But this article is not about Paul Harris. He is a Scotsman without the kilt. For Sri Lanka's Scotch-with-soda political elite, Harris has replaced the Maha Sangha as the most potent anti-peace symbol.

To them, Paul Harris, the Scotsman has become the protector of the Maha Sangha and the nation. Though nobody would say it in this very reverent country, the country's homegrown intelligentsia has been whispering that the Maha Sangha cannot save itself. They say Paul Harris has to save the Mahanayakes, who have betrayed Buddhism to the extent of blessing not just the government - but the LTTE too.

But what is the largest single factor that should militate against the current 'peace -trend' of (a) a totally bought-over and docile press (b) a totally supportive if not cheerleading Maha Sangha leadership and (c) a totally ineffectual lobby of opposing actors?

The country does not need to protect the Maha Sangha from the peace process.

But, do we want the press to toe a single line of thinking, which is that peace is a certainty, and that the peace process will definitely save the nation? The current peace exercise just might save the nation, and if it in fact does, nobody would really mind handing over a Nobel Prize or two, even to Anton Balasingham and wife. I mean that if there is a real lasting truce in this country as a result of the current peace initiatives, the press and the Maha Sangha and everybody else who said hallelujah will be so vindicated, that there will be no real quarrel even if Balasingham and Karuna are seen as peace prize candidates. If there is a real permanent peace - I know of many who will be saying Balasingham for UN Secretary General, if not Balasingham for President.

But the cop-out is that the supine press and the Maha Sangha who say that peace is a certainty (if not directly, they say so by implication) have put all their eggs in one basket. In the process, they have completely forgotten the one entity by whom they all have an enormous responsibility - - and this is certainly not the brotherhood of Buddhist Sinhalese, or the order of the Buddhist monks.

What the imbibers of Scotch, and those who want to save the nation from Paul Harris have forgotten, are the boys who fought the boys. It is uncanny how the LTTE is romanticized each time somebody puts pen to paper to describe Prabhakaran's fighting cadres (as opposed to his suicide squads.) The LTTE are the boys. The Sri Lankan boys who fought the boys, always become 'soldiers'- dirty old men - as if they have permanently given up their rights to their youth, by virtue of the fact that they are soldiers fighting some romanticized rebels.

Unfortunately, boys are boys, and anybody who goes to the so-called war-zones of the past now enjoying a ceasefire, will realize that the boys who fought the boys are boys as well. You meet a lot of them in their own unromanticized terrain, going from bunker to sentry point, getting about their generally unromanticized soldier lives.

Talk to them (as I did when I was in the North and the East) and they are as indifferent to Paul Harris as they are to the Maha Sangha. They'd say Paul who? Asked about the Mahanayakes, they will say, as they often do "api itin apey rajakariya koranawa, egollo egollange rajakariya koranawa." "We do our duty, they will do theirs.''

If the peace doesn't hold, these boys who fought the boys will be cannon fodder, and the most poignant part is that they know it. But yet, not even the Sihala Urumaya - and I say it with responsibility - speak on behalf of the soldiers. The most shrill who are opposed to the Norwegian brokered peace, are opposed to the peace largely on an ideological basis, and they spew out nothings like 'sovereignty' and 'Sinhalathva' at the speed of one syllable per nanosecond.

But none of them talk about what will happen to the soldiers (I'd say boys) on the front, who are almost certainly cannon fodder if the Sri Lankan power elite put all their eggs in this one peace basket?

It seems that it is a morally bankrupt polity that will agitate for abstractions such as 'sovereignty' and 'Sinhalathva'' and not for the lives of the men who have fought and protected these ideas? The foreign funded lobbies of NGO peaceniks will not even acknowledge that Sri Lankan soldiers exist, as boys or even as plain living/breathing biological entities. But that's what they are often paid for. But there is no excuse for the rational Sri Lankan polity to feel that the soldier is so expendable, that he/she doesn't even come into the equation. In a big man's war, the boys perish - and if you are a Sri Lankan soldier, your vocation seems to be to perish.

As for the NGO propaganda machines which are so unsophisticated and hick, (they survive because there is no resistance to this 'put your eggs in one basket' peace-mindset from the Sri Lankan polity) that they say " look at the thousands of lives saved every day due to this peace process'' - they do not even know what it means to be a Sri Lankan soldier, dreading that war may break out anytime, which means a 90% chance that they will lose their lives. (Before the ceasefire it was only a 30% chance.)

The Mahanayakes can cheer-lead the peace process if they want, but if they abdicate their responsibility to say that the 'process'' should be very carefully calibrated, and should not leave a semblance of a chance for all the boys out there to have their lives put at risk - then there should be a plague on all their houses. There should be a much worse plague on their houses than Paul Harris.

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