[Editors note: Beyond Borders, as part of a discussion series aimed at connecting youth activists with key opinion  and decision makers, organised a discussion with Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka on 8 October 2009. Around 25 young people interested in politics participated in the discussion. Well-known bloggers Aachcharya, Negligible Minoritist and SP who were present share some reflections on Dayan.]

Judging Public Intellectuals by Aachcharya

It is impossible not to be swayed by Dayan’s display of intellect. The way he answered  questions was exemplary, being able to quote from very ‘high theory’ and then engage with us the very next minute in some very good ‘common sense’ but vivid and sharp analysis, replete with anecdotes, a quality I must say, is in the dying in our intellectual tradition.

I asked Dayan a very lengthy question with primarily two limbs 1) the role of public intellectuals and the choices that they make regarding direct, mainstream political engagement 2) his prescription for Tamil politics (I asked him rhetorically: what would he say if he after twenty years is invited to lecture at the Jaffna University). I shall reflect only on the first one here and save the second for sometime later.

Dayan explained his alignment with Rajapaksa and earlier with Premadasa as justified because he thought the greater evil of the LTTE and JVP had to be wiped out. He argued that the Sri Lankan state offered always a ‘minimum democratic space’ which these two actors never were able to provide and for the oppressive politics that LTTE and JVP practiced they just had to go was his argument. He compared his engagement with the GoSL as something close to Kethesh Loganathan’s decision to join the Peace Secretariat.  He was careful to point out, as he has done in the past (see for example his interview with the Groundviews editor given shortly before his departure from Geneva) that he did not defend what he thought he could not associate with – some of the atrocities committed by this regime, like for example the Trinco five killings. He maintains that there was no willful targeting of civilians during the final war (which I am not sure) and that to have defended Sri Lanka in the UN Human Rights Council was right because the resolutions brought by the West was not about things like the Trinco five but about war crimes which Dayan wants to believe did not happen. (This question of how to be ‘anti-imperialist’ and at the same time ‘anti-statist’ in a third world country is a pretty fascinating debate. Can you be unhappy about the West for its double standards and still agree with the content of their accusations of what they say are wrong with Sri Lanka? I think you can.) He told us that this was not him disassociating with the Rajapaksha regime and in an abstract sense said part of the decision to engage and take sides is also the readiness to take the moral guilt that comes with association. I am not sure however what moral guilt that Dayan is prepared to share with this regime. At this point I asked him about the process of disassociating as justifying any engagement including the Late Dharmeratnam Sivaram’s (Taraki’s) engagement with the LTTE. Could not then Sivaram argue that he never sided with the LTTE on all what was bad about them but only aligned with them because he believed in the importance of the struggle and chose to ignore the mistakes of the LTTE?

Sivaram is quoted by Mark Whittaker his biographer as having said:

“Let history judge.. to all these people I ask do you sell off your mother because your brother has cut off your arm? Because your brother is a scoundrel? So are we just going to say that the LTTE is a static thing, that it is fascist and that it killed a lot of people. Yes it killed a lot of people… I don’t care a f*** being called an LTTE apologist.. Because I am fighting another war – my war. .. This problem has nothing to do with the LTTE. It started long before there was a LTTE in the 1950s, when Prabaharan was a f***ing kid…If the LTTE was not there we would all be f**ed. At the end of the day that is why the Tamils do not want the LTTE gone. Because we know what the Sri Lankan state has done… So you have to make practical choices – that this is your own man, was a brother once, so you try to reform him. And it is not just him who is the problem”

(See Mark P Whitaker, ‘Learning Politics from Sivaram: The life and death of a Revolutionary Tamil Journalist in Sri Lanka’, Pluto Press, London (2007), pp. 216-7)

Dayan at the discussion referred to an article in which he was quoted, written by Philip Gourevitch for the New Yorker,

“Rather than blaming the dead journalist for failing to denounce the crimes of his side, Jayatilleka said, the Sinhalese should ask themselves what offenses they have chosen to ignore. He posed as “the final question” of his friend’s life a conundrum that belongs equally to every side in every ethnic-nationalist conflict on earth: “Had we been Tamil, are we sure we would not have been Sivarams?”

(available here)

I am very happy that Dayan acknowledges this difficulty – that choices of engagement by public intellectuals are not divorced from considerations like ethnicity. But I think Dayan argued (if I understood him properly) despite all of this that Sivaram’s choice of supporting the LTTE was a wrong one.

I understand that the choice of side for political engagement that one makes can never be satisfactory. While I don’t blame people for non engagement for the reason that they do not want to be associated with any sort of guilt, I respect people who make the decision to do so and get their hands dirty. This paragraph from Edward Said which is from a speech that he delivered n the subject of public intellectuals says so much about the difficulty of taking sides:

“..Just as history is never over or complete it is also the case that some dialectical oppositions are not reconcilable, not transcendable, not really capable of being folded into a sort of higher, undoubtedly nobler synthesis. The example closest to home for me is the struggle over Palestine which, I have always believed, cannot really be simply resolved by a technical and ultimately janitorial re-arrangement of geography allowing dispossessed Palestinians the right (such as it is) to live in about 20% of their land that would be encircled and totally dependent on Israel. Nor on the other hand would it be morally acceptable to demand that Israelis should retreat from the whole of former Palestine, now Israel, becoming refugees like Palestinians all over again. No matter how I have searched for a resolution to this impasse, I cannot find one for this is not a facile case of right versus right. It cannot be right ever to deprive an entire people of their land and heritage. But the Jews too are what I have called a community of suffering and brought with them a heritage of great tragedy. But unlike Zeev Sternhell, I cannot agree that the conquest of Palestine was a necessary conquest. The notion offends the sense of real Palestinian pain, in its own way also tragic.”

Edward Said, “Public role of Writers and Intellectuals’, Alfred Deakin Memorial Lecture, 19 May 2001 available at http://www.abc.net.au/rn/deakin/stories/s299210.htm

Given this complexity that Said so vividly explains how does one then pick and choose a side? I think we need people who will not pick sides and will make contributions that will help us see politics beyond what the different sides show us. I also think it is important that there are people who choose one or the other side and work towards transforming it. But the emphasis is engagement and the picking of one side should help transform the other side. Did Dayan and Sivaram do this is the question? How much of criticism did Sivaram make of the LTTE at least internally? Is Dayan with the demise of the LTTE now prepared to take on this Government for all what it is wrong about it, at least in the post war scenario?

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The Dayan Paradox by Negligible Minoritist

Listening to Dr Jayatileka speak is always an interesting experience. He seems to me to be one of the few people who are able to articulate many of the grand political theories in a way that most people can understand them. Part of this I feel is due to a truly gifted capacity for rationalization that Dr. Jayatileka brings out in his presentations and analyses. However while I see why he would chose to rationalize the decisions he has made over time in this way, I feel that they are built on a fundamentally flawed premise – that the elimination of the LTTE (and the JVP) alone will signal a new dawning and a new phase of inclusive power relationships. It is perhaps pertinent to consider what has become of the Left following the decimation of the JVP by Premadasa and I wonder how Dr. Jayatileka’s socialist sympathies have reconciled itself to the kind of lunatic fringe that the Left in general has now been reduced to. What I mean to say is that while the decimation of JVP no doubt stopped the bloodletting (and indeed I too have issues with the way in which the JVP went about their revolutionary agenda) in the long term the decimation of the JVP has hurt the left more than it has helped it. Furthermore the political ideology of the JVP, in spite of its decimation of the movement, there appears to be very little that has changed in their rhetoric or their outlook.  This suggests to me that things with the LTTE are not going to be that different in the long term and while I am sure it would please the regime no end, I believe that as a polity we are only poorer for it (a Tamil nationalist movement that is like the Left of today).  My reasons for saying this is not because I am sympathetic either to the LTTE or to the JVP but rather because the lesson history has taught me is that when this kind of decimation takes place, the entire broader political movement that it is a part of also struggles for breath and flops around like a fish out of water and is eventually lumped together with the fringe lunatics of the political spectrum. This is not necessarily (in my opinion) a change for the better as it robs us of those alternative voices that serve at least at some level as reminders of what is very wrong with our society – the intolerance of minorities and the unequal distribution of wealth. In a situation such as this Aachcharya’s comments and the questions that he raises about the role of the public intellectual in this article take on immense significance.

Much was said and much was spoken about but what struck me most about that evening was the realization of the kind of paradox that Dayan embodies. On the way home today I saw a billboard with Dayan’s photo on it, showering praise on him for the coup –de’etat he and the rest of the Sri Lankan delegation pulled off in Geneva. Now no doubt Dayan is “bloody proud” of that achievement but it seems a bit strange to hear him now make critical noises about the government. As someone who was directly involved in establishing and stabilizing the current regime and government (for whatever purpose), Dr. Jayatilaka cannot escape the blood that he has on his hands of not just the innocent Tamil civilians but also the many lives of soldiers from the South who were killed, injured and lost due to the war. However, I also realize that if he had not been so intimately involved with the regime, the criticism he now makes would not be as resounding as it is. So this then is the paradox Dayan embodies – and in spite of his powers of persuasion and rationalization I feel it is still not one he has fully resolved it for himself either.

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A Discussion with Dayan Jayatilleka: Random Thoughts by SP

Even to his critics, Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka is an impressive man. A political scientist by training and a public intellectual, Dayan served as Sri Lanka’s Permanent Representative to the UN in Geneva till recent. His role in warding off “international intervention” is widely known. Dayan was the only war-time Sri Lankan government official easily accessible to the public. Despite heavy criticism, he never fought shy of debate but instead chose to actively engage his more constructive critics on Groundviews.

I have long believed that Dayan was the architect of Sri Lanka’s controversial war-time foreign policy. Grounded strongly in the tenets of non-alignment, his thinking endeared him to the Eastern and African blocs though some would argue, isolated him from the West. But on foreign policy, Dayan is a realist. So as far as preserving state sovereignty and crushing the LTTE were concerned, his work in Geneva was in line with the national interest.

On the domestic front, he was among the foremost advocates of the present Eastern model where Pillayan was installed Chief Minister of a once embattled province. He has often cited what he calls the Chechen model where Kremlin-backed former rebel commander Ramzan Kadyrov was installed President of Chechnya. To me, the Chechen model itself is deeply problematic. Kadyrov presides over a regime which stands accused of the murder of human rights activist Natalya Estemirova, among others, showing clearly that it has no tolerance of dissent. The Kremlin for its part has not batted an eyelid. In Sri Lanka’s East, a spate of ransom killings and apparent cover-up operations by the police have severely discredited Pillayan’s provincial government and with good reason. With the East touted as a model for the North, one must be wary of a similar fate there.

But Dayan is a man of deep conviction. There’s never a time he presents an argument that is not carefully reasoned. Unlike others in the Administration, Dayan won the respect of his critics for his deep intellect, ability to engage and to reason. He is a firm believer in a political solution to the national question and has long advocated devolution above and beyond the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. His consistent argument has been that in order to devolve beyond the Thirteenth, one must first implement the Thirteenth. In other words, in order to make new laws, one must first implement existing laws.

From Geneva, Dayan vociferously argued that support for Sri Lanka’s counter-resolution at the UN Human Rights Council (that was adopted in place of the harsher resolution sponsored by the West) was dependent on Colombo’s display of goodwill towards its Tamil people. In other words, he reasoned that the national question required a political solution through the devolution of power to majority Tamil areas and that Colombo was duty-bound to fulfill this. He argued that support from the Asian (including India) and African blocs in Geneva was conditional upon such a solution and pushed Colombo to move towards this. Indeed, this cost him his job. To date, the Rajapaksa Administration has shown no clear signs of such intentions. It militarises the north and speaks of another ‘mandate’ to act, dousing out its own promises to overhaul the system.

Dayan’s dismissal brought forth a flurry of prophesied declarations from his critics, while some even said it served him right. Was Dayan then also a victim of the system that he had once fought so hard to overhaul? Meeting Dayan at a recent Beyond Borders meeting shed some light on the man and his motivations.

From the very beginning, Dayan was a deep thinker. He spoke of a bookish past during his days at St. Joseph’s College, Colombo. He was exposed to the international perspective by his father, renowned journalist Mervyn de Silva. His recognition of oppression and general injustice started from a very early age. He spoke of his sympathy for Leftist politics and his belief in the revolutionary cause of the JVP. He told a group of us how he waved from his middle class Ward Place residence as incarcerated JVP ‘comrades’ were driven by in a prison van. So, revolutionary Marxism found its way into Dayan’s mind quite early in life. But ever the maverick, Dayan had his own ideas on how the cause should be pursued. He recalled how he attended JVP meetings but often argued with Rohana Wijeweera about the necessary course that the struggle should take.

Dayan is an intellectual and a revolutionary who tried to reform the system. When the EPRLF formed a provincial administration in 1988 in the then merged Northeast, Dayan was a provincial minister. He was also a journalist and wrote of ideas that he thought would reshape the system. But when Ranasinghe Premadasa became President in 1989, Dayan backed Premadasa for his ‘progressive’ qualities. Perhaps these were similar to what he once saw in Rajapaksa. Perhaps he also saw himself as a potential architect of a foreign policy that could fight the fascist LTTE on the international theatre and help bring peace. In this respect, he succeeded without doubt. But did he also see himself as one who could ensnare the regime in an international net so devolution could be implemented at last? Was it worth the effort?

For all the criticism, Dayan Jayatilleka is a great public intellectual and a very interesting man. Thank you Beyond Borders for the opportunity to meet him. For whatever it is worth, one hopes future regimes will not miss out on such a human resource that the country would do well to call on again to reshape the policy process in the undetermined future. Dayan, thank you for the talk.

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A young boy was drowned in broad daylight this week. Though not a single newspaper carried it, I’m told B. Sivakumaran was his name. He was “believed” to be mentally retarded and known for throwing stones at passing vehicles and trains. Approximately 100 people watched him die. One even managed to capture on film the final five minutes of his life.

That five minutes of footage could have been of a possible rescue by one of the 100 or so spectators.  Or, that five minutes of footage could have been shot at the same time a call for assistance was made to the nearest Police Station, by someone present in the crowd. This was the heart of Bambalapitiya after all, and Sri Lanka is not short of mobile phones. But instead, the five minutes of footage shows us the gory, pathetic end of a young life, for no apparent reason.

The spectators watched on intently.

Three to four men surfaced out of the water, as if from nowhere, and began to advance towards the boy, who by then was fast retreating. Two men armed with large wooden poles (more like thick tree branches) continued to advance on the boy, and thrash him, one brutal stroke at a time. The spectators watch on. The boy kept trying to head towards the shore. He even brought his hands together in a desperate plea for mercy. His persecutors however, showed no sign of it.

The spectators continued to watch.

The more he pleaded, the more vicious the attack became. Closer and closer they inched to him, thrashing him unmercifully each time he surfaced. This went on for five minutes, until at last the deed was done. He resurfaced no more.

The spectators watched on, transfixed.

A friend said to me that maybe people didn’t want to get “involved” because they thought it was some “underworld” rift. That’s a damning indictment on us, our society. This video is proof that we’ve reached a point where our “fear” overrides a sense of humanity.

I sense a pattern of sorts here.

The deafening silence on the IDP issue for example. Everyone knows they’re suffering, some even care. But, our “fear” of a “possible” threat to our lives by the “possible” re-emergence of terrorism justifies our silence. Our inaction. Isn’t it strange to have a State half-heartedly respond only when threatened by the International Community to set these people free? Doesn’t it seem strange at all that a Government must be held to ransom to look after its own people? Our paralyzing fear of dissent and our sheer capacity to rationalize the violent fate of those who do dare to is another facet of our ‘Spectator State.’

If cold-blooded murder can take place in the heart of Colombo in broad daylight, in front of a crowd, we can only wonder what happened on bloody battlefields in the Vanni, with no one left to tell the tale.

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This is one of the subjects that has in recent years put me in constant confusion. To situate my confused status in its context, let me begin with a personal note. In the 1960s when I began my political praxis, I had very clear and precise a position on the subject of democracy. I observed the presence of certain democratic values, forms and institutions in Sri Lanka and while recognizing their importance especially for left politics, I branded this democracy as a bourgeois democracy giving primacy to the adjective rather than to the noun. My firm perception was that in order to make democracy complete and perfect, the capitalistic mode of production that imposed many constraints on democracy had to be abolished and society should be restructured on a new democratic and just foundation. Within my theoretical perspective, the same logic can be applied to the issue of justice. While I was working on this premise, I didn’t see any gaps or contradictions in my theoretical perspective or practice. All questions were nicely resolved. This perspective also posited that the perfection of democracy required a transitional phase in which a new state form called the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat supported by peasantry would rule. Although this form of the state is not fully democratic, it would represent the majority of the population.

However, in the mid 1980s, I realized that this simple or rather simplified trajectory for democracy would not work. I posited that its completeness is the cause of its emptiness. What is an alternative? How could we develop a new democratic praxis? I was thrown away from the single simple light to multiple forms of darkness out of which I have not yet been able to come out. Thus, I will attempt to portray the nature of the confusion into which I have been thrown. I hope that this depiction would throw some light on the subject of the theory and practice of democracy.

I delineate three main tendencies (T1, T2, and T3) in relation to democratic theory and practice in Sri Lanka. In my opinion, the threshold moment was the first JVP uprising in 1971. The three tendencies I will depict shortly surfaced in the immediate aftermath of the JVP uprising. Let me deal with them briefly.

T1: the emergence of liberalism as the ‘definer’ of democratic theory and practice in Sri Lanka: I would claim that liberalism as a political ideology was established in Sri Lanka in the mid-1970s. The notion of ‘individual’ and liberalism’s emphasis on the individual against the group or collectives have its positive implication in a spatio-temporal context in which individual rights were regarded as subservient to the rights of the collectives. However, the kind of liberalism that has been established here gave primacy to some rights, like the right of expression and the right for private property, while restraining other important rights, like the right to life, the right to information and multiple socio-economic rights. Neo-liberal ideas that surfaced as a universalizing tendency since the late 1980s globally have transgressed these negative elements and the dominance of neo-liberal economic policies led to a closure of economic options giving rise to what is called TINA (there is no alternative) syndrome. Neo-liberalism has delimited not only available economic options but also restricted the role of elected governments by empowering non-elected forms of organizations. Could not one argue that the absence of a critique of the neo-liberal project and its consequences, the lawful state and procedural norms will be too weak to curb neo-liberal and power-bureaucracy? Is it not imperative to transcend these constraints in the struggle for democracy and justice?

T2: An increasing presence of non-governmental organizations:  This was also a novel feature that emerged after the defeat of the JVP uprising in 1971. These organizations raised the issue of human and democratic rights of the JVP members at the legal proceedings against them outside the normal judicial institutions. In the late 1970s, they stood for the rights of the numerically small national collectives. How did they evolve since the 1990s? There seems to be a paradigm shift in the nature and functions of these organizations, as many of them have become appendage of the neo-liberalist project. Neo-liberalism deploys new technologies of domination and is in a constant attempt to decolonize civil society organizations and social movements through money and power. The decolonization of the lifeworld as Jurgen Habermas aptly described it is almost completed. This is evident when we compare early NGOs like the Human Rights Center led by Sooriya Wickramasinghe and Desmond Fernando with new organizations like the Center for Policy Alternatives. In the field of peace-building, the role of MERJE was qualitatively different from that of new organizations with similar objectives, like the Foundation for Co-Existence and the National Peace Council.

T3: Primacy of ethnic/national question in democratic discourse: Democracy and justice discourse in Sri Lanka during the early years was dominated by the issue of redistribution. We have witnessed the emergence of the issue of difference and the associated need of recognition since the late and early 1980s. Once again this can be depicted as a positive addition to the democratic discourse in Sri Lanka. However, as it happened in many parts of the world, the issue of difference and recognition are highlighted in order to replace the issue of redistribution. So recognition claims tend to predominate. In my opinion, as a result of T3, there has been a lopsided growth in the Sri Lankan democratic discourse and practice. More precisely, the Sri Lankan democratic discourse has failed to integrate three fundamental issues, namely, redistribution, recognition and representation, in holistic framework. While those who emphasize redistribution marginalize the issue of recognition, those who highlight recognition neglect almost totally the issue of redistribution.

The flaws of democratic theory and practice in Sri Lanka have strengthened the chauvinist obscurantist forces, and these forces have gained the monopoly of the use of anti-imperialist and socialist rhetoric. The current regime in Sri Lanka has been using all the rhetoric for its advantage and in order to continue and magnify its anti-democratic practices. How does one salvage democratic theory and practice? Can the current crisis in democracy be reduced to a crisis of philosophy? These are the issues we have to grapple with in our collective effort to come out of the current impasse.

Does it mean that past records have proved that my original position still holds?  The answer is both Yes and No. Yes; in order to perfect democracy, a substantial change in the economic structure and the way in which income and wealth are distributed is imperative. I have to add here that democracy cannot be perfected within the framework of the nation-state, its specific concrete form notwithstanding. Hence, democratic theory and practice not embodying a strategy towards weakening capital logic and power logic would be basically flawed. So personally I moved through two metamorphoses. The first metamorphosis is the move from the Marxist-Leninist position which is a static position, to the Anarcho-Marxist position. The second transformation is from a revolutionary to a reformist position.

Before I conclude, let me elaborate on the second metamorphosis. Here, we may bring back Lenin, not as a revolutionary, but as a reformist; the Lenin of the post-October New Economic Policy period. Social activists working in the third world context, as I have argued above, have to face two main evils, namely, (1) neo-liberalism and (2) national chauvinism. They have to organize their work on the basis of an assumption that there are ‘constants’ that cannot be changed in the immediate future. Two main ‘constants’ are: (1) the presence of the globalized system dominated by finance capital through the London and New York financial markets (Tokyo and Frankfurt to a lesser extent); and (2) the continuous presence of the nation-state system. So how should democratic activists develop their strategies and action programs? Here, I would like to highlight the distinction identified by Amartya Sen in his latest work on justice. He has identified two traditions, (1) the transcendental institutionalist tradition of Hobbs, Kant, John Rawls, Habermas etc and (2) the comparative tradition of Adam Smith, Karl Marx and others. He suggests that the first tradition is not of much assistance in improving justice and eliminating or alleviating injustice. The comparative framework aims at improving justice through a number of ameliorative measures. I believe that Sen’s idea on justice may be applied to democracy as well. Democratic transformation would be constantly opposed by multiple forces that would wish to conserve and defend the status quo. They would also try to overcome some of its contradictions within the boundaries of the present system. They have been quite successful not only because of the radical measures the system is equipped with, but also as a result of the defects and gaps of the progressive discourse. However, as Antonio Gramsci argues, this “incessant and persistent efforts of the [dominant classes and elites] form the terrain of the conjunctural, and it is upon this terrain that opposition organizes.”

Text of the talk given at ICES, Kandy October 20, 2009.

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I feel that there is a pressing need to rise to the defense of Buddhism. This is because Buddhism is being degraded and exploited  as a reactionary political ideology by a grade of low class politicians. Their impact is severe and decisive. Their politicized version of Buddhism is being incessantly drilled into the social consciousness of a particular chauvinist political base, with full state patronage, and more fundamentally, as the core program and agenda of the state and the regime.  The impact has been to imbibe a jubilant sense of a dominant, triumphant ego for having vanquished an oppressed nation, a narrowed, distorted and introverted sense of self, based on nurturing arrogance and intolerance against others. The mantle of the Dharma is being used to entrench the supremacy of the one Sinhala-Buddhist nation, as the basis to subordinate all others and suffocate all dissent. It is being exploited to enthrone the ideology and politics of naked Sinhala-Buddhist chauvinist supremacy. Buddhism is being exploited to enthrone an utterly corrupt and bloody state and regime, a parasitic, comprador capitalist dictatorship, with an unprecedented  track record of gross, systematic and intensifying human rights violations. This, in the name of defending Buddhism, equated with the state, nation and the motherland- and the regime! The construction of a fundamentalist-theocratic state is in full swing. Instead of legitimizing the right to abortion and providing modern medical facilities as a basic human right of women to control their own bodies and their lives, illegal abortion clinics-the only ones there are- are raided. Hotels and lodging houses are raided to arrest any form of ‘illegal’ romantic interludes. Couples are arrested or intimidated on the beach and other places where they seek privacy. The internet and movies are to be censured. Adults only films are to be banned. Illicit liquor joints are raided, while ministers sway in alcoholic stupor and urinate in public places. This Buddhism is targeted against the poor and oppressed, since the rich will always access these rights and privileges without any problem or state suppression. All of these forms of state repression and control are being exercised to cover up for the naked corruption and abuse, and the sheer moral bankruptcy  of the state and its parasitic agents. This is a form of state enforced populist Buddhism designed to cater to the most backward and hypocritical mass base.

To be clear, this piece is NOT meant to criticize the ordinary Buddhists who honestly practice their faith and conviction as a way of life. The vast majority of them do not realize that they are themselves manipulated as pawns  by the feudal-colonial politics of Sinhala-Buddhist chauvinism and how it serves to reinforce, perpetuate and enforce the comprador Capitalist class dictatorship over their lives. This piece is directed squarely against that fascist coterie of the ruling class that is usurping the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha to entrench and extend their fundamentalist-hegemonic authority over all of society. This fundamentalist-fascist coterie has gone to the pitiful extent of conducting a mass propaganda campaign to enthrone the President as the supreme monarch – ‘rajano’ – based on the argument that the masses have declared their aspiration to rid themselves of the colonial trappings of bourgeois democracy and to revert to the feudal age of absolute monarchy. Say hello to medieval fundamentalist-theocratic fascism in the guise of Buddhism.

Buddhism is based on a dialectical logic of dependent origination. Nothing is permanent. All forms of matter and consciousness are in a permanent state of coming into being and passing away. The ceaseless emergence and resolution of contradiction is the universal law that governs all things and processes. Every cause has its effects, every action brings forth an equal and opposite reaction. How then are we to liberate ourselves from this chain of causation and endless suffering – this sea of Sansara?  What is required is the correct scientific understanding of the underlying laws of motion, change and transformation that account for all reality, in order to be liberated from ignorance and illusion. Accordingly, the doctrine is based on conscious individual self-determination, where everyone is free to consciously and voluntarily choose their own path. Buddhism cannot be imposed, nor legislated. The very essence of Buddhism lies in negating the self and the ego through compassion and meritorious deeds, guided by correct scientific understanding and an abiding sense of humility. The Buddha preached a doctrine of overcoming all selfish desire and motivation deriving from ignorance and arrogance as embedded in the alienated ego, and all the negative and violent passions these can unleash. This is in order to seek human liberation in a doctrine of universal compassion towards all beings. This state of mind is to be achieved  through the cleansing of the mind of all negative, destructive impulses, thoughts and feelings through meditation, and the Noble Eight-Fold path of being progressively detached from mundane, material life, and offering good merit (pin) to others. In this act of selflessness, devotion and dedication to enlightened truth, one shall repose in a sublime and eternally blissful state of Nirvana- a cessation of all contradiction, duality and conflict, accompanied by a state of the most serene, blissful contemplation of the infinite wonders and mysteries of nature.  Buddhism relies upon seeking the  truth as opposed to being deceived by  lies and illusions for personal and political gain. However, Buddhism has today become a vehicle for spreading diabolical lies and fatal illusions to defend and perpetuate a corrupt  Comprador Capitalist regime and class dictatorship, with the Parliamentary Opposition supinely falling in line.

One can disagree with these doctrinal assumptions, precepts and premises. One can argue, as I would, that the path of human liberation lies in waging scientific, revolutionary – Communist proletarian class struggle to rid the earth of private property and class divisions, so that humanity can live in solidarity and cooperate in conquering  the world through collective conscious social activity. Grappling and struggling with philosophical differences is the font of intellectual life. But, we cannot allow for anyone to willfully distort the true essence of any philosophy for vile and deceitful political reasons. Well, it may be that the time shall come when the true guardians of the temple – the oppressed masses- shall rise against all imposters and sweep away the pile of rot that has accumulated. Upon the ashes and ruins of accumulated lies and  deception, and filthy parasitic privilege, they shall build a true temple of universal scientific enlightenment, dedicated to the emancipation of all humanity, where a true doctrine of solidarity shall liberate all human beings on earth from the chains of property, ignorance and slavery.

One can ask as to what right or legitimacy I claim to have to rise to the defense of Buddhism, when I happen to have been baptized as a Catholic, and have now being transformed into a Maoist-Communist. And I can turn around and say, all great philosophies, all great path-breaking systems of ideology, all advances in the fields of science and art, belong to the earth. This great and immortal legacy of human enlightenment and achievement shall not be the exclusive privilege nor sanctuary of any populist politician, self-appointed museum curator, nor robed imposter, but  to those who would have struggled to gain  scientific enlightenment and the courage of conviction to stand for the truth. Besides, there appears to be no Buddhist with the courage of conviction to speak out against this violation of the Dharma for political gain. For those who would question my credentials, I  gladly say, ‘Lets really get down and discuss some of these issues, but in an open and public way, and not, hopefully, in that all intimidating, threatening and terrorizing way, which has been the policy and attitude of the state against any form of serious and informed dissent. A good Buddhist shall cultivate dissent and difference in the search for universal truth, in the spirit of intellectual engagement and dialogue, as a commitment to human liberation. They shall not claim absolute monopoly over truth. They shall not violate the Dharma by imposing a political dogma and agenda in the name of Buddhism, at the point of a gun. Let it be announced to the authorities, in whatever robe, hue or uniform, the people  shall not relent, whatever the cost! Truth shall rise and liberate us all! That is why it is necessary to rise to the defense of Buddhism.

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I spoke with Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka recently on his take on post-war politics, his interpretation of the Southern Provincial Council elections, the issue of war crimes and the extension of GSP+, the challenges of peacebuilding (with peace seen as more than the absence of war) and the purported entry of the former Army Commander Gen. Sarath Fonseka to mainstream party politics.

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