Merchants of Moderate Aspirations
– part II
C. Wijeyawickrema
cwije7@yahoo.com
“One law for the lion and the ox
is oppression”
William Blake (1793)
“All human progress has depended on ‘new questions’
rather than on ‘new answers’ to the old questions."
Alfred North White — Science and the Modern World, 1925
Introduction
A homeland-based Indian “F” model promoted as a moderate
Tamil aspiration is unreasonable on two objective grounds. Part I
of this essay discussed the first reason, the Tamil Nad backyard factor.
The second factor, the cohabitation of people of different ethnic-religious
backgrounds is discussed in this part utilizing population distribution
maps at the electorate level. The SLFP proposal in April 2007 to empower
people at the Grama Rajya level fits in with the population distribution
patterns emerging from this exercise. A.T. Ariayaratne’s 1988
book, “The Power Pyramid and the Dharmic Cycle” and the
Abhayewardhana Report on Local Government Reforms (Sessional Paper
No. 1 of 1999) also provided in detail why the country needs to go
back to the pre-1980 village council system.
The theory that Tamil people are not secure among the Sinhala villagers
becomes a myth with this data. With the trinity of village-tank-temple
(kovil/mosque/church) as the basic societal unit in the island since
antiquity, village boundaries could be adjusted to follow the watershed/hydrologic
boundaries, making the basic empowerment units language-blind and
ecologically sound. With this approach, if a province-level unit is
needed then the river basin-based seven unit demarcation proposed
by the geographer Madduma Bandara in 1987 provides an ideal solution
(Chapter 4 in Fifty years of Sri Lanka’s Independence: a socio
economic review, edited by A.V. de S. Indraratna, 1998, p.83).
Empowerment of people
“Aspirations” is the new term for the old colonial tactics
of “divide-and rule.” It talks fussy politics—aspiration
to have a separate country, a new national anthem, flag and a seat
at UNO. A set of new politicians will become new ministers and beneficiaries
of such talk. “Aspirations” are rarely free of controversy
and conflict; it divides and allows manipulation by those with hidden
agenda. “Aspirations” could then become an issue of protection
of human rights or even R2P (response to protect), a lucrative topic
for NGO-INGO businessmen.
“Aspirations” have to be sugar-coated or sanitized with
an adjective “moderate.” Unfortunately, this increases the
fussiness of aspirations. Take for example the Iran nuclear power
plant issue. Does Iran have an aspiration to become a nuclear weapons
power or a nuclear energy power? For some Iran is an extreme case
because it wants weapons not energy. The solution provided by USA
for this extremism is to sell arms to three “moderate” countries
in the neighborhood—Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. What is the
definition of the term “moderate” in this case? Would the
new arms deal empower the people or the ruling classes in the three
countries? When the math professor Sundaralingam was playing havoc
on pollution of kovils by the entry of hari janayas, a law was passed
to prevent him and others of such acts. Was this an empowerment or
prevention of the aspirations of high caste Hindus?
Old colonial masters have now become the new global saints. But, if
the new saints (R2Ps) want to genuinely help their former colonies,
then they should aggressively work to empower the people in these
countries. For this people must be helped to escape from the grip
of the local ruling classes in these countries. Aspiration is poisonous
talk while empowerment is healing action. Really speaking empowerment
of people applies to both the rich and the poor nations in the world.
To aspire one needs empowering at the individual level. Teaching one
in Sri Lanka to learn how to swim, how to ride a bicycle or how to
use a computer is no different from teaching remedial (developmental)
math, reading and writing to between 20-40% of college entrants in
USA who must have such basic skills (which they did not get in K-12
public schools) before they can register for regular college courses.
The attempt to get an Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
passed was an example of political aspiration, a woman carrying pepper
spray can or a gun in her purse is empowerment. A canine unit empowers
a policeman; a trained walking dog empowers a blind person. Aspirations
must follow empowerment; otherwise the cart is placed before the horse.
Solution: Tamil police men in Sinhala villages!
The majority APRC report proposed to station policemen in villages
because it was in the “aspirations” box supplied by western
diplomats and INGOs. If they had an understanding of the population
distribution of Sri Lankan minorities instead of more police stations
they would have proposed empowerment at the village level. The cohabitation
(harmony of living) of Tamils, Muslims, Christians, Hindus and Buddhists
at the village level would have convinced the APRC to examine the
concept of language-blind regional development units (Island, 10/25/2006)
and the empowerment of people (not politicians and ethnic groups).
People can be empowered only if they are allowed to exercise the governmental
powers (legislative, executive and quasi-judicial) at the lowest spatial
level possible (grass-roots democracy?). Each individual, family and
village community could aspire only if they are empowered.
Empowerment works at individual or family level whereas “aspirations”
is a passport for a new set of politicians to exploit people in a
new political space. An example of such empowerment of individual,
family and village is the Graameen Banks in Bangladesh. Recently,
the inventor of this empowerment mechanism (Muhammad Yunus) tried
to extend the concept of empowerment at the national level, but politicians
in Bangladesh did not agree with his plan. He began empowerment by
giving a total of 26 dollars as loans to 42 people. The Gama Naguma
movement under the Mahinda Chinthanaya Program could be handed over
to Grama Rajya Institutes with a constitutional empowerment. Villagers
know their problems and they could seek experts’ help when they
need it. As the new swarm theory suggests crowds tend to be wise only
if individual members act responsibly and make their own decisions
(National Geographic, July 2007, p. 146).
“Empowerment attempts”
Greek and Roman “city states” had a kind of direct democracy
(governance without a middleman politician) and the Buddhist India
in the 5th Century B.C. had such democracy in smaller kingdoms. On
October 26, 1959, President Ayub Khan proposed for Pakistan an empowerment
plan which was similar to the Soviet people’s councils. He was
talking about “basic democracies” with units of 800-1000
people each electing a candidate to a union council of ten members
as the first tier of a new constitutional structure (Pakistan: old
country/new nation, Ian Stephens, 1964, p. 314). India had its Panchayat
system. After forty years of step-motherly treatment given to it following
Gandhi’s death, India finally resurrected it in 1993 as Panchayathi
Raj Institutions by constitutional amendments 73 and 74.
Under the Bolivarian revolution of President Hugo Chavez a new law
on Communal Councils came into effect in Venezuela on April 10, 2006.
Based on 200-400 families in urban areas or 20 in rural areas (an
over kill?) the principal decision making body of a CC is the citizens’
assembly (www.venezuelanalysis.com, 4/26/2006). SLFP proposal to APRC
in April 2007, presented Sri Lanka’s home-grown devolution solution
based on the Grama Rajya concept. Recently, Professor C.G. Weeramantry
also presented Grama Rajya as a model suitable for Sri Lanka (Island,
5/20/2007). In a global village one thinks globally, but acts locally.
Or as the former U.S House Speaker Tip O’Neil once said “all
politics is local.”
Montesquieu standing on his head
Some people argue that Lord Acton’s famous formula “power
corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely” needs to be modified
because it is possible that people who come to power could already
be corrupt (such as some Sri Lankan politicians) or criminals (such
as some Indian MMPs in the Lok Sabah). Similarly, some say that Montesquieu
did not advocate a rigid separation of the three governmental powers
of legislative, executive and judiciary as we find it today in its
extreme form in USA, but the maximum possible distribution of the
sum total of governmental power (legislative-executive and some quasi-judicial)
to as many political units as possible. Our Grama Rajya and the Indian
Panchayathi Raj Institutions could be such units.
An example of this idea in practice could be found with the chief
priest system in the Buddhist temples in Sri Lanka. Unlike the Catholic
or other major religious organizations, a Buddhist temple priest is
the sovereign of his temple with no edicts from a unified central
office controlling his social relations. This was why a Buddhist temple
chief could provide food and lodging to a Christian priest when the
latter went on circuit to remote areas looking for possible coverts.
A local church pastor was not authorized to treat a Buddhist missionary
in the same manner.
Mismanagement by the ruling class
Sri Lanka does not have an ethnic discrimination problem warranting
a separate Tamil country. Without doubt there were several readjustment
issues such as restoration of Sinhala language discriminated and humiliated
for 450 years, living space for the Kandyan peasantry whose land was
robbed for plantations and district quotas in university admissions.
Such issues could have been better handled but were abused by the
ruling Colombo families to stay in power creating a beggar’s
wound. Sri Lanka was not unique in “reverse-discrimination”
attempts in all over the world. If a Tamil medical doctor or a teacher
wants a job in the south he or she has to know the language of the
people. Same applies to a Sinhala person who wants a job in Jaffna.
That is how one becomes an “obedient servant” of the people.
In dethroning English in 1956 (dethroning English did not mean throwing
English out but the removal of its use to discriminate against those
who did not have an opportunity to learn it as a second language),
Sri Lanka’s problem was not a clash between Sinhala and Tamil
but between two other “countries”—English Colombo country
versus Sinhala and Tamil village country. After 60 years of plans
and plan implementations by the Colombo ruling families and their
CAS officer cadre to develop the village, the gap between these two
“countries” has actually widened. In 1971, JVP reacted violently
against this division and in 2007 Col. Karuna said “give us what
Colombo gets.”
In 1903, the American, Jack London, wrote a book titled, The People
of the Abyss, which annoyed the British high society. He lived in
disguise with the mostly Irish slum-dwellers of the East End of London.
He could not believe the British Empire could have an environment
in London itself where humans (mostly Irish labor) lived like pigs
in slum conditions. He concluded that was a result of sheer mismanagement.
This was 14 years before the Russian Revolution. Huxley said, “I
assure you I found nothing worse, nothing more degrading, nothing
so hopeless, nothing nearly so intolerably dull and miserable as the
life I left behind me in the East End of London.” Mismanagement
at its height could be seen with the Katrina flooding in New Orleans,
USA (August 29, 2005). Sri Lanka has a more difficult war against
corruption and crime once the terrorist war is over.
Colonialism with a class of black-whites
The history of human society is a history of a tiny group of people
controlling the rest (95% of the people) using divine authority or
the power of law. Laws are designed as the norms accepted by the ruling
elites. For example, during the time of Dutch control of Ceylon, the
punishment for the destruction of a cinnamon plant in government owned
land was death. Until 1967, a black and white mix-marriage was illegal
in USA. Columbus went looking for an alternative route to India because
the rich and the powerful in Europe wanted their supplies of silk,
gems and spices continued. Thus began the regular European colonialism
which ran from 1498 to the late1960s.
Colonialism gave a new meaning to the phrase ruling class. In the
name of peace and good governance colonial masters used local feudal
and caste systems to maintain law and order and to exploit local resources.
This was how about 100,000 British men could control a population
of 300 million in India. Added to this was the divide-and-rule policy
with selected, favored and loyal minority groups. Those who worked
for the colonial masters and took their side against local uprisings—for
example in Ceylon during 1818, 1848 and 1915—later became ruling
families of former colonies. In the British colonies an education
policy was designed in the 1840s to create “a class of persons,
Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in
morals, and in intellect (Macaulay: The Shaping of the Historian,
John Clive, 1973, page 376). This class was expected to continue regular
colonialism as remote-controlled or after 1980s as NGO-INGO dominated
colonialism.
Lakshman Kadiragamar versus Stanley Tambiah
Some time back professor J. B. Dissanayaka wondered, “Why Lakshman
Kadiragamar and Stanley Tambiah (American-living retired anthropology
professor who was the author of the book Buddhism Betrayed) had two
contrasting pictures about the nature of Sri Lankan Buddhist society?”
Both came with connections to prominent Tamil families, both lived
in Colombo and both born as Christians (one difference was that LK’s
second wife, late in his life was a Sinhala-Buddhist). Tambiah, the
late A. J. Wilson, Tambiah’s disciple H. L. Seneviratna and the
history professor C. R. de Silva (all American-living) have written
books distorting Sinhala-Tamil issues and ignoring the responsibility
of the Colombo ruling class for the mess they created. Sinhala Buddhists
treated LK as one of their leaders. This is why one could say that
Mr. Anandasangaree missed the bus when he declined the JHU offer of
a parliamentary seat. He could have proven that he was not a separatist
Tamil but a Sri Lankan leader of Tamil origin.
India has a Sikh as prime minister and had a Muslim president. Indians
do not consider Sikhs as an angry minority anymore. Unlike in Tamil
Nad, in schools in Punjab Hindi and English are first and second languages
and Punjabi comes as the third. The average Panjabi does not think
of a Hindi invasion on his or her “aspirations.” President
Kalam once said that the solution to world’s problems is Buddhism.
Sinhala Buddhists in Anuradhapura elected a Sinhala-speaking Englishman
H. R. Freeman, as their representative in 1931 and in 1936 (uncontested).
The long time Kelaniya MP was a Catholic (R.S. Perera). A Tamil-Christian
woman (Siva Obeysekera) defeated the professor of Buddhist philosophy
(W.S. Karunaratne) as a candidate for the Mirigama seat. A Christian,
W.J.C. Munasinghe was the general secretary of SLFP after Nimal Karunatileke.
It was the separatist germ which began as far back as in 1918 which
made Tamil politicians prisoners of suffering.
Map exercise on cohabitation
The population distribution map of Sri Lanka does not support the
moderate solution of Indian “F” model the majority in APRC,
NGOs and the IC ambassadors are asking GOSL to follow. No other country,
whether it is the giant Canada or smaller Belgium or Switzerland,
has the unique situation one could find in Sri Lanka. The distribution
of Tamils outside the Northern and Eastern Provinces indicate that
the Grama Rajya level devolution of powers is the best home-grown
solution which will empower people and allow them to aspire to what
they wished to achieve as human beings in a free country. At the village
level the unit boundaries should be based on hydrology or watersheds—in
other words language-blind and ecologically-sound. Still so many units
will be exclusively Tamil and arrangements could be made to allow
for minority representation at the village level in case the number
of minority persons is so small to have an elected representative.
Instead of proposing police stations at villages to protect Tamils,
the APRC should visit New Zealand to see how ecology-based local government
units operate in another small country.
Source of data
The source of data for the five maps presented in this essay came
from G. P. S. H. De Silva’s “A Statistical Survey of Elections
to the Legislatures of Sri Lanka 1911-1977” (1979). An Excel
table was developed using race and religion percentages data of voters
in the 1977 General Election (1976 Delimitation Commission). In calculating
Tamils per electorate, Ceylon Tamils and Indian Tamils are combined
thus giving them an advantage at the electoral level rather than treating
them separately. In the case of Sinhalese, rather than race, the religion,
Buddhists, was used. This way Christian Sinhalese are separated and
any advantage Sinhalese gets at the electoral level is removed. When
Prabakaran’s youngest brother was studying with me in Canada
in 1979, he said that the biggest headache they had in Jaffna was
the scene of yellow robed monks walking on streets of Jaffna. I used
this logic in deciding to use religion instead of race.
Provincial or District level maps can hide rather than reveal useful
information. If race and religion data are available at polling booth
level, that will be the ideal spatial unit. But on the other hand
it could become so complex making it difficult to recognize useful
spatial patterns, if any. In the past, Professor Howard Wriggins who
was US Ambassador in Sri Lanka during JRJ presidency in his book,
Ceylon: Dilemmas of a new nation (1960) produced several maps with
1947, 1952 and 1956 electoral level ethnicity data.
What do maps show?
Map 1 – Tamil majority
This map shows 1977 electorates where Tamils (red), Muslims (green)
and Buddhists (blue) are 50 percent or more. If the democratic principle
used is territorial representation based on majority only 12 electorates
remain empty making them electorates with no ethnic group claiming
majority. They were Puttalam, Wennappuwa, Nattandiya, Negombo, Ja
Ela, Wattala, Gampola, Nawalapitiya, Colombo North, Colombo Central,
Colombo West and Potuvil. If Muslims are added Puttalam, Colombo Central
and Nawalapitiya fall into the category of minorities over 50%.
Map 2 – Tamils between 11-49 percent
This map plays a gap filling role for map 1. Those empty electorates
on map 1 become areas with significant numbers of Tamils. They form
a kind of transitional zone between Buddhist and Tamil regions. If
the World Tamil Federation and Tamil Nad separatist lobby are determined
to have a separate Tamil country in Sri Lanka, then this is the region
that will become the zone of conflict.
Map 3 – Tamils between 1-10 percent
This map shows the electorates that the majority in APRC report wants
to provide Tamil police stations or Tamil police officers! This is
because it wants to use the 1983 government-sponsored attack on Colombo
Tamils as an excuse to justify that Tamils have a security problem
in living with the Sinhalese. How many Tamils have been killed in
these areas, except in the areas of conflict or the frontier region?
How many killings took place after 1983? Recently, in an open letter
Mr. Ananadasangaree gave the best answer to APRC’s majority.
He said that no Sinhala villager killed any Tamil.
Map 4 – Christian influence
This map shows the “Catholic Belt” in Sri Lanka. Red color
indicates electorates with Christian over 30%. Between 10-29 is in
green and 1-9 is in blue. Not a single church was attacked during
the past 100 years until after 1977 the unethical conversion workers
began to abuse religious tolerance and started smashing Buddha statutes
and urinating on broken pieces.
Map 5- Buddhist minority
What is the protection APRC has proposed for this group? The numbers
are small but there are Buddhist archeological sites in these areas.
Actually in all the areas with major Buddhist religious sites have
significant numbers of minority groups living in harmony like they
did before the arrival of colonial masters to shoulder the “white
man’s burden.”
Table 1
This table reveals an aspect of the distribution of race and religious
minorities in the island, unique perhaps, to Sri Lanka. Smaller numbers
of minorities have a wide distribution all over the island compared
to the distribution of Buddhists (example: less than 5% of Ceylon
Tamils in 108 and Indian Tamils in 107 electorates compared to just
19 electorates for Buddhists). This is the reason why Sri Lanka should
be one homeland for all its inhabitants with equality of opportunities.
Yes, inhabitants will not be equal or same as bars of soap coming
out of a soap factory.
“All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then
success is sure”
Mark Twain
