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| Sunday, 29 February 2004 |
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Chelvanayakam's ghost : Crisis of Sinhala conservatism Observations by LAKSHMAN GUNASEKERA Not only is history repeating itself, but old ghosts are emerging from the past as this country goes through yet another phase of its on-going national crisis. As I have argued in these columns earlier, Sri Lankan society has been going into a steadily deepening political crisis in its post-colonial period, a crisis that is, itself, a part of the larger civilisational crisis arising from the 500-year 'Dark Age' of European invasion and colonisation. In fact, next year we will be marking our 500th anniversary of the arrival of the Parangi in 1505 (just a decade after Vasco Da Gama and his little flotilla reached Kozhikode in what is now Kerala). The post-colonial crisis is a crisis of the failure of the national polity, that is, the Sri Lankan nation-state as it is currently configured and also, the continuing failure of society to deal with that failure of the polity and devise another system in an orderly and socially harmonious manner. That failure of society arises primarily from its severe debilitation during half a millennium of colonial domination, just as much as the nation-state that has failed is a product of colonialism both in terms of the nationalisms it engendered and in terms of the system of governance bequeathed to us by the retreating British rulers. If the SLFP's annexation of the JVP is a repeat of the 1964 SLFP coalition with the LSSP-CP, we now find that in the latest twist in the even more turbulent flow of Tamil politics, fourth generation political descendants and militant heirs to the Federal Party, the original Tamil self-determination movement, are having to return to the FP election symbol for April's parliamentary election. Why 'fourth' generation? The TULF was the political movement forged in 1972 to continue the self-determination movement originated by the FP. Appapillai Amirthalingam took off with the TULF about a decade after the Chelvanayagam generation, which led the FP, faded away. When, by the mid-1990s, the TULF, the second generation movement, was clearly seen to have run out of steam, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) was formed. This third generation movement first survived uneasily parallel to, and then, under the domination of the fourth generation self-determination movement which is the Tamil armed secessionist movement. Today, as the TNA nomination lists clearly indicate, this fourth generation movement has infiltrated the TNA and has taken over its effective leadership. But this fourth generation's own authoritarian politics has caused a minor internal problem: Mr. Anandasangaree's courageously independent politics has prevented the TNA from using its own election symbol of the 'Rising Sun'. Hence, the TNA has borrowed the 'House' symbol of the Federal Party. Mr. Chelvanayakam would have been thrilled that, at last, his people, under a brash new leadership, are recalling the symbols of his original historic struggle for their self-determination. His foundational work is bearing fruit at long last. But even this little matter of a symbol is not easy to resolve in our convoluted politics. The current official executive committee of the long dormant FP, mainly in exile overseas, has stirred itself to block the TNA's move to use their party symbol. So, do the ghosts emerge. But they are only ghosts. Mr. Prabhakaran's men and women (should I say 'boys' and 'girls'?), having taken on and successfully resisted the real-life State armed forces of India and Sri Lanka, can handle ghosts. Furthermore, although the current FP leaders may disapprove, I am sure that Mr. Chelvanayakam, despite his class and caste prejudices, would have happily handed over the House to the new leaders of the emerging Tamil Nation. Not that those new leaders would have bothered to have asked him. If everything seems hunky dory - in a war battered, impoverished way - in Tamil politics, Sinhala politics continues on its confused, short-sighted, self-destructive and self-contradictory course. The latest contradiction is most intriguing and prompts one to peer into the dark recesses of the ethno-supremacist mind and into the nooks and crannies of the Sinhala ultranationalist political movement. Who are most vocally opposed to the initiative by a group of Buddhist monks to contest the parliamentary elections? None but the broad ultranationalist movement itself! This is a most striking internal contradiction. The Sihala Urumaya, now under its new name of Jathika Hela Urumaya, had emereged as the principal formal political articulation of Sinhala ultranationalism. The rest of the ultranationalist movement comprises at least one other registered political party, the Sinhale Maha Sammatha Bhoomiputhra Party, and numerous large and small religious, cultural and civic action groups. Some of these groups comprise the same people and have formed and disbanded and coalesced with other groups from time to time to the prompting of political needs and personal ambitions. The National Movement Against Terrorism (NMAT) is one example of this fluidity. This fluidity is, of course, no different from the similar dynamic to be seen in the rest of the Sri Lankan political firmament, Sinhala, Muslim or Tamil, Left or Right. Several less political but socio-culturally conservative (that is, favouring continued Sinhala domination of the Sri Lankan society as well as the entrenchment of simplistic, restrictive, cultural and social norms defining 'Sinhala' identity) Sinhala organisations, including Buddhist ones, also go to make up the broad Sinhala ultranationalist movement. Even though many of them do not join explicitly political activity, at crucial moments and for broader societal purposes (such as the Sinhala Commission) these groups readily coalesce with the more political ones to form broad fronts for specific objectives. It is as the most articulate and dynamic political expression of all these groups that the Sihala Urumaya functioned. By no means does the SU function as the dominant group or the controlling body. The Sinhala ultranationalist movement is far too weak and unorganised to possess the rigid hierarchy and complex structure that has developed in the Tamil self-determination movement. Nevertheless, the SU is the chief political group, overtaking, in this respect, the older Bhoomiputhra Party. At the same time, perhaps because of its political nature, the SU has been the most innovative of all the various groups in the broader movement. Also, given its political nature the Sihala Urumaya has the task of responding to the compulsions of the current political context. It is a context of slow but increasing momentum towards dissolution of the Sinhala dominant State and the creation of an ethnically plural and egalitarian and structurally diffused (federal or confederal) Sri Lankan polity or even a partitioning into several ethnic polities. This momentum quickens the end of the Sinhala fantasy of empire and ethnic supremacy. It is the SU that has the daunting task of taking up the challenge of slowing and modulating if not completely blocking this trend. And this may be why the SU, along with the most radically activist Buddhist clergy supporting it, has innovated: they have come together to make political and social history by fielding Buddhist monks in the parliamentary elections. They have created a new political formation, the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) to facilitate this. This new name recalls one of the 1970-80s ultranationalist groups, the Hela Urumaya, of which SU leader Tilak Karunaratna was a leading light. The significance of this political initiative by elements of the venerable Maha Sangha I discussed in my last column. What I am examining now is what seems to be the immediate ideological and social repercussions of this development. That the enemies of Sinhala ultranationalism and the political rivals of the SU for its Sinhala voter base, such as the JVP, would oppose and criticise the SU/JHU launch of the Sangha into formal politics is to be expected. Actually, given the coyness of these oppositional groups and their reluctance to provoke what they fear would be more popular sympathy for the ultranationalist movement, has discouraged the mainstream political movement from strongly criticising the JHU nomination of Bhikku candidates. There may also be a muted hope (probably correct) that this initiative would fail in terms of placing several monks inside Parliament and, therefore, that this would further emasculate an already weak ultranationalist movement. Officially, though, many of the mainstream political parties have formally disapproved of the monks' initiative and left it that. Why 'officially'? This is crucial, in ideological terms. The dominant political discourse presumes a certain fixed 'traditional' code of behaviour for the Sangha in society and, all of these 'mainstream' parties, the UNP and SLFP, MEP and others, being 'mainstream' must necessarily uphold this discourse and social code. Hence many of the mainstream leaders may officially make disapproving statements but would probably secretly be happy that the Bhikkus are coming forward, because the hope is that the experience would, on the one hand teach the militant monks the difficulties to be overcome in the national crisis and, on the other, would, in the event of electoral failure, further weaken the ultranationalist movement. The liberal, westernised intelligentsia is also probably a silent observer of this process with similar expectations. But the Liberals also have a lurking fear that electoral success could strengthen the ability of the ultranationalists to block peace moves. The loudest protests against Bhikku parliamentary candidacy have, therefore, come from those groups who have already been vigorously shouldering the task of defending the Sinhala nation and its domination of Sri Lanka. And these are the very groups that comprise the bulk of the ultranationalist movement, except, that is, the SU/JHU. Thus, while the SU has made what it thinks is a bold political intervention to combat the momentum towards an ending of Sinhala political-cultural supremacy, this initiative has already resulted in severe ideological confusion and political dissension within the very political movement that the SU thought it was championing. In this immediate situation I think that the SU has been right in its logic and the conservatism that is at the bottom of the heated opposition to the Bhikku election candidates is reflective of the mediocrity of the larger Sinhala ultranationalist movement. Unfortunately, this mediocrity straddles the entire spectrum of Sinhala politics. Thus, there have been no creative, organisational responses to the political militancy of the Maha Sangha that would have channelled this spiritual-social energy towards more constructive politics and civic activism for social and economic justice and genuine democracy as originally lived by the Sangha itself. The Ven. Baddegama Samitha remains the lone symbol of what is possible in that direction. How this internal dissension within the Sinhala ultranationalist movement plays itself out remains to be seen. In one sense this weakness is good: it weakens the immediate reactionary anti-peace impetus of this movement. In another sense (as I pointed out last week), this formal arrival of Bhikkus onto Sinhala society's political centre stage opens up vast possibilities of this socially significant segment of society, the Sangha, becoming once again a force for social justice and societal equilibrium. But for this to happen, organisations other than Sinhala ultranationalist ones have to find ways of absorbing this clerical militancy so that it can be channelled towards building society rather than worsening the existing crisis. After all, the goal of the Bhikku includes social interventions for the betterment of all living beings. In becoming a Bodhisattva, one "...gives the best food to those who are hungry, strives for the healing of those who are sick, shares ones riches with those afflicted by poverty, and bears the burdens of those who are tired and weary." (from the Mahayana text: Siksasamuccaya) |
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