Mind your language
By Dayan Jayatilleka
Unfair criticism must be met with fair counter-criticism. If the
criticism is private, so too should be the counter-criticism. In so far
as the criticism is public, so too should be the defence, and the
counter-criticism. No self respecting state can respond in private, to
criticism of it in public.
The British Foreign Secretary David Miliband was gracious enough to
issue a statement on Sri Lanka's 60th anniversary of Independence. He
said: "The 60th anniversary of Sri Lankan independence is a time to
reflect on the health and welfare of the nation and its people as it
moves forward in the 21st century. The cycle of violence in Sri Lanka
has worsened in recent weeks. Civilian lives have been lost from all
communities and regions of Sri Lanka. The end of the formal 2002
cease-fire agreement does not remove the obligation of all parties to
the conflict to protect civilian life.
"I wholeheartedly condemn these attacks upon civilians and those
responsible. My thoughts and condolences are with the victims of the
attacks, and their families. I call for an immediate end to practices
which target civilians or put them in peril. I urge all in Sri Lanka to
take steps to safeguard the civilian population and find ways to reduce
the violence.
"Violence can never provide an answer to Sri Lanka's problems. People
in Sri Lanka need to find space to realize their many similarities,
rather than becoming further polarized by their differences. A
sustainable solution to Sri Lanka's conflict can only emerge through a
just political process involving all communities".
The statement does not congratulate or wish Sri Lanka well on its
important Independence anniversary. It moves straight into a little
homily commending reflection, a reminder from the former colonial master
on the need for such a practice. While it bewails and bemoans civilian
deaths, the three paragraph statement makes no reference to the LTTE,
terrorism or separatism. It contains not the slightest hint of
solidarity in the struggle against terrorism, from a fellow democracy.
It concludes with the unctuous observation that "Violence can never
provide an answer to Sri Lanka's problems." This leaves one wondering if
violence can ever provide an answer to Iraq's or Afghanistan's problems,
because in both countries British troops are present, engaging in the
practice precisely of violence! Neither country is part of Britain. In
both countries British troops are invaders. Neither country did any harm
to Britain. In the case of one, Britain led the pack in lying to the
world and its own people about WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) as a
prelude to invading and occupying it.
Sri Lanka is fighting a war that is just by any criteria. It is a war
against separation of a small island. It is a war of a democracy against
an enemy that is both totalitarian and terrorist.
How well are the Sri Lankan armed forces doing against the LTTE? The
evidence is in a professional, four page, diagrammatically illustrated
special report in one of the most respected and arguably the best known
South Asian magazine, India Today. Check out the latest issue with its
frank interview with President Rajapaksa and its report on the war and
the Sri Lankan armed forces, entitled 'Getting Prabhakaran'.
It is said that each generation has to re-fight the battles not of
their fathers but of their grandfathers. The matter is all rather
simple. Sri Lanka is fighting a war to prevent separation, to unite the
country, to maintain it as a single territory, to make the writ of the
state run from West to East, North to South of our little island. This
is a struggle undertaken by many societies at an earlier stage of their
history. It is part of what is known as the bourgeois democratic
revolution, i.e. those tasks undertaken or completed by the rising
bourgeois class of those nations. In the global South, this task of
national unification often comes up against the opposition of the
Western powers (as it did in China). This seems to be the case in
present day Sri Lanka too. In such historical situations, the tasks of
national unification combine with the struggle to win or defend national
independence and sovereignty.
Colonial past
The task of national-territorial unification intertwine with the left
over or reactivated task of defending national independence against
Western intervention, hegemonism and diktat, or in a word - old
fashioned but accurate - imperialism. It is a term that David Miliband's
highly (and deservedly) respected father, Marxist political theorist
Ralph Miliband, was not afraid to use. In these twin tasks, the national
capitalist leaderships of the East play a role, sometimes a leading
role, unlike those in the West. This is what led Lenin to speak
paradoxically of an "Advanced Asia and Backward Europe". Even more
striking was the development of this idea by Stalin, who concluded in
the 1920s, that inasmuch as he stands up against Western imperialism for
his nation, despite his ideological backwardness, "the Emir of
Afghanistan is more progressive than the British Labour Party". This is
certainly true of many a Third World and Eurasian leader including those
of Sri Lanka, in relation to the British (New) Labour Party!
Sometimes the task of national unification takes a particularly
enlightened multilingual, multi-religious character, but in many, even
most cases, the struggle requires the mobilization of the peasantry and
the nationalist intelligentsia and therefore takes a majoritarian
nationalist, even religio-nationalist, character. The Year 1848 which
witnessed radical democratic revolutions throughout Europe was called
the Springtime of Nations and that season spilled over into a conflict
of nationalisms. Uneven development dictated different ratios of Reason
and Romanticism, of secularism and religiosity, of forward looking and
backward looking elements in each democratic upheaval or nationalist
movement. While the American Revolution of 1776 was exemplarily
enlightened, an earlier experience of enormous progressive import in
English - and Western - history, the Cromwellian Revolution, had a
religious charge and a dark downside in Ireland.
British Foreign Secretary Miliband's advice to Sri Lanka, which reeks
of retro-chic in that it seems to forget that it is sixty years since
Britain ruled us, must be matched against some excellent advice he
received recently from the Foreign Minister of Russia, Sergei Lavrov,
probably the most impressive Foreign Minister in service today (whose
twin lectures at the UN in Geneva I greatly look forward to attending
this week). Incidentally his early years as a diplomat were spent in Sri
Lanka, beginning in 1972. When the British Ambassador to Moscow dug in
his heels over the presence of the British Council in St Petersburg and
said something to the world's media to the effect that (as the old
protest song went) "we shall not be moved", the British found that in
fact they were, the very next day. Commenting on the episode, Russia's
Foreign Minister said that Britain had not obtained Russia's permission
to set up these British Council offices. More importantly he made an
observation of the statements emanating from the British Foreign
Secretary and the UK govt, remarking that "this is not the language with
which to speak to Russia....some people have not got over their colonial
frame of mind and are still nostalgic for their colonial past.
"If any country takes a stand that is tilted against us or is
ambivalent in this most fundamental of struggles, then we must recognize
that there exists an incompatibility of interests between those
countries and ours.
Identity of interests
Such states are not firm friends or staunch allies. It should be made
clear to them that their stand today directly influences the role they
will or will not have in influencing the post-war, post-conflict order
in Sri Lanka. Those who stand against us, who threaten or attempt to
intimidate us; those who vacillate and temporize during this war, have
forfeited the chance to play a role in the peace. They must be limited
to a strictly diplomatic presence. There are on the other hand, states
that have uncritically supported us during this war, or have voiced
their misgivings and advice in private. They are the ones with whom we
have a basic identity of interests. These are our friends, allies and
partners.
They are the extended family to which we truly belong.
Some choices are easy. The Sri Lankan people are politically among
the most sophisticated in the Third World and even the newly emergent
democracies of the Second World, given not only our levels of literacy
but also the exercise of universal franchise from 1931. A recent Nielsen
poll conducted in cooperation with the Sunday Times contained some
important judgments by a representative sample of the Sri Lankan people.
They rated the greatest leaders of Independent Sri Lanka in the
following order: (Founding Father) D.S. Senanayake, President Ranasinghe
Premadasa and incumbent President Mahinda Rajapaksa. (I am proud to have
supported and worked with two of the three).The people unerringly
discern synchronicity where the pseudo-intelligentsia does not.
The poll also placed President Rajapaksa way ahead of his current
competitors, with former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe (economic
neoliberal, peacenik and darling of the West) and former President
Chandrika Kumaratunga (darling of the Tamil liberals) scoring a truly
pathetic 1% each! Set these figures along the results of recent polls
which show figures of a massive majority ( 85%) identifying separatist
terrorism as the most important issue and supporting the military
efforts of the incumbent, and you get the overall picture of where the
Sri Lankan people stand, and just how isolated the Colombo "comprador"
critics are. What we must do is to renew our commitment to and
reactivate "really existing devolution", that is provincial level
devolution as contained in the 13th amendment. The issue is not whether
such devolution is intrinsically desirable. The issue is that we cannot
afford not to do so.
If we do not want a replay in some form or the other of the bitter
experience of 1987, when the advancing Sri Lankan Army under General
Gerry de Silva and more famously Brigadiers Kobbekaduwa and Wimalaratne,
were stopped in their tracks by external intervention, we must devolve.
Tamil Nadu, the DMK factor, the coalitional character of governments in
Delhi, and elections in India this year or next, are facts that we
cannot ignore.
We cannot afford South India becoming once again a safe haven or rear
base for the LTTE. We can still less afford anti-aircraft rocketry being
smuggled in through South India to the LTTE. We need India to play a
more active role in cooperating with us to put down Prabhakaran who has
cost both our countries so much. The lowest price we have to pay is the
full and immediate implementation of the 13th amendment. |