Last week we took a long walk down memory lane. It was to a time when Sri Lanka then used to be a nation of diplomatists (a few of note of global calibre), demagogues able to move a nation’s mighty spirit and break a people’s backbone in the same breath, and avid pioneers in the spheres of civics and governance. And oh, ‘e pluribus unum’… if not quite yet one people, one nation.
A handful of readers were probably prone to think of Ceylonese heads of UN agencies and debonair foreign ministers who once did our little island nation proud by boxing above its weight.
This week you might be tempted to take a short stroll to the nearest neighbourhood suburb for that rally which has a slim potential to position Nugegoda as another Nuremberg in terms of mass movements away from popular democracy towards the interests of a particularly mercantilist class. And also from an emerging pluralism back to ethnic particularism and/or socio-cultural and pseudo-religious exceptionalism. Or the agendas of some agents provocateurs posing as part of an ostensible joint opposition event.
But saner counsel, such as that which passes for it these days, will probably prevail later in the day. And a so-called joint Opposition rally – ironically sans the leader of the Opposition and his party – will rally to protest against the incumbent regime.
The other ironies that abound run the gamut from discredited mainstream parties that were once in Government and only recently rejected by the people – not once, but no less than three times in successive polls – protesting against alleged corruption by their successors in executive and legislative office, to sly attempts to privilege a perspective of the past in which race and religion are key. Have they no shame, or sense of history? Or is this what desperation smells like?
Shall we content ourselves – instead of a jaunt to that junction – with perambulating through the pages of this journal you’re perusing at present? Let’s borrow a leaf from notebooks of yesteryear. In which yours truly penned a piece then titled ‘No! to Nugegoda as a Nuremberg’ then, which may still have a little usefulness left in it, now.
Look back in anger (and other emotions)
For what it is worth, and also because the monsoonal winds blowing south from temple-side Trincomalee these days has the rank odour of racism and religious bigotry in it, find below the summary of the chief arguments I made…
A. Nationalistic rallies more often than not escalate into anti-democratic, exclusionary politics
There was an uncanny parallel between the rally imagery at Nugegoda in 2017 and the infamous rallies at Nuremberg in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
The use of mass ‘storm-trooper style’ pageantry, demagogic speeches and tribal mobilisation set the tone for the putsch of 2018 and the presidential victory of 2019.
That it took the agitation of the Aragalaya and all the angst that it created before the people’s movement of 2022 brought popular sovereignty to the fore and evicted arrogant yet incompetent and arguably corrupt governors is a lesson not to be forgotten. There is more than the veracity of a prominent politico’s law degree riding on the revelations to be made yet.
B. Ethnic particularism and nostalgic triumphalism distort history and fuel divisiveness
Rallying forces that evoke a war-victory nostalgia, post 2009 in Sri Lanka, cast present Governments as weak, dithering, compromised, class interests oriented, second class or third rate.
Invocation of ethnic-nationalist triumphalism (and the attendant desire to return to a golden era) marginalises other groups, silences critical engagement or contrary views, and ignores the pluralistic multi-ethnic nature of the nation that defeated terrorism together.
After all, isn’t that what the SLPP rump in Parliament earnestly desires – a pivot on which to rotate the national narrative back to past triumphs and present tragedies in terms of great leaders long ignored?
Threatening to gloss over mistakes made, abuses or atrocities committed and rights violations still not righted to date, such ethnic particularism reduces a fragilely united national community to a single dominant entity; or perhaps worse, a singular political movement championing an exceptionalist view of Sri Lanka.
A dominant ethnicity or its champions privileges a false narrative and sidelines others.
C.Ethno-nationalistic chauvinism threatens the peace, undermines socio-cultural cohesion and thwarts political accountability
The avatar of aggressive nationalism at Nugegoda 2017 – and its 2025 reincarnation, if even some of its rising stars follow suit with similarly vitriolic slogans, scapegoating of perceived traitors to the putative national cause and isolation of minorities – risks stepping beyond symbolic protest into real violence, which our country can ill-afford at this precarious juncture in its national recovery journey.
It could at the very least destabilise civic order by disrupting both traffic in the town and thought patterns in the city and beyond the pale. There is more than the chagrin of motorists and the consternation of shopkeepers at stake.
That currently discredited narratives of the past – with patriotism at the fore – loom like a resurgent nationalism over national interests must be cause for concern not only for citizens and rally-goers. But also all of us who opt out of participating in a protest. Only to find rejected representatives of the people are being smuggled into coinage through a faux-treasury of old ideas.
When even the expression of such chauvinistic ideas becomes normalised, tasks such as critical oversight of Government, protecting minority rights, and bringing
corruption to account, book
or court – all these suffer very
badly indeed, as 2005-2015 and 2019-2022/4 may well remind us.
The state and law enforcement, other Opposition parties and right-thinking citizens with the twin auguries of hindsight and foresight would do well to ‘put their foot down with a firm hand’. And beyond the exercise of the right of any political party to march, say ‘enough is enough’ if #2025 imitates #2017 closely and dangerously.
By all means, let the partial Opposition protest this Government’s alleged chicanery, mismanagement or favouritism as a pretext to regain some currency among an electorate disgruntled by tax and cost-of-living burdens.
It is another matter altogether if anyone protesting seeks to chivvy a regime that is ostensibly on the right path as regards national reconciliation efforts that privilege pluralism and peace with justice for all.
The past is prologue
All of the above, just in case town and country are still tempted to flock to a junior demagogue’s call, as they were to that of the paterfamilias in the past. After all, what else can one say to drive home again – in case the brutal, bitter and bloody lessons of 2022/4 are forgotten or forcibly suppressed – the point that ethno-nationalistic rallies can undermine the cause and carriage of justice, weaken the rule of law, and undo a hard-won peace and socio-political stability.
It is interesting to note from the timing of the rally that its organisers evidently believe they still command a sizeable following in town and country despite electoral trouncings. Not simply the sentimentality of commemorative celebrations for the grand old man of southern politics to account for then.
There is the danger that the assumed vacuum of salutary developments on the political front can be supplanted by a resurgent third force, which the SLPP and its cohorts in places of power, professions and spirituality now are. Such an irony won’t be lost on the JVP-led NPP, which was once such a rank outsider, and now very much ensconced in the corridors and seats of power.
Decline and fall
Last week I also essayed a weary observation that ‘today, we are in danger of descending from being a democracy of the corrupt into a confederacy of dunces’. And added, rather fatuously, that ‘often it is hard to say which option one prefers’.
After seven days of recovering my sense of the prudent following my fall from grace into a state of lapsed republicanism, I am fairly certain which option – warts and all – I’d opt for now.
And also last week I rested content in the assumption that at least one is safe to critically engage with the powers that be in the perhaps forlorn hope that speaking truth to power will work now as it never did then to further the national interest.
One was also inclined to suggest that if the bygone era of egregious governance was characterised by abductions, assassinations and the aggressive policing of dissent, the ethos of civics going forward may well be encapsulated by amiability, amateurishness and the assertion of the intention to do their duty by the polity while happily lapsing into apathy.
It is the one last thing – one last fling flirting with former revolutionaries – we must focus on now. To persuade the powers that be in JVP ranks and NPP files that there is much more than merit (there is enlightened self-interest chasing a long-stymied national interest) in walking the talk they have talked from campaign-trail walks to talks at local and international fora alike.
First to remind AKD and Co. that they were not always on the side of the angels. And urge them to do the right thing by democratic-republicanism, and all that is decent and righteous in the country we say we love, in terms of shutting down the resurgent march of ultra-nationalism through delivering on promises made.
Then to request those of us who still remember the depredations wrought by decades of divisive ethnically loaded identity politics not to give into the temptation of bowing before the altars of particularism or exceptionalism again – even if, and perhaps especially if, we’re ‘fed up’ with the ostensible apathy of the present powers.
And last but by no means least, to renew – together with civil society at large, and the electorate with the national interest at heart – the July ’22 pledge never to be gulled by scurrilous ethno-nationalism again. Who knows, even the scullions of a scurrilous movement to re-enthrone the demigods of race, that laid waste to town and country with fire, and the minions of the deep state still hell-bent on restoring the ancient régime, may have turned a new leaf? Today the mask falls. Hope the rank and file of protestors can see through the subterfuge of a bankrupt political opposition.