Letter to the President of Sri Lanka from an Ordinary Citizen

Faculty of Social Sciences

South Asian University
New Delhi - 110021
India

09^th January 2015

His Excellency Maithripala Sirisena
The President of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka
The President’s Office
Colombo 1
Sri Lanka

Your Excellency:

Best Wishes for Your Appointment as President

Greetings from South Asian University, New Delhi! Though a citizen of Sri Lanka, I am one of those people who did not vote for you in the presidential election concluded yesterday. Not that I was not interested, but as a person displaced from Sri Lanka as a necessary condition of my present employment in New Delhi, there are no facilities for people like me to vote in our elections despite the great technological advances that all of us routinely enjoy today. But this is a minor matter compared to the challenges you have to face in the immediate future as President and concerned citizen. Let me first of all congratulate you on your election and appointment. I am sure Your Excellency is more acutely aware than I am that the hardest work in your tenure is about to begin. I thought I should share some of my thoughts with you as a fellow citizen who shares with you and many others a great concern for Sri Lanka’s well-being.

The fact that Your Excellency agreed to be the common candidate for the united opposition gave Sri Lanka a much needed breathing space to try and reclaim its democratic practices and its civilizational heritage both of which had been seriously mauled in the previous decade. I am thankful to all the political leaders who made this possible. It made all of us aware that not all is lost, and that there is some room for hope. This reminds me of Reverend Desmond Tutu’s words that “hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.” Your Excellency’s victory, the cobbling together of the coalition which made that victory possible, the selfless, tireless and brave work of many ordinary but committed people from all walks of life against unthinkable odds to ensure that the transition Your Excellency personifies would become possible, point to the kind of hope that makes difficult things possible. These actions symbolize the light beyond the darkness that Reverend Tutu referred to. But Your Excellency, I am sure you agree with me that we cannot live on hope alone. We have to act in ways that make what we have hoped for materialize in our own life time.

This becomes all the more difficult considering the situation you find yourself in today. This path-breaking victory which is a watershed in recent Sri Lankan history was made possible by ideologically and politically disparate groups who have no real history of working together. They were brought together by the specific desire to defeat Mr. Rajapaksa while all of them agreed on the main issues focused on in Your Excellency’s campaign. What would happen in a situation when that much-aspired defeat has actually been achieved? Will they be able to compromise on some matters and agree on more crucial issues in order to move ahead as a country despite very obvious political differences? It remains to be seen if we as a country can move forward to a more secure future or if we might get bogged down in impenetrable political semantics. However, the mere fact that the disorganized opposition that has been in the political wilderness for nearly a decade could ensure your victory within such a short period of time suggests that this might be possible. I hope quite fervently that Your Excellency would be able to lead those around you to govern with wisdom as you step into the future so that what has been achieved in this election is not prematurely lost. I think it was the American political activist, Malcolm X who once said “the future belongs to those who prepare for it today”. So how would we imagine and prepare for our collective future? 

According to Your Excellency’s own election manifesto you are expected to curb the powers of the executive presidency within the first one hundred days. This should be a goal that you should not deviate from like your predecessors. I hope this interest in curbing the powers of the executive is linked to curbing the ability of elected representatives crossing from one party to another for mere personal gain as we have seen time and again since the late 1970s. This needs to be changed so that if an individual truly wishes to change his allegiance for ideological, moral, ethical or any other reason, he should take this step by forfeiting his seat and facing a by-election that allows the electorate to decide again. That would be the democratic way of changing political allegiance rather than allowing crude market conditions to decide these matters. Added to this is the necessity to be very serious about not allowing criminal elements to enter politics at any level even though it is more difficult to implement at a practical level.  

In the last ten years or so, the country’s armed forces and police became for all purposes an extension of the regime rather than unbiased professional entities of the state. More clearly, they became extensions of the ruling dynasty. This is typified by the rather bizarre admission of one of President Rajapaksa’s sons to the Navy and the very unprofessional relationships this admission created in that agency which once played a significant role  in the defeat of the LTTE. I know that many officers and ordinary men and women in these services were very uncomfortable with this situation; yet they had no real choice. I hope Your Excellency would be able to take necessary measures to re-establish these institutions as agencies of the state under a rational command structure so that public confidence in them might be restored.

Your Excellency, your campaign focused a great deal of attention on the extensive corruption that had developed in all sectors of our society over the last decade. During the campaign, in addition to you, members of the Janata Vimukti Peramuna, the Jatika Hela Urumaya and the United National Party articulated quite convincingly the extensive level of this corruption. Much of the evidence presented is still in the public domain. The Mongolian politician Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj has noted that “corruption is a true enemy to development.” This is because corruption adds to the costs of development activities and becomes a long-term burden for the people. We have set in place some of the most vulgar systems of crony capitalism in South Asia. We as a collective of people prefer not to know how some of our top politicians have become so visibly rich in alarmingly short periods of time, owning incalculable properties both locally and abroad. In this context, the only way in which we can address corruption in the long run is to establish beyond any doubt that corruption does not pay. This means that corruption in ministries, government departments, armed forces, universities, among powerful families and wherever else, must be investigated. And corruption is not only about kickbacks and the misuse of funds, but also about the abuse of power. Consequent to legally and ethically constituted investigations, the culprits must be punished irrespective of their positions in society and wherever in the world they might be at present. But I would emphasize that this must only be done as matter of law following due process, and not as a matter of vengeance and an exercise of the law of the jungle. The country has suffered enough already under such a dispensation. But this is a policy that must be relentlessly pursued to its logical conclusion. I hope Your Excellency’s administration is up to this task.

My next concern is the extremely politicized public sector, civil service and the foreign service. While the politicization of Sri Lanka’s civil service began when Mr. J. R. Jayawardena appointed an ex-army officer as the Government Agent for Gampaha in the late 1970s, it became much worse under Mr. Rajapaksa’s tenure when his own brother was appointed as the Secretary of Defense. In addition, many unqualified people with no semblance of ethics or morals were put in charge of public sector entities including Sri Lankan Airlines, and they were allowed to relentlessly plunder public assets as if it were their birthright. Our embassies were staffed with completely incompetent political appointees with no foreign policy or public service experience. As a result, competent and well-trained career officers were sidelined and their chances of heading missions overseas or making meaningful contributions to foreign policy formation became marginal. The blunders we have made in diplomacy and our isolation in the world of nations, the unhealthy over-dependence on China to deal with thorny world affairs as well as for local development projects clearly indicate this state of affairs. I hope Your Excellency and your administration would take urgent steps as a matter of priority to depoliticize these institutions and services and reestablish their sense of professionalism and self-worth which has been mercilessly dismantled in recent times.

Similarly, universities in our country have been so extremely politicized that they fail to function effectively as centers of excellence they once were and as the conscience of the nation. It is in this context that Professor Gananath Obeyesekere wrote to President Rajapaksa in 2012 and noted that “there is another challenge for a wise leader, and that is to bring back the universities to their early glory by supporting them at every level because a world bereft of intellectual life will end up as a dreary world.” But when we take stock of the rather obvious lack of intellectual caliber among the Vice Chancellors recently appointed to our universities, the actions of the chairperson of the University Grants Commission and the public utterances of the Minister of Higher Education, it is quite clear that neither Mr. Rajapaksa nor his government had the slightest idea as to what higher education was all about. This is even clearer when we juxtapose their collective attitude against the very reasonable demands presented by university teachers in recent protests and negotiations. For Mr. Rajapaksa’s government, universities were merely something that needed to be curbed and controlled. Given the fact that many of my former colleagues selflessly supported Your Excellency’s campaign thinking only that it is the right thing to do for the betterment of the country and not of any personal perks for themselves, my hope is that you would help deliver our universities from the present quagmire they are entrapped in. I hope Your Excellency’s government would exhibit the necessary wisdom to establish a practice of appointing university Vice Chancellors through a system delinked from narrow party politics and government interference.

One of the main priorities Your Excellency’s administration needs to pay attention to is the way in which we as a society and the state deal with ethno-religious minorities. Ayn Rand has quite correctly noted that “individual rights are not subject to a public vote” in the context of which “a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities.” I think this a very basic principle that any sane society should be able to live with and cherish. Despite the rhetoric and irrespective of our very long and exemplary history of accommodating different people, many of us today seem to consider minority groups as a problem. It is precisely that kind of fundamentally faulty attitude that created the Tamil militancy in the first place. Already, many people are equating the voting pattern of Tamil citizens in the northeast in the recently concluded election with the map of Elam. It is indeed quite saddening that even after coming out of a very destructive and painful war which consumed and scarred all of us, many of our people are still incapable of thinking beyond parochial ethno-religious lines, and imagine a polity and a collective future as an inclusive nation. 

I find it quite intriguing and hopeful that such a mandate for you came from these people without any preconditions in exchange for their support. This is particularly so in a context where Your Excellency’s own campaign hardly focused on the northeast as a region and crucial issues of security and personal anxieties which particularly Muslims and Tamils in the country feel at present. Much of the anxieties felt by minority groups has come about as a result of the activities of fascist groups such as the Bodu Bala Sena which your predecessor encouraged almost as part of domestic political policy augmented by the silence of large sections of ordinary Buddhists, and also as a result of the wholly security-centered postwar internal policy in the northeast. It must be one of Your Excellency’s priorities to ensure that the present mandate you have very clearly received does not become yet another missed opportunity. We can, after all ensure the security of the northeast in particular and the country in general, and also ensure minorities becoming an integral part of our society. If we are welcoming and inclusive in our economic, educational, language and cultural policies, their own exclusivist tendencies that sometimes manifest would simply become irrelevant. But I personally feel that this kind of overarching tolerance and compassion which both Your Excellency and I receive from our own religious background in Buddhism, must legally and institutionally be preceded by a specific kind of intolerance. That is, the intolerance of any kind of intolerance. This means that legally and institutionally, any organization that promotes sectarianism and violence, however powerful they might be, should not be allowed to have any legitimate existence in our society. 

Your Excellency’s campaign endured not only enormous financial onslaught from Mr. Rajapaksa’s campaign but also the unethical use of state resources and relentless violence. But you prevailed. Why the election was not as bloody as many predicted it would be was mostly due to the credit of the restraint that your own campaign very clearly exhibited. It also helped that the Commissioner of Elections, the Inspector General of Police and the Commander of the Army exhibited much needed qualities of leadership at this crucial moment. Needless to say, such exemplary behavior which  we had once expected from public officials have been forgotten about in recent times. I hope this positive experience of which you are already a part would be the basis upon which a tolerant, enlightened, and sensible political culture could be established in our country.

Let me end my rather long letter with a personal note. I came to South Asian University which was collectively established by the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation in 2011 because I strongly believed in the idea of the university as a centre of excellence for young people from the region. It is the result of the thinking of some very sensible people in our region. Even though my initial idea was to come and help set up this institution and go back to Sri Lanka, I had to resign from my position at the University of Colombo as I could not get the required long-term leave I needed due to systemic failures and also due to a lack of institutional support; however, I don’t wish to dwell on this point. Even though Sri Lankan taxpayers as well as taxpayers in other South Asian countries help maintain the South Asian University, only the government of India seems to pay some attention to it. What is the status of our citizens in the university, how are public funds sent from Sri Lanka for the university’s upkeep utilized and what are  Sri Lankan students’ experiences about the place, is the sense of collective South Asian sensibility that is a stated priority for the university being created? I often wonder if anyone in the Ministry of Higher Education or the University Grants Commission in Colombo ever thought of these questions. In this context, I hope Your Excellency’s administration would take a keen interest in the functioning of the university and help towards its development. By this however, I do not mean political interference in the day-to-day running of the university which has ruined once-reputed universities in Sri Lanka and elsewhere in South Asia.

Despite the difficult path ahead, I hope the democratic and civilizational space Your Excellency, Hon. Prime Minster, Ranil Wickramasinghe, your colleagues and many concerned citizens have opened up in our country would prevail. It is the Buddha who said long time ago, “there are only two mistakes one can make along the road to the truth; not going all the way, and not starting.” These are two mistakes neither Your Excellency nor your coalition partners can afford to make. These are also mistakes that no other Sri Lankan citizens can afford to make as well.

I wish Your Excellency the best of luck and the blessings of the Triple Gem.

Very sincerely,

Sasanka Perera

Professor and Dean
Faculty of Social Sciences 

(This letter was sent to President Sirseina on 9th January 2015 and was initially published at: http://groundviews.org/2015/01/13/best-wishes-for-your-appointment-as-president/ )

The Sound of Silence

Photograph by Joyashree Sarma, Mphil/PhD Program in Sociology

Avijit Roy, a writer and an acclaimed champion of ‘secularism’ and freedom of expression was killed in a Dhaka street on 26th February 2015. Very clearly, to deserve this terrible public execution, he had committed two crimes: One was that he had an opinion which was not shared by some others in Bangladesh. The second was that much of what he believed in was expressed openly in the public domain, and often through Mukta-Mona (free mind), a Bengali blogging platform which he had established after migrating to the US in 2007. Roy was not the first to be hounded or killed in Bangladesh for his opinions. He will not be the last.

But this is not merely a Bangladeshi phenomenon, it is a form of global intolerance, which nevertheless has a profoundly obvious presence across South Asia. In 2011, Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab Province in Pakistan was killed in Islamabad by one of his own bodyguards. His crime was his defense of a Christian woman who was sentenced to death in terms of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws. Lasantha Wickrematunge, the editor of the Sunday Leader was killed in Colombo in January 2009, and his crime was his criticism of the government of the former president of Sri Lanka. Taunted by people who had issues with his novel, Madhorubhagan, Indian writer Perumal Murugan decided on his own to cease his passionate engagement with creative writing. He had posted on his Facebook account not too long ago, “Perumal Murugan, the writer is dead. As he is no God, he is not going to resurrect himself. He also has no faith in rebirth. An ordinary teacher, he will live as P. Murugan. Leave him alone.”[1] Though his corporeal body was not harmed, his emotions and his will to write and express were shattered, and the end result was not too different from the fate of the others referred to earlier. 

In all of our countries, books and films have been banned for very similar reasons under similar circumstances. In these different places, these people were all silenced and their ideas erased by our own people who believed that only one kind of truth and reality should exist. That is, one kind of powerful truth is expected to prevail, be it political, religious or both, within a larger domain of silence and acceptance. Many more have been killed in South Asia under similar circumstances since these killings and muzzling of voices. And by all indicators, going by the nature of relative state (in)action in theses contexts in South Asia and the relative lackluster public opinion, these kinds of actions will continue. 

Whenever I am confronted with this discomforting expansion of silence and the accompanying expansion if a single claim for ‘truth’ that must necessarily hold sway in our countries, I am always reminded of an encounter attributed to a group of people known as the Kalamas who lived in Kesaputta and the Buddha nearly three thousand years ago. These were our ancestors living, thinking and debating very much within the borders we call South Asia today. But they also had encountered the spectre of a singular truth and its rhetoric for superiority in their time. The Kalamas’ question to the Buddha was to figure out how to ‘know’ what is ‘right’. According to the narrative, they asked the Buddha: “Lord, some teachers come to Kesaputta, expounding and glorifying their own doctrines. But as for the doctrine of others, they abuse them, disparage them, deprecate them, and pull them to pieces. Other teachers, on coming to Kesaputta, do the same thing. When we listen to them, we feel doubt and uncertainty as to which of these teachers are speaking truth and which are lying."[2] What is expressed here all those years ago have an uncanny similarity with what we see in our region at present. 

The Buddha gave the following response to the Kalamas: “Come, Kalamas. Don't go by reports, by legend, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by consistency with your own laws, by probability, or by the thought, 'This contemplative is our teacher.' When you know for yourselves that 'these mental qualities are unskillful; these mental qualities are blameworthy; these mental qualities are criticized by the wise; these mental qualities when acted on lead to harm and suffering' then abandon them. When you know for yourselves that 'these mental qualities are skillful; these mental qualities are blameless; these mental qualities are praised by the wise; these mental qualities when acted on lead to well-being and happiness' then keep following them."[3] Surely, this encounter, in terms of the circumstances, the question posed and the response given is not about religion. Instead, we can see this has much to do with the freedom to think and freedom to express, and more importantly, to have the choice and the right to do these things. 

This is a state of logic and commonsense that prevailed in the minds of thinking people in our region all these years ago. I find it very sad, when we talk of our past with much rhetoric and virulence these days, we often forget what was truly unique in our past and remember and recall only what might best be left in the haziness of the past and myth.

What the killings of today and the anticipated silence through these acts clearly show is a very radical shrinking of our public sphere and a relentless encroachment of our collective conscience and a dismantling of our collective intellectual traditions. What we see is an emergent fear of the plurality of ideas and an intolerance of engaged and reflective dissent. 

Photograph by Joyashree Sarma, Mphil/PhD Program in Sociology

In these grim circumstances, when students of the Department of Sociology at South Asian University associated with the departmental students’ blog, ‘Rickshaw’ organized a ‘public meeting’ on the theme, ‘Muzzling Freedom, Killing Dissent: South Asian Scene’, taking the killing of Avijit Roy as its point of departure on 5th March 2015, I wondered what it means for the university, and by extension South Asian citizenship. I also wondered if it would mean anything at all going by the large regional realities all of us are very familiar with. A handful of students and faculty members constituting a panel expressed what the incident and the larger issues it entails, mean to them. Some other students also took part in the discussion. 

But obviously going by the student and faculty population in the university, most people clearly had other things to do, going by their absence. I have no doubt, for each individual whatever else they had to do, must have been important. But then, this is precisely what the larger South Asian polity’s inactivity in the context of the regions’ larger crises including the intolerance of ideas and dissent has also indicated. If issues such as the shrinking public sphere in our time do not touch our house, salary, scholarship, our right to buy a car and so on, it appears that killings and dismantling of collective conscience that is necessary to expand the singular truth in our time could be tolerated. We can, as we have seen in many parts of the region, be contended with gleaming highways, chandelier-hugging five star hotels, urban beatification and other manifestations of ‘development.’

Photograph by Joyashree Sarma, Mphil/PhD Program in Sociology

It seems to me this is the kind of reality my friend and poet, Rudramurti Cheran wrote in another context as “the irresponsibility of distance”. If so, this also means that the people perpetuating the intolerance of the plurality of ideas that has become endemic in our region are not merely religious and political extremists as often claimed. The silence of ordinary and often reasonable people is as culpable. So the small ‘public meeting’ at South Asian University is not going to change the direction of South Asia’s future or the way its citizens think for sure. But it indicates that our collective conscience still flickers on and off and sometimes can be seen above the glitter of irrationality and disinterest.

_______________________________

Notes

[1]. http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/perumal-murugan-gives-up-writing/article6784745.ece
[2]. http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/rosenberg/righttoask.html
[3]. http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/rosenberg/righttoask.html