Rajpal's Column

From Silindu to tough guy: Sinhalaism on the march

By Rajpal Abeynayake

So what is the force behind the National Movement Against Terrorism, the organisation which enigmatically came into national prominence with each successive editorial the state-run newspapers ran condemning it? 

Within a short space of time, the new movement was embroiled in controversy, particularly after its members were involved in a spat with the conveyors of the National Peace Movement at the Public Library premises. The movement gradually stepped up momentum after that, dispatching faxes to national newspapers calling for the arrest of certain journalists, such as Ajith Samaranayake, the Editor of the Observer, and Fredrica Jansz, a freelance correspondent. 

These scribes, the movement alleged were in contravention of prevalent anti-terrorism laws. Then, slowly., almost deliberately, the NMAT was acquiring a tough hardscrabble image, an image that would have been associated with, say, the JVP in the late eighties, or even the PRRA, the state agent for terror in the remembered past.

And so a great many of the curious public would have wanted to dissect the NMAT in these circumstances. It was being led , at least in public, by a gangly youth with a radically dishevelled appearance, Champika Ranawaka, who fairly breathed fire when he spoke. Ranawaka states publicly that "all of the members of the national peace movement have blood on their hands''; that must include Tissa Vitharana as well then, it has to be asked?

But the NMAT's beginnings may not have been all that radical as the exterior of Champika Ranawaka conveys. Apparently the NMAT was conceived by a demure lady, who thought of the idea of an anti terrorist organisation immediately after the bomb blast in Maradana. The movement is therefore in that sense the ultimate Sinhala rearguard action against Prabhakaran. A rearguard it had to be —— coming at the time LTTE activity had reached the heartland of Sinhala territory in Colombo .

But its also with a sense of disbelief that pressmen gathered at a impromptu pow wow held by the NMAT recently. . The uninitiated found that the make-up of the NMAT was essentially of the Colombo bourgeois fronted by the "radicalese'' of university activism. Amid whiskey, arrack and beer and a general spirit of laid back backslapping bonhomie, a now well known chronicler of the JVP got the discussion rolling with his own thesis . This was on the brittleness of the Sinhala psyche/mindset. 

Characterizing the Sinhala psyche as "peasant dominated'' the writer asserted that the Silindu types ( who made their appearance in Leonard Woolf's Beddegama) " cannot fight the war against Tamil expansion.'' He then went on to add that the Silindu mentality is a wimp ( "bai'') or 'hick' mentality in the main , and that this is hardly the type of mindset that would produce Dutugemunu's who are needed to fight Tamil imperialism of the venomous kind….

That had most of the anti terrorist campaigners fairly scandalized, but all was taken in good spirit and with a tot of arrack and a pleasant shake of the head. Its quite a cool and sedate anti terrorism front, this.

If this is all the venom that the Sinhala mind can muster, then the Sinhalese must be a mild lot and maybe does not possess, the right stuff ( "balls'' someone said ) to fight terrorism in an eye for an eye, tooth for tooth kind of style that the Israeli state mastered, for instance. The low down is something like this, then:

Ideologically, the core Sinhala psyche is unsettled. The insulated Sinhalese are rattled, and the alarm bells are ringing in their minds. Some of the facts highlighted by the NMAT leaders for instance are as follows: 

(A) The prediction made by war analysts that the LTTE would reach for the sky by the year 2000 has materialised with the acquisition by Prabhakaran of more than one aircraft. 

( B) Though there was a just outpouring of indignation over the rape and murder of Krishanthy Kumaraswamy and family by a group of Sri lankan soldiers, women's rights and human rights organisations and the media hardly noticed for instance the fate of two schoolchildren who died as a result of the Maradana bomb blast. 

(C) The reaction to Tamil militancy is to look for the grievances of the militants. The reaction to Sinhala militancy is on the contrary not to ask whether the Sinhala youth have any grievances, but to brand them instantly as terrorists. (This was said in reference to Tissa Vitharana and the National Peace Council's reaction to the Public Library incident.)

( D) NGO fact finders assert that over 30,000 people are living under "trees and stones" or gasgalyata in the North Central Province. But the reality is that these refugees have migrated to Colombo and are buying up pieces of prime property in the government flats in Narahenpita, Ratmalana and other such places. 

Conclusion : The soul searching within the Sinhala psyche is therefore a waste of time. Prabhakaran will come to Peliyagoda with his cohorts by the time the Sinhala community get their onions sorted out. 

So here is the manifest reality of a majority with a minority complex.

These are the concerns of the NMAT which sees a Hitler in Prabhakaran and he has to be fought down to the wire with a venom that the Sri Lankan psyche is hard put to apply in the first place.

It is a thesis that has the symptoms of a frustrated community that cannot bear to see the other being labelled as the only one with the grievance. For instance, asked about the reported intolerance of the National Peace Council's activities, the NMAT spokesman's reply is "we here are asked why we do not tolerate opposition, while over there Prabhakaran merely bumps off his opponents."

The theory is that Sinhala toughness is a need of the times, a "yugaye awashyathawaya." The only way to outsmart Prabhakaran is to do what he does better? That's bad policy, but one can understand why the Sinhala psyche is slowly getting there.

Commentary

Editorial/Opinion Contents