorities” we showed that if a political party was able to muster about sixty percent of the Sinhala vote it could win the elections. However to win that much of support from the Sinhalas a policy that could attract them had to be adopted. For the first time since 1956 the UPFA came out with such policy at the Presidential elections in 2005. The UPFA promised to protect the unitary state and the majority of the Sinhala people gathered round the UPFA and Mr. Mahinda Rajapakse. Having come to power the President has gone to defeat the LTTE standing up to the pressure exerted continuously by the western powers and intermittently by India. The government and the military have won not only the northern and the eastern provinces but the hearts of the people living in those areas. It is the so called Sinhala army that has been engaged in humanitarian operations against the barbaric LTTE, and has liberated the innocent Tamils from the clutches of Prabhakaran. The innocent and poor Tamils now know that the “Sinhala army” is not a devil, and that the real devil is none other than the former darling boys of the Vellalas. These Tamils have now realised that it was the Vellalas who had suppressed them and not the Sinhalas. It is ironical that the Vellalas who were brought by the Dutch as agricultural labourers in the seventeenth century (the Dutch also took some Vellalas to Natal in South Africa during that time. South Africa and Sri Lanka are home to these imported Vellalas as well as to Roman Dutch Law due to the Dutch.) and were pushed by the British to be the local leaders over the Sinhalas, were finally displaced by the Karaivar Prabhakaran.  However, the Tamil diaspora living in the lap of luxury of the westerners are prevented from realising this fact by the westerners themselves and the west think that if they could smuggle Prabhakaran out of the island then they could commence another round of ethnic violence.

If Mr. Mahinda Rajapakse came to power in 2005 on the Sinhala vote without depending on the so called minority vote, in the Provincial Council elections held on Saturday the UPFA has been able to win the votes of the “minorities” as well. It is not the APRC that plays no useful role as at present that has attracted the “minorities” to the UPFA. The APRC served a purpose during the days when humanitarian operations began but it has no role to play now. It is not devolution to the Vellalas that matter but “development” of the areas and the human resources whatever is meant by the term development. It can be said that currently the UPFA attract about 70% of the Sinhala vote and about 45% of the “minority” vote. This is only a rough estimate going by the votes polled by the UPFA at the Vayamba and Central Province provincial council elections where the UPFA received around 70% and 60% of the votes respectively. Even if the estimates are not correct it is clear that the UPFA has increased its vote among the Sinhalas as well as the “minorities” (almost from nothing) compared to the Presidential elections held in 2005 and the general elections held in 2004.  In the meantime the UNP vote has come down not only among the Sinhalas but among the “minorities” as well.

As mentioned before it is not the intended APRC report that has attracted the votes of the “minorities” to the UPFA. The devolution was not an issue at the elections nor did the economic factors play any role. The only issue that attracted the attention of the people was the humanitarian operations against the barbaric and inhuman LTTE. The innocent Tamils who have been held as a human shield know more than any “humanitarian” NGO or INGO agent how cruel the LTTE is in sealing with human lives. The UPFA has been able to increase votes among the Tamils by defeating the LTTE and looking after the poor Tamil people who had braved the attacks from the LTTE to escape to the “war free zone”.  This is a good lesson for the UPFA, which the NGO and other pundits will never learn. The supremacy of the Vellalas subsequently taken over by the LTTE is not the concern of the ordinary Tamils and what they are interested is in ‘development’ and security. The “minority” vote for the UPFA has increased in spite of propaganda by the LTTE and the west that the condition of the civilians in Vanni had deteriorated considerably in the past few weeks. The fact that the “minority” vote increased when the most adverse propaganda against the government was aired by the western and other pro LTTE media speaks volumes for the correctness of the leadership given by the President.

The verdict is in many ways an approval of the nationalistic policies adopted and the national theories and concepts adhered to by the government. There is a national feeling among the Sinhalas as well as the “minorities” for the first time since Sri Lanka won the world cup in cricket, but at a deeper level. The lion flag has all of a sudden acquired an importance and the people Sinhala as well as non Sinhalas were proud to display it on the official Independence Day. The sovereignty of the nation and the welfare of the people are the concerns of the people and the Sinhalas are determined to proceed along the line that has been so far adopted by the government. The Sinhala people have overwhelmingly approved the policies of the President and they would not want the government to bow down to the westerners and others. The pundits would again play the same tune of Sri Lanka being a small country could not isolate from the rest of the world and shout on the repercussions of not listening to the western and other “influential” countries. However, what has been proved during the last two or three years is that the country could stand up to all these pressures upholding the sovereignty of the country. Except for some LTTE supporters and UNP sympathisers, who are not in large numbers these days and the Tamil diaspora a good proportion of the other Tamils would support the government even on this score as they have experience of the life they had with the LTTE supported by the so called donor countries and their friends. The verdict given by the people is for continuation of the policies of the government including defeating of the LTTE, and it should not deviate even by a centimetre from the line that has been pursued so far. If the government were to do so at the insistence of a few Marxists and other such creatures in the government then it would amount to committing political suicide. It is not the policies of these characters without much support among the people that have been approved by the latter but those of the now defunct group of Sinhala MPs (Sinhala Manthree Kandayama) in the UPFA.  It is unfortunate that these MPs are now not very vociferous and their views are being expressed by others who had opposing views only a few years ago. The danger is that some of these vociferous elements could go back to their original positions once the operations are over. The Sinhala MPs group should try to take the leadership in policy matters.

The UNP has lost their mass base and in certain poling divisions they could manage only about 25% of the votes polled. The party that could boast of a vote base of about 40% has lost support simply because of the policy on the problem of Tamil racism. It should be clear to the UNP that they cannot hope to win an election based on non national policies dictated by the west. The people have given a clear verdict and defeated non national forces that include the UNP. The JVP has fared miserably winning only one seat in the Vayamba Provincial council and losing in all the polling divisions. As we have argued on many occasions the JVP is strong only when they are in an alliance with the SLFP, and the moment they leave the alliance their strength is lost. The JVP can either join the UPFA, provided of course the latter is prepared to accept them, and survive or perish. The JVP insisted that the victory over the LTTE belonged to the people and not to a party. The people have not listened to these ideas coming from party leaders who would hero worship their leader Vijeweera and would claim that the Russian revolution was a success due to the leadership of Lenin. The party does not want to give due credit to the President and probably want to say that it is the armed forces (ranaviruvo) that was successful at the humanitarian operations against the LTTE. The people did not listen to this argument, and had they known that some of the young followers of the revolutionary party had got female university students to abuse and attack the ranaviruwo the outcome would have been even worse for the party. The JVP that had a mass base of about 3% of the votes polled even in 1982 has lost most of it to the UPFA. Once Mahinda Chinthana was formulated the attraction for the smaller parties has deteriorated and these parties can survive only by becoming partners of the alliance.

The myths of Tamil racism are being exploded gradually and if the government keeps its cool and work out on a proper national integration (meaning integration of the non Sinhalas to the Sinhala nation recognizing that the Sinhala Buddhist culture is the prominent culture in Sri Lanka and maintaining the identities of the non Sinhalas) the ordinary Tamils would support the government more and more in spite of the diaspora and the leaders who have only brought them misery.

THE BANKRUPT MIDDLECLASS

The Sri Lankan middleclass, especially the English speaking among them have lost the leadership that they had in opinion making in the country. That task is also being gradually grabbed by some politicians and others with definite nationalistic political leanings. The middleclass had been hiding their political leanings and pretending to present a so called balanced view. However, the hypocrisy of the so called balanced view has been exposed, and the public in general know that there is no such creature as a balanced person, whose existence we were informed in the schools and the universities.

The assassination of Lasantha Wickramatunga has exposed the English speaking (even this concept is challengeable as the lingua franca is changing fast to Sinhala, with people having a working knowledge of English. Those who are identified as the English speaking middleclass have not noticed, never mind understanding, even the changes that have taken place at their homes.) middleclass even further. Those who tried to pretend that that they were impartial and balanced have been shown to be utterly partial and biased. Those who were against the so called war or who expressed expert opinion that the war cannot be won are now questioning whether it could be called a one man victory, a family victory or even a Rajapakshe – Fonseka victory. Even the JVP leadership wants the people to believe that it is the country that has won and not even the armed forces. Then we have the spectre of finding a “dictator”, a “fascist” in the Defence Secretary Mr. Gotabhaya Rajapakshe for not maintaining his “composure” at a multi channel interview.

Lasantha Wickramatunga was more a politician than a journalist or a lawyer. No journalist is unbiased, in fact no individual is unbiased and Wickramatunga was biased to the core. He had political ambitions and his writings were definitely pro UNP, pro Tamil racism, anti SLFP though he may have had been a private secretary of Mrs. Bandaranaike long time ago. He was not the best investigative journalist we have had as information came to him rather than him going after information. When one reads the gossip columns that are published under the pretext of political commentary, political analysis etc., it could be easily seen that the sources of these columns are more or less the same. Of course some gossip columnists have more “resource persons” (a term used in middleclass seminar circuit to mislead the gullible people), and their columns are more popular. In Sri Lanka at present anybody with good contacts and a telephone could become an investigative journalist, provided of course he has a flavour for journalism and a place to present his “findings”. Let us face the facts, though they are not sacrosanct as some people tend to believe. Lasantha Wickramatunga as a UNP politician had access to anti government and in particular anti Rajapakshe family material than most of the others who authored gossip columns. I am not trying to find fault with a dead man, but I am only exposing the middleclass that has lost the leadership that they had in the society.

Then we have the so called last editorial. One does not have to be an investigative journalist to see through the last editorial. The last editorial is not the last supper, and only the gullible would believe that it was written before the assassination. Wickramatunga was just an ordinary politician, and the middleclass however much it tries cannot make him a hero who sacrificed his life for truth. However, this does not imply that I condone the assassination. Finally it was a sacrificial of a life for intended political gains without achieving anything. Those who finally suffer are his three children and their mother and not the “heroic” middleclass that write eulogies that will help to boost up their frustrated egos, nor the free media people who enjoy life on funds provided by the west.

Who won the so called war? We have right throughout maintained that there was no war in the country and it was only a case of defeating a gang of terrorists who had taken up arms against the government. If one calls the operations against the LTTE a war then one has to state that we have had two wars against the JVP. Operations are not called wars depending on the number of days of fighting or the number of bunkers or even the foreign aid given to the armed gang directly by the western embassies or indirectly by them through the NGOs and INGOs, and conceptually there had been no war in this country. In any event, the operations against the LTTE have been successful and we may ask, on behalf of the middleclass who won the operations.

The operations were won by the armed forces under the military leadership provided by the commanders of the armed forces, under the leadership given by the secretary of the ministry of defence, and under the political leadership of the President with the support of the majority of the public, and of course with the help given by the opinion leaders of the nationalist movement who had maintained that the terrorist outfit can be and should be defeated against the tide created by the NGOs, INGOs, the war pundits, ambassadors and special envoys, missionaries, Solheims who claimed that Prabhakaran was a military genius who could not be defeated. If anyone of the above conditions or factors was missing the operations would not have succeeded, and I would say that the operations would not have even begun if not for the political leadership provided by the President. Thus the most crucial factor is the political leadership and due credit has to be given to the President irrespective of the wishes of the middleclass. If the President bowed down to pressure from the western powers, then that would have been the end of the operations. The President also was able to win the confidence of the Indian government by assuring them that Sri Lanka would not act in a way that would pause a threat to India, directly or indirectly. Few years ago when we first raised the issue of the political leadership some pundits in the so called alternative (vikalpa) press ridiculed us and wanted to know whether we advocated pollicising the armed forces. However, now everybody is talking of the political leadership provided by the President and it is clear that without him no victory was possible.

Finally why should the middleclass get upset about the interview given by the Defence Secretary? He spoke frankly and of course as the Defence Secretary he knows at least some of the terrorists. Referring to a certain personality he said he would have an inquiry and get the former arrested. Simply because one is identified as a journalist it would not confirm that he could not be a terrorist. We know now that Richard de Zoysa had connections with the JVP and he was not merely a journalist. However, one does not condone the assassination simply because he had JVP connections but one cannot run away from these bitter truths.  Let the police go through the investigations and either release or indict those journalists in custody at the moment. It makes no sense to demand the release of a person simply because he/she is a journalist. It is clear that during the past many journalists did not act in the interests of the nation. The nation had one main interest and that was the defeat of the LTTE and the genius of Solheim. Of course when I refer to the nation I refer to the majority of the nation.

What the defence secretary said about Sirasa makes sense and one does not judge a person by the words he uses nor by his composure when he says something. What is important is what one says and not how one says it. The middleclass may be still thinking that style is the man but for many others content is more important than the form. Those who were under the impression that the LTTE could not be defeated are not happy with the outcome and they want to accuse the armed forces tarnish the name of the forces and if possible get the westerners to intervene even at this last moment. Remember all those R2P s, failed states that the west was trying to use against the government. It is clear that it is the failed west that cannot think of any action plan except resorting to Billyboy tactics of sacrificing their own people and institutions and deserting their darling middleclass that they nurtured for more than five hundred years.

GENOCIDE, WAR CRIMINALS, DEVOLUTION AND DIASPORA

There is lot of discussion these days on genocide, war criminals and of course devolution. Interestingly the discussion is among the usual crowd, namely the diaspora, the human rights people in the NGOs INGOs as well as united nations organisations and western diplomats. Some countries naturally backed by USA and UK and some other western countries are trying hard to bring the human rights situation in Sri Lanka before the security council of the United nations. If not for Russia and China this would have been already taken up at the Security Council and strictures would have been passed against Sri Lanka. If one thinks that the Tamil diaspora have been able to convince some not so well known country that it should move this resolution at the security council then one is mistaken.  Some delegation of the Tamil diaspora may have met the leaders of the countries concerned but the council would not go against the wish of Russia and China that have veto powers. In any event it is doubtful that the former countries would have agreed to bring the Sri Lanka human rights situation for discussion if they did not have the backing of the USA. Those countries would not have done anything simply because an unknown delegation of the Tamil diaspora had met them. Here again as has been the case right throughout it is the western powerful countries that move less known countries against Sri Lanka and not the Tamil diaspora. The Tamil diaspora is neither that efficient nor recognized and if not for the powerful western countries their voice would not have been heard.

Genocide means extermination of a race and even if the hundred thousand or so people trapped by the LTTE were killed that would not have exterminated the Tamils in Sri Lanka. The interesting fact is that about fifty thousand of these people have already left the area and gone to the so called exterminators voluntarily. Has anybody heard anything similar to that even vaguely? Did the Jews go to Hitler voluntarily and ask him to look after them? The delegations of the west that went to Vavunia and other places know how these people who have fled the “Tamil Eelam” and come to the “Sinhala Army” and the way the “Sinhala Government” has treated them. Apparently even the secretary of the united nations is satisfied with the way that these people have been treated by the armed forces and the government. At present there cannot be more than fifty thousand people “trapped” and very soon they will also find peace with the Sri Lankan armed forces. However the Tamil diaspora and officials of the united nations bodies that have been established to give employment to few thousands of highly paid officers from the poor countries of the world as a way of satisfying the middle class of these countries are busy collecting data of people who have been killed by the armed forces in the “war free” areas declared by the government. If these officials are interested in “facts” then they would know that more than fifty thousand Tamils have already left the LTTE for the armed forces, and can save some money that have been allocated to “collect” data.

These officials including notorious Ms. Pillay “collect” data with quite a few objectives. They assume that Prabhakaran is trapped in Mulativu by the armed forces and they are more concerned of this trapped man than in the thousands of other “trapped people”.  If possible they want to give publicity to the so called war crimes of killing innocent people in order to send united nations forces with the expressed objective of liberating the so called trapped people. However what they are interested is in the life of Prabhakaran whom they assume is in Mulativu. While officials such as Pillay are collecting “data” (they are only constructing data) the secretary general expresses other views perhaps due to the objections raised by India and other countries against sending united nations forces to Sri Lanka and/or because he does not think that Prabhakaran is in Mulativu.

Whatever may be the thinking of the secretary general, the officials and the secretary general himself and the Presidents and the Prime Ministers in the western countries have another objective in constructing data. They may be thinking of framing charges against the President, the Secretary to the ministry of defence and other officials in Sri Lanka as war criminals. Whatever may be the legal definition of a war crime, in the last analysis those who are tried for war crimes are the Presidents and others who go against the western (mainly American) policy. Who are the worst war criminals in the past seventy years or so? Who took the decision to drop atomic bombs to Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Who were the so called leaders who brought misery to Vietnam? Who took the decision to bomb indiscriminately in Afghanistan, Iraq and other such countries? Has anybody framed charges of war crimes against any of the American Presidents? Is Winston Churchill a war criminal or a hero?  Why no Israeli Prime Minister is charged for war crimes? The legal definitions are there only for the students of law. The interpretation of law is for the others.

The Tamil diaspora will go to town with charges of war crimes and genocide that will help the western powers. If the westerners do not send UN or some other forces due to Prabhakaran’s absence in Mulativu or because of opposition from countries such as India, China and Russia, then they will attempt to use the “data” constructed by Pillay and others to frame charges against the President, Defence Secretary and commanders of the armed forces, and if possible convict them.  It should be remembered that some Tamils living abroad are already shouting of concentration camps. Tamil racism, separatism and terrorism are based on lies and nothing but lies and the concentration camp is the latest addition to the list of lies. However, if somebody asks the people who have left Prabhakaran’s camp whether concentration or not, and come to the armed forces they will have a different story to tell.

In any event the diaspora will try their best to propagate more and more myths on genocide, war crimes, concentration camps and the rest as they are only interested in a Tamil Eelam. They are not prepared to integrate with the Sinhala people and work towards the development of the nation, as from the beginning the English speaking Tamils were nurtured by the British to think of themselves as the leaders and the rulers of the country. It is this idea of supremacy that has made them to interpret any loss of privileges that they enjoyed under the British as injustices to the Tamil community. The devolution is only the beginning of separatism and the diaspora with its supremacy thinking will not “lie down arms” until a separate state is won. If Prabhakaran has already escaped or would escape the Tamil diaspora will establish an Eelam in exile under the sponsorship of the western powers. However, those “trapped people” are not interested in the Eelam of the diaspora or even devolution of power and all that they want is some kind of development without Prabhakaran, the LTTE and Tamil supremacy.

Pluralism and Supremacy

Is there any country, with a history, in the world where all cultures are treated equally? This is a question that H. L. Seneviratne, Shanie and others should answer before pontificating on pluralism. I presume that H. L. Seneviratne has been living in the US for quite some time. Does he as a western sociologist or as a plain human being aware of a culture in the US even on par with the American Christian culture? When one thinks that there had been many cultures in the Americas before the whites and Seneviratnes went there one has to wonder what happened to all those cultures. They are there for western Anthropologists such as Redfield to speculate on great tradition and little tradition but not for Bush or Obama and others to treat them equally.

So many foreign ministers have been visiting Sri Lanka in the past few days and they too perhaps preach pluralism. Among the countries they represent France, Britain and Australia have been very tough on Muslims. The Prime Ministers, the judiciary of these countries are on record, though not in the same words, effectively asking the Muslims to leave the respective countries if they could not live according to the Christian culture respecting the Christian law. Pluralism in these countries means that though there may be people of different cultures living, one culture is more significant than the other cultures. The cultures are never treated equally and when Obama took his oaths as the US President he did so as a Christian according to Christian culture. Leave alone the Presidency and the associated ceremony the US. In Sri Lanka in universities the convocations are conducted according to the Christian tradition with the Vice Chancellors, Deans, other officers, graduands and those who receive so called honorary degrees wearing the cloaks which represent nothing but the cloaks of the Christian clergy. Even Universities of Kelaniya and Sri Jayawardhanapura which were made so called universities fifty years ago by imposing a Christian university structure on them have to follow these western Christian traditions!

Where do we find pluralism in the western Christian world? We have repeated the above umpteen times without any response from Seneviratnes and Shanies who only repeat the word pluralism as if it were a panacea for all the problems. The national flag of United Kingdom represents the history of the country and one can see only the Christian crosses and not any other symbol of any other culture. Westminster abbey will not accommodate any Bhikkus if and when Charles Windsor becomes the king of Britain or the UK. (Will the Irish accept him? I also wonder why they do not have a Duke of Ulster or a Prince of Ireland resembling the Duke of Edinburgh or the Prince of Wales!) English may not be the official language of Britain, meaning there is no official language act, but for all purposes English occupies a supreme place in the government and other institutions. The US supposed to be the most powerful country made English or American English the official language of the country a few years ago to undercut Spanish which the Anglo Saxon Americans thought would become a threat to English.

As we have said even individuals are not equal in the west or in any part of the world under western Christian hegemony. Surely H. L. Seneviratne enjoys more access to the press in Sri Lanka than an average Sri Lankan living in the country but on the other hand does not enjoy the same “equality” vis- a- vis the American press though he lives there as an academic. We do not hold DPL passports and we are not treated equal by the police. Equality and such concepts are only rhetoric introduced by the French revolution, and western Christian modernity with its hypocrisy has been happy to adopt them into the western Judaic Christian culture.

The British treat the LTTE sympathisers ‘more equal’ than most of the other communities on her soil. Which other community would be allowed to block a bridge over the Thames disrupting traffic? Imaging what would have happened if an association of the Arabs had attempted to block a bridge not over the Thames but over some brook in the country demanding that bin Laden be allowed to escape from the US-led forces. Poor Sadam Hussein, had he been an LTTE member, he would not have been hanged. Let us face it!

The British who do not treat all the cultures equally and who would do everything to make sure that the Anglo Saxon Christian culture the dominant culture in the whole world including the academia want Sri Lanka to treat all cultures equally. They have their theoreticians as well as the “commentators” such as Seneviratnes and Shanies to work for them. Invariably, the latter are products of the imitative western education with its rotten core (incidentally Gunadasa Amarasekera in his writings has criticized only the outer shell dealing with phenomena such as the tennis playing undergraduate from the central schools and not the knowledge system based on western Greek Judaic Christian Chinthanaya) we have in Sri Lanka, whether in Peradeniya or Wayamba, and they know only to repeat what their masters and mistresses want them to tell the world.

There are some of my friends who want to know the reason why the British want to destroy the Sinhala Buddhist culture. I only request them to read the Vidusara series of articles available in www.kalaya.org. Of course, it is not an academic website with “research papers” written in the jargon of the academics, and some third rate engineers turned third rate sociologists will consider the articles childish. The Sinhala Theravada Buddhist Chinthanaya is the most prominent Chinthanaya not based on a God or an objective reality and those intellectuals in the west and not those Sri Lankans in the western universities, who serve the west, know the strength of that Chinthanaya.

When Sri Lanka or Sinhale, as it was known then, entered into an agreement with Britain in 1815, the British promised to rule the country according to the Sinhale law or tradition and protect Buddhism. This may be the only occasion a Christian country undertook to protect a non Christian religion and a culture, and it speaks volumes for the strength of the Sinhala Bhikkus and of the leaders at that time. The British had no alternative but to accept the significance of the Sinhala Buddhist culture and the Sinhala “law”, even if it was done with the intention of deceiving the Sinhala leaders. The British parliament naturally did not approve what Brownrigg had done and there was protest in England against the so-called Kandyan convention. The British did not want to protect or promote Buddhism, and they did not know that Brownrigg was to rig the Convention. The British promised to uphold the significance of the Sinhala Buddhist culture in Sinhale but had no intention of doing so. With the so-called educated Vellala Tamils they maintained the dominance of the western Christian culture by not giving the due place to the Sinhala Buddhist culture.

It is significant that no European colonial power entered into a similar agreement with the Tamils in the country. One could say that the so-called Jaffna kingdom was defeated in the seventeenth century by the Portuguese and after that there was no need of an agreement. However, according to the late Mr. Gamini Iriyagolla there was an agreement between the Portuguese and the Arya Chakravarthins that was in Sinhala.

There is no unconditional or absolute pluralism anywhere else in the world and Sri Lanka does not need to be unique in practising such pluralism playing into the hands of the British who have ulterior motives.