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President Obama and Buddhist
politics: a reply to Neville Jayaweera
C. Wijeyawickrema, LL.B.,
Ph.D.
Obama to the rescue
After reading Mr. Neville Jayaweera's (NJ) draft manifesto praying
for a "Sri Lankan Obama" with a vision for a "new nation"
(The Island, 2/1/2009), my first reaction was whether this retired civil
servant living in London went deaf and blind recently. After the last
king of Kandy, a Sri Lankan prime minister or president spoke in Tamil
for the first time in 2008 (at UNO) and addressed Tamils in Tamil in
2009 in Colombo. When was the last time thousands of Tamils in Jaffna
went on demonstration carrying the lion flag? Was it due to divine intervention
that two former terrorists (East C.M. Pillian and National M.P. Col.
Karuna) who previously wanted to destroy the Dalada Maligawa decided
to visit it to pay homage and to obtain the blessings of the Kandy Mahanayakas?
Was NJ lost in between two worlds or lost his mind to not comprehend
how a man came from a remote village in the Ruhuna finished a 30-year
old terrorist war called the beggar's wound in less than 3 years as
if he got the Aladdin's lamp? A comparison of Mahinda Rajapakse with
Abraham Lincoln appeared in the Island newspaper on 2/22/2007.
NJ is no ordinary journalist. He is a long time director of the World
Association for Christian Communication (WACC) (South Asia branch) operating
from London. He is obsessed (deep stirring, trembled, heart stopping,
and explosive power- his words) with the Obama phenomenon. He is also
an expert on South Asian geopolitics. For example, only via his essay
that I came to know that "within the Trincomalee harbour there
is a trench so deep that a [an American] nuclear sub may rest in safety
there and, if it ever comes to that, place [American] ICBM's simultaneously
in Peking and in two dozen other cities within that radius" (www.sangam.org/articles,
April 9, 2004). He said that for the Fifth Fleet of the U.S. navy Sri
Lanka is a Buddhist haven in the middle of a Moslem lake. Was it a clash
of Moslem and Christian fundamentalisms?
I do not know if in the past NJ also followed "this war is not
winnable" path of the NGO/INGO-funded Colombo intellectuals, but
in August 2005, he came on BBC to deny that the LTTE was behind the
murder of Lakshman Kadiragamar (Asiantribune.com, 8/14/2005). NJ considers
President Premadasa a past Obama! But he did not bother to apply his
Obama test to Mahinda Rajapakse. What did he do Instead? He was engaged
in two things: (1) commission and (2) commission by omission. Commission
he did to the tilt. He decided to mythologize Obama. The light was blindingly
so bright that nothing else could be seen. By a deadening silence (omission)
he tried to negate and make irrelevant any and all "Obama"
things taken place on the Sri Lankan political landscape since November
2005! Thus, by default, without him uttering a word to that effect,
he snatched a perception that Sri Lanka is still that "failed-failing
state" needing UN intervention. Gordon Brown became a cat on a
rock after eating this dead-rope! Was NJ not a genius in communication?
But NJ was not fair and reasonable in his acts of commission and omission.
The island already has an Obama and it is a new nation. Objective facts
render NJ's manifesto a meaningless attempt.
A Tamil Obama
These days everybody wants to get on to the Obama bandwagon. A group
of Sri Lankan Tamils living in Los Angeles and New Jersey formed a website
called "Tamils against genocide" and hired an American lawyer
Bruce Fein to run with it. During the November 2008 American presidential
election they added two new websites, "Tamils for Obama" and
"Tamils for John McCain." After Obama's victory they dumped
McCain and converted Tamils for Obama slogan to a new one-could a Tamil
become an Obama in Sri Lanka (to prevent Tamil genocide)? They wanted
to piggy-back on Obama's historical victory to pump oxygen to the slogan
"There is no state without a Tamil, but there is no state for the
Tamils" of the World Confederation of Tamils (2006) (www.tamilnation.org).
How and why Obama won the election cannot be compared with the Tamil
separatist issue in South Asia which began in 1917. However, President
Obama was not impressed. He took action to ban the Maryland-based Tamil
Foundation as a front organization for the LTTE terrorist outfit (Feb.
12, 2009)!
Separatist paradigm
A Tamil Obama could become a reality in Sri Lanka if Tamil leaders
are prepared to accept two changes in their political behavior: (1)
learn Sinhala and (2) declare that there are no traditional Tamil (or
any other) homelands in Sri Lanka. Essentially, what this means is Tamil
politicians in Colombo coming out of the Tamil separatist (cage) paradigm,
(If the Tamils' cry for separatism is given up, the two communities
could solve their problems and continue to live in amity and dignity"
(Sansoni, C.J. in Sessional Paper No. 7 of 1980). The English-speaking
Colombo Sinhala politicians who operated under "milk to Colombo,
forage to villages" (Colombo) paradigm were also victims of the
Colombo Tamils' separatist paradigm until November 2005. Since the 1920s
they reacted to this racist paradigm as if a cancer can be cured by
feeding it. Tamil separatist agenda in the Tamil Nadu with 70 million
Tamils has been an added thorn.
Most British Governors secretly worked to promote racial conflicts
between educate Colombo elites, but unlike in India they could not divide
the island in to two. Hence they left the colony with Section 29 in
the Soulbury Constitution of 1946. It restricted the scope of the freedom
given in 1948. The inability of the English-speaking Sinhala politicians
in Colombo to handle Section 29 in a wise and Buddhist manner was due
their colonial mentality. They were unable to speak the truth because
they abused both the poor Sinhala and the poor Tamil living in villages.
Therefore, they engaged in two monumental blunders: (1) the shameful
Marxist-bent constitution of 1972 and (2) the bahubootha document of
1978 (with a quick list of dictator-amendments) providing ladders to
the separatist monkey.
The late professor Gunapala Malalsekera said the truth it in 1956.
"The Buddhists wish-and quite rightly-that in this country where
they form 70 percent of the population, Buddhism should be recognized
as the predominant religion of the people. In the rest of the world,
Ceylon is regarded as essentially a Buddhist country, and they want
this claim established here as well...They will not be content to remain
in the position of inferiority to which they have been reduced by 450
years of foreign occupation... They have no desire to make Buddhism
the State religion-in spite of the cry raised by self-seeking politicians-
but they want the State to help them rehabilitate themselves and undo
some, at least, of the injustices perpetrated against them during the
days of their subjection."
And Sarath Fonseka said it in 2008 in a different way. Minority communities
cannot think of separate homelands in Sri Lanka. That would be an unreasonable
demand. The homeland of Tamils is Tamil Nadu just like Japan is the
homeland of the Japanese. Obviously, the international Christian evangelist,
NJ cannot swallow this bitter pill.
Colombo paradigm versus Col. Karuna paradigm
The unique nature of Col. Karuna as a Tamil politician in this regard
(compared to the late Neelan Thruchelvam, Laskhman Kadiragamar and Jeyaraj
Fernandopulle) is that not only he accepted both requirements mentioned
above, but removed poison from the infamous 13-A serpent by declaring
that to empower (personal aspirations of socio-economic development)
the Tamil people (not devolution of power to Tamil politicians) land
and police powers were not needed (India found problems even in giving
up education as a state listed function). By his phrase, "Give
us what Colombo gets" Col. Karuna, in 2006, opened the path of
reason-language-blind political-administrative spatial units. Thus Col.
Karuna showed more wisdom than SWRD or Dudley Senanayake taken together!
They carelessly and unfairly agreed to give exclusive land rights to
Tamil District Councils (B-C Pact, 1957; D-C Pact, 1965) under the influence
of the Tamil separatist paradigm. To give exclusive land powers to a
set of politicians who talk about a Tamil homeland was sheer lunacy.
Fear of history
When NJ preaches to forget history, the result is that he gets a set
of robots that can be remote controlled from London or Oslo or Lisbon.
People without a history are rootless people, likes sticks in the mud,
ideal for capitalistic propaganda and fundamentalists' manipulation.
NJ wants to refrain from asking "what are Tamil grievances,"
because there are no more Tamil grievances but grievances of non-Colombo
people, Tamil, Sinhala and Muslim. By removing history from his formula
called the draft manifesto NJ wants to make us opapathikas (gods). Yes,
it is true that we are not andaja (from eggs) or anshedaja (bacteria
associated with moisture) but we are jalabujas (conceived in a mother's
womb) as the Thathagatha said! From our mothers we become part of history.
We cannot sever our link with the Sri Maha Bodhi or the Ruwan Veli
Maha Saaya or the Tissa Vava. Hence, the rational approach is not to
try to hide history, but to look at history with a critical eye so that
we can learn and benefit from history's lessons. Despite his desire
to ignore history, NJ is right at the center of it when he speaks of
genetics and a Sinhala Buddhist central zone (Buddhist haven, core or
heartland?). James W. Gair reminds us, "Sinhala [language]'s very
survival as a clearly Indo-Aryan language can be considered ‘a
minor miracle of linguistic and cultural history" (Studies in South
Asian Linguistics: Sinhala and other South Asian languages, 1998, Chapter
14: How Dravidanized was Sinhala phonology? Pages 185-199).
Humiliated Sinhala Buddhists
If NJ rejects history with his left hand and uses history with his
right hand, his draft manifesto is flawed, on the face of it. His discriminatory
treatment of history is obvious when he talks about "triumphalism."
The armed forces in Sri Lanka consist predominantly of Buddhist and
Christian Sinhala villagers who do not speak English. This happened
after the 1962 Coup. Poor Christians are different from the English-speaking
establishment and organized Christians living in Colombo. It is an objective
historical truth that for 500 years the Sinhala Buddhists faced humiliation
under the Christian rule. This was shaken during 1956-59, but the Colombo
ruling class always had the Christian shadow. During 2000-2002, the
cabinet was 75% Christian. There was even an invitation to Lisbon government
to come to Colombo to celebrate 500 years of Portuguese landing! For
the sins of the Colombo families the Sinhala Buddhist heritage of more
than 2000 years was branded as a society of Sinhala Buddhist Chauvinists.
The war went on for 30 years. Unless, NJ expects people to be saints
or gods (opapathikas), how can he object people celebrating the end
of suffering? How was he going to handle the celebrations by the Jaffna
Tamils with lion flags?
The humiliation on the international front is carried out by the international
press by false propaganda and by omission. For example, these reports
invariably ended with a last sentence, Sri Lanka's Hindu minority is
fighting a war with the Buddhist majority, and Buddhists are killing
Hindus." They omitted to mention that (1) most separatist Tamil
politicians were/are Christians and not Hindus and (2) between 20-30%
of the sacred space in a Buddhist temple is devoted to Hindu gods and
goddesses.
Lessons for Obama
When the then Indian president Dr. Abdul Kalam said that Buddhism provides
answers to world's problems, he was repeating what the late Buddhist
philosophy professor W. S. Karunaratne said when he was in active politics,
"we need an external (bahira) as well as an internal (santhanagatha)
revolution. External revolution (by way of material gain, TVs, Cars)
failed both in Marxist societies and in capitalist-free market societies
because both types ignored the internal revolution (individual spiritual
growth). Buddhist economics discussed in his book Small Is Beautiful
by Schumacher (1973) is one of the many ways of cultivating this spiritual
growth under the Buddhist concept of cyclical nature of life (in historical
religions life is linear not cyclical, no death but a temporary departure
to a holding tank until resurrection). Impermanence, the Middle Path,
come and examine (Ehi Passiko), and not come and believe as in faith-based
religions, influence Buddhist politics, discussed by the American professor
Robert Thurman as recipe for the ills of the American and European societies
(Inner revolution: life, liberty, and the pursuit of real happiness,
1998).
Unlike the false starts of a "Just Society" during the times
of Presidents JRJ and RP, the Mahinda Chinthanaya Program enunciated
after November 2005 provides an example of the pragmatic implementation
of what Dr. Abdul Kalam envisaged as Buddhist answers to world's ills.
Under it a terrorist war ended up as a humanitarian effort to liberate
innocent Tamils. The army gave a new meaning to the theory that all
powers come from the barrel of the gun. It became savior of the Tamils
suffering under dissolving dictatorship. Amazingly, it was this kind
of enlightened approach that the late American Senator William Fulbright
advocated so painfully for America in 1966 by his book "The arrogance
of power." For example, President Obama could benefit a lot on
how to win peace in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Palestine, if he follows
the Fulbright approach which is no different from the Buddhist approach.
Military-Industrial complex
Former army general President Dwight D. Eisenhower left the presidency
in 1961 warning against the corrupting power of the military-industrial
complex in American politics. Wall Street corporate business cartels
finally killed the myth of capitalist democracy in the world (a new
end of history after the supposed end of history with the collapse of
the Berlin wall). He did not see the tyranny of the American two-party
system. As Howard Zinn cites in his book, "A people's history of
the United States, 1492-present," (1980, 1999, page 284) "after
the Civil War both parties (Democratic-Republican) cane under the control
of capitalists. The populist movement that began in the 1870s was a
farmers' reaction to this development (The democratic promise: the populist
movement in America, Lawrence Goodwyn, 1976). For example, this time
I voted for Obama instead of the third-party candidate Ralph Nader,
and expected that Obama would utilize Nader's services (Nader made a
forty-year unique contribution to help American people) just like the
way he hired Republicans to serve on his cabinet. How wonderful for
America and the world if he said as the president-elect that he thought
that Israel should stop bombing the Gaza strip (in the past Began was
asked to halt bombing by President Regan). But President Obama is a
prisoner to the two-party set up. He cannot implement a third-party
agenda despite the fact that most voters perceived him as if he was
a third-party candidate. NJ does not know this ground truth.
As high school students we used to get an essay topic in Ceylon in
the 1960s, "the American presidential election is a device to change
the bull, not the cart," but definitely the election of Obama is
a fact of historic world significance. "The American system of
government is such that even a very bad president cannot totally wreck
it; but the system is such that even an exceptionally talented president
cannot deliver that much," so I read in newsprints here. If President
Carter could get his energy policy implemented in the 1970s America
and the world would have been a much better place. By placing Obama
on so high a pedestal NJ did a disservice to Obama's name, and indirectly
tried to diminish the great achievements already made by his own countryman,
Mahinda Rajapakse. Instead of writing with actual example taken from
the domestic and international behavior of a pragmatic Rajapakse, with
his draft manifesto NJ took everybody on an opapathika ride!
Abraham Lincoln and Gandhi were humans
Abraham Lincoln and Gandhi were great leaders. But a writer of the
caliber of NJ has a duty to treat them as humans and not as gods on
earth. They had many weaknesses, and they faced many human problems.
If we take this perspective, then we can understand the plight of Mahinda
Rajapakse as a statesman. Political corruption, bribery, criminalization
of society etc. are problems that Mahinda Rajapakse inherited and he
must be given time to handle them, before we put the cart before the
horse. It is sad that NJ does not cite a single item favorable to the
Rajapakse administration but lists some gargantuan tasks. If in less
than 3 years he could end a 30-year war other tasks that he had listed
would be like flying kites.
Lincoln suffered and died for his country. He wanted to end slavery.
But he did not accept that Blacks and Whites were equal. He believed
in White supremacy. He promoted actively the idea of sending the freed
slaves to Liberia to colonize in a new country. He was called a dictator
for some actions he had to take to wage the war. At the end of the civil
war, Lincoln let the confederate army to go home with their guns. If
Lincoln was not assassinated, perhaps the history would have been different,
but within decades a new form of slavery came back with Jim Crow (segregation)
laws backed by KKK. In fact, in May 1922, at the Lincoln Memorial dedication
ceremony, ‘black guests were seated in a "colored section"
off to the side'! Some invited blacks left it in protest. Blacks had
to wait until the 1960s to see the melting of vestiges of slavery which
were supposed to have ended in the 1860s.
Gandhi was able to bring down the British rule because he operated
within the "system" (some people think it was Hitler who indirectly
helped former colonies; Churchill had to agree to grant freedom to colonies
to receive crucial U.S. weaponry on loan). Subash Chandra Bose presented
a different approach. In April 1918, Gandhi begged the Viceroy Chelmsford
to allow him to become the agent to recruit Indians for the British
army to fight in the war (Gandhi's truth, Erik H. Erikson, 1969, p.
367). B. R. Ambedkar, born to a poor untouchable family, disliked Gandhi's
methods and started the Dalit Buddhist Movement in India. On December
25, 1947, a month before his death Gandhi supported sending troops to
fight Muslim rebels stating "Beautiful Kashmir was worth fighting
for" (Religion in four dimensions by Walker Kaufmann, 1976, p.
248). Gandhi wanted everybody to learn Hindi. He ridiculed Rajagopalachari
for his inability to speak in Hindi and treated Kamraj Nadar with a
mixture of laughter and scorn for not learning Hindi (imagine SWRD lecturing
GG Ponnambalam and SJV Chelvanayagam to learn Sinhala!) Gandhi said
it was their dharma to learn Hindi which will link the south with the
north (India: the most dangerous decades, Selig S. Harrison, 1960, p.
279). Despite the work of Gandhi and Nehru over 300 million Indians
are living in abject poverty today. Hardly a day passes without some
form of ethnic-tribal-caste clash in somewhere in India.
Abraham Lincoln versus Mahinda Rajapakse
Lincoln did not have to get his political rivals on to his cabinet.
He faced ‘war' at cabinet meetings and only after his death that
his rivals began to talk about him as the greatest statesman in the
world. In Sri Lanka under the Bahobootha Constitution and the electoral
laws, the president is a prisoner of the MPs. Unlike Lincoln, the Sri
Lankan president had no choice but to bribe MPs (with ministerial portfolios)
so that he can get the budget passed. This is pragmatism based on Buddhist
politics. He was able to get the support of so many political parties.
There is already a kind of national government consisting of all communities
of Sri Lanka. With Tamil student learning Sinhala and Sinhala students
learning Tamil as now in progress in 10-15 years there will be no topics
for writers like NJ to dance with.
Whether NJ likes to hear it or not there are three interrelated forces
operating in the world today. Any manifesto that ignores the impact
of them on the Sri Lankan political landscape is a waste of paper. (1)
The last Pope on his trip to India declared 21st century as the century
for Christianizing Asia. (2) The Harvard professor synthesized the East
is East and West is West thinking with his evolving theory of the Clash
of Civilizations. A Palestine in Sri Lanka is the surest way to disrupt
Buddhism and Buddhist heritage and to have a beach head to balkanize
the Hindu India. (3) Free market globalization is remote-controlled
new imperialism which some try to sugar-coat saying the "world
is flat." Discrimination based on wealth is increasing and more
people in the third world are crushed under a WTO. After creating all
the problems for 500 years the White man now comes to share his burden
with R2P. Sri Lanka's village boys and girls in the army, who could
not speak English and who did not have a home of their own let alone
a plot of land for a home, made the NGO-INGO agents of these currents
and cross-currents look like proverbial cat that did something on a
rock.
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