Rajpal's Column

Did it again – and done in again, the Censor's story

Amunugama had better stick to irrigation from now on. Irrigation and intrigue, one might add, because Amunugama is said to have the dubious honour of being told by the President that she plans to hold a referendum — an honour not bestowed on the likes of Professor Gamini Luxshman Peiris, of Constitutional Affairs fame.

There were those who have been identified with the culture and the arts, such as Sarachchandara for instance, who joined the PA bandwagon, and spent their time pacing the backrooms of the Beira ( Sarachchandra was appointed to high-office in the Lake House, almost moments before he passed away to the great beyond.)

But, Sarachchandra knew that good art ends where partisan politics begins, and so he was content observing the view over the lake, and generally making sure that he contributes nothing by way of censorship or curtailment of freedom of expression. On the contrary, Amunugama can't get rid of his Censorial scissors. He is the Gestapo and Goebbels totally irrepressible, and all rolled in one.

His record reads like it's from the Who's Who of the World Book on Suppression of the Freedom of Expression. Competent Authority (on more than one occasion), Competent Authority being a sad misnomer for Censor, Chairman of Lake House, co- conspirator in a move to suppress a no-confidence motion by holding a Referendum, and Chief of the Abattoir of Art who banned the movie Purahanda Kaluwara. When the inglorious chapter is written on the suppression of people's legitimate rights during the tenure of a regime in the first decade of the 21 st century, Purahanda Kaluwara will acquire a place as prominent as say, the Pevidi Handa, under a different regime with which the present one is now competing hysterically for a place as the most crude and crass suppressor of democracy and free speech. Pavidi Handa, Purahanda Kaluwara, ask Amunugama, he won't know the difference.

The producer of Purahanda Kaluwara will also have Amunugama to thank for the fact that his film will now be the pick of the crop. Those who might have heard the title and thought that it is a re-run or sequel of Madusamaya, will now be rushing to see some version of the movie whether it is screened in public or privately in the homes of art-lovers and critics and the cognoscenti. If Amunugama was not Amunugama, one may have even been excused for thinking that he was a fifth-columnist of sorts who was installed by those who had the interests of the film at heart, to promote it as a "matyred movie'' as well, and not just as a plain expose of the corrupt world of arms deals and defense spending.

Any rationale is good for the crass partisaness that is manifest in Amunugama's Censorial mind. As Censor he would be, or at least would have been, in favour of suppressing the news on corrupt weapons deals, on the grounds that it "demoralizes the forces.'' As a state panjandrum, he is in favour of suppressing a movie on the same grounds. The court has shown that the non-exposure of corrupt arms deals leads to the deaths, not just the demoralisation, of the hapless lads fighting the war in the trenches in the North and the East.

But, Amunugama is on the side of the men who make the buck at their expense. He was never on the side of art, and the muses, they wouldn't want to touch him with an extended bargepole. 

But what's hilarious is that at any given moment, Amunugama will be on the ready to teach music to the muses, to teach art to the artistes, and to teach media to the media-men. He is said to have made Lake House his petty – fiefdom in the remembered past, and told journalists what a paper should look like. Ha ha. That's until the perennially irreverent practitioner put him in his place. 

Amunugama as a person, we don't care two hoots about. We will defend to the death, his right to make an ass of himself. But, it's the damage he does to the institutions and the process as some sort of self-styled exponent of media and the arts that is galling, which is why this column was taken out as a broadside on the Amunugama Doctrine. 

You want to play Goebells these days, you need to go back in time and distance to Nazi Germany. 

The Special Report

Editorial/ Opinion Contents