“The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew, cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down”.  

- Barack Obama, Berlin, July 24

 

We must not settle for a draw in a game we can win and are winning. As we draw closer to victory, those who wish to deny it to us will intensify their efforts.

Let us do everything that can help us win the war, and desist from anything that may prevent or divert us. We also need a vision for winning the peace. Our vision for winning the peace will play a part in helping or hindering the winning of the war. Our postwar program will affect the outcome of the war, not least by influencing the behavior of external powers (one of which actively saved Prabhakaran in 1987).

Victory is imperative and yet not inevitable. It is more than possible; it is probable. Yet, the war is not won as long as Prabhakaran is alive. As long as he is alive, he can recruit and continue to fight. People will follow him. A guerrilla war waged under Prabhakaran’s leadership is a rather different prospect from one waged by a post-Prabhakaran LTTE. From the outset of his struggle– whether one dates it back to the 1970s or the early ’80s– right up to 1990, Prabhakaran proved a maestro of guerrilla war, doing what was thought impossible in a relatively limited area of a small island His performance against the IPKF was as a classic guerrilla fighter, and his tactics since, even when waging semi-conventional war, have never lost the unorthodox guerrilla style. As long as he is alive, the dream of Tamil Eelam, a separate country carved out from ours — the only one we will ever have — will never die. That dream, our nightmare, will begin to die only when he is no more. It will remain only in the cyberspace fantasies of the Tamil Diaspora, a computer game.

For now there must only be one objective in view: the military defeat and destruction of the Tigers. Moderate devolution helps and does not hinder the war effort because it brings India over to our side or at least keeps it benignly neutral. There are two forces who do not want closer relations between India and Sri Lanka: the LTTE and pro-Tiger elements in Tamil Nadu such as Mr. Vaiko on the one hand, and sundry Sinhala chauvinists and xenophobes on the other. The latter do the job of the former.

 

The Movement for Devolution

A UN Under Secretary-General from a country which is among Sri Lanka’s staunchest friends, gave me some good advice (prompted by warm recollections of my father): draw the line, defend your core interests, make no concessions on them; but do make concessions short of those core interests so that you give your friends something to defend you with.

Our core interest is to win the war. It is one thing to resist external pressure from whichever quarter far or near, that wishes us to stop the war or retard its pace or restrict its objectives to something short of victory. That sort of pressure impinges directly on our core security interests, and must be resisted by any means necessary. However, signals that are short of that, which have nothing or little to do with the war, must be treated with sensitivity and accommodated to the fullest degree possible.

Moderate, realistic devolution is the classic case in point. Strategic wisdom has it that he who seeks to defend everything, defends nothing. Those who oppose everything and everyone gain nothing and jeopardize everything.  Those who seek to obstruct moderate devolution will almost certainly help obstruct victory in the war.

This is why the launch of the Movement for Devolution, a pro-devolution caucus of Government Ministers-Rajitha Senaratne, Douglas Devananda, Tissa Vitharana, DEW Gunasekara, Dilan Perera-who support the war, the President and devolution, is to be greatly welcomed. Devolution is too important to be left to appeasers and NGOs, while the war is too important to be left to interpretation by chauvinists.

 

Power sharing and Nation building

While Tamil separatism must be rolled back and overcome, Sinhala and Tamil nationalism have to be contained if one is to build a Sri Lankan national identity and consciousness. They can be contained only by being accommodated to some degree. Tamil nationalism can be contained only by a sufficiency of devolved power and resources. We must share power with one another so as to build a nation with and for us all.

It is a myth that devolution is advocated only by India and/or the West. When Hon Lakshman Kadirgamar sent a delegation to Pakistan in 2005 as a guest of the (Defense-funded) Institute of Strategic Studies of Dr Shireen Mazari, one of the questions we were asked by an intelligent young Minister of State for Foreign Affairs was why Sri Lanka did not learn from Pakistan’s federal model. That is not to say that we must be blind to its faults, but we must understand that it is not only Tamil Nadu, or the Tamil Diaspora influenced West, or the Christian churches or the INGOs, that wish us to share power with and grant adequate political space to the Tamil people.

No devolution or too little, and communities will break away. Too much devolution and they will do the same. The degree of devolution at the periphery depends on the character of the mainstream. If one implements a strictly secular Republicanism as does France, and one is a French citizen with equal rights irrespective of ethnicity, then the need for substantive devolution at the periphery is virtually non-existent (though Corsica would doubtless disagree). However, if a society insists that the culture, language and civilization of its majority must have some built-in preference, then it is unrealistic to expect that those who do not belong to that culture but are inhabitants of the country would feel themselves fully integrated and un-alienated citizens. Full integration can only take place on the basis of full equality, and a citizenship that is blind to ethnic origin, religion and language. If the State and citizenship are not blind or even-handed but biased, then it is unavoidable that there will be demands by minorities for their own political space at the periphery.

Wild illogic asks the question as to why Sri Lanka should devolve when Prabhakaran is not asking for devolution. Others equally irrationally speculate that Prabhakaran really wants devolution as an escape hatch. Worst of all some actually hold both - mutually exclusive and contradictory - views. The evidence of decades is plain. If Prabhakaran were willing to accept devolution even when he was militarily disadvantaged, he would not have waged war against the IPKF. The other argument, that devolution is unnecessary because Prabhakaran does not want it, is a model of utter irrelevance. When there is a general strike, one grants a realistic wage increase not because the most radical “wildcat” strikers want it or would settle for it but because the vast majority of rank and file workers and moderate trade unions would settle for it, thereby undercutting the extremists. When the strike is reduced to a hard core of extremists, it can be brought quickly to a close. So it is with separatist struggle and devolution.

To win the war, our successful military track has to be paralleled by a political one which proceeds with the same purposiveness and at the same speed. If our neighbors and the world think that a military victory for the Sri Lankan state is tantamount to a Sinhala /Sinhala Buddhist victory over the Tamils/minorities, we may be denied that victory by external economic and coercive pressure, as we once were twenty years ago. A moderate, rational political program containing a progressive vision for Sri Lanka’s post-war future is a necessary component for bringing this war to a successful close; for winning this war.

 

Don’t Lose the Peace

Xenophobia, cultural or otherwise, is profoundly counter-productive for winning the war as well as the peace. Scholarly and scientific research has shown that creativity and innovation in all fields takes place not so much from within the bowels of homogeneous and unchanging cultures but precisely where cultures interface, interact, exchange and cross-fertilize. Sir Arthur C Clarke correctly observed that Sri Lanka contains the greatest cultural diversity in the most compressed space, which is a source of conflict but potentially also of great creativity. Unless we embrace pluralism, learn to celebrate the treasure that is our own diversity, and tap into it as an energy source for advance, we shall certainly be unable compete regionally or globally. Worst of all we shall not be using all our cultural capacities, making the best of our endowments, making the best of ourselves.

The best performing of our youngsters, the brightest minds coming out of our universities with First classes, are migrating. Unless we can retain them by creating an environment in which the intelligent discerning internationally aware individual can flourish, we may win the war but lose the capacity to re-build, regenerate. Post war Sri Lanka must not be like pre-war Sri Lanka, because that order was so flawed as to contain the seeds of war. As we reconstruct we must restructure, transform, learning from past mistakes.

Similarly, post war Sri Lanka must be unlike wartime Sri Lanka. If ideologies of resentment and closure prevail over those of conciliation and openness, we shall be unable to manage the problem of the hemorrhage of quality human resources, which in turn will decide whether we shall develop or decline as a country.

It will serve little purpose if we win the war and lose the peace. For those who think that Sri Lanka can win the war on the basis of a program and vision of inequity between peoples, of enforced cultural homogeneity in a heterogeneous society; for those who believe that Sri Lanka can return to its pre-war order or build an unfair unequal post-war one; for those who assume that closed minds and cultural exclusivity can sustain our country in the 21st century, I have little time and no more arguments but only two words, which must be marked well: Barack Obama.

 

The American Candidate: Barack in Berlin

Barack Obama left the USA for the Middle East and Europe as a candidate described as African-American but in Europe he was re-defined and reborn as what he is: the American candidate. Leonard Cohen’s song says “First We Take Manhattan, Then We Take Berlin”. Obama seems to be reversing that trajectory of triumph. Let him speak for himself, in his own words — highly acclaimed as statesmanlike — delivered (without a note) to the two hundred thousand strong crowd in Berlin’s Tiergarten on July 24th:

 “…Tonight, I speak to you not as a candidate for President, but as a citizen - a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen of the world.

 ”…I know that I don’t look like the Americans who’ve previously spoken in this great city. The journey that led me here is improbable. My mother was born in the heartland of America, but my father grew up herding goats in Kenya. His father - my grandfather - was a cook, a domestic servant to the British…”

 ”…The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.”

 ”…Our allegiance has never been to any particular tribe or kingdom - indeed, every language is spoken in our country; every culture has left its imprint on ours; every point of view is expressed in our public squares. What has always united us - what has always driven our people; what drew my father to America’s shores - is a set of ideals that speak to aspirations shared by all people: that we can live free from fear and free from want; that we can speak our minds and assemble with whomever we choose and worship as we please.”

 Obama points the way for Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims. For the Tamils, the relevance and example should be clear: abandon projects of separatist walling-off, integrate into the mainstream, fight against discrimination and for equal rights, regard oneself as a Sri Lankan and compete as one. The African-Americans experienced slavery and segregation and still encounter racism, but Barack Obama’s example is to transcend that experience, which was historically far worse than anything suffered by Tamils. His is the model of our martyred Lakshman Kadirgamar (whose oration for devolution in the Parliamentary debate on the August 2000 Draft Constitution is cunningly ignored by Sinhalese chauvinists). It can come to the forefront only when Kadirgamar’s assassins, the Tigers, are defeated.

What is the lesson and example for the Sinhalese? Barack Obama, perhaps the most intellectually gifted politician in today’s world and potentially a philosopher-president in the Platonic sense, ushers in a new model of cultural globalization and globalized culture of and for the 21st century. He is the modern, Multiethnic, Multi-Cultural Man, emerging from the melting pot meritocracy that is America. However, this is not an exclusively American Dream. It is not essentially different from the multiracialism of Cuba’s Fidel Castro and South Africa’s Nelson Mandela, or that of Jawaharlal Nehru, without whose inclusive, pluralist, secular, rational, modern leadership vision for an ancient, culturally rich society, India would not be the Asian success story and the 21st century miracle it has become.   

 

[These are the strictly personal views of the writer].

 

 

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The day after tomorrow

you write to me
of blowing snow and whiteouts.
of snow goggles and skating rinks
you tell me your cat may need clothing
and you joke about
living in the movie
‘the day after tomorrow’

I write to you
of scorching sun and blackouts.
of checkpoints and closed roads
of a play I went to see
called ‘between the devil and the deep blue sea’

You ask for news of home.
have you forgotten that
over here, no news is good news
or have black memories buried themselves
under white snowflakes

you say it is freezing there. again. You had to dig out your new car
from underneath
a mountain of snow this morning.

It’s burning here. still.  this morning old women
and new babies were dug out
from underneath
mounds of mangled metal

you say everything there is predictable. I begin to think that is a good thing.
Here, a white van has become a black Maria
and nothing is certain.

and I have decided not to postpone my reply to you
until
the day after tomorrow.

February 2008

[Editors note: Vivimarie Vanderpoorten's book of poetry "Nothing Prepares You" published in February 2007 was awarded the 2007 Gratiaen Prize on 26th April 2008]

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Watching the current SAARC jamboree unfold over television news, my young daughter asked why none of the officials were smiling. The SAARC Secretary General, Dr. Sheel Khant Sharma, was always scowling. Others didn’t have smiles on their faces either, even insincere ones. They all looked stressed out, wearing glum, miserable faces.

I could only hazard a guess. Perhaps the assorted babus have too much to worry about, as they get through their very serious and grim business of fostering regional cooperation. On the other hand, after all these years of endless meetings and declarations, they might have forgotten the simple joys of smiling and enjoying each other’s company.

Make no mistake: SAARC is a good idea hijacked by unimaginative and pompous, unsmiling babus of South Asia and run to the ground. The self-congratulatory rhetoric of the inter-governmental merry-go-round is once again deafening us as the 15th SAARC takes place in Colombo. In reality, SAARC at 23 has the mental development of a 3-year-old (if that). There isn’t, in fact, much to smile about.

The proof of the SAARC pudding is not in over-hyped Summits or crusty declarations, but in the free flow of people, ideas, creativity and culture across the political boundaries jealously guarded by governments and their militaries. Most SAARC initiatives miserably fail this test. Typical of this arrested development is the SAARC Audio-Visual Exchange, SAVE.

Announced in 1986 and established a year later, SAVE was to be “a South Asian broadcasting programme covering both radio and television”. Its mandate was “increasing the awareness of each other among the peoples of the region through disseminating information on the socio-cultural, economic and technical aspects”.

SAVE connected South Asia’s state-owned, government controlled radio and TV stations to share selected content for broadcasting in each other’s countries. Some joint productions were also to be undertaken. The original plan was to air something, anything SAARCy on the 1st and 15th of each month.

Whether or not every participant station kept to this original schedule, over the years some content swapping has indeed taken place. And in true SAARC style, the SAVE Committee has met over a two dozen times in the past 20 years. All this hard work apparently pleased their masters. According to the SAARC website, “The successive SAARC Summits had lauded the smooth functioning of SAVE programme as being a useful medium for promoting a South Asian consciousness among the people in the region.”

 

Babus in a parallel universe?

So what was produced by these Himalayan labours, and where has it all gone? SAVEs founders chose relatively ’safe’ topics for coverage — such as environment, disabled persons, youth, literacy, clean water and mountains. Without a close analysis of SAVE-distributed content over the years, we can safely bet that nothing remotely critical of governments or militaries would ever have come out of this official process. These government mouthpieces diligently avoid critical issues such as the rise of religious fundamentalism and ultra-nationalism, saffronisation of politics, militarisation of whole societies and uncritical cheerleading of market economics.

Indeed, South Asia as covered by state TV and radio is so detached from reality that it could just as well be in a parallel universe. For example, the democracy struggles in Karachi, Kathmandu or Male are reported only as civic disturbances or anti-governmental mayhem. Everyone who does not completely agree with the ruling oligarchs is branded either as a traitor or terrorist.

Who would consume such perversions on the air? As it turns out, fewer people every passing year. When SAVE began, most Asian viewers had access to an average of 2.4 TV channels, all state owned. This has changed dramatically — first with the advent of satellite television over Asia in 1991, and then through the gradual (albeit partial) broadcast liberalisation during the 1990s. South Asian audiences, at last freed from the unimaginative, propaganda-laden state channels, exercised their new-found choice and quickly migrated to privately owned, commercially operated channels. Soon, Babu TVs found themselves with ever-shrinking audiences and declining revenue. For the past decade, most have survived only because governments infused them with massive amounts of tax payer money. Their public service remit is long forgotten.

A similar transformation has taken place in radio. Government channels — amplifiers of their masters’ voice — have been sidelined by a cacophony of FM channels. Meanwhile, pioneered by Nepal and belatedly followed by India and Bangladesh, community channels are carving out a further slice of what used to be Babu Radio’s monopoly on the air.

The spread of Internet and mobile telephones has further diversified South Asians’ sources of information and entertainment. While broadband internet penetration was a mere 3 per cent in 2007, this is set to expand rapidly in the coming decade, bringing online video and webcasting within the reach of millions. India alone targets 100 million broadband users by 2015.

 

Enter TV Southasia

Despite being pushed into complete irrelevance by this nuanced, complex media reality, SAVE has plodded on for 21 years.

But the need for a truly pan South Asian TV channel is greater than ever. This could balance not only the stereotypical coverage of South Asian affairs by global TV networks (for many of whom this dynamic region is India and Pakistan plus debris), but also counter the excessive nationalism of some private channels pandering essentially to their home audiences. Tribalism titillates and sells.

Against this backdrop, the April 2008 launch of TV Southasia (TVSA), co-anchored from Dhaka and Kolkata, is indeed welcome news. It is a collaborative venture of five commercial broadcasters who have joined hands to produce and share content across borders. Mercifully, there is nothing official about it: no governments are involved and certainly none of the Babu TV dinosaurs.

And if they get it right, TVSA founders - Rtv of Bangladesh, Tara Newz of India, Image Channel of Nepal, Aaj TV of Pakistan and News 1st of Sri Lanka - can tap into an enviably large combined audience: 1.5 billion people, most with access to TV.

TVSA founders are taking one step at a time, perhaps knowing very well that cross-border ventures in South Asia need to be nursed slowly and incrementally, while dealing with historical hang-ups and tonnes of red tape. They launched the channel after having produced a collaborative weekly magazine show for over a year. TVSA is beamed down from the ThaiCom5 satellite, and locally distributed by cable operators. Its medium is English, the only language understood by all countries of South Asia.

TVSA is concentrating on talk shows, interviews, lifestyle, music, short films, sports, cuisine and quiz — genres already available on existing channels. But TVSA aims for a trans-boundary, pan South Asian outlook that others don’t usually offer. The challenge is to celebrate unity among diversity.

On its website, TVSA has spelt out its agenda. It seeks to promote values like liberalism, scientific temperament, education, heritage and cultural diversity. Significantly, it also declares what it opposes, including superstition, fundamentalism, corruption, violence, cultural hegemony and communalism - the assorted evils South Asia.

We just have to wait and see if fledgling TVSA will live up to these lofty ideals, but one thing is clear. Neither SAVE nor its parental Babu TVs could ever aspire to these heights even in their wildest dreams.

So here’s something good that the unsmiling SAARC babus can do in Colombo: finally pull the plug on SAVE, and give it an unceremonious burial. Few would notice or lament its demise.

  

Nalaka Gunawardene is a Colombo-anchored South Asian who blogs on media, society and development at http://movingimages.wordpress.com/

A shorter version of this essay appears in August 2008 issue of Himal Southasian.

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I don’t think I had the slightest inkling of a problem between the sinhala and tamil people in Sri Lanka, until July 1983. But I should have.

In the heady days of the 1977 election, a good 13 years before I could vote, I remember my father quite nonchalantly relating a story: at some time and place in Sri Lanka, strangers accosted people on the street and forced them to pronounce the sinhala word Baaldhiya (meaning “bucket”). The tamil language wasn’t familiar with the “B” sound as a starting consonant. So a tamil person would say Vaaldhiya. Tamils, thus identified, were beaten or killed. They were, literally, condemned by the difference of a consonant.

What I don’t understand, even now, is why I have no memory of being shocked or distressed by this story and why it didn’t make me acutely conscious of a deep malaise in Sri Lankan society - in my world.

The story of an LTTE landmine killing 13 soldiers in the north of Sri Lanka, on July 23, 1983, entered my consciousness in the same matter-of-fact way - as a story that stirred neither cheers nor outrage, neither joy nor sadness. It was simply something that had happened, in a world “out-there” from which I was thoroughly protected - the way that floods happened in Bangladesh or famines happened in Ethiopia, in the days before television.

On July 25, 1983 the two stories came together. They broke through the dikes of my insulated life and flooded my world. But not all at once. It was still many more years before I understood what had happened. I was still able to live for the moment, without having to worry about the future or the past - the extraordinary privilege of being a child and not being poor.

The first news I got that morning was good news: I didn’t have to go to school. My mother and father had pitted their particular extremes of anxiety and nonchalance against each other and come up with a compromise: Sohan, my older brother, would be the only one sent to school. Nilhan, my younger brother, and I would stay back. I didn’t dislike school, but I never liked waking up early morning. Sleep overtook the irrelevant concerns about why I was being allowed this indulgence.

By the time I woke up Premalal, our sinhala driver, had gone to fetch Sohan back from school. The household was in agitated conversations about sinhala mobs setting about burning tamil shops and houses. A little later, when the Morris Marina returned home with Sohan it had a clubbed bonnet. Sohan had seen many of the familiar local shops in flames as they drove through the chaos of streets over-run by violence. The mobs had stopped all the cars and demanded petrol for their arson. But the Morris Marina was a diesel vehicle, and Premalal could say Baaldhiya.

Shortly after, we heard that the mobs were moving in the direction of our house. I took up position on the balcony, curious and nervous about what would happen. We lived in Wellawatta, a locality in Colombo inhabited predominantly by tamil people. We had two sinhala neighbours; every other home and establishment surrounding us was owned by tamils. Because of this, what I witnessed from the safety of my “sinhala balcony” was all the more terrifying. The thirty foot wide lane that was Ramakrishna Road was chock-a-blocked with threatening people wielding clubs, iron rods, and knives, of various shapes and sizes. Even before we saw them we could see the signs: plumes of smoke rising from the tamil homes that had been set on fire further up the road. As we heard the eerie sounds of people screaming in fear, my mother started crying uncontrollably.

Our house, No. 35 Ramakrishna Road, was a hundred yards away from the sea, two doors from a small hotel called Hotel Brighton and opposite the front gate of the Ramakrishna Mission (a hindu religious institute spanning a large expanse of land). Like a disorganised army of ants, the tamil people on our road began running into the Mission and to the hotel to take refuge from the impending mobs. At some point I saw the Mission close its gates and padlock them. Hotel Brighton had locked its doors much earlier. But people were desperate. I watched a pregnant woman crawling under the one foot or so gap between gate and road to get in to the Mission. Suddenly, the gates of our house were pushed open and a middle-aged woman came running in with her teenage daughter, desperate for protection. My mother quickly escorted them to a back room in the house.

I remember these events from 25 years ago with a dream-like unrealism. I still can’t quite believe that they happened and that I was there, a passive observer, safe on a balcony, while my neighbours’ houses were being broken, looted and burned. “What happened to anyone who was found in the house?” I didn’t even dare to think. The mobs surged past our house. The domestic staff shouted “meka sinhala geyak” (This is a Sinhala home). It was the protective mantra which spared us the collective fate of our neighbours. To be able to present oneself as credibly sinhala - the gaping divide between the wor(l)ds of Baaldhiya and Vaaldhiya - was once again, on that day, a matter of life and death.

My father returned from office. His car had somehow been stuffed with 11 people whom he had daringly driven to safety. In true fashion, he was to say that his main fear was not about being stopped by the mobs, but that the half million rupees in his glove compartment (from a business deal) would be stolen by one of the passengers.

He quickly made enquiries about several of our neighbours. We knew that many of the houses around us were empty and the residents had taken refuge elsewhere. “What happened to the Subramaniams?” he asked (they were our neighbours living two doors away). Donald, our immediate sinhala neighbour, spoke from his balcony to ours: “I didn’t see them leave their house,” he said.  My father hot-footed it to the Subramaniam’s house.

The mobs had already been there. The house was broken and looted, but it had escaped being set on fire. His repeated calls of “Mr. Subramaniam, Mr. Subramaniam” drew no response. But my father was never known to give up anything easily. When he returned to that house for the third time in half an hour, he heard a slight movement inside a small broom cupboard. He went close to it and explained who he was and that he had come to help. The door opened slowly and fearfully to reveal nine traumatized people spanning three generations, a third of them my age or younger. These nine people were to spend the next weeks of their shattered lives in our home.

The simple and portable possessions of the Subramaniams were moved into our house surreptitiously: first from their house into the house of our sinhala neighbour; then from his house to ours. All this over neighbourly walls, to avoid detection.

The mobs were now thinner on the ground with most of their monstrous work accomplished; but looting and burning was still an active sport and the street was as chaotic as ever. Directly facing our balcony was the home of Mr. Murugananthan, and it had been burning for many hours. Nilhan was feeling bad about an old prank of shooting a catapult on to his house and ducking under the balcony. Mr. Murugananthan’s house burnt ever so slowly. Its catapult-tested roof and walls would hold out till late the next morning before finally succumbing to the insatiable flames. A stream of thick black smoke from that house enveloped our sky: an artificial dusk and a visual testimony of the human depravity that unfolded beneath. Later, this would be known as “black July”.

One of the many paradigm altering observations for me that day was watching how the police and the army waded in through the thick of the mob, in uniform, and stood by comfortably as the carnage was being unleashed. On that day they had perverted their professions to preside over the en masse persecution of the innocent and the protection of the criminals. There they were, providing at best only lenient boundaries for the sinhala mobs, between the atrocities that were “permitted” and those that weren’t. Their orders “from above” seemed to have been minimal. On Ramakrishna Road, only the sinhala houses, the residential parts of the Ramakrishna Mission and Hotel Brighton were “protected”.

Sonny was one of the young Subramaniams. He was old enough to know better. But traumatized and dazed by the events, he ventured out on to the street, to take another look at his house and personally recover belongings. He was accosted by the police. My father strode out into their midst. The policeman turned his anti-tamil venom against my father. How dare we hide tamil people he asked? My father was too clever to claim the moral high-ground in front of perverted police power. He shrewdly cited his helplessness in the face of neighbourly obligations. “These people,” he said in sinhala, “when you give them an inch they will try to take a yard.” The policeman was slightly appeased by this show of disdain for tamils. Sonny was rescued. Nevertheless we were soon to receive a message from the police: our house had just crossed the dividing line between being “protected” and “permitted”.

On July 25, 1983, in the midst of all the atrocities being unleashed around us, it was my father’s characteristic lack of respect for danger that enabled us as a family to show a modicum of humanness.

For years before that day Sohan and I had been playing cricket with tamil children scattered through the neighbourhood. On Ramakrishna Road cricket had joined us together, as we commandeered the streets, inconvenienced motorists, and occasionally sent the ball hurtling through the window of an irate resident. But on that day, I didn’t and couldn’t know what had happened to those with whom I had so happily bowled and batted. On that day, in July 1983, all the young cricketers of Ramakrishna Road grew up very suddenly and found ourselves in different worlds - “us” in the world of Baaldhiya and “them” in the world of Vaaldhiya.

We never again played cricket.

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“Dhammapada and Other Works”- An exhibition of Paintings and Installations by Chandraguptha Thenuwara was inaugurated at the Lionel Wendt Gallery in Colombo on 23rd July 2008.It was organised to ‘Commemoration of the Un-Commemorative Julys’. Being an anti-war artist, Chandraguptha Thenuwara has sought to remind his fellow Sri Lankans of Lord Buddha’s teachings about tolerance and peace.

The exhibition will remain open till 29^th July 2008 from 10am-7pm. Chandraguptha Thenuwara is a senior lecturer at the University of Visual Arts in Colombo. He is also the Director of Vibhavi-Academy of Fine Arts, which was founded in 1993.

An abstract of “Dhamapada” by Chandraguptha Thenuwara:-
From childhood we are never allowed to forget that we live in a dharma-dveepa (an island of righteousness).  The full force of modern communication technology and the education system are both harnessed to this ‘fact’. Even if we don’t awaken to the sound of the bells in the nearby Buddhist temple, we open our eyes to a world in which there is some Buddhist preaching going on, on the radio or on television. Moreover, we live with the confidence that Buddhism is safe in our island, protected even by our Constitution.  

Our culture is always described as a ‘Buddhist’ culture. Politicians remind us of this whenever they have the occasion to do so. Saying that ordinary politicians were abusing both the religion and the people by making false references to Buddhism, the most precious Sangha was escorted ceremoniously into that most hallowed shrine of politicians, the Parliament, and are now firmly ensconced there through the ballot of the people. The people know all this very well.  

Most venerable statues of the Lord Buddha are to be seen coming up at every junction.  Residents of some areas have become so holy that when they are helpless in the face of a garbage heap, they erect a Buddha statue in that place, and erase the garbage dump forever. 

Each year since 1983, the month of July has dawned as no ordinary month. July acquired a new meaning as a marker of terrorism and militarism by spreading a stain of shame that we cannot wash away even today. On July 23, 1983, 13 soldiers were killed in the north.  An attempt was made to play politics with their bodies, which were brought to Colombo. Because of this, a massacre of Tamils took place. Since ‘Black July’, since that day, July 25, 1983, the rate of destruction of human lives has grown rapidly. Thousands of politicians, soldiers and other professionals, so-called Liberation Tigers and all those who are labeled as opponents have been brutally murdered using a hundred and one justifications.  Today, these deaths are reduced to a ‘News Alert’ SMS or a ‘Breaking News’ story. 

The cycle of assassination that began with the killing of Alfred Duraiappah in Jaffna on July 25, 1975, moves ever forward. While they are in power, no politician accepts that there are specific issues that are based on ethnicity. While in power politicians turn a deaf ear to whatever is being forcefully brought to their attention in a democratic manner.  When there seemed to be no further room for democratic manoeuvre, the young took up arms on behalf of those who confronted the issues. At one time, they were Sinhalese. At another time, they were Tamil. The armed Sinhalese were repressed. Perhaps this could be done because the majority of the rulers were Sinhalese themselves. The consequences occasionally still rear their heads, although they do not any longer bear arms. The educated young Tamils who have taken up arms have grown to the point that they cannot be repressed.  For years now we have heard those who declare, at times loudly and at other times softly,  that those who take up arms can be destroyed by arms, as if to fool themselves. Yet each time, it is the words of the Buddha that have been proven to be true. That is, that those who take up arms will perish by arms. Those who are crazy with racism and militarism boast that they can defeat the enemy.  In order to hide the fact that soldiers who bear arms are also dying, they say that they have sacrificed their lives. In the same way, in the terrorist operations arena, those who kill themselves and kill others also become heroes who have sacrificed their lives. While they race on in the spirit of self-sacrifice, they also compel innocent civilians to sacrifice their lives.        

The question is not being resolved. Rather, it is becoming worse by the day. There is no end to the bomb explosions. Neither does there seem to be an end to the operations to save the country. After each operation we hear repeated State appeals, calling on us to sacrifice our lives for the sake of our country. We see the same images again and again on posters and billboards, and in advertisements. Time flows on. Politicians work hard to drive the scoreboard of the rate of dying ever higher. 

On our dharma-dveepa, no death can take place that is not a natural death. Why do we say so? Because most Sri Lankans are Buddhist, who promise, in the first of the five precepts of Buddhism that they will refrain from taking life. But what actually happens?  This island which the Buddha visited three times, became formally Buddhist after the arrival of Arhat Mahinda on our shores. From that day onwards, the preaching of the dharma became official.

Rivers of blood will continue on our earth, on this land that is the like our Holy Land according to the sacred teachings of the Buddha, until we eradicate terrorism and militarism. It is only we who can call a halt to this.  All politics can do is fan the flames again and again, and drag our people and our country further into sacrifices of more and more blood. It is clear by now that they are not capable of doing anything. We should not allow the Buddha’s preachings, which are two thousand five hundred years in our land, to remain in camouflage. 

Let us once more listen to what the Buddha preached, with consciousness, free of the shadows of race and caste and politics. If we were to at least pay attention to these three verses of the Dhammapada, and if we were to strive to put them into action, we will be able to honour these human forms that we have attained through much exertion and we will be able to bring about peace to our island. 

The three key paintings in this exhibition are three verses of the Dhammapada that are hidden, as if they are yet to be heard.

      Na hi verena verāni - sammantī’dha kudacanam
      Averena ca sammanti - esa dhammo sanantano
      (In this world hatred never ceases by hatred; it ceases by love alone.
      This is an eternal law) - Yamaka Vagga, (5). 

      Sabbe tasanti dandassa - sabbe bhāyanti maccuno
      Attānam upamam katvā - na haneyya na ghātaye
      (All fear punishment; all fear death, comparing oneself with others,
      one should neither kill nor cause to kill) - Danda Vagga, (1). 

      Sabbe tasanti dandassa - sabbesam jivitam piyam
      Attānam upamam katvā - na haneyya na ghātaye
      (All fear punishment; to all life is dear.  Comparing oneself with others,
      one should neither kill nor cause to kill) - Danda Vagga, (2). 

The Dhammapada constitute the footsteps of Buddhist philosophy, as they are the path of the teachings of the Buddha.  Those who travel on the path of the dharma, are those who are suited to attain nirvana. The dharma that was preached by the Buddha is based on material fact.  Therefore, there is always a practical meaning to his teachings. The text that accompanies the Dhammapada, the Dhammapadattha-katha contains the description of each verse and sets out the fact on which the verse is based and the person for whom it is intended.  The Dhammapada was preached in order to help human beings better understand the problems they face in life, to bring them relief and to guide them on the path to Nirvana.

For more articles on July 1983, please click here.

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