Sri Lanka : A promise of change

A promise of change

DC | Sreeram Chaulia

The defeat of Mahinda Rajapaksa in Sri Lanka’s presidential election is good riddance for the troubled island. It opens up possibilities of a hopeful future for its people and for the Indian Ocean Region. That a man of absolutist dictatorial intentions — compared by lackeys to the legendary Sinhalese warrior king Dutugamunu, could finally be ousted through the ballot box is an indicator of the corrective power of democracy, which had gone into deficit in Sri Lanka over the last decade.

What is most heartening about Mr Rajapaksa’s shocking loss is that the Sinhalese community in Sri Lanka, which constitutes 75 per cent of the population, did not fall — a third time in a row — for his majoritarian votebank strategy that had worked in two previous elections, in 2005 and 2010.

Though the vote was split along class and rural-urban lines, many Sinhalese rejected Mr Rajapaksa and his tight knit clan of brothers who patronised Buddhist chauvinism and pursued an unabashed agenda of terrorising religious minorities. While Mr Rajapaksa did sweep 10 Sinhalese electoral districts, he lost to his surprise opponent Maithripala Sirisena in Sinhalese-majority districts like Badulla, Colombo, Gampaha, Kandy, Nuwara Eliya, Puttalam and Polonnaruwa.

The fact that the Sinhalese vote was fractured and disinterested in Rajapaksa’s social polarisation has created space for the new President, Mr Sirisena, to resolve the “national question” of ethnic accommodation and justice. Even though Mr Sirisena allied with the hardline Sinhalese Buddhist political party, Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU), his politics of expediency did not deter minority Tamils and Muslims from choosing him over Mr Rajapaksa, whose reputation as the butcher of the north and east during the final years of the war against the Tamil Tiger rebels is a permanent stain.

After Mr Sirisena’s triumph, the JHU bragged that its contribution to the electoral outcome was decisive and that its presence in the anti-Rajapaksa rainbow Opposition coalition “made the Sinhala voter confident that their aspirations and rights would always be protected under the presidency of Maithripala Sirisena”. JHU and Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), which has a Sinhalese chauvinist background and supported Mr Sirisena, will surely try to block the new President from undertaking political liberalisation and decentralisation of the polity.

Until his 11th hour defection, Mr Sirisena had crafted his political career within Mr Rajapaksa’s majoritarian Sinhalese Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP). Prior to the elections, he did not promise the moon and the stars to minorities on their critical issues, viz. withdrawing the military from the north and east and devolving powers from an over-centralised Colombo to the toothless provincial governments.

The unitary structure of the Sri Lankan state, which was particularly abused by the Rajapaksa brothers, is not going to be transformed by Mr Sirisena unless he is prodded and pushed by the Sri Lankan people, concerned social movements and India, a long-time foreign advocate for implementing the 13th Amendment to the Sri Lankan Constitution which outlines provincial autonomy from the Central government. Instead of being cynical and pessimistic about mainstream Sinhalese politicians like Mr Sirisena ever trusting or being fair to minorities, this is a moment to focus on the promise of change.

The main window of opportunity is Mr Sirisena’s election campaign vow to abolish the institution of the executive presidency within 100 days of taking office. This executive presidency, which gives paramount authority to the President at the cost of the legislature, the bureaucracy, the judiciary and other arms of the state, has been in place since 1978 and produced elected autocrats like J.R. Jayawardena, Ranasinghe Premadasa and, most obnoxious of all, Mr Rajapaksa.

Under Mr Rajapaksa, who converted the executive presidency into an imperial presidency, Sri Lanka’s press freedom slipped to 165th out of 180 countries according to Reporters Without Borders. The Rajapaksa chapter in Sri Lankan history witnessed the country inching closer to the worst ranking of 7.0 in civil liberties and political freedoms in the index compiled by Freedom House.

Mr Sirisena can be expected to redress the culture of disappearances, political prisoners and browbeating of free thought that had become common under the Rajapaksas. With a moderate and pragmatic Prime Minister like Ranil Wickremesinghe in tow, Mr Sirisena can make Sri Lankans of all ethnicities feel relatively free and safe.

The fall of the Rajapaksas is welcome news for India and a strategic setback to authoritarian China, which had invested heavily in propping up a regime that resembled the mind control system that the Chinese Communist Party operates at home.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has already reached out to Mr Sirisena and proposed “lifting the China-Sri Lanka strategic cooperative partnership to higher levels.” But the diplomatic, financial and even military largesse that China had laid on a platter for the Rajapaksas to feast upon is so unpopular in Sri Lanka today that Mr Sirisena is likely to walk the talk on his commitment to pursue a more “balanced foreign policy”, including scrapping problematic Chinese-funded infrastructure projects.

Sri Lanka is an example of how China often overdoes its chequebook diplomacy of favouring strongmen in developing countries and then runs into grassroots resistance. Although zero-sum games should ideally be avoided, China’s loss in Sri Lanka is India’s gain because Beijing has been deliberately working to weaken New Delhi’s sphere of influence in South Asia.

Mr Sirisena and Mr Wickremesinghe’s encouraging stances on reopening a domestic war crimes inquiry that had been doctored by the Rajapaksas, and on setting up a “truth-seeking mechanism where there will be apologies and forgiving”, are verbal signals that resonate in India.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s congratulatory message to Mr Sirisena hit the right chords by reminding the latter that “genuine and effective reconciliation” is badly needed in a fractured, post-war society like Sri Lanka. With the blackmailing menace of the Rajapaksas, who used to bring in China as a foil to India, now out of the way, New Delhi can regain lost leverage in its southern flank through proactive diplomacy that has civilian and military dimensions.

The fall of the Rajapaksas bodes well for all except China. It is up to India to be a catalyst of Sri Lanka’s positive evolution.

FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION

“FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION”: THE TOOL OF VICE IN THE HANDS OF FORCES OF GLOBALISATION

 

Dr. Javed Jamil

When Charlie Hebdo was targeted by Muslim attackers resulting in about a dozen deaths, the immediate reaction in the Muslim world was one of outrage and shock, with the whole community uniting in condemnation of the acts. But as soon it started appearing that the magazine is vowing to persist with its policy of satirical hatred of religions in general and Islam in particular, with French leaders openly supporting the “Free Speech”, a large number of Muslims and many right-thinking non-Muslim writers started losing sympathy for the Charlie. The French leaders forgot that “Free Speech” has itself become violent causing huge mental violence to the people who are even more committed to their faith than the owners and editors of Charlie Hebdo. They forgot that psychological violence does not take long to turn into physical violence, and if the deepest sensitivities of a community of more than 1.6 billion believing people are targeted, the appeal of clerics and intellectuals for maintaining peace will start losing its appeal in the common masses.

 

The shootings have renewed the call by the forces of globalisation for defence of “freedom” and for an all-out war against radical Islam. They again forget that radicalisation is not a process limited to religion or any one religion, but it has also affected in much greater degrees other ideologies. The most notable radicalisation has occurred in the ideology of New World Order, which in today’s world dominated by West can also be pragmatically called Westernism. Westernism is primarily based on negation of religion as a public institution but has received an open and tacit support of several religions, Christianity, Judaism and to a lesser extent the forces of Hindutva. The radical West has caused much bigger violence than the radical Islam, and it can be easily argued that radical Islam, if there exists any such thing, is the direct result of Radical Westernism, which has not only tried to propagate its ideology as the supreme in the world but has also used every kind of violence and exploitation to impose it on the whole mankind against the wish of the most. But the powerful as they are, they have used the international media only to highlight violence and other problems, which are linked or can be made to appear linked to religion in general, and Islam in particular. They forget to tell the world that the overwhelming majority of violence in the recent years, recent decades as well as recent centuries has been caused by the forces that claim to be the champions of New World Order, and for which the negation of religion has been the primary principle of ideology. It is simply because religion is the biggest obstacle in their designs of commercialising the human weaknesses to the hilt, and without commercialising everything; they cannot attain their desired goal of subjugation of the whole mankind. “Freedom” is nothing but a tool in that process. It is not that “Freedom” is absolute even in West, but it stops exactly where it threatens the survival of New World Order.

 

I am reproducing below what I had written about “Freedom of Expression” more than 15 years back in my book, “The Devil of Economic Fundamentalism”, which still holds as much true as it was then:

 

“The growth of economic fundamentalism depended on two main fac­tors; policies of the government and perceptions and proclivities of the people. ‘The big business’ targeted both. On the one hand, it incessantly campaigned for sweeping modifica­tions in the statute. This was achieved by putting pressure on politicians through different means, or luring them by catering to their pecuni­ary expectations. On the other hand, it schemed to captivate the imagination of the masses. Without continuous generation and escalation of demands, the generous assistance of the state and administration would be of no avail. There were various venues open for them and their tireless efforts spared none. With the steady elevation of the level of literacy, media had started becoming stronger day by day. Technological advancement was constantly procuring sophisticated tools for it.

 

With the ongoing privatisation of economy, the media too went commercial and a complete metamorpho­sis was brought about in its structure and functioning. Small newspapers and magazines owned and edited by dedicated persons, who used to revolutionise society through an ideological and patri­otic fervour, soon paled before the new media blitz backed by industrialists. Big newspapers had the volume and the appearance that attracted the masses. These newspapers survived because their managers were able to successfully commercialise them. In the late twentieth century, the television also slipped into private hands. Earlier, the media aimed to inform, educate and reform. Entertainment existed but this also invariably carried implicit or explicit social and moral messages. Advertisements too did not flout the social norms. With the media kotowing to the economic fundamentalists, it has ceased to be the teacher and reformer. The single commandment of the showbiz is: play to the gallery. It has become an electronic salesman of an unparalleled efficiency. Whatever little contents of information and knowledge it disseminates are also a part of the marketing strategies, or an attempt to silence the critics. Apart from the great heights that advertising has scaled, every single programme presented on TV is consciously produced with the purpose of transforming social values corresponding to their long-term marketing strategies. The entertainment now offered on various channels has nothing to do with intellect, humanism or spirituality; it only seeks to galvanise the baser corporal instincts of human beings and electrify their physical desires. This hits many birds with one stone. The channel itself enhances its rating on the popularity chart, brings in advertisements in large numbers, and changes the perceptions and tastes of men, women and children whose galvanised desires drive them to markets of different kinds. The latest trends in fashion take them to the garments’ bazaar. The inherent desire to attract the opposite sex makes them empty their pockets buying gorgeous dresses, stimulating perfumes, cosmetics, jewellery, shoes and thousands of other items. Sex too is available to them in various forms: still pictures of ‘naughties’ in the soft porn magazines, depictions of sexual act in the films and women themselves in the red light areas.

           

The objectives behind the privatisation of media are not limited to making money through advertisement, or through the sale of newspa­pers, magazines and cassettes. The real goals are much bigger. At the political front, it is to sustain a relentless pressure on the government to follow the ‘desired’ policies and to defeat a democratic government not following the dictates of the economic fundamentalists through vituperative and slanderous campaigns against it, and to assist a new political group in ascending the throne by mobilising support for it.

 

            The media is least concerned with the welfare of the people, their education and morals. Whatever information the media disseminates is almost always invested with some commercial linkage. The print and the elec­tronic media are playing this role to perfection. The overall strategy is to materialise human lives; as conscientious men and women are garbage for the market. It is in fact here that the intrigues of the economic fundamentalists have reached the most sordid level. For them human beings are no humans; they are either animals or machines. It is their animal instincts that fetch them enormous wealth and they use the media to whip-up these baser instincts. What a travesty of knowledge that the people these days know enormously more about film actors and actresses, models, fashion designers, musicians and dancers, than scientists, poets, thinkers and reformers!

 

             As has been mentioned earlier, the economic fundamentalists owning the media have two-fold objectives. Not only do they multiply commercial gains by telecasting programmes showing women’s anatomy at its glorious best, they also seek to develop a culture that would open new venues for the corporate world. Due to certain restric­tions, however, imposed by the law of the land, and also due to their own fears of provoking public protests, the media cannot show all that it wants to. But the media strategists are no idiots. They have thousands of ways to recondition human psychology. What they fail to carry through serials and other programmes, they achieve with the help of discourses and discussions organised on TV. The topics of discussions are mostly related to the changing social values. There are discussions, for example, on: Should there be any bar on women’s dresses, is there any thing bad in posing nude before camera or giving “bold” scenes in the films and serials? What is wrong with premarital or extramarital liaisons? Is pornography bad? Should there be any legal measures against smoking and drinking? Should the unwed mothers be ostra­cised by society? Should the young girls opt for modelling as career? Is marriage necessary for society? Is homosexuality intolerable? And so on. The presentation of such discussions is usually slick. The moderators engage the participants chosen carefully with the objective of conveying a specific message to the listeners or watchers in a manner that the ultimate message would be in accordance with the specified objective. Though the protagonists and antagonists of a particular issue are given a fair chance to vent their feelings, the producers invariably succeed in extracting from the particip­ants observations that fit in their own scheme of things. The substitu­tion of such programmes appears in the magazines in the form of surveys based on a questionnaire that is circulated among a few thousand persons in a way as would give the desired impression. Recently, for example, some well-known magazines in India carried out surveys for determining the sexual attitude of people living in the country. The surveys indicated that the attitudes of Indian men and women, too, like their counterparts in West, were undergoing steady transformation, and people in increasingly greater numbers were indulging in premarital and extramarital sex and even incest and homosexuality were on the rise. The obvious purpose of these exercises is to suggest that the social and legal response to­wards these practices must change. The law must recognise them as “natural” aberrations or preferences that need neither condemnation nor pun­ishment. Society must stop stigmatising the people behaving differently in their sexual choices, and others have no busi­ness to police them.

 

           It is not only the private media where economic fundamentalism manifests itself in its ugliest form, the corporations like BBC too are extremely partisan in their presentations. They project themselves as the most unbiased news organisations, but there is always a carefully designed, under the counter conspiracy lurking in the shadows of their programmes. Their objectives include presenting the people of West as developed and civilised, and the people of East as backward, belligerent and uncivilised, making every possible effort to malign religion (especially a particular religion that is considered the biggest threat to their dominance), beating anti-west nations with the stick of “human rights”, blindly supporting individualism, regard­ing all social aberrations as natural, impressing upon East that, whatever vices West is blamed for are also existing in their societies and advising them that, if they want to gallop on the road to progress, they have no option but to seek scien­tific, technical and economic assistance from Western Powers and to follow their cultural norms. BBC has always spouted venom on communism, Islam and Indian culture. It has constantly striven to demolish all religions in general and Islam in particular. The sense and concept of chastity with which Islam and other religious people have always been extremely concerned has been ridiculed rather than appreciated. Instead, it has carried reports on homosexuality and other similar perversions in some East Asian countries in order to convince the listeners that debauchery is not limited to West.

 

The impact of economic fundamentalism on the press has spawned what is aptly termed ‘gutter journalism’. The market of newspa­pers and magazines expands in the wake of sensational stories. Scandals are reported with great fanfare; in fact, non-issues are many a time converted with the magic of ink into mind-blowing scandals. Sex scandals have become a routine in West. Till recently such gossips were confined to a few tabloids and the leading dailies did not attach any significance to these stories. But now even the biggest dailies garnish their front pages with reports, often with ‘exciting’ photographs, on the private lives of public figures. The affairs of the members of Royal family are the topics of discussion in bars, restaurants and clubs of England. The British tabloids excel in such reporting and always find a Crown Prince, his estranged wife, a duke or duch­ess, a Diana, Pamela or Jemima to embellish their pages. And if a Monica Lewinski is discovered in the life of the President of the only superpower nothing like it! For months, the US public discussed nothing about anything but everything about the Clinton-Lewinski affair. Every scintillating detail of the type of sex they indulged in was portrayed with perfection in the media. This of course also provided a golden opportunity to the merchants of sex to popularise oral sex as an essential ingredient of lovemaking. Now every boyfriend would desire his girlfriend to lewinski him. And when the President of a country cannot avoid the temptation of having sex outside marriage, common people must do it as right by birth. After the furore, the masses were persuaded to give the verdict in the favour of the President. He was a human being, and his private life had nothing to do with his work as President. And because he accepted, even if belatedly, the mistake he committed, this refurbished his face with the halo of honesty. To commit a major sin, they have been made to believe, is not as big a sin as is the sin to conceal the fact that one committed the sin. Clinton’s popularity rocketed high again and he is still counted as among the most popular Presidents of the US. The Indian newspapers, too, have now started giving elaborate coverage to the happenings involving personal lives of the rich and the famous. The photographs of beauty pageants and models regularly appear in national dailies. Marriages and divorces of celebrities are piled on the agony.

           

The impact of sensationalism in journalism on the business is manifold. It multiplies the sales of newspapers and magazines; diverts the attention of the masses from their real problems that are mostly the outcome of glaring economic imbalances accentuat­ed by economic fundamentalism; fans materialistic desires, the key to consumerism; and changes social and cultural ethos in society. Sometimes it goes to the extent of blackmailing public figures. The increased sales, naturally, brings in more advertise­ments.

 

            To justify and perpetuate its style of functioning, the media has discovered the “freedom of expression” that has lately assumed notorious proportions. The new maxim has spawned great symbols of freedom of expres­sion for them: To traduce anybody. To malign religions and religious figures. To describe and exaggerate the most private areas of the life of any celebrity. To portray or publish anyone in the nude. To film the lewdest forms of sexual relations. And to engage in misinformation for the furtherance of the desired objec­tives. Liberty has turned into libertinage and license to express has resulted in licentiousness. Any attempt to censor such vagrancy attracts sharper censor by the media all over the world. Those who advocate some control on expression are virulently condemned as the enemies of freedom, civilisation and development. To give further credence to its licentiousness, the media has used the “right to know” as a weapon to defend itself. And when, sometimes, it faces unbearably intensive shelling for its perversity, it takes refuge in the argument that, instead of making any laws to patrol the media, the media must itself resolve to exercise self-restraint. This is another matter that, as soon as the controversy gets subdued, the self-restraint too is cremated with full media honours. Thus “freedom of expression” is nothing but a magic wand in the hands of the economic fundamentalists, who misuse it with great effect in their commercial circus.”

 

“No doubt one may smile and smile and yet be a villain.” (Shakespeare)

 

 

·         Dr Javed Jamil is India based thinker and writer with over a dozen books including his latest, “Quranic Paradigms of Sciences & Society” (First Vol: Health), “Muslims Most Civilised, Yet Not Enough” and “Muslim Vision of Secular India: Destination & Road-map”. Other works include “The Devil of Economic Fundamentalism”, “The Essence of the Divine Verses”, “The Killer Sex”, “Islam means Peace” and “Rediscovering the Universe”. He can be contacted at doctorforu123@yahoo.com or 91-8130340339. For his shayri visit http://urduyouthforum.org/shayari/poet-Dr-Javed-Jamil.html