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| Sunday, 24 October 2004 |
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The right column "To be or not to be: that is the question." Not for a sceptic like me, but for Ven. Uduwe Dhammaloka Thera. He has postponed by a fortnight a decision on his future political career. Well, this is not peculiar to the Venerable Thera. Before him the same question haunted no less a person than Tilak Karunaratne, the leader of Sihala Urumaya, the mother party of Hela Urumaya. Of course, he has been liberated. He is back in the UNP fold. No need to ask nasty questions like how he could sit with the "traitors to the Sihala Jatiya". That is politics in Sri Lanka. I believe it is the same elsewhere too. The breed of turncoats is not dying. It is the four-legged elephants that are getting extinct not the two-legged species. Ven. Kolonnawe Sumangala Thera totally renounced politics and returned to the pansala to immerse himself in the Dhamma. Perhaps, he was not used to the intrigues and pressures emanating from various quarters. Whatever it is both the Sihala Urumaya and the Hela Urumaya are in crisis. May be it is their karumaya (kamma). Political analysts will spin theories to their liking. One fact, however, is conspicuous. The Hela Urumaya was destined to split or to get embroiled in a crisis. Political parties may spring at the spur of the moment like the Hela Urumaya. Yet their longevity depends on the cohesion of class forces that support them. To put it in other words, if a political party does not express distinct interests of a social class, group or strata it is destined to wither away. This has been the case in many political parties. Several fortuitous circumstances were responsible to the birth and ascent of the Hela Urumaya. The proliferation of Christian fundamentalist sects and their proselytization activities had produced a backlash in the form of a new Buddhist renaissance, especially among the urban middle classes, including its youth. Ven. Gangodawila Soma Thera was its principal torchbearer. The dissatisfaction with both the UNP and the SLFP among the voters had produced a void in the political arena. The Sihala Urumaya which had earlier received a licking at the polls used the sudden demise of the Thera to its advantage and formed the Hela Urumaya and abdicated its election chances in favour of the latter. Neither the elected MPs nor the members of the Hela Urumaya were homogeneous in class character. Though all of them were united on the necessity of a vaguely defined dharmarajya they differed much on mundane matters that comprised contemporary politics. From Day One these differences became apparent even to a distant observer. Creating a dharmarajya out of a secular state was like fitting a square peg in a round hole. - the Sceptic |
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