Answer To The 75 Year Scourge: A Revolution, Violent Or Non-Violent, The People Will Decide

By Vishwamithra –MARCH 29, 2022

“The hopeless don’t revolt, because revolution is an act of hope.” ~ Peter Kropotkin

Decades of silent apathy has taken its tragic toll. What was once considered mainstream political activism such as non-violent protests and Satyagraha campaigns, marches towards destinations the majority of Sinhalese Buddhists venerate with supreme devotion, all party conferences which have ended up as meaningless platforms for worthless demagogues, instead of sharpening the sensitivity of the mind, have been rendered feeble and dead. Two revolutionary attempts at overthrowing two governments, one in 1971 and the other in 19877-1989 period, both by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) ended up in despondent disaster. Both revolutions devoured our young. Both were led by Rohana Wijeweera, a devout follower of Marxism-Leninism.

Seventy five years after she gained Independence, Ceylon stands on the edge of total collapse, both economically and in the sociocultural sphere. Leaders as well as followers do not seem to have any idea where they are headed next. Nevertheless, thanks mainly to the rapid development of the social media, the speed of information reaching the masses has accelerated exponentially and perfecting the process has become a well-defined priority, especially among the youth in the country.

In the meantime, the middleclass, the segment that is most acutely aware of the current crisis, if the visible signs are to be believed, is losing its cool. And they too are joining not only the queues for petrol, kerosene, diesel, milk powder and everything else, but willingly assembling with the protesters, a slice of the population which is usually crowded by the lower middleclass and the poor. Scarcity of essential household commodities has been a unique equalizer.

Corruption, which some say is the primary cause of the economic debacle also has played a pivotal role in raising the sharpness of the intellect of all the people and their decisiveness seems to gather momentum with each passing day spent at this queue or that line. An utterly treacherous saga is telling a story which needs no preamble, prologue or epilogue. Page one to the last line of the book is very readable because of its fast-paced flow, but painstakingly unreadable because of its content as it tends to send one to desperate action with absolute despair.

The government as well as the Opposition is engrossed in their own separate expeditions, flights that lead to the other side of nowhere. The Rajapaksas do not seem to care; their preoccupation with staying in power has overridden all commonsensical rectification processes that would have engaged any other government who would face such a catastrophic national drama.

Despite the fact that Sri Lankan voters have thrown out each and every government that did not perform to the satisfaction of the broad masses, only on two separate occasions caused fundamental changes to the country’s character. The first occasion was in 1956. S W R D Bandaranaike, the destroyer of national reconciliation, introduced a new notion of politics. Politics of the ‘Common Man’ and the introduction of the ‘Sinhala Only’ policies coupled with unwise and ill-timed nationalization of profit making ventures began their destructive passage and, SWRD virtually turned the country upside down and transformed the Sinhalese psyche into one that displayed its thereto-concealed propensity to kill and not being tolerant of otherness of a national identity.

When riots broke out between the majority Sinhalese and Tamils in the country, he handed the management of day-to-day affairs to then Governor General Sir Oliver Goonetilleke. SWRD, the man who thundered from the political platform about a dawn of a new era did not have the stomach to witness or manage the destruction that his words and action expressed and caused.

Yet what SWRD brought about as a meaningful transformation of society from one ruled by the English-speaking Pukka Sahibs to one dominated by postal peons and ‘kavi kola kaarayas’ (ballad sheet reciters) attained its desired end in that, one segment of our population that was cornered by the Colombo and big city-educated rulers found a place in the sun. Transformation of our language policy from English to Sinhala only made Tamils our mortal enemy and the first cycle of brain-drain occurred soon after its implementation. A great number of educated Tamils began their departure from our shores and continued their purposeful lives in Europe, America and other western countries. What they left behind was ember beneath the ashes which exploded in the early eighties as a well-armed militant uprising led by Velupillai Prabhakaran and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam.

Surely, there are other mitigating circumstances and groundbreaking policies at the center of political power in Colombo, yet what SWRD Bandaranaike began in 1956 was never subject to reversal. The change that ensued was conclusive and decisive. It changed how the Tamils think, even today. Sirimavo Bandaranaike only managed to worsen the sociopolitical dynamic by introducing the ‘standardization scheme’ in respect of University Entrance examinations. Affirmative action was introduced without paying any attention to intensifying of English language education in the rural areas, both in the South and in the North of the country. Our Universities started producing graduates who could not fit into the fast-developing modern society and its ever-growing marketplace. This in short was our first revolution, non-violent yet the products of which became immeasurably violent in the face of unarmed Tamil civilians as was shown in the 1983 riots and all other racial riots that took place from 1950s to the present day. Bandaranaikes’ revolution, as a matter of fact, was a great misfortune that befell our nation at a very crucial time.

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