What is the correct terminology that can be used to describe Sri Lanka's conflict? Eelam War 3 has been a nomenclature that has been bandied about, but are the bomb blasts, (particularly the Central Bank blast which took place an year ago) events which can be encompassed by the reference to Eelam War 3?
There has been a somewhat muted reaction to the first anniversary of the Central Bank blast. It is worth asking why. Perhaps, one reason is that the Central Bank bomb was not an isolated event.
In a country in which disaster is waiting to happen, one blast, irrespective of its magnitude, is reduced to the size of one event in a series. So, it will be a little trying for Sri Lankans to bow their heads, Oklahoma-style in remembrance. On their way back home, they can be blown to smithereens. Small wonder that special import cannot be attached to one particular event.
Incidentally, it was Prabhakaran who was quoted as saying that the Sinhala mind will forget anything in two weeks. Prabhakaran would definitely know his onions about these matters.
Prabhakaran runs a war that has gone into three distinct phases, but yet he knows more than anyone else that the Eelam War 3' is not confined to the frontlines.
Prabhakaran's war would be a better name for it. After all, Prabhakaran runs the war's Colombo front.
One year after the Central Bank blast, it is worth asking whether the Sri Lankan mind, or the Sinhala mind, is inured to disaster, as Prabhakaran observed.
The sarin gas attacks on Japanese trains, for example, tore apart the Japanese social fabric. The Japanese reaction to the attacks was not one of resignation, even though, palpably, the threat to Japanese society from these attacks seems to have been highly exaggerated.
I met Soko Asahara when he was here in Sri Lanka, almost on state invitation, though not quite. Asahara's visit had the full patronage of the Sri Lankan government.
The man was put up in style at the Galadari Meridien, with his considerable retinue and supporting staff. If this blind terrorist was fomenting social upheaval in Japan, one wonders what he was doing in Sri Lanka a few months before that? Perhaps he was here to learn some of the methods of this kind of warfare from the region's expert, Velupillai. Of course Prabhakaran doesn't believe in sarin gas, but his interests do extend to the area of public transport.
A word about Asahara then. When I met him, I didn't know he was blind. But, because the man was described by a Japanese girl as a sage, I was not too perturbed that he didn't acknowledge my presence. By now, the Japanese beauty was fairly all over the man. She explained that he was blind, but what was important was that I was asked to watch Asahara because anything he might do would be important.
Well, for the next 45 minutes, Asahara breathed and tuned some kind of musical instrument. All that was important because the dignitary was in one of his moods and these things are important for dignitaries. Sometime later, I heard that this same Soko Asahara had bombed Japan.
Being a sage, he used sarin gas instead of plastic explosives.
The sarin gas attacks did not leave hundreds dead in Japan the way the Central Bank blast did here. But the collective Japanese psyche was shaken.
Perhaps things would have been different if Japan had faced a series of such attacks, phased out over a period of, say ten years.
The Japanese psyche would have become inured in the same way the Sri Lankan psyche has reconciled to terrorist manoeuvres.
In a way, however, Prabhakaran's complaint that Sri Lankans forget anything in two weeks is a back-handed compliment. The Sri Lankan psyche does not whip itself up into a frenzy to go after the Tamil jugular.
Though calculated canards were circulated after the Central Bank blast, to the effect that all Tamil employees were on leave the day the blast took place, it is apparent today that such talk was baseless.
The Central Bank has come up with a poignant commemorative page in a national daily which includes the photographs and names of the dead employees the photographs neatly arranged in the shape of the demolished Central Bank building. Tamil names do figure among the dead in their correct proportion.
A grey shaft of a form can now be seen next to the ghost of the old Central Bank, signifying the resolve' of the Bank as the Bank hierarchy likes to put it. This is the era of the urban skyscraper, and next to the monolithic twin towers, this new piece of real estate (the new Central Bank) does add some new psychological dimension. It proclaims, if not loudly, at least unobtrusively that Colombo has not given up.
In fact the expansion in terms of real estate belies the fact that the country is going through an unprecedented economic squeeze. But real estate is of perennial value, and therefore it is a bad indicator of the fact of economic growth.
At the moment what happens inside these edifices of concrete is a more accurate representation of the state of the nation. For instance, though the twin towers are not running empty, occupancy is so bad that the owners had shelved some of the embellishments that were to go with the edifice.
Though what happens inside the concrete of Colombo does not necessarily predicate the state of the economy, the Colombo picture constitutes a major part of the psychological baggage that is stopping foreign business etc., from resuming investment.
Curiously, what Chandrika KumaraÐtunga has in contrast, to say to her visionary father, for instance, is an amount of political stability which should theoretically work in her favour. At the time S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike was assassinated the MEP was all but finished, because several key coalition partners had already deserted it. Mr. Bandaranaike faced a battle for political survival almost on a daily basis, because he did not have political advantages such as the Executive Presidency.
But then, all Bandaranaike governments (and this is a Bandaranaike government) have been jinxed. Sirimavo Bandaranaike, for instance, enjoyed more political stability than her husband did, despite the fact that many stalwart coalition partners were deserting her towards the end of her tenure. But unemployment was running at three million, shortages had reached crisis point, and the rest is now history.
This government may be labouring under the delusion that a commendable war effort might eventually save it from being judged in history as another Bandaranaike government which could not quite get its economic act together (destined for disaster?).
But, the Sirimavo Bandaranaike government was labouring under exactly the same kind of delusion. Alright, if delusion is too strong a word, let's just, say that Bandaranaike governments are too severely prone to miscalculate.
Cabinet Ministers of Sirimavo Bandaranaike's UF government were almost certain that the good work' of seven years, a process of "national consolidation" and the fact that we were proclaimed an independent republic would all count when the intelligent masses made their final assessment. It's rude to reiterate the repercussions of such a monumental miscalculation.
The Chandrika government can afford to be more self-effacing, at least for the fact that it does seem to have better more practical minded advisers. But for the moment, it has chosen to go down the slippery slope.
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