By Rohana R. Wasala

This year, we are supposed to be celebrating 69 years of independence from the British. But, with  the national security deteriorating, the economy taking a nosedive, and inter-communal relationships unravelling as never before, one could wonder what there is to celebrate. The disconcerting truth is that, politically and economically, we have been returned to the state of dependence on foreign interlopers that we were deemed to have left seven decades ago. When all’s said and done, May 2009 saw the end of the Tamil separatist problem that had plagued our country since 1949 and frustrated all our efforts to forge ahead as a free people; it also marked the beginning of an era of national resurgence in the economic, social and political spheres. This was not to the liking of internal and external elements with different personal axes to grind. The country’s determined march towards progress was conspiratorially brought to an abrupt end.

Only those citizens who have a genuine love for Sri Lanka as their inalienable inheritance, as the land of their ancestors who built up a unique island civilization, and who do not look upon it as a piece of earth to grab possession of, or to plunder, are determined to see it survive into the future as one undivided country.  It was that just aspiration of the Sinhalese that is now being challenged. Nationalism is not a bad thing; it is not the same as racism. The majority of the ordinary British and the Americans have discovered this recently, though the long entrenched subversive Western media are trying to misrepresent the situation. The ordinary British and Americans have never been our enemies, though their rulers have been nothing else. However, we need not worry about whether the British and Americans accept or reject nationalism. That is up to them as free peoples. As for us, we must embrace nationalism since we cannot willingly give up our historical national identity.

What Sri Lanka was granted in 1948 was the status of a ‘dominion’. ‘Dominion status’ is defined in Encyclopaedia Britannica (updated 1998)thus: Although there was no formal definition of dominion status, a pronouncement by the Imperial Conference of 1926 described Great Britain and the dominions as autonomous communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs, though united by a common allegiance to the Crown and freely associated as members of the British Commonwealth of Nations.” Our independence was therefore effectively hamstrung by two conditions: allegiance to the (British) Crown and membership of the British Commonwealth of Nations. So, theoretically at least, we became an ‘independent’ dominion within the British empire; we were not made really free. The British empire was even then only nominal, but that is a different matter. As far as we are concerned, we are still subject to imperialist intervention in our affairs.

It was the ‘Brown Sahib’ class politically led by the leader of the United National Party Mr D.S. Senanayake (and by his successors after his sudden death in a horse-riding accident in 1952), who stepped into the shoes of the departing colonialists.  Brown Sahib” was a derogative term used by critics of that class. It was applied to natives of South Asian countries that the British ruled as their colonies who had been influenced by European/British culture and thinking, and who adopted a Western lifestyle and a servile Western bias in politics. In Sri Lanka, they were toppled from power democratically in 1956 by an alliance of parties led by Mr S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike the leader of the SLFP, ushering in the ‘era of the common man’. He preferred a  socialist economic model to the UNP’s capitalist one. It was Mr Bandaranaike who initiated nationalising private or foreign owned assets such as the Trincomalee harbour and oil companies. The changes that Mr Bandaranaike brought about had been long overdue. (By the way, Mr D.S. Senanayake who Mr Bandaranaike disagreed with and hence parted ways with to form his own Sri Lanka Freedom Party, was also a genuinely patriotic nationalist, though he had to serve the interests of his West-oriented reactionary class under the then prevailing circumstances; in spite of his comprador social background he was an honest Sinhalese Buddhist political leader who had great empathy with his people.)

An event that impressed on the public the fact that we hadn’t still moved away from the shadow of British imperialism even after the 1956 ‘revolution’ was when the suspects of the 1971 JVP insurrection were formally accused of rebelling against the queen of Britain, instead of against the Sri Lankan state/ government. It was a legal requirement, a corollary of the country’s dominion status. (Incidentally, the queen has sent warm greetings for this year’s independence day celebrations, as reported in the media; that is nothing unusual, for she is the head of the commonwealth.) Under Mrs Sirimao Bandaranaike’s SLFP-led coalition of left parties that had swept the polls in 1970, a republican constitution was adopted in 1972, that significantly distanced the country from the sphere of British influence. The UNP government of Mr J.R. Jayawardane that ousted Mrs Bandaranaike in 1977, drafted and promulgated the second republican constitution (1978), which still operates. Both those constitutions were formulated by local constitutional experts and were adopted by MPs who had been elected to office by the people. Not the same thing can be said about the proposed constitutional reform or reformulation program. According to informed critics, the yahapalana government has not got a popular mandate to bring in a new constitution. The genuine will of the multiethnic public has not been ascertained to guide the current constitution making process. Federalism is what the government wants to introduce to please the Tamil diaspora, the Western powers and the Indians. But it will only alienate the communities from each other, instead of uniting them into a single sovereign people. It threatens to put a forced end to our 2600 year unitary state of Sinhale. Some foreign NGOs and some local media seem to have been paid money to bamboozle the ill-informed public into accepting the new constitution when it is submitted for a referendum.

The right-leaning UNP has always been pro- West. The left-leaning SLFP was always opposed to the UNP’s foreign policy orientation and its basic capitalist economic strategy associated with total reliance on the private sector. On the contrary, the SLFP prefers a more non-aligned foreign policy, and a more public sector based economic model that, nevertheless, takes care of the local entrepreneurs . The uneasy ad hoc alliance that forms the so-called yahapalana regime is actually the baby of a shotgun marriage between two rival groups (the UNP and a section of the SLFP) that hardly ever see eye to eye with each other regarding those two important matters. This malformed creature is likely to reverse the historic victory of 2009, which itself was the culmination of the transition that was launched by the pioneer of the SLFP in 1956. Will the Brown Sahibs eventually succeed in eliminating the common people, though the latter are deemed to be sovereign?

It is doubtful whether our average legislators, most of whom are innocent of knowledge, intelligence, and common sense, have taken at least a cursory glance at the constitutional proposals. During a political debate broadcast on Sirasa TV some time ago, a participant (I’m not sure if it was an MP, PC or LG councillor) was asked by the moderator to explain what he understood by the term ‘mega-polis’. The panel member’s response must have surprised the viewers, for he said that since the law and order situation in the country was in a bad way, with the crime rate rising, this was an important subject, implying that, to him ‘mega-polis’ meant a ‘mega’ police! If he had wanted to find out what the minister of mega-polis development was actually responsible for, he would have learnt what ordinary people know: that a mega-polis means a large city. If they remain ignorant even about the subjects of their ministers, it is hard to imagine that they would make an effort to read through the new constitutional proposals to see what the obscure constitutional experts are trying to enforce amidst a chorus of dissent from patriotic citizens.

Written on February 4, 2017