Mario Perera,Kadawata

This morning seeing our President return from abroad, descending from the plane, kneeling and worshiping the soil of Sri Lanka would no doubt have brought tears to many an eye, in any case it did to mine. If these white “hypocrisies” watched the reception accorded to our president, and the heart warming discourses of one and all that form the fabric of our civil society, they would perhaps realize, if they have eyes to see, that the entire nation is with its leader, that this leader is the embodiment of our fondest national aspiration, that of being ONE.

We celebrate the 4th of February as our National Independence day. We know however that our independence was an adjunct of Indian independence. We benefited from the struggle India undertook to rid herself of the white man’s rule. Furthermore, that independence was inserted into the history of our party politics which has been the bane of our civic lives. Long ago I expressed the view that we will never feel independent unless we win it, like so many others did, with our blood. That utterance shocked some of my friends. Do you want to see bloodshed in our country they asked? Nobody wants bloodshed, but freedom is somehow synonymous with blood, as shown in history. Our independence of the 4th of February was a paperwork effort, a lip service endeavour. We were paper lions, the beneficiaries of the Indian struggle, the struggle that saw the emergence of the Congress as the governing body. And today quite unexpectedly, surprisingly and surely SYMBOLICALLY, the same scenario has once again unfolded itself before our eyes. We have gained our Independence, our real one this time with our blood, and the Congress has swept the polls in India. Our destiny is somehow irrevocably tied together with that of India. The Congress victory in the whole of India and in TAMIL NADU especially, just goes to show the ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”¹…”eye-wash’ that is party politics. In Tamil Nadu the parties that espoused the so called ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”¹…”Sri Lankan Tamil cause’ were swept aside by Indian Tamil voters. They voted for the Congress knowing very well that it has no sympathy for the LTTE the murderers of Rajiv Gandhi. These ordinary voters, especially those of Tamil Nadu overtly accepted the fact that the internal matters of Sri Lanka are for Sri Lanka to solve. They have accepted the sovereignty and integrity of Sri Lanka, which the white so called ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”¹…”democratic hypocrisies’ could not see in their power hunger and greed for filthy lucre.

The arrival of our President into a reunified country is also symbolic. No one with even an iota of knowledge of our history will forget the arrival of MAHINDA the arahat on our soil. He too came through the air and from abroad. He came with the message of liberation, liberation from suffering. Independence is primarily freedom from suffering. It is freedom from chains, from bondage. The 4th of February event did nothing of that sort. From a colonial dominated country we made a transit to a neo-colonial dominated nation seeing nothing else but carrots and sticks held by white fingers, dangling before us, exactly as at this present moment. Just a few days ago Gordon Brown was menacingly pointing his finger at our President. My feelings of decency prevent me from telling the ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”¹…”White-Brown’ bluntly where to stick his finger. Moreover he has a multiple choice for inserting his digital suppository; himself, Hilary Clinton, Miliband, Kouchner among others. “Do it on your vile bodies, Brown”. We resisted them all and we conquered. Rudyard Kipling perhaps thought of Sri Lanka when he penned the ringing lines;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn out tools;

Yes, we did just that and so witnessed the dawn of our real independence. We won it with our blood, our own our very own, the blood of the flower of our youth, the blood of our future. The blood that was shed, was not that of those nurtured in the colonial culture, but of those soaked in the “wewa (lake),gama (village),daboba (temple), civilization. No one will ever contest that.

Let us relegate the so called political party ushered independence dates, such as that of 1948, or that of 1956 or any other to their due places within their due perspectives. That was the paper independence wrought by cardboard giants for the vain glory of family power blocks, as a heritage for their scions. The independence of the 17th May 2009 is the reality we have dreamt about, the reality that has come about. We did it against all odds of crooked men and women hiding behind State power and State sponsored organizations and individuals working according to their egoistic agendas. We fought the terrorists of our own soil, and the State terrorists, the white ones of the USA and the European Union, headed by the detestable erstwhile colonial pirate and swindler.

And in this hour of our glory, our reunification written in the red letters of the blood of our youth, let us be grateful to those who stood by us to the last: India, China, Japan, Russia, Iran, Lybia, Turkey, many Muslim nations and the rest. Let us espouse their causes against these white hypocrites. Let us vote with them and for them at all international forums, without fear as they did for us. The day of victory has dawned; the day of truth has risen. The masks have been rent aside, the true faces exposed. We have won, the truth has won, and we are ONE.