Columns
Time to return to old school norms
Even as India is stridently taking steps to further strengthen her democratic institutions and Prime Minister Modi and his cabinet are declaring their assets for all to see online on Modi’s website in a welcome display of transparency, Lanka finds herself still stuck in the rut of corruption and shows all the signs that she is quite content to remain in its mire and conceal its shame in the bog of hypocrisy holding it as a suitable substitute for democracy.
While Lanka hails human rights as good moral and ethical concepts to pay worship but not as legitimate political objectives for a people to pursue, last week’s bail application of Jayalalithaa brought to the fore an earlier Indian Supreme Court decision to elevate governmental corruption to the higher level of a human rights violation which causes an imbalance leading to “systematic economic crimes.’ The court held it as a “serious malady undermining the very health of the polity.’
Corruption busting: Modi’s India shows the way. Pic AFP
India is a land where corruption in high places habituated by the elite is as rife as poverty is wide spread in the lowly ghettoes of its teeming masses. But before this moral light of the world burns out and the nation is turned into a god forsaken land; and the attendant evils ill gotten wealth inevitably bring, are allowed to corrupt the entire body politic beyond redemption, the Indian judiciary has stepped forth to strike back and return India to the virtues of her forefathers.
It is indeed a daunting task, one that seems doomed to fail from the outset. But, for a nation given to explain the vicissitudes of life by reference to the Hindu concept of the inexorable karmic law, secular India has placed her faith in the exercise of free will to change the course of her destiny. With the Supreme Court of India taking the lead and the lower courts faithfully following the ratio decidendi of her judicial pronouncements to the letter, as was demonstrated by the Karnataka High Court this Tuesday in Jayalalithaa’s bail case, India looks set to keep her tryst with democracy, enlightened with the enhanced status the modern world pays to human rights.
In this regard, she is further blessed with a new spirit of the new age, Modi elected to her highest political office to give the necessary political support to achieve this formidable aim. Time and fate have brought Narendra Modi to the helm and enthroned him with the prime ministerial seat and seal of power; and, for the moment at least, he has come as a refreshing gust of wind to cleanse India’s Aegean stables of the stank and musty air which has choked her forward march, even as corruption and lip service to human rights have stifled Lanka’s advance.
Throughout the years India has stayed steadfast to the ideals of democracy, more than any other nation in the region and it is timewe took a leaf from India’s book and started rebuilding the same democratic institutions that once proudly existed till they were whittled down by successive governments without protests from a subdued populace made apathetic by five hundred years of foreign domination where even the right to religion was insidiously robbed from them.
If the Sinhala people could have accepted from India, the teachings of India’s greatest son, Gautama the Buddha 2300 years ago and turned it to be their guiding philosophy, now is the time to follow India’s new path and keep step with the rest of enlightened mankind.
For it is not from western culture that Lanka has received the notion of democracy. The nuts and bolts of a working democracy may have been imposed upon us by the western world. But the very spirit of democracy which has gripped the Sinhalese for centuries is not immersed in the British Magna Carta or in the American Bill of Rights. Though widely believed to be the case, these are not the feeding grounds from which the Sinhala psyche originally received their nourishment and conditioning in the value of man’s rights.
Nay, the Sinhalese spirit received its impetus from the Kalama Sutra of the Buddha where he expounded the right to free speech against the tyranny of conditioned thought and exhorted that it be a fundamental right to be exercised before accepting existing dogma as revealed truths. This is reinforced in the Jnanasara-samuccaya where the following counsel is given: “As the wise test gold by burning, cutting and rubbing it, so are you to accept my words after examining them and not merely out of regard for me.” When the Buddha has thus empowered the people with the right to question his own words, the Sinhalese became licensed with the authority to question with impunity the words and authority of lesser mortals. The first seeds of man’s intrinsic fundamental rights were sown by the Buddha and took deep root in the fertile bed of the Sinhala conscience.
The right to freedom of expression which encompasses the right to question the validity of accepted truths without remorse, without fear and without invoking the wrath of the gods as then existed in Hindu culture became the indispensable primary right without which no other right could exist. It is this liberty and licence given to mankind by the Buddha and adopted by the Sinhalese as their own, which provided the insight to the value of human rights and to the realisation that man does not live by bread alone.
Successive governments acting out of political expediency to ensure their own political survival; blatant moves made to extend the life of parliament through undemocratic means; a southern rebellion crushed in the 1970s; and a devastating 30-year terrorist war which, on the grounds of national survival, called for the suspension of traditional rights the departing British left behind as a parting legacy, all contributed to plunge us down the slippery slope to swirling chaos. Though this right was often trammeled even to the point of nonexistence, it still burns and sparks in the indomitable spirit of the Sinhalese, fuelled by Buddhist fervor.
We cannot, we must not resist the winds of change that blow and bury our heads in the sands and hope it will pass but use its power to turn our windmills to create economic prosperity and a higher quality of democratic life which adds dignity to man’s existence. If you take the present world, notice how the most prosperous nations are the ones most democratic.
Now as Lanka faces another Presidential and general election, it is time for both the Government and the opposition to renew their commitment to restore democracy to its pristine state. What is required is a total commitment from all parties vowing that the decline into anarchy will be halted, that treasured values of the past will be legally reintroduced to breathe again in the present, that lost rights will be legally restored and the independence of the judiciary legally secured.
Whilst building replicas of the Ruwanweli Saya throughout the countryside, it is time to also rebuild upon the ruins of democracy; and in its renovated hallowed temple to enshrine Justice, Liberty and Equality as living organisms vibrating a living culture of freedom. Only then, in the midst of mega projects, trendy walkways, expressways and shopping arcades, can it be said that this land is truly the miracle of Asia. Only then will the people of Lanka be truly proud to be Sri Lankans. Let’s take new tech power from the Chinese to light our homes and age old morals from the Indians to enlighten our souls and use the best of both nations to benefit our own.
| Mervyn yodels liquor swansong
SUNDAY PUNCH 2 Even as Jayaram Jayalalithaa must be pondering over her future fate and wondering whether she has reached the end of her road, Lanka’s very own Minister Mervyn Silva was busy last week conducting his own last rites in preparation, perhaps, for his imminent departure. Last Saturday at a meeting held in Peliyagoda, he declared that he had no use for big vehicles and security personnel and that though they were good for those in his own party who have been reduced to katussas, it meant nothing to him if he was denied the chance of being able to serve the people.  Mervyn Silva “I will easily give up these vehicles, I have my own vehicles,” he announced, “I received no help from the Government to serve the people. For the last one and a half years, I was not allowed to serve the people. It has pained me a lot; it has angered me a lot. In the coming days, if the Government does not give any hand to help me serve the people, I will give up these vehicles and this ministership and go home.” But hang on. Has it slipped the minister’s mind that instead of being ignored, the Government had bestowed upon him another vital function which is right down his alley to serve the down trodden masses even better. In addition to his duties as Minister of Public Relations and Public Affairs, his new job was gazetted on August 14th this year. It carried the job description that he was responsible for “formulation of plans and programmes necessary for the uplift of the welfare conditions of the low income earning people living in houses deprived of minimum facilities.” The main ‘minimum facilities’ lacking in houses of the low income group are latrine facilities and sewage disposal. This is a serious problem affecting those living in the ghettos of Colombo and creates many social and hygiene issues as well. It is the ideal challenge for any social service oriented minister to undertake to bring relief to the sorry lives led by those whom society has forgotten and condemned to the gutter. For any minister with a great desire to serve his people selflessly, it is the ideal portfolio to hold. As Minister of Latrines and Sewage, Mervyn Silva could have brought his vast wealth of experience and knowledge coupled with his philanthropic heart to alleviate the sufferings of his fellowmen. But, alas, he has forgotten his heaven-sent role to perform divine duties amongst the poor, the sick and the unfortunate. He could have become the Mother Theresa of Lanka but instead missed the golden opportunity to answer his natural calling. But he cannot use his own negligence or his own forgetfulness, to accuse the Government that it has not allowed him to work when on the contrary the Government has, by gazetting his new duties and job description, given public legal notice of it; and, in recognition of his talent have bestowed upon him this singular honour which other ministers with the same admirable bent on serving the down trodden would have given their right arms gladly to receive. But on Sunday morning he called a media conference. Once again he reiterated that he had not been allowed to work but the main purpose of the meeting was to disclose his umbrage over the fact that a liquor licence had been issued to a new hotel in Kelaniya without his knowledge. “Is this the respect to be shown to the party’s chief organizer of the area,” he demanded to know, and stated he would be immediately writing to the President about it. “What’s the use of my staying in Kelaniya with the Government? If this licence is not cancelled I will not stay in this Government. I will go. This issue itself is enough for me to leave.” Then dramatically banging the table he declared: “This must be stopped. If it is not, I will not wait a second.” What storms brew in the minister’s breast none knows. But it is clear that something is stirring and the strong blasts of air portend bad weather, unpredictable. Yet, rather than exist on a queered pitch, it is clear that he intends to make the liquor licence his swansong. No doubt he would like to show that, being the good Buddhist he claims he is, he cannot stomach a single dose of the potent stuff the Government is allegedly doling behind his back. |