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A humanist's quest for peace

by Regi Siriwardena

Neelan Tiruchelvam was a many-sided figure, astonishingly diverse in the range of his interests and activities - as scholar, lawyer, social activist and politician. But as remarkable as that variety was the underlying consistency and unity of the attitudes, convictions and beliefs that he brought to bear on every one of the fields in which he was engaged.

Neelan Tiruchelvam

The basis of that consistency was that his convictions were not merely abstract principles to which he had given intellectual assent. They were the mainspring of his life, so that there was in him a rare harmony between his life and his thought. It has often been said that Neelan was a liberal, and I would agree that the values of liberalism were those that, by his intellectual upbringing and the formation of his mind, were those that were most deeply ingrained in him. However, Neelan was a liberal alive to the fact that he was thinking and acting in a third-world country in the latter years of the twentieth century.

He had come to terms with both Marxist and feminist critiques of classic Western liberal thinking, and he often responded to and incorporated them in his own thinking and writing. His fundamental response to these critiques, however, consisted, not of rejecting the liberal values and freedoms as merely a concealing veneer for dominant interests of class, race or gender, though he recognized that they had in fact served this function in the heyday of Western liberalism and still continued to do so in a world riven by inequalities. His endeavour was to widen, extend, modify and complement the restricted horizons of classic liberal thinking so that the rights and freedoms to be upheld and defended should no longer be limited to those that were important for a western privileged male elite.

Neelan's commitment to the liberal values came naturally to him not only from the intellectual influences that had shaped his thinking but also from the very cast of his personality and his most deep-rooted inclinations. Thus, tolerance, acceptance of diversity and pluralism were not values that he upheld only in the larger arenas of constitutionalism, law or governance; they were equally what guided his thinking and action in the many smaller, though for him not less important, spheres in which he worked.

In the several non-governmental organisations he set up and guided, his most congenial mode of operation was not by directorial fiat but by discussion, persuasion and reconciliation of different views. He had an extraordinary ability to evoke creative responses and participatory activity from those with whom he worked by responding to their interests and concerns. Even young and inexperienced people among those who worked with him felt that for him they counted.

It was this same spirit and mode of activity that Neelan projected into his political life in the period after he decided to enter national politics. It goes without saying that decision, which was initially surprising even to many of his friends and associates, was not made in the quest for personal power: as somebody said after his death, he could have had a portfolio for the asking if he had wanted it.

At first sight it did seem that his decision to accept a place in parliament was a detour from the scholarly and intellectual tenor of his life's course up to that time. But for Neelan the decisive motivation was that in that period of momentous national crisis he felt that he could not stand aside from any possibility of influencing the course of political development in a more fruitful direction.

During his years in parliament Neelan conscientiously devoted part of his time and energy even to some of the more routine obligations of a legislator. It is illuminating to read the published selections from his parliamentary speeches and take account of the astonishing variety of subjects on which Neelan was active in parliamentary debate. He carefully scrutinised bills and offered detailed suggestions for their improvement, whether the subject was the elimination of ragging in universities or the law relating to rape or abortion. Nor were his concerns only parochial or local: he twice took the initiative in focusing the attention of parliament on human rights in Myanmar.

But the main axis of his parliamentary activity, of course, rested in his sustained efforts towards peace and an enduring political settlement that would dispel the nightmare of war and ethnic conflict and open the way towards a future in which all communities could live in dignity, equality and mutual respect. Neelan's public political activity on the floor of parliament or in constitution-making bodies, was only part of his tireless efforts towards those ends. He engaged at the same time in continual activity in discussion and interaction with an extraordinary range of people, politicians and non-politicians, as part of his endeavours for peace.

What sustained him and made possible his unflagging activity even in those dark and discouraging years? First and foremost, he had a deep-seated faith in the ultimate triumph of the values he cherished. He expressed that faith once in parliament at one of those moments in the past decade when peace appeared to be within reach:

'This moment in history must be grasped. We can bring an end to bloodshed and human suffering. We can transcend the bitter legacy of distrust and destruction and frame a future that is positive and ennobling. The journey will be a difficult one, and there would be inevitable setbacks. But if one's resolve is firm, we can ensure that "The spirit of man can transcend the flaws of human nature".

Neelan's faith in a peaceful outcome was, therefore, not based on any naive ignorance of the difficulties of the task, or blindness to what he called 'the flaws of human nature'. But he had, as is shown by the passage I have quoted, a faith in the ability of human beings to rise above and overcome those weaknesses. It was in that spirit that even after the hopes he voiced eight years ago had flickered and died, he soldiered on, constantly striving to breathe fresh life into the cause of peace.

Neelan's deepest faith was, therefore, a humanist one, that gave depth and purpose to his concerns and actions. He had wide-ranging interests in the arts - literature, cinema and music, in particular - but these were not the interests either of a pure aesthete or of a busy professional who goes to the arts for relaxation.

The significance that the arts had for him was continuous with his life's work as human rights activist and politician. For instance, in his last years he discovered for himself the poetry of the great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, and even quoted her in parliament (probably one of the rare occasions when poetry of that order has been cited in a legislative assembly), because she was somebody who has lived through repression and enforced silence and yet kept her spirit untouched.

The tragedy of Neelan's violent death has not been diminished by the passage of three years, and the void it has left in our intellectual and political life will never be filled. But his voice, in his writings and the text of his speeches, and the memory of his example are still as alive as they were before his physical presence was destroyed. We can be confident that if he was able to speak to us today, he would still be exhorting us to rise above the difficulties and discouragements in the struggle to restore peace in Sri Lanka and to create the political conditions under which all its peoples can live in equality and dignity.

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