Sunday Times 2
Anecdotes of chaos
When the post of Executive President was declared by J R Jayewardene, the only MP to oppose it was Dr Neville Fernando from Panadura. I can very well remember this incident. Those days an MP could resign from a party and cross over to the opposition without losing his seat in Parliament. That is how S W R D Bandaranaike crossed over and sat in the opposition when D S Senanayake was the Prime Minister.
Getting back to Dr Neville, he had resigned and gone to Panadura. I was the Chairman of the Ceylon Steel Corporation at the time, and Cyril Mathew told me to see Dr Neville. It was fairly late in the evening, and I drove my green and white Morris Oxford to find Dr Neville in the office of his medical centre with many of his supporters. Prime Minister Premadasa had telephoned him and asked him to withdraw his resignation. Lalith Athulathmudali and Gamini Dissanayake had seen the Presidential Act, but did not see the problems that would have to be faced if the Act was passed. It was left to a medical doctor to see the flaws. JR declared that the only thing the Act could not do was to make a man a woman, and vice versa.
Undated letters of resignation were in JR’s pocket. Only Cyril Mathew could not be cast out of Parliament because an engineer gave him a point which had to be accepted by the then Speaker. Despite the guarantee by PM Premadasa, Dr Neville was sacked by JR as he could not control him.
Somewhere in 1983, when the LTTE was hitting at all fronts, JR considered conceding something to Prabhakaran. It was only Cyril Mathew that opposed the proposal; others kept quiet to keep their posts. Once Cyril Mathew was removed from Cabinet, JR tried all types of tricks with his all-powerful Executive Presidential authority.
The blundering went on, and Chandrika Kumaratunga was elected Executive President. She also fought the war, but after sidelining her uncle Ratwatte the war against Prabhakaran became a stalemate.
Later Mahinda Rajapaksa was elected, and the war was won. It must be recalled that the old Generals where there, even during the time of JR, Premadasa, D B Wijetunga and Chandrika. Then how did Mahinda win the war? Was there a lack of equipment during the previous regimes, or was it a case of believing the Western notion that the LTTE was a formidable and undefeatable power.
The West want to eliminate this country from the map due to some hidden factors. To mention this, is a deviation from politics to ethics. So let us be ethical. In my opinion ethics are beyond laws and acts. Portia in her Merchant of Venice case used an Ethical argument, not a legal argument. “You cannot shed a drop of blood, while cutting your pound of flesh from Antonio. And you must cut exactly one pound not an ounce less or an ounce more.” She won the day.
The Siv Hela now called Sinhala is the small race on Earth that has managed our affairs for 2,600 years without an almighty God. This is not a statement by me; it was stated by Lord Bertrand Russell 80 years back. We see that it is the God-believers that are responsible for the present chaos on Earth. The siege of Constantinople in 674 and final conquest in 1453 are by Muslims, who started conquering with an initial army of 10,000 men. What ethical right did these Muslim warriors have, to say that there is only one God, and all humans must follow this God? Before this one God concept, people were of several faiths and there were only minor clashes. The Christian almighty God is another concept to whom people pray for virtually everything from birth to death, and heaven thereafter, as this world is a place full of strife.
We are the few million that do not depend on an almighty God; hence God-believers are all out to finish off Buddhism from this land. That is the problem that we face at all levels from the President down to the labourer who earns his days meals. This poverty is often shown on the television channels but we still have politicians who need vehicles costing hundreds of millions of rupees and residences which are renovated spending millions of public funds. It is the Buddhist monks from this small land that take the truth, normally stated as the Four Noble Truths, to the whole world. The Western God-believers do not like this situation because their aim is to have a 100% God-believing world. It is true for the Muslims as well as the Christians. How are they going to achieve this end? Is it by preaching or is it by weapons of mass destruction that have been accumulated across the world? Can any God-based religion say that their teachings are superior to the Four Noble Truths? If then, why do they follow a phantom, a God not seen by anybody during the last 5,000 years? A God who talks to a selected few in a selected land, or to a single person who can neither read nor write.
The real fact is that God is an entity created by primitive man. I do not include invisible beings as Gods. The microbes may be beneficial or harmful. Some bacteria are harmful and some are harmless. Some may be benevolent like the chemical molecules in any type of medicine regardless of it being Western or Ayurvedic. But do we worship a bottle of medicine? We may respect the doctor or even thank him with folded hands and be grateful to him. There is the case of placebos, just a pill with no medical action. When a patient who has absolute faith in his family doctor (a vanishing person in this age of specialists), placebos have often cured when the patient’s problem is often mental than medical. Thus even a prayer to the unseen God can be a placebo, and may work.
It is therefore logical to leave God alone and look at the suffering human beings. A very good poem that highlights this is ‘Abou Ben Adhem’, which we learnt as children. I reproduce the poem in full for those who do not know it. This was by Leigh Hunt.
Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An angel writing in a book of gold:—
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the presence in the room he said,
“What writest thou?”—The vision raised its head,
And with a look made of all sweet accord,
Answered, “The names of those who love the Lord.”
“And is mine one?” said Abou. “Nay, not so,”
Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerily still; and said, “I pray thee, then,
Write me as one that loves his fellow men.”
The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,
And showed the names whom love of God had blest,
And lo! Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest.
These are the lessons, and not the equations in Mathematics or Science, that were used to mould us by our dear teachers. I do not think that I should clarify the poem. It was Abou’s name that appeared at the top because he loved his fellow men.
How many of our politicians can say this when they obtain for themselves all the luxuries of life, while parents with a few children have only a hut. This is despite the housing schemes started by Prime Minister D S Senanayake in 1947, and continued by President Premadasa and carried on by Minister Sajith Premadasa heading the housing ministry.
Presently, on a national and an international scale, it is God that is receiving attention and not the poorest of the poor with hardly one meal a day or a roof above their heads. See the cost of a single missile designed for destruction and a luxury car meant for travel for a few hours per day. They are doing this for the sake of their own Gods who are at loggerheads with each other for foolish statements written in two books. It is for the sake of these two books that they are building arms.
Now let me come to the law books and acts of Parliament. The most notorious is the Act of 1643 passed during the time of the Catholic King Charles. The entire mass of people, over 90% were Church of England. As the Parliament was with the King, the masses got the hangman to burn the 1643 Act.
Why did they get the hangman to do it? When a man is hanged he dies, they may have surmised that when the hangman burns the Act the Act dies.
By 1661, the Church of England gained power. A new Parliament was called and the 1661 Act forbade anyone to take part in the government of a town who did not conform to the Church of England. Now this was a case of one God one Book but different thinking. The reforms started with Martin Luther and his 95-point Thesis which he nailed to the door of the Wittenberg Church. After the break in the church, thousands were massacred not for any acts of terrorism. This shows that religious fanaticism was there all over Europe even then.
In the morning of Dec 11, 1520 another bonfire was started at the Eastern Gate of the Town of Wittenberg. Students and Professors in their official robes were present. This time it was not an Act of Parliament but the Papal Bulletin to be burnt by Luther. This little bonfire started a fire all over Europe crossing the English Channel to England. Only Ireland remained aloof and they are still Catholics. It was de Valera who stood up against the powerful English Protestants.
Thus it is seen that throughout history, suppression of the will of the masses led to strife. Now let us get back to our little country with about 22 million citizens. Of these the Tamils are the descendants of invaders. King Gemunu did not expel a single Tamil after his war with Elara the invader. The main question is why Elara was called Dharmista in the Mahawansa. If he was dharmista why did he invade this peaceful unarmed island when he had millions of square miles of land as against our 25,000 square miles? Was it enmity or greed. Or did the Hindu Brahmins who had successfully exterminated Buddhism in India wish to do the same in Lanka. Vigneswara does not like to see a Buddhist statue. He is an educated man and must be aware that Sri Nehru had a picture of the Samadhi Pilima of Mahamewuna in his room.
Now I will come to the main point in all these anecdotes. It is said that the citizen is the sovereign in a democracy. In 2015 President Maithripala was elected with 62 lakhs of votes while Mahinda Rajapaksa received 58 lakhs. He was elected for a period of six years. In my opinion, no person whatever the post he held in the public or private sector can be punished with retrospective effect. Persons have been promoted with retrospective effect but a retrospective punishment has never happened anywhere in the world. Thus the Parliament or the Supreme Court has no right to deprive him of his full term of six years. If the 19th Amendment has brought about this chaos, let the hangman burn it, as was done in England in 1661. What is good for the Mother of Parliaments surely must be good for the daughter.
Chaos was created by the 19th Amendment and not the 18th Amendment. 18th was to give some power to the citizens to choose whom they want, while the 19th is to deprive the people of a fundamental right they enjoyed. I hope all the legal luminaries will pay some attention to this idea of a Mechanical Engineer.
In passing I wish to complain about the words “Yanthricawella” used by some referring to a poor state of mind. This is not so; Yanthrica is a precise arrangement of parts that never let down the system it is expected to serve. Sometimes they last for half a century like my Morris Oxford car which will be 50 years in Sept 2019. But electrical and electronic systems fail in 10-15 years. The most recent case was in Maldives where a fully automatic desalination plant failed. Had mechanical override been installed that disaster would never have occurred. So please think of the mechanical engineer’s view with an open mind to avoid disaster.
(The writer is an Emeritus Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Moratuwa)