5th Column

My dear Mother Lanka,

I thought of writing to you because you would be celebrating our 73rd anniversary of independence in a few days. For all the noise we make on February 4 every year, I am not sure whether ‘celebrating’ is the right word, and whether we are indeed independent, for that matter.

It has been seven decades since the British left our shores. If we were still a colony, would we be better off? Have we made real progress being in charge of our own destiny? These are questions many ask. Most of us do want to be free, but we also feel we haven’t made the most of our ‘independence’.

Had you been under colonial rule, our Heads of State would have come from one family, the Royal family. Having had ‘independence’, the only difference is that our Heads of State have came from a handful of families instead of just one family. Now, that is not that much of a change to boast about, is it?

In fact, it looks like we might have our Heads of State from just one family once more – at least for the foreseeable future. Even if the reins of power change hands, the leaders of the three parties that have any chance of being in charge are all from the same old families. So, nothing has changed, really.

Then, most of our ‘big’ schools are the schools the British founded or those founded by others during colonial times. Only a handful of ‘good’ schools have emerged since then. We tried to set up a Royal College in Polonnaruwa, but its most famous old boy suggests that it wasn’t that much of a success!

When we build highways or undertake major development projects we always have to beg, borrow and steal from other countries – not necessarily in that order.  You realise this is true if you look at anything from the BMICH, our Parliament, the Supreme Court or the Victoria Dam, to name a few.

There was a time when we blamed everything on the war when there was a threat of part of you being separated from the rest, Mother Lanka. The war has been over for a dozen years now and if anything, it is fair to say that even people in the South want to leave your shores as quickly as they can.

We blamed the British when they used the strategy of ‘divide and rule’ to their advantage. Decades after they left, I don’t think we ourselves are any different. All our rulers have tried to divide us, mostly on racial lines, at every election, so that they can come to power. We saw that last year too.

We are unable to bond as a nation because we are so hopelessly divided. That is evident even now when there is a disaster such as the coronavirus pandemic. It seems as if those who came to power alienating one community are digging their own graves by not allowing that community to dig theirs!

The pandemic itself is a reflection of how we make decisions. We had it well under control until a few months ago. Then, we abandoned strategies that worked. We opted for what was popular, not what was scientific. We invited tourists and encouraged people to drink a ‘peni’ as a cure for the virus.

Some blame the person who is distributing the ‘peni’. I don’t. Why are we surprised that people seek help from someone who says he received the recipe for his ‘peni’ from a goddess, when we elected a leader because some claimed that a snake suddenly appeared with Lord Buddha’s relics at Kelaniya?

The pandemic also shows us just how ‘independent’ we are. We depend on other countries to donate their vaccines to us because we don’t have a vaccine of our own – other than the ‘peni’ of course. We don’t have money to buy it, nor have we made arrangements to reserve some for ourselves in advance.

The one activity where we did better than our colonial masters was beating them at their own game, cricket. Sadly, that was also a few years ago. Now, they come and beat us repeatedly in our backyard and all we can do is hand the game over to someone’s father-in-law hoping he will fix the problem!

So, pardon me for wondering whether there is anything to celebrate about ‘independence’ day, Mother Lanka. Maybe we should use this day to reflect on how dependent we are, how divided we are and how nothing has really changed, then that may be useful!

Yours truly,

Punchi Putha

PS: Just as much as we hark back regularly to our win in World Cup cricket 25 years ago, I am sure we will still gather on Thursday and praise ourselves for our proud history of over 2,500 years. That will keep us going until next year, won’t it, Mother Lanka?