Post-Colonial Perspectives 13 – New political alliances

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Bandaranaike, Champika Ranawaka, Chanaka Amaratunga, Cyril Mathew, Dhammika, Dinesh Gunawardena, IPKF, J R Jayewardene, Jaffna Library, JVP, LTTE, Mr Ashraff, Mr Yoheswaran, Ossie Abeygunasekera, Ranasinghe Premadasa, Ratnasiri Wickramanayake, Referendum, Vijaya Kumaranatunga

By the late eighties, Sri Lanka was in a state of turmoil. In the North and East, the Tigers were battling with the Indian Peace Keeping Force. In the South the JVP was gaining in strength, aided I believe by several SLFP members who saw this as the only chance of getting rid of the authoritarian government J R had developed, with not even a pretence of fair elections. The techniques initiated at the election to the Jaffna District Development Council in 1981, which had included murderous intimidation of opposition politicians (I was in Parliament when the MP for Jaffna, Mr Yoheswaran, subsequently assassinated by the LTTE, described how he had barely escaped with his life) and gratuitous violence such as the burning of the Jaffna Public Library, had been applied successfully in the country at large.

Given the absurdity of the Referendum which put off elections to Parliament for six years, the wholesale prevention of opposition meetings, the total control of the media, and then to make doubly sure the ruthless stuffing of ballot boxes (not just impersonation but the phenomenon of armed gangs taking over whole ballot books from Returning Officers), I am astonished at how the chattering classes, who accepted all this because it was done by their favoured patron, now claim two decades later with a very different sort of duly elected government in power that democracy is in danger.

The stand taken by Chanaka then was the more admirable, and I continue proud of the dissent we expressed in the days before this became fashionable. But the greatest credit I think has to be taken by the old Left, which not only opposed J R’s authoritarianism and racism, but then had also to face violence from the JVP when they came out in support of the Indo-Lankan Accord. In the Provincial Council elections that took place in 1988, they came under attack on both sides, and some brave characters lost their lives, as for instance the Communist Party stalwart who had helped print the Liberal Party newsletters.

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Colombo Changes 13 – On my own

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Alfie Moragoda, Clarrie Gunawardena, Esmond Wickremesinghe, J R Jayewardene, Jaffna Library, Lakshman Wickremesinghe, Ravi John, Richard de Zoysa, Romesh Soysa, Sarath Muttetuwegama, Tissa Jayatilleke

Thirty years ago then was a fallow period , as I came to terms with the realities of a rigid regime. The position I had hoped for at the Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies vanished into thin air, and the editor of the ‘Sunday Times’ was compelled to stop my weekly literature column. All this was the more upsetting in that Colombo still assumed that all was well with the government and the country, and it must be one’s own fault if one was treated by the government as an enemy of the people, characterized by someone on the UNP Working Committee, as my uncle Esmond entertainingly described it, as a bearded Communist.

I was reminded then of the delightful Art Buchwald satire I had read many years ago of a country that received a lot of American aid, because it had a small Communist party. The aid had a beneficial effect and the country advanced into prosperity, with the Communists too benefiting. But when they gave up their old ideology, the Americans decided that aid was no longer necessary – so that the government had to beg them to keep the party going, to ensure further inflows of aid.

That story had a more preposterous incarnation in Sri Lanka two years later, when Jayewardene permitted appalling attacks on Tamils, and then claimed that this was the understandable response of the Sinhalese to efforts to divide the country. He therefore introduced legislation which in effect led to the elimination of the TULF from Parliament. That however proved too much for his Western allies, so before long the government reversed its stand and claimed that the attacks had been launched by  Communists. The old Stalinist Communist Party was proscribed, along with Vasudeva Nanayakkara’s Revolutionary Trostskyists and the JVP which Jayewardene had revived after he came into power.

Colombo Changes 11 – Resignation

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Bandaranaike, J R Jayewardene, Jaffna Library, Lakshman Wickremesinghe, Peradeniya

Innocence about what was going on in Sri Lanka did not in fact last very long. Though the country had seemed full of hope after the economic reforms introduced by the Jayewardene government in 1977, by 1980 the flip side of the reforms was evident. In July there occurred the General Strike that was dealt with, not so much firmly, as brutally.

That particular episode did not worry me unduly, for it seemed to me that an elected government had every right to try out new policies. If the opposition decided on violent confrontation, government was entitled to respond. The relentless critiques of my uncle Lakshman however, Chairman by then I think of the Civil Rights Movement, in addition to being Bishop of Kurunagala, made me realize that the government’s response was disproportionate. Perhaps as a mark of what still interested me most, what brought home to me most vividly the determination of the government to use violence to crush even mild opposition was the manhandling of Prof Sarachchandra, when he was to deliver a lecture that would have been simply mildly critical of government policies.

The bitter anguish of the students who insisted on taking me to see the burnt out shell …

Lakshman was more concerned by then about what was going on in the North. Though initially I had thought he was being dramatic in predicting civil war if the government did not moderate its violence, it gradually became clear that Jayewardene’s policies were almost deliberately provocative. I only properly understood the situation however in 1981, when I went to lecture at Jaffna University shortly after government goons had set fire to the Public Library. The bitter anguish of the students who insisted on taking me to see the burnt out shell made me realize the great gulf the government had created in trying to impose its will on the North.