Viyath Maga: A morbid symptom

Wednesday, 22 March 2017

Yes. Disraeli said that it is easier to be critical than to be correct.

He also said that ignorance never settles a question.

We live in politically perplexing times. On 8 January 2015 we

ousted a regime that was corpulently corrupt, rapaciously racist
and intuitively intolerant of dissent.

In its place, we elected a new President who promised reforms. He

in turn found a new Prime Minister whose party apparatus formed
the nucleus of the movement which at the time was the only
viable political mechanism that could counter the entrenched
power of the ruling family. It was touch and go. Make no mistake.
Gotabaya Rajapaksa is a terrible but a credible alternative to a
disenchanted electorate.
Viyath Maga was a tribal war dance. In primitive tribes the
war dance was about appropriation of power. The Viyath
Maga event was also about appropriating power. The old
chief was present. The new chief was in charge. The old
tribe in the years 2010-2015 transformed the tribe and
embraced modernity in the form of co-opted corporations
and academics
That ruling family the Rajapaksas in the Majority Sinhala
Buddhist psyche, fortuitously for them, calamitously to us citizens
is associated with the defeat and destruction of the LTTE. Today,
the Rajapaksas are on a comeback mode.

Our reform movement is showing signs of collapse. In a recent

missive, Professor Kumar David has summed up the confounding
complexities of the present impasse in governance and the
senseless sangfroid of the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe duumvirate.
He says that ordinary people describe the present state of
indecision and indifference in rich colloquial terms by resorting to
anatomy of the physiology of the ruling pair. The public seems to
assume that the President is missing a part above the neck and
the Prime Minister is missing a part below the waist.

Viyath Maga also known as Project Gota has to be studied in this

context of cerebral and reproductive deficiencies of the
Yahapalanaya we installed in place of the Rajapaksa Regime. I
have no regrets in voting for President Sirisena. I now regret
voting for the JVP in the parliamentary elections. The JVP runs the
risk of rendering themselves irrelevant. It is time some of them
started reading a few books written in English. They should turn
their curious minds to the exponential changes that occur with an
unbelievable speed in this age. Tilvin Silva is light-years away
from modernity. He is the General Secretary.
Bashing Viyath Maga
The immediate purpose of this essay is to respond to the article
that appeared in the Daily FF under the caption Bashing Viyath
Maga (see http://www.ft.lk/article/604422/Bashing-Viyath-Maga--
It-is-much-easier-to-be-critical-than-to-be-correct).

He describes me as a senior journalist. Thank you. If there is an

afterlife, I wouldnt mind reliving those exciting days. My
meandering journey in life did begin at Lake House. In fact I was a
reporter on the staff of the Ceylon Daily News when my eldest son
was born in a place called Cinnamon Gardens Nursing Home down
Gregorys Road and opposite D.S. Senanayake College.

The total charges amounted to Rs. 560 a princely sum, I did not
have. I applied for a distress loan. The Chairman
Ranjith Wijewardene gently, with a twinkle in his eye, reminded
me that it was a distress that I could have taken steps to alleviate
over the preceding nine months! Somehow, the bill was settled.
He was mindful of the definition of a distress and equally
appreciative of my present and immediate distress. A solution
was worked out. It was Budget debate time. Overtime earnings
came in handy. I celebrated the birth of my first born with Tikiri
Herath and Sarath Muththeuwegama after Parliament.
 That was in November 1970. I remember making a few
generous comments on the maiden speech of the young
Parliamentarian Mahinda Rajapaksa. His speech was drafted by
my friend and neighbour Professor Mendis Rohanadheera. My
active journalism ended in 1974 although I continued to write
whenever possible including a regular column as Narada when
Mervyn de Silva edited the Sunday Times.

I do not have a never-ending quarrel with Dr. Dayan Jayatilake. I

have known him as precocious child of mercurial father, a brilliant
student and arguably the brightest student of Political Science of
Peradeniya since Bishop Lakshman. He could have got the same
academic distinction that Bishop Laksman Wickremesinghe
achieved in the same discipline, if not for his father Mervyns ebb-
and-flow relations with the then academic elite of Peradeniya.
Sins of the father visiting on sons.

That said, I have a quarrel with anyone who champions the

political agenda of the Rajapaksa family. Dayan was a good envoy
abroad. It is my personal and continuing regret that Dr. Dayan J
did not get summarily slapped by Sajin Vass, Mahindas enforcer,
when preaching politics of the realist school seated on a barstool
in a Geneva Brasserie or a Paris bistro. I have not seen Sajin Vaass
Gunawardene since 1994 and I count his father too as a dear
friend.
Prabhakarans indiscriminate terror and Gotas selective
terror
I have an ongoing quarrel with the Rajapaksa clan who consider
this land as their fiefdom on the dubious claim that Gota won the
war that defeated Prabhakaran.

I see no difference between Prabhakarans indiscriminate terror

and Gotas selective terror. I see no difference between Pottu
Ammans shenanigans and those by intelligence operatives of the
National Security Deep State which exercised a vice like grip of
our land after the military victory in2009. The appalling decision
taken by the UNP and the JVP in 2009 to field General Fonseka as
their common presidential candidate changed the politics of this
country.

Stupidity is an elemental force that no earthquake could match.

By fielding the former Army Commander, the opposition opened a
Pandoras Box. Everyone involved was a war hero and the defence
establishment became an autonomous power base of a man who
spent the better part of the war in California.

True. Today Gotabaya Rajapaksa is a dual citizen. He may

renounce his US citizenship if and when the Viyath Maga takes off.
Can some public-spirited organisation file an application under RTI
to ascertain when he applied to retain his Sri Lankan citizenship
under Sri Lanka law? Was it before 2005 or after?

Our present political turmoil can be explained. We can also

explain the phenomenon of Viyath Maga. The present crisis of
indecision and vacillation is the result of a historical phase that we
are presently passing through.
Viyath Maga complies with textbook fascism
We are trapped between a world that is dying but not yet dead
and a new world that cannot yet be born. In this interregnum, a
variety of morbid symptoms can appear. Viyath Maga is one such
morbid symptom of an infantile disease that Dr. D.J. describes
variously as Smart Patriotism, Gota as President, Gota Project and
whatever his rhetorical genius may produce in coming days.
Viyath Maga complies with textbook fascism. It exemplifies
militarised institutional order. The praise heaped on Gotas urban
cosmetics by deploying troops to care for manicured lawns and
Navy frogmen to clean the surface glass on the subterranean fish
tank at the Independence Arcade are examples.

Viyath Maga opposes constitutional reform to accommodate

minority demands. Harsh rhetoric against minorities is an
essential ingredient of fascist thinking. Viyath Maga participants
emphasised a sense of duty towards the State a clear gambit of
the Rajapaksa-led patrimonial State that aims to create a new
breed of Olcott Buddhists ready and willing to justify atrocities
committed against minorities.

Smart patriotism of the Viyath Maga ideologue Dr. D.J., is banal

nationalism. It is a clever political project. This idea of smart
patriotism fosters a duty towards the State in contrast to the civic
nation which is a post-independence imperative of a plural
multicultural democracy. Smart patriotism is a very learned and
profoundly academic subterfuge to restrict civil liberties and to
overcome opposition.

A Smart Patriotic polity will be opposed to pluralism and

divergence. Viyath Maga is a calculated project of the former
Defence Secretary who hopes to regain power and concentrate it
in the hands of a small elite group portrayed as educated
professionals and entrepreneurs. The inevitable result if they
succeed would be moral corruption, end of democratic
participation and darkness at noon and no public debate as it was
before 8 January 2015.

Dr. D. J says that he criticised Gota then while others were silent. I
do not know what he wrote about Gota. As for me I was scared
when I wrote about the regime. I am told prison has only
squatting pans. I was not only shit scared but was scared to be in
prison because passing shit is a part of the business of living. I did
criticise the Defence Sectary a few times in a circumspect
manner. To my utter horror my dear friend D.C. Karunaratne who
is still practicing the craft of journalism told me that he gathered
that I was praising this politico military aberration. I stopped
writing about Gota!

Yes. I did call Viyath Maga a tribal war dance. Indeed it was a
tribal war dance. In primitive tribes the war dance was about
appropriation of power. The Viyath Maga event was also about
appropriating power. The old chief was present. The new chief
was in charge. The old tribe in the years 2010-2015 transformed
the tribe and embraced modernity in the form of co-opted
corporations and academics.

This stupid Yahapalanaya is yet to probe the dump and pump

stock trading that produced billionaires waiting in the wings to
restore the ancien rgime. If that happens, which is today a
reasonable possibility, it is because of the failure of the Maithri-
Ranil duumvirate not to enact reforms and its demonstrated
inability to dismantle the oligarchy that Rajapaksa family left
behind.
Batalanda
The author of Bashing Viyath Maga refers to a crime against
humanity as happened in Batalanda in the late 80s. I am in his
debt for making that reference.

He asks what happened in Batalanda. Frankly I do not know. It is

possible that some atrocious things happened in the 80s. As I
have said before, this country will regain its soul, only when it
makes an honest appraisal of all butchery from the eighties to the
present day.

Gota was also in the army in the 80s. He should know what
happened in Batalanda. He must certainly know what happened
in my hometown Matale. That said I am grateful for the reference.
It gives me an opening to deal with the living breathing atrocity in
the persona of Major General Kamal Gunaratne, the author of
Ranamaga Ossey Nandikadal. He celebrates his wifes bodhi
pooja that earned him the privilege of having his soldiers
dropping the body of Prabhakaran at his feet.

Prabhakarans 12-year-old son Balachandran was also found by

the troops under the command of the same Viyath Maga
participant. What happened to that child who was shown in
Channel IV pictures nibbling something in a bunker? Should we
not ask what happened to little Balachandran?

This war hero physically assaulted a student of D.S. Senanayake

College during the last O/Level examinations. He denied the
charge claiming that he was not even in the country when it
happened. The traumatised student complained only after the full
exam was completed. It was later reported that the two parties
reached an amicable settlement after the war hero tendered an
apology. If he can slap an innocent student in 2016 peace time
Colombo in the presence of many parents who had taken their
offspring to the examination hall, should we bother to ask him
how he treated the young son of Prabhakaran?

As he himself describes it was dizzy time. His soldiers were telling

him Meka thamai rata kapu Prabhakaran, Api mekawa maruwa
Sir. Amidst the clash of arms, laws can be silent. If the law is
silenced by a general in broad daylight down Gregorys Road in
peace time Colombo in 2016, he earns his place in the Viyath
Maga pantheon.
Posted by Thavam