Ajith the journalist for all seasons

Amongst the creators of the arts, we often find many who are less disciplined than ordinary mortals. They live a life unplanned and often with no material goals to achieve. The habits detested by those who preach the importance of abstinence from major or minor vices, are scorned by them. When the ordinary mortals achieve economic stability and advance materially, artistes perceive them as contemptuous beings existing on seminal ideals of values of a petty bourgeoise or thoroughly middle class system.

“Do you ever live? You drive a Pajero and live in a palace in Colombo 7. Have you ever had the opportunity of listening to Bach or Mozart, or have you ever seen the modern masterpieces of Iranian cinema icon Moshan Makmabalf or read the Philosophy of Socrates or Plato. What do you do for entertainment? You, watch the teleplays and your favourite TV program, is it Super Star? Have you asked your servants what they do for entertainment? They do the same thing. Have you lived a life or are you planning to live? You are a successful businessman or a professional but you are still planning and dreaming of fulfilling your ambitions. You are the scum of the earth, never interested in anything interesting. The tastes in art and culture and other aspects, which make you different from your servants, you have none.”

God Bacchus invites the creator of arts away from the common bourgeoisie values and the thinking of lumpen proletariat to the world of wine women and song. Their psyche fights the value conscious society they live in. Their lifestyle often shocks the commoner, who is frightened of losing whatever little he possesses and dying without making any contribution to anyone except their offspring. Life or death is a non event.

The creator of arts hates discipline, middle class values and is driven by the creative instinct they are born with. Thus, we have amongst us a few creators of arts and even journalists who have made an impression on the dull life most Sri Lankans lead.

The whole question of morality and the addiction to various habits, frowned upon by the vast majority, are debated by them. Most of these men have split personalities, one which makes them accept social norms and the other, which strives along, but is often a bewildering and sometimes losing battle, to be intellectually honest. The old Judaic-Christian concept of monogamy, the demonization of homosexuality and these attitudes of the uninitiated majority, mostly guided by the religious beliefs, are unacceptable to the artistes in search of truth and intellectual honesty. The artistes, in their chosen field and journalist in their writing, open up the festering wounds of these pseudo-moralists and show the truth behind their veil of hypocrisy.

They are constrained and limited to their working environment due to their exposure of these individuals who pose as icons and puritans. They constantly battle for their intellectual freedom and though it did not happen to Ajith, another would lose his or her employment. But due to their brilliance at creative journalism, they will not succumb to the pressures that come upon them from those political animals who dictate the thinking of the party in power.

The journey in search of investigative freedom to expose the decaying society which has no real values, but is living on borrowed time, borrowed concepts and is corrupt to the core, with politicians and their cohorts, whose ability lie inveterately in the polluted environment, in which the creative journalist operates makes them further themselves from any serious work and drives them to find some solace in Bacchus.

Ajith was a journalist who rebelled against these misguided narrow masters, who derived puny pleasure in getting their unattractive 'mugs' in the newspapers he edited. But he had a benign character and mannerism which absorbed these dictates with difficulty. The pieces he wrote were read with great acceptance by the reader, as it encompassed a sense of creativity rarely seen in English.

Ajith Samaranayake, whilst being the editor of the Observer, took part in the struggle to empower the editors and publishers with journalistic freedom. He joined the mainstream of editors in their continuous and arduous struggle to free the media from the fetters of criminal prosecution.

At that time a corrupt regime, in order perpetuate its corrupt order, was making every effort to stifle the free press. It used the Criminal Investigations Department and then pressured the Attorney-General's Department to file indictments in the High Court of Colombo for exposing corruption. The government machinery was to empower corruption and suppress any exposure of such misdeeds.

The case filed against the Editor of Sunday Times made the entire journalistic fraternity reconcile their differences, in their resolve to move the politicians to repeal the Criminal Defamation Laws, which had been misused to stifle press freedom. I saw Ajith Samaranayake taking an active part in the campaign to remove these obnoxious and obsolete laws from the statute book. Ajith was paid by the government and was working for Lake House. He refused to succumb to pressure, betray his values and continued to actively support the free media movement, unmoved by the political activism and unbowed by other pressures until victory was achieved.

Ajith was an editor par excellence. He continued his struggle to maintain a straight laced face, in keeping with his commitment, as the editor of Sunday Observer. His unwavering and continuous efforts to preserve his intellectual honesty and his manners and values, which were not in keeping with the values of decadent bourgeoisie society, could not be stifled.

In a country, full of half-baked pseudo-intellectuals, with no moral or social convictions and moralistic and puritan constraints, it would be impossible to fulfill the void Ajith created by his death.