Analysis and Prescription: undercurrents in the peace process - 30th August 2007

Analysis and Prescription: undercurrents in the peace process
Rajiva Wijesinha Secretary-General Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process

One of the reasons I accepted with alacrity the post of Secretary General of the Peace Secretariat was that after intensive writing a new challenge seemed welcome. During my sabbatical I had written frenetically, and over the twelve months that followed the various books I had worked on had been readied for publication. By June 2007, apart from a new edition of ‘Liberal Values for South Asia’, which the Friedrich Naumann Stiftung had finally decided to reissue, and the bringing together of my trilogy of novels about ethnic conflict and political violence in Sri Lanka, under the title ‘The Terrorist Trilogy’, I had nothing constructive to look forward to.

I don’t think very many people knew about the publications. Even ‘Ideas for Constitutional Reform’, the revised version of the seminal collection Chanaka Amaratunga had put together nearly twenty years previously, had scarcely been reviewed in the media. In general we are not a country that values books or ideas adequately, rarely reviewing them in a discursive manner, rarely indeed looking at ideas very deeply. I am therefore quite sure that my books had nothing to do with my being selected for this position. However, as it happened, all the books that have appeared or will appear this year are singularly appropriate for the task I have taken on.

Ideas for Constitutional Reform, Chanaka Amaratunga Foundation / International Book House, January 2007

‘Ideas for Constitutional Reform’ was the product of the informed idealism of Chanaka Amaratunga, founder of the Liberal Party of Sri Lanka, the first intellectual in the country to point out the need for a principled approach to politics that did not rely on a socialist foundation. When he hit the political scene, J R Jayewardene was running riot, institutionalizing authoritarianism through his preposterous constitution and its first six crude amendments. Opposition to this was led by left wing politicians who saw the open economy as the root of all evil, not J R’s refusal to open up anything except trade to the private sector. Meanwhile, inclined as he himself was to the racist wing of the UNP, the minorities were being ruthlessly alienated, with the persecutions and the pogroms of 1977, 1979, 1981 and 1983.

It was Chanaka who first pointed out that the crisis we faced was a crisis on institutions. And the answer he believed was less government, not more. In a series of seminars that brought together the best minds in Sri Lanka, Colvin R de Silva of the old left, Gamini Dissanayake the only person in the UNP who took scholarship seriously, Neelan Tiruchelvam, G L Pieris, H L de Silva, Qadri Ismail, C R de Silva, and so on, he explored structures for executive and legislature and judiciary and the media too that would best suit the requirements of the nation in the continuing context of individual liberty. In revising the book, which is now out of print, and producing a shorter volume, I concentrated on issues that are now of critical importance in the ongoing debate about constitutional reform. Devolution, which maximizes decision making power amongst those affected by decisions, an electoral system that is both just and ensures clearcut representation of constituencies, a second chamber that provides representation for the periphery at the center, a judiciary that actively promotes individual rights – these are some of the areas the revised book, which came out in January, explore in succinct and informative essays.

Sadly, I don’t think the book is still the indispensable text it ought to be, for politicians as well as students. It never will be, if we do not replace the abstract notion of literacy on which we pride ourselves with truly functional literacy. But it is there, for anyone who cares, even if they might disagree about details of implementation, about the principles on which a Sri Lankan constitution should be framed.

Declining Sri Lanka: Terrorism and Ethnic Violence as the legacy of J R Jayewardene, 1906-1996, Cambridge University Press Delhi, July 2007

But to understand the context in which constitutional principles took on so much importance, one should also know the history of the period in which any such principles were traduced while the seeds of terrorism and ethnic violence were sown. In this regard, indebted as I am to Chanaka for the theoretical perspective he provided me with, I can claim that my analysis predated his. Indeed, it predated that of anyone else who lays claim to political awareness, except some left wing critics whose opposition to J R was based on his repudiation of the socialist consensus of the period preceeding 1977.

My view on the contrary was that his old-fashioned centralizing authoritarianism was the surest way of destroying the economic reforms he was trying to introduce. His stranglehold over the legislature and the judiciary seemed to be to be precursors to a tyranny that would only lead to violent opposition, and so it proved. When I first argued this however in 1980, my friends thought I was being melodramatic. Both Chanaka and Radhika Coomaraswamy for instance, later pillars of the Human Rights Movement, thought the deprivation of Mrs. Bandaranaike’s Civic Rights a trivial matter, not bothering at all about the implications of why and how it was done, with a constitutional amendment rushed in to stymie judicial review.

Chanaka recognized I was right at the time of the referendum. Radhika took a bit longer. To my surprise, when the Legal Division at Marga stopped its seminars on constitutional matters following political intervention, and she moved over to the newly set up Institute of Ethnic Studies, she meekly accepted the condition that it should not look at ethnic issues in Sri Lanka. Radhika at least was honest enough to admit the conditions that her directors had accepted; when I challenged this in print, one of them claimed that Radhika had no right to speak for the institution, and implied that my contempt for the ICES was misplaced.

But, to give Radhika her due, the riots of 1983 changed her approach. She was still her usual cautious self, and could not too obviously rock the boat her patrons had set sail, but she gave space within ICES for the Committee for Rational Development, and found the much more outspoken Dayan Jayatilleka to draft its formidable critique of the racism of the Jayewardene government. From then on, I am happy to say, ICES never looked back, and particularly when Jeevan Thiagarajah took on increased responsibilities – with, I like to think, the iconoclastic approach I had trained him in when he first began working with me at S Thomas’, mitigated by a tactfulness I have never managed – it became the cutting edge on issues that had been so woefully neglected in the early eighties.

But at the same time, perhaps given the family connections that still dog Sri Lankan analysts, J R himself, along with immediate family circle, were never the subject of criticism. That, I fear, was left to me, through the novel ‘Acts of Faith’ which appeared in India in 1985, and then in ‘The Current Crisis in Sri Lanka’ which the same publisher brought out in 1986.

It is that book which forms the core of ‘Declining Sri Lanka’. The book was updated following the Indo-Lankan Accord of 1987 and its aftermath (and accompanied by another novel, ‘Days of Despair’, about those incidents). It was followed by ‘Civil Strife in Sri Lanka’, which dealt with the Premadasa years. I had thought then that I would not return to political history. However, the events of the last five years, and in particular what I see as the specter of Jayewardene returning, in the form of his nephew Ranil Wickremesinghe, the last significant politician left who contributed to the excesses of J R Jayewardene’s years in power, indicated that detailed analysis of the recent period too was due.

Typically, the denizens of Colombo now claim that my critique of Ranil is too harsh. The simple answer is that this was their view when I criticized J R at the height of his destructive power, and now most people agree with my analysis, finding in his self-contradictory constitution, his manipulation of the courts, his abuse of minorities, the thuggery and corruption he encouraged, the roots of the tragedy we now suffer. Certainly Ranil Wickremesinghe is not in the same league of destructiveness. But he could potentially be very dangerous, not least because he will tolerate anything in his lust for power – and that anything now includes a totalitarian element far worse than Jayewardene even if created by him originally, the Tiger leader Prabhakaran.

It is therefore not simply as an account of the past that I would like Declining Sri Lanka to be read. Its analysis relates to the here and now, and unless we are able and willing to learn from the past, to understand the dangers of selective reactions to particular problems without looking at fundamental principles, we will slide further and further into disaster.

Bridging Connections – English, Sinhala and Tamil Short Stories from Sri Lanka, National Book Trust of India, August 2007

The other book published in India this year is very different. It is a collection of stories that will I hope allow readers to explore varying responses to continuing social complexities. Understandably, given the current situation, many stories deal with violence and ethnic problems, but to me the book is symptomatic of the real hope we live with in Sri Lanka, inasmuch as people to people relations continue strong. The sympathy with which writers of different ethnicities treat all their fellow Sri Lankans is a greater reality than the polarizations beloved of commentators, especially foreign ones who assume that all ethnic conflicts are the same.

At the same time, the fact that this collection comes out in English exemplifies another factor that should be taken into account in any initiatives to bring lasting peace, namely the importance of linguistic bridges. The current commitment of the government to trilingualism is most heartening, as are the efforts of the Ministry of Constitutional Affairs and National Integration to provide institutional support for this.

I should add on a personal note that, though I believe it is important that Sinhalese learn Tamil and Tamils Sinhalese, both races and Muslims too are generally highly motivated to learn English, and facilitating this will at least lead quickly to better communication as well as empowering youngsters to aspire to higher levels of employment.

Indeed, when I sometimes wonder why I was asked to take on this position, and acknowledge that my books could not have had much to do with it, I fall back on the supposition that someone in government may have realized that the initiative I commenced, way back in 2001, to reintroduce the Engish medium as an option in state schools, was one of the most crucial in promoting ethnic harmony. We began the programmme under the title of Amity Schools, and if soon we are thus able to have Muslims and Sinhalese and Tamils all studying together, we will have gone some way to reducing the distrust our current segregated education system promotes.

In addition of course to the symbolic point, the collection of short stories provides vivid insights into the Sri Lankan situation and psyche. Vijita Fernando and K. S. Sivakumaran, the two translators who contributed so much to the volume provided me with a wide range of stories, and I was also fortunate to have the assistance of Prof. Chelva Kanaganayakam, my host when I last lectured at Jaffna university, who has done much to promote Sri Lankan writing in English as well as Tamil writing during his tenure of a senior academic position in Canada.

All in all the book provides a panoramic view of Sri Lankan society, and though much of the picture is bleak, the understanding that emerges throughout the collection will I hope make clear why I still believe peace will provide many blessings when it comes.

Partition and Divided Selves: British Inadequacies in Paul Scott’s India, International Book House, September 2007

Finally, there is my critique of The Raj Quartet, Paul Scott’s panoramic assessment of the British in India at the time of independence. This is a work of literary criticism I have been working on for years, perhaps ever since I was asked to teach it when I first took up a post at Peradeniya University, and found more senior academics entrenched in the Victorian period which was my speciality.

I have over the years published several articles on Scott’s work, but I believe a full account is necessary, because few critics have done justice to his central theme. This is the betrayal by the British of not only India, but the ideals they purported to uphold in governing it. However, typically, the British made Scott their own romancifier, using a television epic to present a panorama of basically decent British administrators betrayed by the nigger in their woodpile, the repressed sadistic homosexual Merrick, and also by bloodthirsty natives, dying to kill each other when not restrained by their wise and good British masters.

The television serial, beautiful though it was, was a travesty of Scott, whose point was that India was the place where liberal England came to an end, precisely because it was not liberal enough. The idealistic British in the end closed ranks behind people like Merrick, simply because he was in the end one of them, whereas people of a different colour were clearly of a different breed. A few women did try to resist the tide, but as one of them put it, in the end a machine takes over and nothing can prevent the superior race, driven by its worst elements, having its way.

And, ultimately, the result was what any imperialist would have wished, a truncated subcontinent, destined for the next fifty years to fester in rivalries that should have been avoided in the creation of a powerful pluralistic South Asian state. This meant that, during the worst years of the Cold War, the whole region became a plaything of external forces, in a replay of the Great Game that affected Sri Lanka too so badly.

We should not blame the British for that though, for the Cold War was not driven by them, and our own problems arose mainly because J R tried to become a major player in that game, in oppositon to India. And yet, we must remember too that it was primarily Britain that encouraged him in his delusions of grandeur. After all, when Foreign Minister Hameed was dispatched to Britain to invoke the 1947 Defence Treaty in case of Indian intervention, Margaret Thatcher wanted to acquiesce, and it was only resolute opposition by the relevant ministries that made her back off.

Now the dangers of the Cold War are over, we hope, and India’s advances have given her the status that she should have had fifty years ago in the world had partition not made her seem just one element in a variegated region. The United States in particular has understood the position, and – I trust with neither trying to engage in rivalry with China – cooperation in many areas should benefit the region as a whole.

But where does this leave the British? I don’t suppose they are unhappy about these developments as a matter of policy, but certainly some at least amongst them would not want their own influence in the area to be reduced in the context of super power congruences of which they are not a part. Hence perhaps their determination to play a greater role in Sri Lanka, as evidenced by the latest FCO report, prepared it should be noted in collaboration with the Ministry of Defence. Though couched in the generally idealistic language that Scott’s good guys used, the implications are that the Sri Lankan government is not quite doing its job properly, and some British advice and assistance and involvement may produce better results.

What are those better results? I cannot believe that even the British would actually want a divided Sri Lanka, with part of it run by the LTTE under Prabhakaran. That however is what undermining the current government will lead to, as should be obvious to anyone who studied what went on in 2002. However, as Scott points out, careful analysis of consequences has never been a strong point of the British, with their penchant for gifted amateurs. Rather, what they seem to be hankering after is the sort of regime they welcomed in Colombo, the old unregenerate UNP that was so kind to British business and British capital, JR in the eighties, supported through thick and thin however horrendous his human rights record, now Wickremesinghe with the ability to charm the Archbishop of Canterbury, naturally for they speak the same language. And, with Wickremesinghe in place, with a virtual LTTE regime ensconced in Trincomalee, there will be much more scope for bit players on the world scene to extend their influence. Given too the enormous power the Tamil diaspora would wield in any self-governing LTTE entity, the opportunities for European and in particular British influence would be tremendous.

This is obviously not in India’s interests. Now that she has overcome the tragedy of partition to all intents and purposes, it will not do to allow destabilization to the south. Even if this is not consciously intended – and as Scott has shown, very little is consciously intended, the idealists amongst the British shoring up the pragmatists and the ruthless only to limited extents, but extents that in the end serve the final purpose – it would clearly be better for the subcontinent if peace in Sri Lanka could be achieved on subcontinental terms, not those of interested external parties.

Of course this does not mean one should reject British idealists completely. One should welcome their positive contributions and engage in discussion to see how best their undoubted energies can be channeled into what is best for the people in these countries. But, given the propensity of so many of our fellow citizens to accept without question what the West has to offer, those of us with greater historical awareness need to be doubly careful about accepting what they offer on their terms. Instead, one should help them to fulfill themselves more satisfactorily than they are now able to, when they look at the country not in terms of its people but in terms of their own aspirations.

And when they pontificate about rights, the rights they helped Jayewardene to traduce, the human rights of minorities and then others tortured and murdered while Keany-Meany Services trained J R’s handpicked men, the political rights of citizens not allowed to vote for six years while Mrs. Thatcher celebrated her great democratic ally against the wicked Soviet Union, I think we should not get angry, but simply recall what Scott, in his inimitable fashion wrote about a character the British see as the epitome of imperial rectitude –

And I think it was then, with Rowan sitting opposite me, showing not a trace of anxiety (carve him in stone and nothing would have emerged so clearly as his rigid pro-consular self-assurance, remoteness and dignity) that I understood the comic dilemma of the raj - the dilemma of men who hoped to inspire trust but couldn’t even trust themselves….I had an almost irrepressible urge to burst out laughing. I fought it because he would have misinterpreted it. But I would have been laughing for him. I suppose that to laugh for people, to see the comic side of their lives when they can’t see it for themselves, is a way of expressing affection for them; and even admiration - of a kind - for the lives they try so seriously to lead. (Division of the Spoils, pp 306-7)