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| Sunday, 13 June 2004 |
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The ugly face of a political capital Sunday Essay by Ajith Samaranayake What is it about Sri Jayawardenapura, the so-called new political capital of Sri Lanka, that seems to invite such violence? The very week an undergraduate of the Jayawardenapura University was stabbed to death, the Parliament situated in the same townstead, erupted in the ugliest scenes so far in the history of Sri Lanka's legislature. The once resplendent city which was the seat of the most brilliant efflorescence in poetry today resembles a ruin and caricature of its pristine self.
Is there any casual connection between violence among the country's future generation and rowdyism among her parliamentarian? Can the country's legislators afford to pontificate about indiscipline in the universities in the face of their own folly? These are the unhappy questions which the past week has thrust before the country and her people. How can university students enter a seat of learning harbouring knives and kill in broad daylight a fellow undergraduate? Are they so devoid of fellow feeling and a sense of sensitivity, qualities which education is supposed to breed, that they can resort to such barbaric behaviour? And what is it about the new generation of middle and lower middle class youth, who form the bulk of the student body, that makes them so prone to violence? And what is it about Sri Lanka's politics that makes parliamentarians so intolerant of opposition, which makes them express their political feelings in actions which can find no place in a legislative assembly? And conversely, what has made Parliament a place where the piously professed and intoned mantra of liberal democracy can with impunity be mocked and dragged in the mud by its supposed defenders and protectors? Both constitute two sides of the coin of social decay and societal decline. To begin with the universities, there is no point in pretending that they even approximate to the liberal seats of learning envisaged by Sir Ivor Jennings when he established the University of Ceylon, the only university then, at Peradeniya. It was only during the high noon of an imaginary liberal democracy basking in the glow of the Korean boom that Sri Lanka's elite could have believed that the liberal ideals would go on and on for ever. The model of the classical university with its complex of a library, gymnasium, halls of residence and its network of leisure activities such as sports, drama and films did not survive the withering of the Welfare State. But what is tragic is that the latest incidents of violence should have erupted at an university such as the former Vidyodaya University, which grew out of the tradition of monastic education which forms the bedrock of Buddhist learning. Criticism of puritans The two universities Vidyalankara (now Kelaniya) and Vidyodaya (now Sri Jayawardhanapura) were nurtured out of the two pirivenas which bear their respective names by Prime Minister S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike and his Minister of Education W. Dahanayake in the face of much criticism by the puritans to give an opportunity to the new middle class generations to find a place in the sun in an atmosphere which would be more familiar and congenial to them than the elitist surroundings of Peradeniya. One of the main criticisms levelled at that time was that Buddhist monks would be studying in the same surroundings as young men and women, exposing them to all kinds of corrupting influences. Monks studying such modern disciplines as literature was also condemned because they would have to watch dramatic and musical performances prohibited for the Sangha and travel late at night back to their temples after such performances. All this might sound very quaint today when Bhikkhus have even entered Parliament and are at the centre of its storms, but such was the temper of the 1950s and 1960s. It will be easy for the elite (who anyway send their offspring abroad for education these days and even their young children to the so-called international schools sprouting in Colombo) to turn up their noses and ascribe the present indiscipline and violence in the universities to the influx of the middle and lower middle classes. Even those who are not unsympathetic to such trends have seen such indiscipline and violence as the result of a sense of inferiority and regressive peasant tendencies on the part of the undergraduates. There is certainly some truth in such assessments. But even if we concede the fact that the present generation of undergraduates are seized with feelings of economic and social tension, which make them hostile to the established order, what is the explanation for their turning against their fellow students and manifesting such feelings in barbaric acts of ragging and the killing of fellow students? On the same token, it will be easy for that tribe of coat-and-tie MPs to laugh at the bazaar antics of their fellow MPs who engaged in the free-for-all in Parliament last Tuesday. But here at least, it is not the social origin of these MPs which is at fault. Parliamentarians from rural and urban middle and lower middle class backgrounds (dismissed by former Prime Minister John Kotalawela as 'sons of tree pluckers) have been in Parliament for at least five decades now and have generally conducted themselves with dignity. Rather, the present phenomenon of intolerance and unruliness is to be attributed to the brutalization of society which began with the closing of the democratic political system in the 1970s, the perpetuation of the 1977 Parliament by resort to the Referendum in 1982 and the Proportional Representation System and the preferential vote which have paved the way for monied lumpen elements who are able to command thuggery to enter Parliament at the expense of more principled elements who have no recourse to such resources. It is not the intention of this column to comment on what happened last week in Parliament since we still respect the dignity of the House even if some MPs themselves seem to be acting in breach of these cherished traditions. However, two observations in passing would not be out of place. In the first instance, how was it possible for the Ven. Akmeemana Dayarathana (who incidentally is the chief incumbent of a temple neighbouring this columnist's home) to be invited to take oaths when there was a court order expressly prohibiting him from not only taking oaths, but even entering the Parliament complex? As former parliamentary correspondents, we remember well that let alone an express court order, even the very fact that a plaint had been filed in a court of law, has prevented Parliament from discussing such cases in the past on the rule of subjudice. But even if the court order was being violated, would it not have been wiser for the Government party to have allowed the monk to take his oaths, permitting the judiciary to deal with the matter? Parliament supreme It could be argued that the Speaker is not bound by a restraining order issued by the courts since Parliament is supreme, but what has to be borne in mind is that the court was prompted to hand down the order after an unprecedented application made by one monk elected as an MP that a group of monks and laymen had forcibly obtained his signature to a letter of resignation which had been accepted by Parliament officialdom. On the same token, it would have been wiser to have permitted the court to have settled the matter although permitting Ven. Dayarathana to take oaths would have led to a conflict between parliament and the judiciary. In the case of the university too, it is worth finding out whether there are any insidious political forces at work trying to re-kindle violence at a time when the Jayawardhanapura University from all accounts was returning to a state of normalcy after the killing of the student Ovitigala Samantha and the repressive period of the Epitawatte administration against which the university teachers themselves rose in rebellion. This is particularly necessary in the light of sections of the media trying to make out that last week's killing was the result of a clash when all evidence points to the fact that the student Sampath had been calculatedly stabbed to death by a gang who had entered the campus and left it without being apprehended at all by the security officers although other students who had seen the stabbing had raised cries for the gates to be locked. But what is the wider malaise to which these incidents point and which has brought our society as it is constituted today to the present state of breakdown? The reason seems to be the breakdown of the social contract itself which binds the constituent elements of any society together and gives it a central focus and purpose. This is a theme which merits an examination of its own. (To be continued next week) |
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