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| Sunday, 16 January 2005 |
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Hector: the last promethean
This article is written to felicitate Hector Abhayavardhana, who turned 86 on January 5. He is the last remaining Sama Samajist of the early heroic years of the party, and his life and work are inextricably linked with the fortunes of the LSSP. by Jayantha Somasundaram If one is raised in comparative privilege, one must sometimes betray one's class for the greater good, but never the culture of one's class! The great rebels and reformists, from Marx and Engles to Castro and Guevara, betrayed their class but carried over its culture, striving to impart it through social transformation and sheer instruction to the vast masses, raising consciousness and cultural levels. Their ideas of social justice and class struggle were not the politics of envy or social, cultural and aesthetic resentment. - Dayan Jayatilleka Hector Abhayavardhana was born in a Anglican vicarage in Kandy where his maternal grandfather Rev Amarasekera was minister. His father Hector Wilfred Abeywardena was Chief Clerk in Governor Reginald Stubbs office. His Middle Class Goyigama Protestant heritage meant that Hector belonged to a privileged strata in society. Hector received an exclusive education, in English, at the premier Anglican Public School, St. Thomas' College Mount Lavinia. He then proceeded to the Ceylon University College where he continued his liberal arts studies, and to the Colombo Law College, where the Ceylonese elite were groomed for their places within British Ceylon. Hector turned his back on this path, rejecting the very foundations of the system that offered position and privilege to aspiring young Ceylonese. He opposed British rule as well as capitalism, the economic system that propelled colonialism. Through the most radical political movement of his day, the Lanka Sama Samaja Party, he threw in his lot with the under-privileged, the exploited and the marginalised. He committed himself to champion the cause of the voiceless, regardless of race, religion or caste. He identified not only with the resistance movement in his own country, but gave his best years in the service of the struggle in India. Such non sectarian internationalism is the highest expression of radicalism. Hector Abhayavardhana spent 18 years as a practical internationalist working with and for the people of India. In August 1992 on the 50th anniversary of the Quit India move, Hector along with Vivienne Goonewardene and Bernard Soysa were guests of honour in New Delhi. In the early years after his return to Sri Lanka, besides his party work, Hector also edited Community a well known journal in its day. "Hector's talent for political writing and his readiness for in-depth discussion of any political topic made him an intellectual force in the left," says his biographer Rajan Philips." Hector was active in the discussions on foreign policy and international affairs organised by Professors H.A. de S. Gunasekera and A.J. Wilson at the Peradeniya campus in the 1960s. Later he would participate in the Ceylon Studies Seminar discussions organised by Michael Roberts. "In the 1970s and 1980s he was a popular participant at Fr. Tissa Balasuriya's Centre for Society and Religion seminars on Third World trade and development and multinational exploitation. Fr. Paul Caspersz of the Kandy-based Satyodaya Centre has traced the origin of several voluntary action programmes in the plantations, and in the genesis of the Movement for Inter-Racial Justice and Equality (MIRJE) to Hector's inspiring speech on the plight of the plantation workers to a gathering of Marxists and Christians in 1974 in Lewella, Kandy." Political Change In its first three decades of existence the LSSP adopted in succession three different political goals. In the first decade it sought the revolutionary overthrow of the establishment, both British colonialism and its local collaborators. After the War it visualised the distinct possibility of achieving power through Parliament and believed that an LSSP-led Government could introduce democratic and social reforms that would usher in real political and economic freedom for everyone. Earlier in November 1962 in a ground breaking address to the 18th Annual Sessions of the Ceylon Association for the Advancement of Science, Hector made the call for a major reappraisal of Left Wing politics in Sri Lanka. In Categories of Left Thinking he challenged the Left to reconsider a number of facets of their doctrinaire programme. "The thesis of this paper is that the Left in Ceylon has omitted to examine some of its basic categories in the light of experiences of more than twenty five years of development," he said. He drew attention to three major areas that needed re-examination. First the attitude towards independence. No longer could it be maintained that independence for colonial societies was only possible through a revolution. He also called into question the special role of the Leninist party by pointing to countries like Egypt, Iraq, Cuba and Algeria where revolutionary struggles had been successful without the leadership of a Marxist party. He then drew attention to the fact that no longer could the pattern of the Russian Revolution be looked to as the definitive model. With the success of the revolution in China and the experiment in Yugoslavia, it was evident that there would be different paths to revolution and social change. Consequently the classic Trotskyite worldview towards post-Revolutionary societies could not be simplistically applied. He challenged the Left to make a major re-evaluation of its political programme. "The Left in Ceylon cannot continue to function on the two planes of parliamentarism and doctrinaire revolution simultaneously", he concluded. The parties of the United Left Front would henceforth adopt a strategy of popular frontism and align themselves with one or the other of the major parties. The LSSP and CP entered the United Front Government dominated by the SLFP while the MEP was in 1965 to team up with the UNP. Today even the JVP follows a similar policy as a constituent member of the United Peoples' Freedom Alliance with the SLFP, LSSP and CP. Political resource During the year the United Front was in opposition Hector launched the Socialist Study Circle where its future leaders were intellectually stimulated and politically groomed. It served as a forum for the development of the ideas behind the far reaching political and economic reforms that would be introduced after 1970. During those years he also brought out the political weekly The Nation, to encourage serious discussion on current events. When the United Front was in office (1970-75) Hector served as Chairman of the Peoples' Bank as well as being one of the principal advisors to Finance Minister Dr. N. M. Perera. He was also instrumental in launching the Bank's monthly journal The Economic Review. Hector remained an intellectual focal point for Sri Lanka's radical constituency. At one level he kept up an unceasing political debate, one that was informed by what was going on in the world around him, to evolve political ideas, strategies and programmes in order to change the world we live in. Simultaneously he drew on the depth of his literary and cultural consciousness to address the myriad of issues impacting on inter-personal and inter-social relationships, that were germane to any process of political transformation. In December 1985 at a symposium held at the University of Peradeniya on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the LSSP Hector presented a paper titled Marxism and the Left Movement. In it he made a frank and critical examination of the dilemma faced by Sri Lanka's Left movement and the consequent logic of the popular front tactic. He explained that there was a long history of the fragmentation and emasculation of the working class which the Left had been loath to acknowledge. Starting from 1938 when Jawaharlal Nehru came to Sri Lanka to report on the status of the plantation workers of Indian origin. The LSSP pleaded with Nehru against the formation of a communal organisation for them, fearing it would open the door for their becoming pawns in racial politics. The plantation workers comprised half of all organised labour in the country. By limiting them to trade union activities and denying them a stake in mainstream politics Sri Lanka's working class was mortally weakened and divided. Unlike the plantation workers who were confined to their work environment and solely dependent for their livelihood on the sale of their labour, the urban worker was socially less homogenous. Many of them do not live in the towns but commute from villages where they still had interests in small plots if agricultural land. Not only were they less dependent on the sale of their labour but within rural society they could aspire to middle class ambitions and status. In December 1999 a two-day felicitation symposium was organised for Hector Abhayavardhana at Satyodya in Kandy. Papers were presented by participants and discussion ranged across a variety of fields, both national and international, covering politics, economics and sociology. Hector himself contributed to the proceedings with a paper on Marxist Thought in the 21st Century. It was a critical survey of the fortunes of social revolutions in the past century. On revisiting the Russian Revolution Hector pinpointed the factors already present in 1917 which would create the faultlines over the next half century and consume the revolution. He identified the tenuous premise on which Lenin had launched the Russian Revolution, that revolution in Europe, particularly Germany, would occur without delay in order to sustain the Russian experiment. Lenin envisaged only a holding operation in the East, until the politically more advanced working class in Western Europe had taken power. When the prospect for Revolution in Western Europe evaporated the experiment in the East degenerated. Having surveyed the past Hector then looked at contemporary developments and attempted to assess the future. "It is possible," he told the gathering, "to periodise capitalism and to say that there have been three main periods in the development of world capitalism. The first period was one of unfettered competition; the second was that of monopoly capitalism; and the third, in which we live today, that of global capitalism. It is possible to say that the differences of capitalism in its three periods relate in a vital way to the role played by the nation state." Hector retains his intellectual courage, willing to critically evaluate and even discard those concepts that have out-lived their validity. Nor have global events left Hector behind. He remains cognisant of trends and currents and does not shrink from formulating theories to explain them. The passage of time and the impact of the years have changed little. Though physically confined Hector remains intellectually active and mobile. His passion for understanding the world around him, for analysing the course of events, and for questioning and challenging ideas remains unchanged. |
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