freedom

Norman Phillips Campbell of Trinity

2025-11-16T15:28:51.036+11:00

Tipped to become "the next Lord Kelvin," this Oxford prodigy instead chose to teach chemistry to Ceylonese boys. For five extraordinary years, he transformed Trinity College Kandy—washing ulcers in the slums, founding the island's first Social Service Union, and inspiring a generation to serve the poor. His principal called him "a man I have known who was like Christ."

Then came 1914. This pacifist enlisted. This healer deployed poison gas. This family man left his infant sons, and died age 31 on a French battlefield.

How does a Christ-like servant become a chemical warfare officer? This biographical sketch explores the troubling paradox at the heart of Campbell's legacy—and argues that his five years at Trinity shaped the school more profoundly than any other figure in its 150-year history.

A story about brilliance and service, contradiction and sacrifice, and a living legacy that still calls each generation to choose: will we tend the flame or let it die?

Visit my Substack to read his extraordinary story......

The Chains We Choose

2025-05-29T00:19:00.003+10:00

Why Good People Perpetuate Bad Systems

"Citizens consent to bear chains, so they may impose chains on others in turn."
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The Most Uncomfortable Truth About Organizational Life

This is a story that echoes through the sterile conference rooms of modern corporations and reverberates in the hallowed halls of academia. It whispers through the service corridors of hospitals and hums beneath the surface of mission-driven nonprofits. It is a story that replicates itself with troubling consistency across law firms and government agencies, religious institutions and military organizations, technology startups, century-old foundations and even families.

It is the story of us - you and me and everyone else we know in organizational life. Good people with genuine intentions to contribute positively who find ourselves perpetuating the very dynamics that once wounded us. A pattern that touches each of our professional lives, regardless of where we work or what noble purpose brought us there, regardless of how different we believe our workplace to be.

This isn't the story about obviously toxic leaders or consciously malicious actors. It's a more unsettling story about the rest of us - about how ordinary people with normal human psychology become complicit in systems that harm others, often while sincerely believing we are doing the right thing. We prefer simpler narratives about organizational dysfunction. We point to "those at the top" - the narcissistic executives, the power-hungry managers, the disconnected leadership. We imagine that if only we could replace the villains with heroes, our workplaces would transform into the collaborative, nurturing environments we crave.

But Jean-Jacques Rousseau understood something more uncomfortable about human nature that we desperately need to confront: oppression isn't sustained merely by the greed of a small elite. It endures because of the psychological needs of everyone - especially those who suffer under it most.

The Seductive Promise of Future Relief

When a junior employee endures public humiliation from their manager, they will feel genuine pain and resentment. We know that because we have all experienced that ourselves in professional life. But there's often a flicker of something else too - a recognition, not just of cruelty, but of power and its possibilities. The pain we feel is real, but so is the unconscious calculation: This is terrible, but someday, it might be my turn.

This is the insidious bargain at the heart of most hierarchical dysfunction. We consent to bear chains because we believe - rightly or wrongly - that those chains come with the future privilege of binding others. The interns absorb impossible deadlines and dismissive treatment while unconsciously noting how authority works and fantasizing about the day they'll have their own interns to "toughen up." The junior doctors endure the brutal hours and casual cruelty of medical training while learning not just medicine, but the unspoken lesson that this is simply how knowledge and toughness are transmitted - with concrete idea about how they'll "properly prepare" the next generation.

Each level of the hierarchy becomes complicit, not necessarily through conscious malice and not just in their own oppression, but through the very human tendency to normalize what we experience and to seek relief from powerlessness through the eventual acquisition of power over others and the hope of redemption from pain through the opportunity to inflict similar pain downward.

What Do We Really Celebrate About Being Promoted?

Perhaps the question about what we actually celebrate when we get promoted opens up perhaps the most uncomfortable truths that implicates all of us.

Let's be honest about the psychology at play. When we see that LinkedIn update announcing someone's advancement to Senior Vice President (complete with the obligatory humble-brag about being "honoured to serve in this new capacity"), what are we really witnessing? And more pointedly, what are we really envying?

At its core, a promotion typically grants you authority over more people while reducing the number of people who have authority over you. It's a mathematical shift in what we might call the "vulnerability ratio" - you become less subject to others' arbitrary decisions while gaining the power to make arbitrary decisions about others.

This isn't inherently evil. Hierarchies can serve legitimate purposes: coordinating complex work, providing clear decision-making structures, enabling accountability. The uncomfortable truth, however, is that most of us are drawn to higher positions not primarily for these noble organizational reasons, but for deeply human psychological ones.

We envy the corner office not just for its view, but for its physical elevation above others. We covet the ability to "delegate" partly because it means transferring unwanted work downward. We desire the power to "set strategic direction" partly because it means our preferences become other people's mandates. We're attracted to roles where we can "make tough decisions" partly because it means we can impose costs on others for abstract organizational benefits while remaining insulated from those costs ourselves.

This attraction is profoundly human. Even our language reveals it: we speak of "climbing the ladder," "moving up," and "advancing" - vertical metaphors that explicitly acknowledge hierarchy as a system of elevation above other human beings. The higher you climb, the more people are beneath you. The more you advance, the more people you leave behind.

The Choreography of Corporate Status Displays

If you've ever watched a nature documentary about mountain gorillas, you'll recognize a fascinating ritual: after a dramatic chest-thumping display establishes a new alpha male, the rest of the troop engages in elaborate grooming behaviours that reinforce the new hierarchy. Everyone knows their place, everyone participates in the social confirmation of the new order, and life settles into temporary stability until the next challenger emerges.

Our corporate promotion announcements aren't so different, though we've certainly evolved more sophisticated plumage.

"I'm humbled and excited to announce my new role as Senior Vice President of Strategic Digital Transformation Initiatives. I'm grateful to everyone who made this possible and look forward to serving our team in new ways. #grateful #leadership #nextchapter"

And then we all know what comes next: the ritualistic responses with dozens of "Congratulations!" comments, the fire and clapping-hands emojis, the carefully crafted responses from colleagues who understand that visible enthusiasm for others' advancement is how you signal your own worthiness for future consideration.

There's something both beautiful and absurd about these performances, isn't there? The newly promoted person must display ritual humility ("I'm honoured...") precisely at the moment they've gained more power. They must emphasize service ("look forward to serving...") just as they've reduced their obligation to serve and increase their deservedness to be served by others. It's rather like watching a peacock, having successfully displayed its magnificent tail feathers, immediately declare its commitment to helping other birds find worms.

These aren't malicious rituals - they serve important social functions, just like their animal kingdom counterparts. They establish clear hierarchies, reduce conflict through acknowledged status, and create predictable social structures. The gentle absurdity lies in our elaborate pretence that something entirely different is happening.

What we're really witnessing - and participating in - is the establishment of a new position in the pecking order. Someone has successfully navigated to a tier where they can peck downward more than they get pecked from above. The promotion party becomes our version of the gorilla's chest-thumping: a community acknowledgment that the social hierarchy has shifted, and we all need to recalibrate our behaviours accordingly.

How Pain Travels Through Organizations

There's something tragically predictable about how we humans process workplace trauma - and I suspect you've seen this pattern yourself. It reveals itself not through conscious malice, but through unconscious repetition. The manager who was once micromanaged often becomes a micromanager, not out of deliberate cruelty, but because micromanagement represents their internalized model of "how management works." The executive who was once excluded from important decisions may create cultures of information hoarding, unconsciously replicating the very dynamics that once frustrated them.

This isn't conscious malice - it's what I think of as psychological archaeology. We excavate our own difficult experiences and, lacking better models to metabolise them, reconstruct them as "normal" professional practice. The behaviours that once made us feel powerless become the tools we unconsciously reach for when we gain authority.

What makes this pattern particularly insidious is how it disguises itself as wisdom. "I'm preparing them for the real world," we tell ourselves. "They need to learn to handle pressure." "This builds character." These rationalizations aren't entirely false - organizations can be challenging places, and some resilience is valuable. But our justifications often mask the reality that we're simply passing on pain because we haven't learned how to transform it into something healthier.

The difference between heroes and villains in organizational life often comes down to this crucial juncture: when we gain power, do we use it to replicate the conditions that shaped us, or do we take responsibility for creating better conditions for others? It's a choice we all face, whether we realize it or not.

Heroes, Villains, and the Defining Choice

Here's something I've noticed about the stories we tell ourselves: in mythology and literature, heroes and villains are distinguished not by their origins, but by their response to suffering. The villain's origin story is almost always one of trauma, injustice, or pain - but their defining characteristic is their decision to perpetuate that pain, often rationalizing it as justice or necessity. The hero, by contrast, is equally likely to have suffered, but is defined by their determination that others should not endure what they endured.

Think about Darth Vader's journey from victim to perpetrator, or how Magneto's experience in concentration camps becomes his justification for persecuting others. Their villainy lies not in their initial suffering, but in their choice to make that suffering someone else's problem.

Heroes make the opposite choice. They absorb pain rather than pass it on. They use their strength to protect rather than to dominate. They break cycles rather than perpetuate them.

In our organizational lives, we face this same choice daily, regardless of our level in the hierarchy. The manager who was once micromanaged can choose to break that pattern or reproduce it. The executive who was once excluded from important decisions can choose to increase transparency or to hoard information as others once did to them. The senior leader who was once humiliated in meetings can choose to create psychological safety or to continue the cycle of fear-based management.

The heroic choice is almost always harder. It requires us to absorb the pain that was inflicted on us rather than passing it downward. It demands that we use whatever power we've gained to create better conditions for others rather than simply to improve our own circumstances.

The Universal Temptation: None of Us Are Immune

Here's what makes this conversation so necessary and so uncomfortable: we're all susceptible to these patterns. I know I am, and I suspect you are too. The drive to escape powerlessness by gaining power over others isn't the province of obviously toxic people - it's a deeply human response to hierarchical environments.

Most of us have felt that quiet satisfaction of finally being senior enough to delegate work we don't want to do. Most of us have experienced the relief of reaching a level where we're consulted rather than commanded. Most of us have enjoyed the moment when we could make decisions that others had to implement rather than being the ones implementing others' decisions.

These feelings aren't inherently evil. I've felt them myself, and I imagine you have too. The problem arises when we mistake the relief of not being at the bottom for the justification to push others down. When we confuse our own advancement with the necessity of others' subordination. When we forget that our relief from powerlessness doesn't require us to make others feel powerless.

The invitation here isn't to feel ashamed of these very human responses, but to recognize them consciously so we can choose more deliberately how to act on them. Awareness creates choice. Acknowledgment creates the possibility of transformation. And let's be honest - we all need this kind of awareness, because none of us are immune to these patterns.

The Radical Courage of Turning the Other Cheek

Perhaps no teaching has been more misunderstood than Jesus's instruction to "turn the other cheek." This isn't passive submission to abuse - it's one of the most radical acts of defiance imaginable, one that can only be truly comprehended through the crucible of personal experience.

It is only when we've felt the sting of humiliation that comes with a sharp slap on the face, that we can begin to understand viscerally what Jesus was talking about. Anyone who has faced aggression - whether physical, emotional, or professional - knows the immediate impulse: strike back, run away, or submit to domination. These are the responses our attackers expect and count on. But turning the other cheek shatters this predictable cycle entirely.

To turn the other cheek requires a strength that surpasses both fight and flight. It demands we look our aggressor in the eye and demonstrate that we are neither intimidated nor willing to perpetuate their pattern of harm. This act immediately wrests control from the attacker and establishes who truly possesses courage in the moment.

Consider what happens organizationally when someone breaks this expected cycle. The manager who responds to harsh criticism with genuine curiosity rather than defensiveness. The employee who meets workplace bullying not with retaliation or resignation, but with steady professionalism. The leader who absorbs organizational stress rather than passing it downward to more vulnerable team members.

These responses shock and disorient those accustomed to predictable power dynamics. They interrupt the machine of harm that organizational hierarchies often become.

The deepest aspect of this teaching lies in its requirement for love—even love for our enemies. This isn't sentimental feeling but a radical choice to see the humanity in those who hurt us, recognizing that their aggression likely stems from pain passed down to them. Through this love and forgiveness, we don't just protect ourselves from becoming like our attackers; we create the possibility of transforming them.

The Choice We Have

Every day in organizational life, we face a fundamental choice: will we use whatever authority we have - however modest - to elevate those with less power, or will we consolidate our own position? When we have information, do we share it or hoard it? When we face aggression, do we absorb it or pass it downward to someone more vulnerable? When we see someone being treated unfairly, do we befriend them and offer them encouragement, or walk away in fear that we might be suspected of conspiracy.

The heroic choice is almost always harder because it requires genuine sacrifice. But when we choose to turn the other cheek rather than perpetuate cycles of harm, when we absorb pain rather than pass it on, when we serve rather than demand service, we don't just break destructive patterns - we get to create something that can be unexpectedly beautiful.

This isn't naive idealism. It's strategic strength that recognizes a fundamental truth: true authority flows upward, not downward. The leader serves the team, the team serves the mission, and the mission serves the world. When we invert this flow - making everything serve the leader - we corrupt the entire system.

The depth of Christ's message can only be understood through its practice. And perhaps that's precisely the point - that transformation happens not through intellectual understanding alone, but through the courage to embody love in the face of harm, strength in the face of aggression, and service in the face of the opportunity to dominate.

Breaking the Chain, Choosing Heroism

The profound insight of Rousseau's observation is that most chains are not imposed from above - they are chosen from below by individuals who believe that accepting temporary suffering is the price of eventual power. But what if we chose differently? What if we refused this bargain entirely?

What if we understood that the privilege of any leadership position - whether managing one person or one thousand - is not the right to inflict the pain we once endured, but the responsibility to ensure others don't have to endure it?

This doesn't mean creating environments without challenge, accountability, or high standards. Heroes aren't permissive or weak - they're strategic about how they channel pressure and challenge in ways that build people up rather than tear them down. They understand the difference between tough love and casual cruelty, between high expectations and impossible demands, between building resilience and inflicting trauma.

We can try to be mindful about this every time we are in positions of influence over someone else's experience. Are we using this moment to pass on something that was passed to us, or are we consciously choosing to create something better? It's a daily choice, really, and some days I'm more heroic than others. But that's the point - it is a choice.

The Sacred Privilege Reframed

Clayton Christensen wrote beautifully about the sacred privilege of being a manager - the extraordinary opportunity to shape lives, nurture growth, and create conditions where human potential can flourish. Every person in a position of authority, no matter how modest, holds this sacred trust.

Yet how often do we witness this privilege being squandered or, worse, perverted into its opposite? Instead of using our positions to heal the wounds that hierarchies can create, we use them to perpetuate toxic behaviours. Instead of modelling the leadership we wished we had received, we reproduce the leadership that damaged us, convinced that "this is just how things work."

The children watching our choices - our own children, the junior employees starting their careers, the next generation of professionals - will inherit the organizational cultures we create through our daily decisions. Will they inherit workplaces where power is used to heal and build, or where each generation must survive the wounds inflicted by the last?

This isn't abstract philosophy - it's as practical as it gets. My children will enter the workforce someday. Your children will too. The environments we're creating today, the patterns we're perpetuating or breaking, the cycles we're feeding or starving - these will be the workplaces they inherit. That makes this deeply personal for all of us.

The Legacy We Leave

At the end of our careers, we will be measured not by how well we survived the dysfunction we encountered, but by how courageously we chose not to perpetuate it. Not by how effectively we climbed hierarchies that harmed others, but by how thoughtfully we used whatever position we achieved to make those hierarchies more humane.

The chains Rousseau wrote about are real, and the temptation to wear them in hopes of someday wielding them over others is profoundly human. I feel it, you probably feel it too, and there's no shame in acknowledging that. But in every moment when we possess even modest authority over another person's experience, we can choose to be the leader we needed when we were powerless.

The question is not whether we will influence others - we all do, in ways large and small. The question is whether we will choose to be heroes or villains in the organizational stories we're helping to write. Will we use our influence to interrupt cycles of harm, or will we allow those cycles to continue through us?

I don't know about you, but I want to be able to look back and know that I broke more chains than I forged. I want the workplaces I helped shape to be places where my children could thrive, not just survive. I want to leave something better behind me than what I found.

The chains we choose to break today become the freedom we create for tomorrow. The heroism we practice in small moments becomes the culture we leave as our legacy. Choose consciously, choose courageously, choose heroically - because the world our children will inherit depends on it.

A Visionary in the Hills

2025-05-24T14:59:00.006+10:00

Alexander Garden Fraser’s Enduring Vision for Transformative Education

On a crisp evening in Kandy, on 6 November 1904, a young man stood alone on a hill overlooking Trinity College in Kandy, gazing down at the institution that would become his life’s work. Alexander Garden Fraser, just thirty-one years old then, had travelled an extraordinary path to reach this moment, taking over as Principal of a dilapidated school in all but complete disarray. From the rolling hills of Tillicoultry where he spent his childhood with beloved grandparents, through the rugby fields of Merchiston Castle School, to the hallowed halls of Oxford where a fellow student’s courage -- “I am in love with the Lord Jesus” - had transformed his life, Fraser had been shaped by experiences that defied conventional expectations.

The son of the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal by the time he arrived in Ceylon in 1904 (his father’s imperial rank was higher than that of the Governor of Ceylon), Fraser could have pursued any number of prestigious careers. Instead, he had chosen the missionary path, driven by a conviction that education must serve something greater than individual advancement. His courtship with Beatrice Glass, conducted under strict chaperonage during Student Volunteer Missionary Union meetings, had led them both to Uganda, where they married in Namirembe Cathedral and began their shared commitment to transformative education.

Now, standing on a hill overlooking the school he had just taken responsibility for in Kandy, Fraser offered a prayer that marked the beginning of one of the most visionary transformations in the educational history of Ceylon: “Thou knowest I did not seek to come here, and Thou knowest how ignorant I am. But we want this place to be Thine, and please make my pound weight a ton.” It was the prayer of a man who understood that authentic transformation requires divine partnership, that individual limitations need not constrain institutional possibilities, and that the most profound changes often begin with the humblest acknowledgments of dependence.

Alexander Garden Fraser in 1915 (Digitally Enhanced and recoloured)

The Clay That Changed Everything

To understand the revolutionary nature of Fraser’s educational philosophy, we must return to a sweltering morning in Uganda two years earlier, where an episode unfolded that would fundamentally shape his approach to leadership and learning. The setting was significant: the building of a new brick Cathedral to replace the old structure of poles, reeds, and thatch. This was not merely construction but community transformation, a physical manifestation of spiritual and social progress.

The challenge Fraser encountered was deeply rooted in colonial education’s most pernicious effect. The Baganda students who had received Western schooling had internalized a dreadful hierarchy of work - the notion that intellectual labour was noble, manual work was degrading. They had learned to see themselves as belonging to a class above physical effort, a transformation that disconnected them from their communities and created exactly the kind of alienated elite that colonial education was designed to produce.

When the time came to carry clay from the swamps to the brickfields - a distance of two miles over challenging terrain - Fraser faced a moment of profound choice. He could have simply ordered the work to be done, accepting the emerging class divisions as inevitable. Instead, he made a decision that shocked both his European colleagues and his African students: he took up the clay loads himself.

The physical reality was gruelling. Mrs. Fraser’s account captures the toll: “They left very early before the sun was hot, but did not get back till 10.30, having twice carried clay on their heads over the two miles of hill and dale between the swamps and the brickfields.” The European missionaries who tried to follow Fraser’s example found the work left them as “wrecks,” and they did not repeat the experience. But Fraser persisted, understanding that this was about far more than construction logistics.

Years later, Fraser would articulate the profound realization that emerged from those clay-carrying mornings: “I thought of the greatest Teacher of all time and how He worked with twelve, one of whom refused the education, eleven of whom changed the history of the world; and I realized that the Incarnation was not only a doctrine but an example also, and that I must, if a principal, live with my pupils and staff and not above them. I was a disciple of Him who washed His disciples’ feet.”

This was Fraser’s educational Damascene moment. He understood that authentic education could not perpetuate artificial hierarchies that separated mental from manual work, that elevated some forms of human contribution (or for that matter some forms of human lineage) while demeaning others. If education was to serve communities rather than divide them, if it was to produce leaders rather than an alienated elite, then educators themselves must embody the integration they sought to teach.

The clay-carrying became legendary among the Baganda students, not because it was merely unusual, but because it demonstrated something they had never seen: a European educator who refused to consider himself above the work that needed to be done. Mrs. Fraser noted that “the men were delighted to be led by Europeans,” but the deeper significance lay in Fraser’s refusal to lead from a position of separation. He was showing them that true education must break down the false distinctions that divide individuals and communities against themselves.

Trinity College: A Laboratory of Revolutionary Practice

When Fraser arrived at Trinity College Kandy in November 1904, he found an institution in crisis that testified not only to the broader failures of colonial education but divisions of caste and race and creed and nationalism that have been left to ferment in a colonial vat. Discipline had collapsed entirely, with boys refusing to attend detention and openly drinking in public houses. Academic standards had plummeted so severely that not a single student had achieved honours in the Cambridge Local examinations. The school was overcrowded, understaffed, and financially precarious, teetering on the edge of being declared ‘inefficient’ by the government.

But beneath the administrative chaos lay a deeper malaise that Fraser recognized immediately: Trinity had become a microcosm of the colonial system’s most destructive legacy - the systematic division of people against themselves. The student body represented Ceylon’s complex social fabric: Sinhalese Kandyans and Low Country Sinhalese, Tamils from Ceylon and India, Christians from multiple denominations, Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims. Colonial administration had deliberately exacerbated these divisions, understanding that a fragmented populace was easier to control than a united one. At Trinity, these divisions manifested in segregated dining arrangements, hierarchical dormitory systems, and the kind of social stratification that made genuine community impossible.

Fraser saw beneath the chaos to the deeper problem: Trinity had become exactly what the clay-carrying episode had warned against - an institution that separated rather than united, that created hierarchy rather than community, that produced alienation rather than authentic leadership. His first actions were characteristically comprehensive and revolutionary.

While Fraser imposed firm discipline - expelling 140 incorrigibles in his first two terms and personally dealing with misconduct - he simultaneously began building the foundations for genuine educational community. He appointed the school’s first prefects, creating structures for student self-governance that honoured their capacity for responsibility. He instituted regular staff prayers and termly retreats, understanding that the spiritual and emotional health of educators was fundamental to their effectiveness with students.

Most remarkably, Fraser began systematically dismantling the artificial hierarchies that characterized colonial education. He chose to teach primarily in the lower forms, declaring that “the laying of the foundations was the most important,” thereby demonstrating that prestige should attach to service rather than position. This was not mere pedagogy but a revolutionary statement about the nature of educational authority.

The Asgiriya Vision: Engineering Unity Through Shared Struggle

But Fraser’s masterstroke in applying the Uganda clay-carrying lesson came in 1909, when he conceived what many considered an impossible project: creating an eight-acre cricket field from two hills and a valley. The Army had offered him a piece of “useless” land five minutes’ walk from the school - a V-shaped terrain consisting of one high hill, one low hill, and a valley between them. Public Works Department experts declared the scheme impractical, warning that monsoon rains would wash away any soil they moved. Most observers thought Fraser had lost his mind.

Yet Fraser understood something his critics did not: the physical impossibility of the project was precisely its educational value. Drawing directly from his Uganda experience, he recognized that the arduous, extended process of moving earth would become a crucible for forging the unity that Trinity desperately needed. This was not simply about creating a cricket ground - it was about engineering a transformation of hearts and minds through the discipline of shared labour.

The project’s timeline - five years from conception to completion - was no accident. Fraser deliberately chose the most difficult possible approach, requiring collaboration not just within the school but with the broader Kandy community. Students from different castes worked side by side, carrying earth loads that made no distinction between high-born and low-born. Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim students laboured together under the same sun, their shared exhaustion and incremental progress gradually dissolving the barriers that colonial education had reinforced.

Fraser himself led by example, working alongside students and local villagers with pick and shovel. The sight of the Principal - son of the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal - covered in mud and moving earth with his hands sent a message that transcended any sermon or lecture. As Miss. Valesca Reimann (a devoted teacher herself whom Fraser had recruited to the Trinity Staff from Adelaide, Australia) noted, work progressed mysteriously during moonlit nights, as students voluntarily continued the labour, “working swiftly and singing lustily to the accompaniment of Mr. C.B. Weerasinghe’s violin... like gnomes or pixies... But the gnomes were college boys in their cloths and pyjamas.”

(Digitally Enhanced)

The Asgiriya project became what Fraser had envisioned: a lived demonstration that the artificial divisions created by colonial rule could be overcome through common purpose and mutual dependence. Students who might never have spoken due to caste restrictions found themselves relying on each other to move impossibly heavy loads. Those separated by religious differences discovered shared pride in creating something beautiful and permanent. The village workers who joined the project experienced unprecedented collaboration with the college community, breaking down the barriers between town and gown that had historically defined Ceylon’s educational institutions.

More profoundly, the project taught every participant that seemingly impossible transformations were achievable through sustained collective effort. Students learned that their individual limitations need not constrain their collective possibilities - a lesson that would serve them well as Ceylon moved toward independence. They experienced firsthand how patient collaboration could overcome geographical obstacles, social barriers, and technical challenges that appeared insurmountable to individual effort.

When Asgiriya was finally completed in 1915, visiting Australian cricketers declared it “the most beautiful cricket ground they had ever seen.” But Fraser understood that the ground’s true value lay not in its aesthetic perfection but in the human transformation that had created it. A generation of students had learned to see beyond the divisions that colonial administration had fostered. They had experienced the profound satisfaction of achieving the impossible through unity of purpose. Most importantly, they had discovered that their differences - rather than being sources of division - could become complementary strengths when organized around shared vision.

Opening of Asgiriya and The Inaugural Cricket Match (1915)

Digitally Enhanced and Recoloured

Asgiriya Cricket ground (circa 1920)

Digitally Enhanced and Recoloured

Fraser’s approach to community building reached its most extraordinary expression in the famous “rag” incident during a holiday in the hills with senior students and staff. In the dead of night, a playful conflict erupted between Fraser and fellow teacher N.P. Campbell, escalating into a water fight that soaked a student’s bed completely. Without hesitation, Fraser offered his space to the student and he himself slept elsewhere. This moment of casual humility, where the Principal shared real inconvenience without thought of dignity or protocol, created bonds that transcended typical teacher-student relationships and demonstrated Fraser’s complete rejection of artificial barriers.

Such incidents were not aberrations but expressions of Fraser’s core conviction that authentic education happens through authentic relationship. People who shared such egalitarian, undignified, genuinely fun experiences “could not help being drawn into an extremely close fellowship” that lasted lifetimes. The student who recounted this story decades later captured its transformative significance - it showed authority figures as fully human and demonstrated that genuine affection mattered more than institutional hierarchy.

The Vernacular Revolution: Honouring Indigenous Wisdom

Perhaps Fraser’s most controversial innovation was his insistence on teaching Sinhala and Tamil at Trinity College. As Fraser’s biographer W.E.F. Ward comments, ‘In those days, the movement towards a renaissance of Indian and Ceylonese languages and culture was in its infancy; nationalism in politics had not yet brought about nationalism in culture. Then, and long afterwards, the cry was for English and more English; a thorough mastery of English was desired as the essential key to power, and a European who made boys spend time studying Sinhalese or Tamil when they might have been reading more English was suspected of wishing to keep them back.’

In an era when English was seen as the exclusive key to advancement and prestige, Fraser’s policy seemed like educational suicide. Parents complained, educational authorities objected, and fellow missionaries questioned his judgment.

Indeed, the response from professional colleagues in the other privileged schools in the country, Ward points out, especially to the teaching of vernacular languages, took the form of denigrating the College and “personal abuse of the Principal as an individual. They criticised the lines of work and the educational policy upheld by Trinity College, but they were generally occupied with personal details, such as the quality of Mr Fraser’s brains and the credibility of his professions. The boys, past and present, were described as ‘mentally decrepit,’ or ‘non-progressive,’ while the Principal was ‘anti-native’, ‘bribed’ and a ‘conspirator’, and was training his boys to be ‘hewers of wood and drawers of water’.”

Ward continues that ‘Fraser, on the other hand, contended that the boys had a very imperfect knowledge of their own language, and that if they acquired a thorough mastery of their own Tamil or Sinhalese, it would immensely facilitate their learning of English and of all other subjects’. In one of his early letters from Trinity College, Fraser reported that ‘The Colombo educational Missionaries attacked me vigorously for my educational policy...’ But still, Fraser did not waver because he understood then, something that would not become conventional wisdom for decades: that authentic education must be rooted in students’ own cultural and linguistic foundations.

Fraser’s argument was both practical and profound: “A thorough knowledge of the mother tongue is indispensable to true culture of real thinking power. More, a college fails if it is not producing true citizens; and men who are isolated from the masses of their own people by ignorance of their language and thought can never fulfil the part of educated citizens or be true leaders of their race.”

This was not merely linguistic policy but a fundamental reimagining of education’s purpose. Fraser rejected the colonial assumption that progress required cultural abandonment. Instead, he insisted that students must be deeply rooted in their own traditions before they could meaningfully engage with others. The boy who could not write a letter in Sinhala but was forced to study Latin represented everything wrong with colonial education - the creation of a culturally alienated elite disconnected from the very communities they were meant to serve.

Fraser’s vernacular policy proved remarkably successful. Government inspectors noted that Trinity’s English teaching was probably the best in the island, even as students gained fluency in their mother tongues. Most importantly, Trinity graduates emerged as cultural bridges rather than cultural alienators, capable of communicating across traditions without betraying either. An on the strength of that evidence, the rest of the country followed.

Social Service: Education as Community Transformation

Under Fraser’s leadership, Trinity became the pioneer of educational social service in the British Empire. The Trinity College Union for Social Service, developed under Norman Campbell’s guidance, represented a fundamental reimagining of the relationship between education and community development. This was not charity in the traditional sense but education in its most authentic form - learning through service, knowledge applied to community needs, privilege transformed into obligation.

The social service program was voluntary but transformative. Students built shelters for rickshaw coolies who had previously worked exposed to weather, operated dispensaries for villagers who lacked medical care, conducted comprehensive surveys of Kandy’s slums that influenced government housing policy, and provided education for children who would otherwise have had none. Campbell’s legendary moment of wading into clogged drains in the Mahaiyawa slum, to clean them himself, followed by students jumping in to help, became emblematic of the program’s spirit. They were conducting a thorough scientific survey of the slum, the results of which were eventually debated in the legislative council.

The impact extended far beyond immediate services. Students learned that knowledge without service was meaningless, that education created obligation rather than privilege, and that genuine leadership required willingness to address society’s most pressing needs. The Attorney-General acknowledged in the Legislative Council that Trinity students had helped make their country’s laws while still at school.

An old man in a village, hearing Trinity boys talk about Jesus who went about doing good, interrupted to say, “Yes, yes. We know the man you mean. He lives up at the college.” The man was referring to Norman Campbell, who Fraser had also recruited to the Trinity staff and would become and remain one of Fraser’s heroes. When Fraser entered a boisterous crowd during the communal riots in 1915, he said afterwards that he was able to do so because ‘All the people knew me, [as] Campbell’s headmaster; and he always said that Trinity’s reputation among the poor and outcastes was due to Campbell’s work, not to his own.’

To fully appreciate who Norman Campbell was and his contribution to educational institution building requires its own book, but this reflection is about Alek Fraser.

The Peradeniya Vision: Ecumenical Education and Indigenous Expression

One of Fraser’s greatest institutional achievements apart from Trinity College in Kandy and the Achimota School in Ghana, was the creation of the Peradeniya Teacher Training Colony in 1914. This ecumenical institution, jointly operated by Anglican and Methodist churches at the time until the government took over in the 1960s, represented the mature expression of his educational philosophy - a place where spiritual formation, academic excellence, cultural pride, and community service were seamlessly integrated.

The Training Colony embodied everything Fraser had learned about authentic education. Students learning to become teachers, lived in genuine community, with denominational barriers minimized in favour of shared purpose. The curriculum included not only academic subjects but also agriculture, traditional arts, and extensive social service. Most importantly, education was conducted in Sinhala, with explicit instruction in Buddhist philosophy and Ceylonese history, ensuring that graduates would be cultural bridges rather than cultural destroyers.

The present state of the Chapel at the Peradeniya Teacher Training College

The present state of the Chapel at the Peradeniya Teacher Training College, which represents a turning point in Sri Lankan/Christian architecture, which was an understudy for the Chapel of Trinity College and later inspired the Cathedrals of both Diocese of the Church of Ceylon to be built in vernacular style, and likely provided inspiration for the design of Independence square – the design of which likely involved one of its original draftsmen, even though the claim has not yet been verified from primary source documents.

The crowning achievement was the chapel (that would become the understudy for the Trinity College Chapel), designed by the Vice-Principal of Trinity and visionary architect Rev. L.J. Gaster, drafted in traditional Kandyan style at least with a lot of assistance from a very young Clement Leo Unamboowe (if not by him) who was a recent graduate of Trinity then, and carved by the master craftsman Bezalel Patabendige. This building represented Fraser’s vision made manifest - authentically indigenous yet genuinely Christian, beautiful yet functional, rooted in local tradition yet open to universal truth. The construction process itself exemplified Fraser’s educational approach: European missionaries worked alongside local craftsmen, students who would be teachers participated in every aspect of the project, and the result was not merely a building but a symbol of educational philosophy that honoured both local wisdom and universal values.

Cultural Bridge-Building: East Meets West in Mutual Respect

Fraser’s approach to cultural engagement was decades ahead of its time. Rather than seeing Eastern and Western traditions as fundamentally opposed, he understood them as complementary wisdom traditions with much to offer each other. His recruitment of scholars like Kenneth James Saunders, who studied Buddhism sympathetically and produced lasting works on Eastern philosophy, demonstrated his commitment to genuine dialogue rather than cultural imperialism.

At Trinity, students not only studied Christian theology alongside Buddhist philosophy, but the best Christian missionary scholars educated in the classics came from places like Cambridge University to learn Pali and Sanskrit from Sinhala and Buddhist scholars in the island at a CMS Missionary school, where they collaborated to translate the Dhammapada from its original Pali text into English, annotated with explanatory notes and comparative explanations from Biblical and Western philosophy to make it accessible to Western scholars of Buddhism.

The Buddha's "Way of Virtue": The Dhammapada translated from the original Pali
W.D.C. Wagiswara and (Translator) K.J. Saunders (Translator)
Published by John Murray, London, UK, 1912

W.D.C. Wagiswara was an ex-Buddhist monk and a highly respected scholar of Buddhism and Pali whom Fraser recruited as professor of Sinhala and Buddhism at Trinity and Kenneth James Saunders was a Classics scholar from Cambridge who joined the Church Missionary Society to serve as a missionary teacher under Fraser, along with the likes of scholars in the calibre of W.S. Senior, Norman Campbell, Paul Gibson and others.

English literature was celebrated alongside Sinhala poetry, Western science alongside traditional agricultural practices. This was revolutionary in the colonial context, where most missionary education sought to replace indigenous knowledge with European learning. Fraser insisted that both traditions must be honoured and integrated, producing students with the intellectual confidence that comes from deep roots in one’s own tradition combined with genuine appreciation for others.

The result was a generation of cultural ambassadors capable of communicating across traditions without betraying either. They became leaders who could navigate the modern world while remaining authentic to their cultural heritage, exactly the kind of bridge-builders that Ceylon needed as it was beginning to envision and later move towards independence. Fraser himself was not merely an avid supporter of the movement towards independence, but in some ways led the way -- without contradictions -- because he fiercely identified himself as a missionary and not an imperialist. Writing in ‘The Times of Ceylon’ Fraser made the first call for the franchise for Ceylonese as far back as 25 April 1919. In fact, in his reflection, he articulated very clearly how he was struck by the moderation of the proposals of Ceylonese Reformers themselves and urged that ‘an essential prelude [to independence] was to have a broad franchise.’

The Embodied Philosophy: Living the Vision

What made Fraser’s educational philosophy so powerful was not merely its theoretical coherence but his willingness to embody it -- without denying his own human flaws and fallibilities and the imperfect ways in which he manifested it. He lived on campus not as a distant authority but as a member of the community. He shared meals with students regularly, participated in their games, and made himself available for the informal conversations that often proved more educationally significant than formal lectures.

Fraser’s wife played an equally crucial role, creating a family atmosphere that extended educational influence far beyond the classroom. She memorized every student’s name, family background, and personal circumstances, scoring at cricket matches and traveling third class with teams to away games. This attention to individual dignity and worth created bonds that lasted lifetimes and demonstrated that authentic education is ultimately about relationship rather than instruction.

The couple’s hospitality was legendary -- “All our champion teams come to the bungalow for dinner as a matter of course,” Fraser wrote, “but almost every day masters, prefects, and other boys come in to one meal or another.” Mrs. Fraser organized tea parties for entire classes, complete with games and treats, while Fraser took students on jungle expeditions and camping trips. Through such experiences, they created what Fraser called “one college, of one community, and its future lies with us all.”

The Enduring Legacy: Principles for Contemporary Education

Fraser’s educational philosophy offers profound insights for contemporary challenges in education and development. His integration of academic learning with practical skills, his emphasis on community service as fundamental to education, and his commitment to cultural responsiveness provide a framework for addressing modern educational inequities and disconnections.

His understanding that education must serve communities rather than extract talent from them speaks directly to contemporary concerns about brain drain and urban-rural divides. His insistence that students must be deeply rooted in their own cultural traditions before engaging meaningfully with others offers guidance for maintaining cultural integrity in an increasingly globalized world.

Perhaps most importantly, Fraser’s demonstration that genuine transformation requires authentic relationship and shared sacrifice provides a model for educational leadership that transcends traditional hierarchies. His willingness to carry clay, share meals, and make himself vulnerable created bonds that enabled extraordinary institutional achievements and produced graduates who carried similar values into their own careers and communities.

The Frasers on their return to Trinity in 1950

(Digitally Enhanced and Recoloured)

The Sacred Ground That Nurtures

All schools are built on sacred ground - because they are places where sacred visions of human possibility are born and realised. The buildings Fraser erected, the playing fields carved from hillsides, and the chapel designed in indigenous architectural style at Trinity College, remain as physical testaments to an educational philosophy that honoured both practical needs and aesthetic values.

But the deeper legacy lies in the countless individuals whose lives were transformed by encountering educators who believed that authentic learning required authentic relationship, that genuine authority emerged from service rather than dominance, and that the highest purpose of education was not individual advancement but community strengthening.

Fraser’s prayer on Trinity Hill in 1904 - asking that his “pound weight” might become “a ton” - was answered beyond his wildest imagination. The ripple effects of his educational philosophy spread across continents and generations, inspiring countless educators who refuse to accept that schools must simply reproduce existing inequalities, that learning must be disconnected from living, or that education must serve institutions and systems rather than people.

In our contemporary context, as we grapple with educational challenges that seem increasingly complex and intractable, Fraser’s example reminds us that transformation is possible when we are willing to carry the clay ourselves, when we choose relationship over hierarchy, when we honour local wisdom while remaining open to universal truth, and when we understand that the most profound education happens not in classrooms but in the countless moments of authentic human connection that make learning a sacred act.

The young man who stood on Trinity Hill in 1904, acknowledging his ignorance while asking for divine partnership in the work ahead, became one of our history’s most transformative educators not because he had all the answers, but because he was willing to embody the questions that mattered most. His legacy challenges us to ask the same questions and to have the courage to live the answers, wherever our own educational journeys may lead us.

The age of AI is here...

2025-01-16T11:41:00.004+11:00

...and we are not ready yet

As a father of three young children and a professional who has spent decades working with and writing about technology, I find myself in a unique position to contemplate the profound changes artificial intelligence is already having and will continue to have on our world and economies. My professional experience has given me deep insight into how AI systems are rapidly mastering tasks that once required years of human training and expertise. Yet it's my role as a parent that compels me to look beyond the technical implications to consider what these changes mean for my children's future.

The skills and knowledge that our education system currently prioritizes - the specialized technical capabilities that have traditionally guaranteed professional success - may soon be readily augmented or replaced by AI systems. This transformation isn't just another technological disruption; it represents a fundamental shift in how human beings will create and contribute value to society.

This reality has led me to reflect deeply on what kind of education will truly serve our children. What capabilities will help them thrive in a world where artificial intelligence increasingly matches or exceeds human performance in traditional professional domains? How can we prepare them not just to adapt to this changing world, but to help shape it wisely?

The answer, I believe, lies not in trying to predict what AI will and won’t be able to do – because no matter how well we think we understand the underlying principles of AI systems and how they work, the growth in their capabilities over the last two years have defied the predictions of most ‘experts’ and terrified those whose predictions have turned out to be more accurate. They all agree on one thing however – that we will not be able to compete with AI at its strengths.

Instead, we must focus on developing the uniquely human capabilities that will become increasingly valuable: our ability to understand complex systems, to build genuine relationships, to exercise ethical judgment, and to collaborate in pursuing shared goals. This requires us to fundamentally reimagine not just what schools teach, but how entire education systems develop human potential.

In the face of such profound and grave uncertainties, we are compelled – like any business would be when faced with a disruptive competitor – to focus inwards and try to understand the essence of our human capabilities that we can develop to make us more valuable and productive: our ability to understand complex systems, to build genuine relationships, to exercise courage and ethical judgment, and to collaborate in pursuing shared goals. Some of those abilities may help us differentiate ourselves enough to not have to compete with AI to remain relevant and productive in our careers and our role as citizens. It is possible that Intelligent systems may exceed us in others. But understanding the essence of our humanity and developing holistically as human beings – I feel personally – would still be our best bet.

Our current education systems suffer from three critical weaknesses that make them increasingly unfit for this future. First, they focus almost exclusively on knowledge transfer, neglecting the development of character, social capabilities, and self-awareness that will become increasingly crucial for human value creation. Second, their assessment and certification methods provide only crude, unreliable measures of human capability, failing to capture the full spectrum of what makes someone valuable in real-world contexts. Third, they remain designed for a vanishing world where career paths could be predicted decades in advance and professional knowledge remained relevant for entire careers.

The rapidly evolving economy demands a fundamentally different approach. Instead of training students for specific careers that may not exist when they graduate, we must develop their capacity to adapt, learn, and reinvent themselves throughout their lives. This means focusing on character development and core capabilities that transcend specific professions - critical thinking, ethical judgment, emotional intelligence, and collaborative ability. It requires creating formal institutional pathways for lifelong learning, enabling continuous upskilling and retraining as circumstances change. Most importantly, it demands new ways to assess and verify not just knowledge and skills, but character, social integration, and personal integrity.

In essence, we must transform education from a system focused on preparing young people for predictable careers into one that develops complete human beings capable of navigating and shaping an unpredictable future. In the next few weeks, we will discuss how such a transformation is not only possible but essential for our children's future.

A Critical Analysis of Corruption in India

2024-08-28T10:20:00.006+10:00

[Written in 2013]

Introduction

Perception of corruption in India

‘Corruption’, is universally perceived as the abuse of power by individuals or groups, for private gain. Corrupt behaviour – because it is publicly derided and often illegal – often takes place privately (Choi and Thum 2005); making it difficult to measure or reliably estimate its actual social and economic costs (Galtung 2006). India has gained notoriety as a country where corruption is more visible than in others because of the pervasiveness of low level corruption that people encounter routinely as a part of daily life as well as a number of high profile corruption scandals (Parry 2000; Vittal 2012). When Kisan Baburao Hazare (also known as Anna Hazare) launched his public protest against corruption in August 2011, it garnered wide public support from across the social spectrum in India particularly the middle class (Banerjee 2011). From the poor who are often victims of abuses of power by law enforcement officials, to the burgeoning middle class who are often forced to bribe rent-seeking officials to access public services and the rich who often profit or lose based on political patronage; corruption is a visible and tangible reality for a majority of Indians.

Recent scandals have exposed politicians who had subverted due process (Acharya 2012), allegations of fraud levelled against organisers of the Delhi Commonwealth Games (Majumdar 2011) and Indian Cricketers who were convicted of match-fixing (ESPNcricinfo 2013). These indicate that corruption pervades many aspects of public life and a broad range of institutions in the country. They contribute to the perception of India as a country where corruption is pervasive (Srivastava 2001).

Research outline

This research will examine the historical, structural and social underpinnings of corruption in India. Given that corruption is often rooted in political and economic systems, the historical analysis will focus on India’s political transition from the British Raj to independent democracy as well as its economic liberalisation two decades ago. A key argument in this paper will be that the pervasiveness and magnitude of corruption in India is a result of policy imbalances caused by rapid political and economic transformations.

It will also draw on recent cases to illustrate the most prevalent forms of corruption as well as their magnitude. The impact of corruption in India will be discussed in terms of both the social risks and economic cost for a rapidly developing democracy with a burgeoning middle class. However, the role that corruption plays in keeping the enormous state machinery of India functioning despite shortcomings will also be examined, highlighting the institutional reforms that must precede action aimed at eliminating corruption. Finally, the emergence of anti-corruption movements and their impact will be analysed. The scope of this research is to analyse the spread, intensity, variety and future outlook of corruption in India. Analysis of specific anti-corruption measures and prescription of policy alternatives is not in scope.

Literature review

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

The spread of corruption in a society – as much as its eradication – is often a gradual process. Depending on the level of awareness, tolerance of, and attitude towards corruption, they may eventually become a feature of bureaucratic culture (Simpser 2013). Therefore, understanding corruption in a country or an institution requires a historical perspective and recognition of the specific conditions that spawned it. Any analysis of corruption in India must consider the broad social impacts of the two most pivotal events in India’s recent history: independence from the British Raj in 1947 and the liberalisation of its economy in 1991.

Political Transition

Historically - before western colonisation, social organisation in India was based on a class hierarchy that inhibited social mobility and avenues for realising political or economic aspirations of citizens (Heller 2013). The British Raj largely maintained the status quo – supplanting aristocrats with a colonial administration with broad discretionary powers (Lee 2013). Realising India’s vast capacity for wealth generation, the British government ensured that its colonial officials were well paid, but also imposed heavy penalties for dishonesty (Jones 2013).

Independence in 1947 brought sweeping changes to the social structure of India in a short time. It also inherited from British rule, a population that was no longer as tightly bound by their caste or class, and had aspirations of social mobility – and an education system that would elevate a vast portion of the population from the largely oppressive class hierarchy (Das 2013). Running the massive state machinery required a powerful bureaucracy, so the Indian government retained much of the powers that were once vested in its colonial officials but slashed their salaries (Sabharwal and Berman 2013) - creating an imbalance between the broad powers they exercised and the wealth they could access. The educated masses who sought to advance their social status by joining the public sector found themselves underpaid (Roy 2013). The confluence of excess power and low remuneration of public officials proved to be fertile ground for bureaucrats to use their powers to relax the strict regulations imposed on citizens by the state in exchange for bribes.

The left leaning Nehru government also imposed taxes - sometimes as high as 93% - on the rich and sought to enforce them through underpaid bureaucrats who exercised a broad range of discretionary powers (Kattumuri and Singh 2013). Such policies created incentives for officials and their constituency to profit by subverting due process. The taxation system in India continues to be one of the most corrupt public institutions (Das-Gupta and Andrade 2013). A high degree of State intervention in trade and manufacturing also spawned massive public enterprises which were vulnerable to political interference (Roy 2013). Furthermore, the geographic scale and cultural diversity within the federation of Indian states inhibited monitoring and control of power exercised by elected as well as appointed public officials (Patel 2013). With minimal oversight, elected officials were in a position to personally profit from state enterprises with minimal risk.

Economic liberalisation

After centuries of economic exploitation by the west through colonial occupation, the newly independent Indian government remained suspicious of foreign investment. Its socialist leaning economic policies curtailed private enterprise and market competition (Nilekani 2013). Therefore, until its commencement of landmark liberal economic reforms in 1991, the largest Indian enterprises and most valuable assets were owned and controlled by the state. Historical and cultural factors explained above had already enabled the permeation and normalisation of high-level corruption in the public sector. The privatisation agenda of the early 90s presented unprecedented opportunities for them to exploit public assets for private gains. As the government’s economic liberalisation policies began to kick in and investment in high-value public assets and enterprises were opened to private investment, those with close ties to political elites stood to profit the most (Vittal 2012).

It is worth noting that some industries such as technology companies that emerged and grew faster than government regulations could keep up, were relatively unconstrained by public sector interference and undue regulation. They have grown rapidly to become world leaders and a backbone of industry in India’s economy despite government corruption. A key innovation by India’s technology sector in recent years has been the introduction of a biometric personal identification platform for all citizens – which has the potential to minimise corruption and streamline bureaucratic processes across many public service institutions (Gelb and Clark 2013). If successful, it will help automate public services and thereby help minimise the need for bureaucratic intervention and slash service delivery costs (Kapoor 2013).

LAW

Corrupt behaviour and bribery have been criminalised in India under its penal code since 1860 and the Prevention of Corruption Act specifically targeting corrupt behaviour was introduced in 1988. However, much of meaningful action against corruption in India has been made possible by the Right to Information (RTI) act that was passed in 2005 (Relly and Schwalbe 2013; Suthar 2013). It has helped relax provisions of the Official Secrets Act 1923 that previously inhibited public access to government information and mandated the regular proactive reporting of certain government information – minimising the need for citizens to raise formal RTI requests. Under provisions of the RTI, citizens are entitled to receive government information within 30 days of a specific request – provided it does not adversely impact national security (Jain and Saraf 2013).

The campaign conducted by Anna Hazare in 2011 for a ‘Jan Lokpal’ or People’s Ombudsman on corruption – having revived popular demand for an independent office with broad anti-corruption powers two years ago – has not yet achieved its goal. The bill was passed by the Indian lower house but has been blocked in the upper house. It will be a test of integrity for key Indian policy leaders including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. More importantly, it will help gauge the momentum in public opinion against corruption. Those who criticise the bill points out however, that it is not a sufficient or critically important policy tool for combating the culture of institutionalised corruption in the country (Banerjee 2011).

RECENT HIGH-PROFILE CASES OF CORRUPTION

In February 2012, India's Supreme Court annulled 122 telecom licenses after it was revealed that then minister of communications and IT - A. Raja – had corruptly subverted due process in awarding them (Acharya 2012). Instead of being sold at public auction, the wireless phone licenses were sold at a colossal loss to the state, to a few privileged companies which the minister had tipped off ahead of their competitors. Raja was jailed for 15 months but has since been granted bail – even after perpetrating a scam that Time Magazine rated second behind Watergate in its ‘Top 10 abuses of power’ list (Tharoor 2011). The spectrum was later auctioned for $27 billion confirming the estimated value as per India's Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG). In April this year, Raja submitted a statement indicating that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister P. Chidambaram were fully aware of the 2G bandwidth allocation process and approved of his decisions at the time (Singh 2013). Presently, there are also allegations of subverting due process in the allocation of coal blocks to public and private enterprises between 2004 and 2009, but it is not clear whether they are linked to corruption.

In March 2011, a diplomatic cable released by whistle-blowing website Wikileaks revealed an American official’s description of witnessing "chests of cash" shown to him by an official of the Congress party (WikiLeaks 2011). The cable further revealed the cash being described as reserved for bribing MPs to buy their support for a vote of confidence on the US-India nuclear deal.

Even sports have not been spared from the corrosive influence of corruption. The Indian government was seriously embarrassed by allegations corruption and fraud connected with its hosting of the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi (Majumdar 2011). Indian politician and member of the ruling Congress party Suresh Kalmadi faced a life sentence for his alleged role in the scandal. However, Kalmadi was granted bail in early 2012 after serving a 10 month prison term and the trial has not progressed since, further highlighting possible irregularities in the criminal justice system (TNN 2012). In 2012, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) suspended India's Olympic Association over claims of corruption surrounding its internal election process. Also, four high profile Indian Cricketers were convicted of match-fixing last September (ESPNcricinfo 2013). A court order has been issued to investigate the President of the Board of Control for Cricket in India and his son-in-law regarding their possible involvement in the scandal (Correspondent 2013).

The scale of corruption in India is partly made possible by the globalised financial services sector. Trillions of dollars' worth of proceeds from corrupt activity in India is estimated to be held in offshore bank accounts, though the exact figure may not be known (Kumar 2013). This highlights the fact that high-level corruption is a truly global issue – and its prevalence in India or any other country reflects more on a global system that enables, fosters and profits from it.

FIGHT AGAINST CORRUPTION

Social activists such as Anna Hazare and Kiran Bedi have recently gained prominence and broad following in Indian public life for their anti-corruption advocacy and campaigning (Khandekar and Reddy 2013). This highlights a growing and potent public discontent of the Indian government’s inability and sometimes unwillingness to tackle issues of corruption proactively (Goodwin 2013). There are indicators that the correlation between a growing middle class and reducing levels of corruption may hold true for India – as long as the middle class is actively engaged in the anti-corruption movement (Webb 2013). But little progress has been made so far and even symbolic victories such as the Lokpal bill of 2011 have stalled in the legislature. Much of the anticipated progress in the fight against corruption has not yet fully materialised, but increasing levels of social awareness and civil engagement provide cause for optimism.

Technological innovations such biometric identification for all citizens - promise to streamline bureaucratic processes and promote citizen empowerment by enabling easier access to public services for a large number of the population that have remained marginalised for generations (Kapoor 2013). Cheap and robust technological solutions have the potential to become a key ally in the fight against corruption, but they remain a fair distance from reaching fruition (Karna 2013).

Analysis

Continued failure of successive administrations to tackle corruption effectively, and the dominance of a political class that has benefited from it, have allowed corrupt behaviour to permeate many aspects of public life in India. Subsequent generations who have been born into the system have grown to accept corruption as part of public life (Simpser 2013). However, neither specific examples nor perceptions of the pervasiveness of corruption are symptoms of moral decadence; but signs of broader public policy failures, weak institutions and erosion of the rule of law. Even though they have a corrosive social impact in isolation, some have evolved as means of circumventing bad or inefficient policies, and have evolved to be net positive outcomes at least economically.

Lack of public accountability has historically been a key enabler of corruption in India, but RTI legislation coupled with heightened public awareness is increasing the risks for senior officials who engage in corrupt behaviour. Reducing high level corruption can deter corruption at lower levels (Bhattacharyya and Jha 2013). A higher degree of automation that can minimise the need for bureaucratic intervention in public service delivery, citizen empowerment through education and political organisation are proving to be more effective in the fight against corruption in India.

Nepotism and cronyism

Despite being a democracy for three generations, India’s historical social organisation paradigms of class hierarchy, caste clans and family ties have not been supplanted by egalitarian principals. As a result of the cultural primacy of the family, aspirations of the family and community are often inseparable from the aspirations of the individual. India is by no means unique in this regard, but its religious traditions and culture foster instincts that favour the greater good of the group over the individual (Gupta 2013). The ethical constraints on nepotism and cronyism based on egalitarian principles sometimes contradict the fundamental human instinct to favour those with familial ties or shared identity over those who we cannot relate to. As evident in the stark contrasts in levels of opulence and poverty lying side by side in its population centres, and irregularities in its justice system, few Indian citizens – if any – can subscribe to egalitarian ideas about equal opportunity and fairness for all. Nepotism and cronyism have gained credence in a society that is equally defined by the absence of policies that advance egalitarianism and meritocracy.

Political structure

The scale of India’s democracy, the collective demands of its citizen’s political and economic aspirations and the scale of diversity in Indian society have mandated devolution of political power to regions defined by distinct language and cultural traditions. Successive Indian central governments have depended on broad coalitions of federal level power brokers with diverse interests to gain and retain power. Such interdependencies have weakened checks and balances in the Indian legislature that would otherwise enable corruption among politicians to be prosecuted more proactively. For example, it is alleged that the Indian Prime Minister knew of irregularities in the 2G spectrum auction, but failed to take action against the relevant minister as that may have destabilised the ruling coalition.

Economic impact

The actual economic cost of corruption in India would be difficult to measure or estimate – not merely because corruption at most levels is invisible but also because of the scarcity of information. Variations in public awareness of corruption across the immense scale, diversity and geographic spread of the population and lack of reliable information channels would pose significant challenges in the collection as well as collation of data (Galtung 2006). However, there are two salient points that are relevant.

One is that the growing middle-class is rapidly building up a critical mass of people who are aware of corruption at all levels in society and articulate open dissatisfaction about the status quo (Harindranath and Khorana 2013). High profile corruption scandals contribute to a growing perception of the Indian market as one of high-risk as much as it is one of great opportunities (Gill and Mand 2013). There is a significant risk that such an environment may attract the wrong type of investors. Both these factors can have highly destabilising effects on the political climate and economy in India respectively.

The second point worth noting is that corruption in India has been spawned by imbalances in its policy framework caused by rapid political and economic transformations. It is perhaps a sad reality that India’s public infrastructure has not expanded to keep up with its growing population (Swerts et al. 2013). Intensifying competition for limited resources exacerbate certain ingrained forms of corruption that have gained legitimacy by evolving to offer better alternatives to bad social policies. Policies and regulations such as laws that refer minor traffic infringements to court are outdated, and have a negative impact on workforce productivity and judicial efficiency. Bribing a police officer in such instances - though illegal and corrupt - may have a positive economic impact.

Conclusion

India is too vast and diverse a country to be defined merely by perceptions of pervasive corruption. As the world’s largest democracy with a history spanning the entire length of human civilisation, the scale and complexity of policy challenges it faces – including anti-corruption measures – are unparalleled. There can only be a few – if any - precedents or examples of success in other countries that have practical relevance to India. Despite ongoing social developments, corruption will likely continue to be a feature of Indian public life. Given the mass of its population and its growing influence in international affairs, it is likely that the world will have to adjust to accommodate and work with the issue of corruption in India.

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N.P. Campbell: Scientist, Missionary, Soldier

2024-06-20T14:56:00.003+10:00

Click to download

In the grand tapestry of life, there are threads that shine brighter, threads that weave stories of such profound depth that they transcend the ordinary. One such thread is the life of Norman Phillips Campbell. It is with a sense of profound respect and admiration that I pen this forward. Campbell left an indelible mark not only on Trinity College, Kandy, but also on the countless lives he touched with his spirit of service.

Born in Chicago and educated at Oxford, Campbell was a brilliant scientist, tipped to be the next Lord Kelvin. Yet, he chose a path less travelled – when he chose to serve as a missionary teacher at Trinity College in what was then Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), saying “I believe I would do more for science itself by teaching the elements to a people new to it, and training the young there to give their contribution to it. But above all I want to serve Christ…” His dedication to service and his Christ-like compassion were legendary, earning him the love and respect of all who knew him – especially the poor and marginalised.

In the words of Alexander Garden Fraser, the Principal of Trinity who recruited him, Campbell was “the crowning glory” of the College. Fraser wrote after Campbell’s death, “I have only indicated the greatness and wonder of a man I have known who was like Christ… he was our pride, and to win his smile we would have gone far.” It is this greatness and wonder that we celebrate as we delve into the pages of this biography.

Campbell’s legacy at Trinity College is multifaceted. He served as a Professor of Chemistry and Scout Master, founded the Social Service Union, and designed a number of buildings at Trinity. It was in the Social Service Union that left the deepest imprint of himself, and which in turn defined the spirit and character of the school. His undivided devotion to science and the person of Christ has become a part of the identity of Trinity College, a gift for which we remain profoundly grateful.

As he left Trinity to join England’s war effort in 1914, he explained to his students why he felt he must enlist. “…every evil thing that you and I have done during all our lives has helped to bring on this war” he argued, and “evil grows as… the circles widen when a pebble is thrown into a still pool.”

Having taken responsibility for his own sin which led to the war, he felt he must therefore atone for it. “If peace were declared to-morrow, it would not make things better. The evil which brought about this war would be left exactly where it was.” “…war is not simply killing, it is also a willingness to be killed, if need be, not for one’s own sake, but for the sake of others; it is this that ennobles war” he reasoned.

Having been wounded in a gas attack in 1915, he returned to the field. On 3rd May 1917, he died of a gunshot wound to his shoulder, near Arras in Northern France.

This digitised version of Campbell’s biography, written by his wife Lettice Margaret Campbell and first published in 1922, is a tribute to his extraordinary life. It is my hope that the readers will find inspiration in Campbell’s story, just as I have. His life serves as a reminder that the pursuit of knowledge and the spirit of service are not mutually exclusive, but rather, they can and must coexist and enrich each other.

As you read, may you be inspired by the life of Norman Phillips Campbell - a man of science, a man of faith, and above all, a man of service.

How it all began: Revisiting the Vision of the Pioneers & Protagonists of Trinity College, Kandy

2023-12-15T19:15:00.002+11:00

source: Trinity College Kandy

Presentation by Harendra Alwis at a webinar organised by the library council of Trinity College on 25th June 2022 as part of the sesquicentennial celebrations of the school.

Rediscovering Trinity: How it all Began? Revisiting the vision of the pioneers & protagonists

Presented by the Trinity College Library Council

The third episode of the Rediscovering Trinity webinar series discusses about several strands from history in a retelling of how Trinity began and trace the lives and work of a few of Trinity’s pioneering figures, to weave together a story about the school that may illuminate our present moment and offer hope for the future to all Sri Lankans.
Posted by Trinity College, Kandy on Sunday, 19 June 2022

Thank you, Fr. Principal, Librarian Mrs. Illangakoon, and members of the library council, for inviting me. The Chaplain, Parents, friends, well-wishers of Trinity and Trinitians. I really appreciate the time you are dedicating to be part of this webinar tonight or if you are watching a recording online. To the majority of you who are in Sri Lanka, I hope the topic of this webinar and your association with the Trinity story will prove meaningful especially at times like these.

Introduction

I am preceded in these webinar series by two illustrious old boys.

Mr. Keshan Thalagahagoda made the point - which stood out for me - that the primary responsibility of a Trinitian is to be a good citizen. Prof. Gishan Dissanaike led an illuminating reflection, about the relevance and ingredients of an all-round education… the kind that nurtures good citizens and empowers them to think and act.

When Rev. Alek Garden Fraser was asked to outline his vision for Trinity, more than a century ago, in a country and a world that was very different from now, he spoke along the same lines.

He said:

The aim of Trinity is;
First.- To train Christians in Ceylon to present Christ through their lives; that their hearers may realise [Christ] not as a foreigner, but as the real and true fulfilment of all that is best and highest in their own aspirations and of their past.
Second - To make the pupils good citizens of their land,
(a) By carefully relating all that is taught them to the needs, problems, and language of their people,
(b) By deliberately striving to foster and encourage their sense of responsibility and readiness to act and, so working, to produce leaders.

Alek Garden Fraser (Circa 1915)

To be clear, he did not advocate for people to be converted to Christianity, but instead, for all Trinitians to be “Christ like” - that also not according to transplanted ideals about Christ, but the best and highest values in our own culture and faith and being true to our own history and heritage.

He intended for Trinitians to be leaders who can understand their own people and their problems. But not self-ordained leaders or out of a feeling of entitlement to be leaders merely because we call ourselves Trinitians. Rather, for us to feel a genuine sense of responsibility for our fellow citizens, the ability to address their problems and a will to serve their interests.

What Keshan and Gishan have outlined, is evidence that the vision of Alek Fraser has not only remained relevant after a century, but perhaps more now than ever before.

That leaves me to share the stories that gave birth to that vision and what it took to institutionalise them at Trinity. The stories I am going to share may not be new, but I hope they will open new perspectives when woven into the story of Trinity.

Preamble

If I may borrow the words of John Berger, “never again will the story of Trinity be told as though it were the only one.” The story of Trinity is one strand in a rich anthology. I am not here to reaffirm that Trinity is “the best school of all’. The story of Trinity is way more fascinating and way more important than one about wanting to be the best. Most of all, it is a story that matters. Especially if you are Sri Lankan. And regardless of whether you have anything to do with Trinity.

To someone looking from outside and able to see only what is tangible or measurable, Trinity may seem unremarkable. There are schools that are older, that have produced more influential people, that have better facilities… Even as Trinitians - our own assessment of the school is often tied up with the achievements of a few. Be that a list of notable alumni or the tally of trophies we’ve won, or even the fact that famous people like the Queen and Mahatma Gandhi have visited our school.

They are all important aspects of the Trinity story for sure, but it is all too easy to focus on them to the exclusion of the vision and institutional legacy of the school that we need to celebrate and continue to cultivate. That's the reason why the story of how Trinity began, needs to be rediscovered. It is only when we see the story of Trinity as a part of stories about our community, nation and the world that gave rise to it, that we can grasp its relevance in our present lives and appreciate the hope and promise it offers for the future.

How it all began

Carl Sagan, in his pioneering documentary series - The Cosmos - famously pointed out that “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe”.

What if you wish to make Trinity from scratch? How far in history would we have to go back?

Homo sapiens settled our island about one hundred thousand years ago and their course in history has been shaped by the world they came into contact with; from those who traded along the maritime silk-road of which our island was a notable link between east and west and renaissance of Europe almost half a world away, followed by their subsequent conquests of the East… Perhaps Trinity may not have been established had not the Kandyan kingdom successfully repelled successive European invaders for over 300 years - much longer than any comparably sized state was able to do anywhere else in the world…

But relax… I am not going to elaborate on any of those stories. Just to draw a mental picture, I think each of us are like droplets in the river of history; a river that has been nourished by all those streams and many more. Trinity is like a little lake - if not a pond - up in the mountains, where some of us have languished for a while and acquired shared memories.

So, this is a story about how this pond of ours came to be; and a few streams that gifted its distinctive rich waters. This pond and the streams that flow into it matter to the extent that they nourish the thirsty souls living around it.

CMS

On 12 April 1799 a group of men and at least one woman among them, met in a first-floor room in the Castle and Falcon Hotel at Aldersgate Street in London. They came from various walks of life; among them preachers, writers and two members of the British Parliament - Henry Thornton and William Wilberforce. They were social and religious reformists who held deep convictions about issues of social justice, gender discrimination and poverty. They were united in one cause above all others – and that was the abolition of slavery! It was the time when Britain was in ascendance on the world stage - on its way to becoming perhaps the greatest empire the world has ever seen, and much of its wealth and power was built on the institution of slavery.

Meeting at the church Missionary Society was founded. The Society was founded in Aldersgate Street in the City of London on 12 April 1799. Most of the founders were members of the Clapham Sect, a group of activist evangelical Christians. They included Henry Thornton MP and William Wilberforce MP.

Wilberforce was their leader and John Newton – a former slave ship captain turned preacher - who composed the famous hymn “Amazing Grace” was one of their mentors.

That meeting in 1799 would lead to the formation of a ‘Society for Missions to Africa and the East’. In 1812 it was renamed The Church Missionary Society for Africa and the East or CMS as we know it. Its goal was the emancipation of the body, mind, and soul - through the promotion of universal education and health in the expanding British Empire. In other words, where the justification for slavery came from arguments about the genealogical inferiority of non-Europeans, they aimed to educate the masses of the new colonies as a means of emancipating them. Because a “race” that is capable of doing mathematics as it were, could not be considered ‘inferior’ enough to be enslaved.

The CMS is the main catchment that nourished the Trinity pond.

‘Ceylon’ featured prominently in the deliberations of the C.M.S. from its early years, however, it was not until 1817 that they moved to establish a mission here.

Its committee appointed four preachers as missionaries to Ceylon and they arrived in Galle on June 29, 1818. Rev Samuel Lambrick was assigned to travel up to Kandy to establish the mission there. In October 1821, the Rev. Thomas Browning arrived in Kandy with his wife, to join him, but in May 1822, Rev. Lambrick was transferred away from Kandy. In June 1822, Rev. Browning received a government grant of land, which still forms part of the present Trinity College compound. So, the first institution that would eventually become Trinity, was established there exactly 200 years ago.

The first CMS mission house established on the same site where Trinity College, Kandy is today (1823)

Plantation economy, slavery, and indentured labour

At the time, agricultural produce accounted for the majority of international trade and European powers were competing with each other in South Asia to control the spice trade - which was among the most profitable. As is always the case, plantations, to be profitable, required cheap labour which in the Americas, came predominantly from enslaved Africans. It was William Wilberforce the same person who founded the CMS - who successfully led the motion in the British parliament, to abolish the slave trade there in 1807.

There is a movie called - “Amazing Grace” Directed by Michael Apted about this very story.

Britain would abolish slavery altogether in 1833. But once the slave trade had been abolished in Britain, a large number of ships that were used for the transportation of slaves across the Atlantic had no use. Many of them lay anchored in ports from New Orleans to Baltimore.

Back in Ceylon, the Uva-Wellassa rebellion of 1817 to 1819 shook the British East India Company and they were spending more to suppress the population in the provinces than what they earned from trading there. So, there was a push in the 1820s to introduce industrial scale agriculture in Ceylon. For that, the government opened up land for European planters, but they needed a steady source of cheap and compliant labour. In a cruel twist of irony, many of the old slave ships were cheaply repurposed by the British in the 1820s and 1830s - for among other things - transportation of indentured people mainly out of India as cheap plantation labour throughout the colonies from the West Indies to South Africa and Mauritius, as well as Ceylon and the Malaysian peninsular. These ships were used also to transport the produce of those plantations and more notoriously Opium that was grown in India to be sold in China - leading ultimately to the opium wars.

A distribution map of Indian indentured labour during the British Raj sourced from Reddit.

The British administration in India was responsible for causing a number of famines. The poorest in South India, who perhaps suffered the most from those famines, were promised a better life in Ceylon and brought here as labourers to work in the plantations from the 1820s and this continued till the 1920s. They were ‘offloaded’ in Mannar and marched treacherously on foot to Anuradhapura and then to Matale - along what became known as “Skeleton Road”. Many died along the way and a British planter described that “one could fill two carts with the skulls of those [migrants] who have been abandoned, unburied.” The survivors would be quarantined in Matale for two weeks and screened for diseases, then brought to Kandy to be sent off to plantations all over the country.

Agriculture has always been the bedrock of Sri Lanka’s economy, and it was colonised by successive European nations that wanted to control the spice trade. But it was the British who set up industrial scale plantations. Kandy - given the location, became one of the main trading hubs - where the produce of the hill country plantations was brought to be sent to Colombo.

People, brought from South India, have to this day, sustained the plantations and thereby the rolling fortunes of the Kandyan economy during the British period - and for decades afterwards. Their staging post in Kandy was in Mahaiyawa, where some of their descendants live to this day. Those men and women and their descendants who have lived in Mahaiyawa since the 1820s, became one of the streams that enriched the Trinity pond.

Recent images of the Mahaiyawa Slum

The Colebrooke-Cameron Reforms of 1833 opened up the Ceylon Civil Service to locals for the first time and standardised the education system - making English the sole medium of instruction. An English education became a gateway to power and wealth for aspiring Ceylonese, and Christian Missionary schools were especially favoured by the government which gave them an advantage over non-Christian schools.

As a trading hub, Kandy attracted both the rural elite - who were essentially plantation owners and administrators as well as the urban elite - the new professionals who ran the trade exchanges and machinery of government. They all needed a school that would provide an English education for their sons. The CMS mission in Kandy had both the means and favour of the government to fill the need better than any others. And so, it did.

When the hill country coffee plantations prospered in their march across the hills, they drew in professionals from all over the country and people seeking riches from other parts of the empire, and the school thrived. But whenever the coffee plants withered - the school too lost the population that sustained it. Fortunes of the CMS schools in Kandy were tied to the plantation economy.

Cultural and religious revival in Ceylon

Meanwhile, the world and our own history kept opening up. As a natural reaction to British government policies including those which unfairly advantaged Christian missionary schools, and also boosted by the archaeological discoveries in Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa including the ‘discovery’ of the Mahavamsa by George Turnour - the 1840s paved way for a Buddhist revival in Ceylon. The growing opposition to Christian Missionary work came from scholarly monks like Hikkaduwe Sri Sumangala thero. They were not narrow-minded religious conservatives but men who had broad breadth of vision and by all accounts, were very liberal minded. Further afield, Charles Darwin published “On the origin of species” in 1859 which undermined the authority of the Biblical creation narrative on objective and rational terms. So, despite favourable government policies, the latter half of the 19th century was a very tough time to be a Christian missionary, especially in Ceylon.

Ruwanweliseya (circa 1891)

The decline of coffee plantations and the introduction of tea in the 1870s finally helped stabilise the Kandyan economy. In retrospect, if not for the stability and prosperity brought about by the tea plant, the CMS missionary school in Kandy would have also continued to blossom and wither with the economic cycles.

An early Tea plantation in Ceylon and James Taylor (left) credited with the introduction of Tea.

So, during the course of the nineteenth century, the CMS mission that was founded half a century earlier… and a colony of South Indian labourers brought in by the most powerful empire the world has ever seen… and a resurgent Sri Lankan consciousness would all converge on either side of what is now DS Senanayake Veediya and Katugastota road in Kandy. It is a valley that stretches like a hammock towards the Mahaweli river, from the Kandy lake - strung from two mountains - Hantana on one end and Hunnasgiriya at the other. This is where Trinity College Kandy began, in 1872.

View of Kandy from the Kandy Lake in the foreground to the Hunnasgiriya range in the distance (circa 1890).

The founders of Trinity College in 1872, were separated by more than three generations from the founding of the CMS. Slavery was a thing of the past in Britain and more recently in America with the end of the American Civil War in 1865. Perhaps feeling absolved of past sins, they saw England and the West as the wellspring of all that was civilised and civilising. Britain already controlled India and had decisively won the Opium wars, bringing the mighty Chinese empire to its knees. So, it was perhaps natural for them to see it as their great mission to make the rest of the world more like them - to evangelise and Westernise the East. Even if early CMS missionaries at Trinity were not blind to the cruelties of empire, they did not publicly question the notion of the British empire as an institution ordained by God to gather all the nations under her flag. The curriculum at Trinity (and content of the library) at the time, reflected this adulation of western civilization to the exclusion of much else. It was not only far removed from the students and the community it wanted to serve, but ignored the archaeological facts being unearthed before their very noses - that the Ceylonese they were ‘educating’ in European classics were themselves heirs to a grand civilisation much older and at least as rich as theirs.

Vision of the pioneers

It is unlikely that Alek Garden Fraser was the first Principal of Trinity to have a great vision for the school, but his was more aligned with the trajectory of history and the genuine needs of the community. Perhaps even more importantly, he had an ability to bring together a team of similarly inspired men and women to realise his vision. There is nothing worthwhile that an individual - alone - can do. Executing a vision requires a team of capable individuals and space for them to also enrich it with ideas and energy of their own. Part of Fraser's team were handpicked from the far corners of the Empire stretching from England to Australia, but the majority of them were drawn from local stock. And it is mostly the lives and work of those men and women that breathed life to the great pioneer’s vision.

I quoted Fraser’s own statement of vision earlier, but how did he and his staff achieve it? Well, they have left many vital clues in their own accounts, and also in the Trinity they built.

The College Chapel invariably occupies a special place in our memories of Trinity. To me, that is because it captures for the ages, the spirit of Trinity and her pioneer’s vision in its true sublimity. However, by the time Rev Gaster drafted its plans, Trinity was already the leading national school in the island. The vision depicted in the chapel was more a reality than a dream.

Architectural draft of the Trinity College Chapel by Rev. L.J. Gaster

The idea about what Trinity could become was conceived during the construction of a very different monument a decade earlier, half a kilometre away: at Asgiriya.

It may be tempting to imagine - that by merely reflecting on the murals in the chapel - that we could understand and emulate their message in our lives. But as Jacob Bronowski - author of “The ascent of man” wrote; “The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation. The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.” Fraser had the wisdom to realise that building an institution based on rich values required more than a visual meditation, but active participation. He shared that vision with Mr. Don James Abeywardene Jasinghe - his master builder and they decided that the ground will be built by the students and staff themselves. As a project, they recognised it’s potential to fulfil a much larger purpose than the building of a Cricket field, but of the construction of a collective identity and a shared sense of responsibility.

One of the most moving accounts of the construction of Asgiriya comes from Miss. Valesca Reimann’s history of Trinity, where she describes this rather poetically:

“The making of the new cricket-pitch began to assume gigantic proportions. It was found that after moonlight nights there was a miraculous advance on the following morning, as though gnomes or pixies had been at work in the silence of the moon. And so, it was. But the gnomes were college boys in their clothes and pyjamas working swiftly and singing lustily to the accompaniment of Mr C.B. Weerasinghe’s violin. Almost like Nero fiddling at night to the destruction of Rome. But this destruction of a hill was the construction of a field”.

As a project, he used it to establish a school without racial, religious or class barriers within, as well as in its interactions with the world around. As they toiled hard to build their ground, Trinitians would have learned that they could not do it alone - they depended on the help and generosity of others. Fraser also got help from neighbouring villagers to do specialist tasks. The association of the ground with workers from the neighbourhood in Mahaiyawa has been a lasting one - from construction to its maintenance up to now. The ground itself, and the fields of sport that it represents would be at the heart of a Trinity education.

Asgiriya Cricket ground (circa 1920)

Visiting teams that commented on the ‘beauty’ of this Cricket field were merely captivated by the vistas from the pitch. But the true splendour of Asgiriya lay beneath its surface. How could the boys not aspire to win every game they played, on a surface that they had literally planted themselves?! I am not saying that the Trinity identity was chiselled out of a hill at Asgiriya, but it would have been unimaginable without it.

Before construction commenced at Asgiriya, Trinity was still a provincial school among many like it. By the end of construction in 1915 - Trinity had completed her magical transformation. In that year, Amicus - an illustrated weekly magazine at the time reported;

‘Trinity was first in the Intermediate Examination, first in the Arts Scholarship Examination, first in cricket, first in physical drill, first in military drill, first in shooting, first in boxing – for the Shield remains with them – without equal in rugger, and in running equal second.’ and by means of this ‘astonishing record, this provincial institution has forced its way into the very front rank of our great public schools and means to stay thus’.

Dare I say, in that moment in history, Trinity had even become “The best school of all”!

Being the best and knowing it, even for a mere decade in the 1920s, can breed an unhealthy ego. Merely being Trinitians is often sufficient to infuse even into us - a century later - an air of superiority. When we talk about the “Trinity Spirit” or sing about the best school of all, or even win the Bradby like we used to from time to time, we often do so out of a sense of exceptionalism - the unfounded assumption that we are better than the rest. But the reputation of Trinity and of her legendary Principal, was built fighting against such a sense of exceptionalism.

The ’Communicant’s Union’ of Trinity College was founded by Rev. W.S. Senior in 1909 - around the same time the land in Asgiriya was being secured. Members of the union dedicated themselves to preaching the bible in neighbouring villages. One cold evening in 1913, some members of the Communicant’s Union were preaching in a village where they shared stories about Jesus, as a man who served the poor and healed the sick. An old villager interrupted them, and said, “Yes. We know the man you are talking about. He lives at Trinity College and in fact he was here a little while ago and gave me this coat because he saw I was cold.”

The man was speaking about Norman Phillips Campbell, whom Fraser had recruited as Professor of Chemistry and Scout Master at Trinity. He was a brilliant scientist - tipped to be the next Lord Kelvin - when he left Oxford and followed Fraser to Trinity.

He founded the Social Service Union in 1910.

The idea that a spirit of social service should be integral to a sound education was argued by another great educator and contemporary of Fraser in India - Tyndale-Biscoe - in his book “A mission school and social service”. It inspired Rev. Fraser to do something about people living in the slums of Mahaiyawa, where he noted ‘'the conditions were intolerable”. It was Norman Campbell who formulated the programme through the Social Service Union.

Among the projects of the SSU, they consulted local doctors to supervise the boys as they visited the poor and sick in and around Kandy town as well as at the hospital. A group of students built a shelter for rickshaw pullers while another group ran a school for their children while younger members of the Union organised Christmas treats for them. The union ran a program to help opium addicts and beggars by investigating their circumstances, fulfilling their basic needs, and helping them get access to rehabilitation. The Union also organised lectures at the college on contemporary social issues. Rev. Fraser said of Norman Campbell, that 'he saved men who were confirmed opium-eaters or drunkards, using his own bedroom to lodge them in....’

Norman Phillips Campbell

Norman Campbell is one of my favourite heroes in the story of Trinity. Not to be confused with Rev. John McLeod Campbell who became principal of Trinity following Fraser. Norman was a brilliant scientist who also practised Christ-like service. It was he who designed the science laboratory building at Trinity memorialising the great scientists including Darwin. In a world freshly divided between science and God, he held deep convictions about both without any conflict. His undivided devotion to science and the person of Christ would become imprinted on the identity of Trinity College Kandy and remain one of the profound and unique gifts I am personally grateful for receiving from the school.

His spirit of service would become the spirit of the school - as Mr Hilary Abeyratne so movingly described to me at his residence in the Mornington Peninsula one evening in 2011. Perhaps, it is not too far-fetched to imagine that David Paynter himself may have been an active member of the Social Service Union, or that he may have heard the story about how Norman Campbell and his students had once gotten into faeces ridden drains in the Mahaiyawa slums to unclog them, while leading a landmark survey there. The survey that they conducted, triggered a debate about it in the Legislative Council - the parliament at the time - and led to the passage of legislation which improved the lives of those people.

It is worth noting that some of the descendants of labourers brought from South India were not afforded citizenship in Sri Lanka until as recently as 2003, while many were sent back to India by subsequent Sri Lankan governments after independence in order to maintain a favourable balance for their respective parties in the ethnically divided electorates.

Even though the school’s level of active involvement in the community has declined over the years, the idea that Trinity should be deeply involved in the life, education and improvement of the community was a deeply held conviction of her pioneers. Fraser used to say, “If I go into a village and see the place full of flies and mosquitoes, the poultry scrawny, the streets untidy and the houses dilapidated, I know at once that the school - if there is one - is not doing its job.”

Time does not afford me the luxury to elaborate on the love of the land and people of Sri Lanka that W.S. Senior’s poetry inspires or reflect on the influence of K.J. Saunders’ - another hand-picked by Fraser - as a man who had a deep respect for eastern philosophy and Buddhism in particular. If we were forced to identify one man for creating a culture of deep mutual respect and unity of race, religion, and class at Trinity, it would be the work of Saunders along with Fraser that should be credited. There are Trinitians alive today, who are more qualified than I am to speak of how Miss. Valesca Reimann’s love of music, of history and humour have touched their lives. The architecture, murals, and sense of worship the Chapel inspires, speak to us of all those things. Each of its fifty-four pillars are unique, and yet uniform in design and equally responsible for the load they bear. Each of them speaks with gratitude - of those foreign and local donors - whose generosity made them possible. Each of them also confidently bears an identity that is both cosmopolitan as it is ancient, but always firmly rooted in local soil. It is a place that inspires love and unity among all nationalities and religions of the land.

More than four generations later, we are beneficiaries of the vision of our founders only because they were successful in institutionalising it at Trinity. I recall Dr. Jayantha Dhanapala’s Prize Day speech in 2004, where he pointed out:

“...that institutions, as the aggregator of individual achievements over the years, are ultimately what endure the test of time. Nothing is possible without men; but nothing is lasting without institutions.”

Traditions and culture are major components of the institution that is Trinity, but the role of leaders cannot be overstated. The School Officer's Guild, the Staff Guild, Principal and Board of Governors as its custodians and stewards share a great responsibility for advancing that vision.

The visions of missionary educators are not without detractors, both in their time and since. One of the criticisms is that their mission to educate was in many ways a gateway for evangelisation - the conversion to Christianity of people from other faiths. The second is that they both failed to criticise the evils of empire and at times strengthened imperial ideology. Any response to these criticisms requires both an impartial and case-by-case analysis.

Also, the criticisms as well as any response to them need to consider their historical context - which E.F.C. Ludowyk outlines in his well-considered evaluation of the role of Christian missionaries in Ceylon, where he says:

“Most valuable in what came through the missionary to his pupils was in effect neither indoctrination nor familiarity with the Christian story; it was schooling coloured by certain values derived from the teacher’s own education in his homeland. What these men and women believed of course influenced their personality as teachers, but it was their character as men and women rather than their beliefs (in so far as they could be separated) which left its mark on those they taught. For all its inadequacies and misdemeanours this kind of education had most effect through the contact of the pupil with persons whose qualities of mind and character had much to give them. One can only regret that contacts such as these were available only to so few.”

Conclusion

In the final analysis, the vision of the pioneers was to institutionalise an ethos of unity and a spirit of service at Trinity College Kandy. To that end, they initiated traditions to habitualise, monuments to memorialise and a holistic education to empower the men, and women, who would pass through this institution. Here, I echo what Mr. Thalagahagoda and Prof. Dissanaike has already spoken of so eloquently - that the vision of the pioneers of Trinity was to educate and equip Trinitians to be good citizens.

But why good citizens? Why not aspire to produce powerful but benevolent leaders? That question would have baffled us at any time in the past, but the answer is clearer today than ever before. There are leaders who rule and leaders who serve. Each must be moulded and raised very differently. The pioneers of Trinity envisioned that Trinitians would be able to understand the masses, empathise with them and serve their community, the country, and the world competently - out of a sense of responsibility.

That is why, as I promised this would be, the story of Trinity College is both fascinating and relevant to all Sri Lankans, especially at the present juncture in our history. The wisdom behind their focus on moulding good citizens is dawning on us now. At this very moment, on our streets, we as a nation are beginning to realise that our hopes of the future depend on the wholesomeness of our citizens, rather than the benevolence of a few powerful rulers.

Finally, even though we have much to treasure in the vision of our pioneers, as times change, we as its stewards have the right and responsibility to revise and update it. Does it need revision? Probably not. Does it need to be updated? Of course, it does. For one, our avenues for social mobility are not limited to the colonial civil service anymore; to every Trinitian leaving school today, the whole world is open for play. It is vital, but not enough that we understand our own people and our own history; we need to encourage students to learn world languages, world history and geopolitics. The world today is connected in very different ways than it was in Fraser’s time, and on wholly different terms. Technology like quantum computing and fusion energy, perhaps even more than imperial powers, may govern the dynamics of the world order in years to come. All these, and existing issues like climate change, will present new problems and opportunities that are unprecedented in human history.

There is a need for law and legal reasoning to be introduced as a serious subject or practically as a model court system at secondary school level. While our responsibility to be good citizens cannot be overstated, perhaps we have even greater obligations to fulfil as parents, partners, siblings and towards our parents, and need an education that sufficiently emphasises those and equips us to meet them. More broadly, education policy has to keep up with the social, political, technological, economic, and ecological change around us, and Trinity, like she has done in the past, has a lot to contribute to meaningful and visionary reforms.

There is an even more enduring lesson in the 200-year history of the CMS missionary school in Kandy. That is; Trinity is not an island oasis. The fortunes of our school will remain inseparable from the fortunes of our community - in Kandy, in Sri Lanka and the world. It is not by any measure of how much we are better than others that will determine the prosperity or greatness of our school - but by how ably we serve and how ‘Christ-like’ we mold each subsequent generation to be.

I thank God for the wisdom and faith of the pioneers and the resilience of the community that has sustained our school, and pray that her leaders, teachers, students, and alumni will strive, despite our limitations, to be a blessing to our neighbours.

Thank you all very much!

The greatest hero of our time, and civilization

2015-08-23T22:59:00.001+10:00

The Cricketing world will pause for a moment, to celebrate the legendary career of Kumar Sangakkara that has drawn to a close, and then move on; a bit richer for the legacy he leaves behind, for the standards he raised, expectations he upheld and for his story being entwined with the story of Cricket. He has already confirmed his place among the greatest test batsmen the game has ever seen. Yet the people of Sri Lanka will pause for longer and with heavier hearts; not merely beset by doubts about who now will rescue their hopes the next time their openers get dismissed in quick succession. To most Sri Lankans, he is more than the greatest Cricketer their country has ever produced. By far the most loved and respected Sri Lankan of his generation in Sri Lanka and throughout the Cricket playing world, for Sri Lankans, he is also their Hero. Our choice of heroes - as individuals and as nations - reflect more deeply and authentically, our history and character as well as our hopes and aspirations.

The first popular hero of the Sinhalese was a king named Gamini from Sri Lanka’s Deep South. Gamini was a rebel from his younger days, raging against his father’s inhibition to evict Ellalan: a Cholan invader who occupied richly irrigated Northern plains - the rice bowl of Sri Lanka. It earned him the nickname ‘Dutugamunu’, meaning ‘Gamini the Wicked’. When he eventually waged his successful military campaign against Ellalan, he did so with the army that his father had built, having marched along the East Coast through Tamil villages where his father had nurtured friendships in order to supply his troops. Gamini’s army is said to have been led by ten ‘giant’ generals with superhuman powers that his father had recruited and around whom he had organised his troops. The impassioned king and his ten giants led a heroic campaign against many odds to unify the island politically - in 205 BC - for the first time in the islands recorded history. Despite the connotations of this event, Tamils and Sinhalese continued to live rather peacefully together for centuries to come.

Yet, for two millennia, as Sri Lanka came under constant attack and threat of invasion, the quintessential Sri Lankan hero conformed to a version of Gamini’s prototype – usually a tragic-heroic king or royal princeling who defended his race from foreign invaders and protected his faith from heresy. Every generation and historical epoch that followed was characterised by the nationalism and fervour of heroes they spawned; whose lives reflected the fears and aspirations of their time and whose tales become the progenitor of heroes that came after. The stereotypical Sri Lankan hero therefore, was invariably a brave nationalist. From Dutugamunu in the third century BC, to Veera Puran Appu in the nineteenth century, this type of heroism crystallized in the national psyche to the exclusion of all others. Despite its heroes, a stable, independent and unified Sri Lanka did not materialise for another two thousand years, and the intermittence of political and geographic unity never allowed a coherent and inclusive national identity to emerge; let alone the unity of hearts and minds of the diversity of people that inhabited the island and those who came from afar to trade and settle.

Like Gamini, for much of the island’s long, rich and conflicted history; its heroes have been cast on the field of battle. They distinguished themselves in conquests waged to unify their land politically, but opinions about their heroism or villainy remained divisive because they often fought to protect their own ethnic, religious or cultural identity to the exclusion of others. It has therefore been a common feature even during its struggle for independence from British rule, that Sri Lankan heroes of one community were often perceived as villains by others.

Therefore at its birth as a modern nation state in 1948, the Dominion of Ceylon faced a serious deformity that would cripple it for decades to come. Strong nation states - more often than not - are born out of collective struggles; through which emerge their defining values, legends, myths and - perhaps most importantly - heroes that personify and embody all the vital elements of a nation’s identity as well as the aspirations of its people. While each community had their own leaders and historic legends, there wasn't a single heroic figure that represented the identity of an inclusive nationhood and the aspirations for peace and unity among its people within a pluralistic state. Instead, narrow visions of national identity and short-sighted politics led to decades of divisive communal violence. Most notably at the end of the war in 2009, Sri Lanka needed - more than ever – a voice of intelligent cosmopolitanism that could elevate the island nation from the divisive legacy of its past heroes and their fearful insularity from the outside world. They needed someone who would inspire the myriad cultural and religious groups to unite. Yet, it was a void that the island’s conflicted history was ill-equipped to solve by itself.

Sri Lanka required a different kind of battlefield for a new and revolutionary type of heroes to emerge – who could unite its ancient peoples in heart and mind like never before. Cricket would prove to be that battlefield and their first heroes came in the form of Arjuna Ranatunga and his own band of ten ‘not quite giant like’ men. Fittingly, they were as diverse a group as the people they represented. They came from the all walks of life including the urban middle class and the rural heartlands that had rarely fitted the template of heroes past. Their vocation was even more peculiar. Cricket was very much a symbol of foreign conquest and occupation of the island. Heroes were more likely to be made fighting it than playing the game. Besides, heroes are often inclined to imperil themselves in pursuit of immortal glory – whereas Cricketers are required to do the opposite. Upul Tharanga was ever lauded for bravely chasing deliveries outside off stump nor Chandimal for courageously hooking bouncers down deep square-leg’s throat. But Arjuna's men nevertheless managed to achieve something that no Sri Lankan heroes have ever done before. 2201 years after the famous campaign of Dutugamunu and his ten giant worriers had briefly united the island politically, a contrastingly modest and unassuming band of eleven men united Sri Lanka in heart and mind - for the first time in the island’s history - in 1996: when they won a world cup (or “THE world cup”, if you are Sri Lankan).

Until 1996 and then again in the early 2000s, Sri Lanka’s cricketers, much like the celebrated kings and rebels of their ancient past, were tragic heroes who valiantly resisted foreign attacks; but often failed despite their own bravery and ingenuity. Most notably, they failed against better equipped and organised conquerors. Yet, whereas history had often trickled down in little streams, they were a torrent that carved out within a decade - a special space for Cricketers to stand among Sri Lanka's pantheon of heroes. The legends of Aravinda, Sanath and Murali were created on the field. Underdogs for much of their careers, they rose heroically to often rescue Sri Lanka against intimidating oppositions and sometimes, single-handedly carried the hopes of their nations to victory. The boys reflected every culture and faith, but played for a united Sri Lanka. Muththiah Muralitharan and Aravinda De Silva were embraced by all as Sri Lankan heroes. Even though the batsmen were hardly consistent enough to be relied upon and the bowlers - except Murali and Vass - were required more for rescue operations than conquests of the opposition, they represented a vision for what the country and her people could aspire be if they were united and has equal access to opportunity.

The colonial legacy in Sri Lanka had left a deep and enduring imprint in its society and culture, and Cricket was perhaps its most visible icon. The timidity of the colonised was another that persisted for decades after political independence. Aside from a few exceptions like Duleep Mendis - Sri Lankan Cricketers had modest ambitions - easily satisfied with a draw against major test nations. Much like the Israelites who had to wonder in the wilderness for 44 years after being rescued from slavery in Egypt, it took the passing of two generations of Sri Lankan Cricketers, for them to unshackle themselves from the game they were drilled to play, and discover the way they were meant to play it. So, it was not until the 90s, in the coming to the fore of Jayasuriy's devastating stroke play and lethality of Murali's perplexing action, that they were finally assured enough in their own identity to disregard the text-books and express themselves more authentically. Murali, Kaluwitharana, Mahela, Avishka Gunawardene and Sangakkara – unlike even Arjuna and Aravinda’s generation – had no direct links to the Cricketers who had only played the game as they were taught by the masters of a forgotten era.

With the opening up of the Indian economy and the advent of dedicated sports TV channels in the 90s, the modern international game transformed into a commercial enterprise - almost unrecognisable from the refined pastime that it used to be, both on and off the field. In that context, it makes little sense to compare modern Cricketers against the greats of its past because the yardstick had changed. Yet, even in that comparison, Kumar Sangakkara statistically ranks among the best three test batsmen of all time. But Sri Lankans who celebrate his heroism don’t often cite statistics to quantify their argument. Where Cricket is much more than a sport, even numbers don’t mean what they say. As much as he has been relied upon consistently to bat his team and country to victory, people all over the world remained glued to their TVs after the match was over – to hear him speak. Though his hero’s journey had started on the pitch with bat in hand, he came to the fore behind a microphone.

Heroes are more inclined to monopolise the limelight than share it, so it would not have been a surprise if the war hero of Sri Lanka’s past and the Cricket hero of its present eventually clashed: for one to emerge dominant while the other is relegated to the shadows of time. At an august gathering at Lord’s in 2011, Kumar recalled an encounter he had with an unknown soldier, at an obscure checkpoint somewhere in the labyrinth of Colombo’s streets. By the soldier’s own admission, the Cricketer was the more dominant and valuable hero. Remarkably, Kumar had survived an armed attack just a week earlier. It is possible to imagine that the soldier would have never experienced the heat of battle himself - but could only hope that the next vehicle he hailed down to inspect would not be a fatal choice. Yet, the unknown soldier and the great Cricketer took turns appreciating each other’s contribution to their own lives and the life of their country - calling each other ‘heroes’ before departing, perhaps never to meet again. They were both right of course; and so the Cricket star and soldier both were enhanced by that experience.

In that speech, Kumar went on to brew a cocktail of emotion; with wit, humour, passion and rage. His words that tugged at the heartstrings of the Cricketing world, and from Sri Lankans in his worldwide audience, it drew tears. A few months earlier in November 2010, Mathews and Malinga had turned an impossible chase against the odds at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Jayawardene had scored a match saving century just weeks before. But, in all the years since Arjuna and his team won the world cup in 1996, it was through Kumar’s voice that Cricket spoke most compellingly to Sri Lanka’s hearts and minds. His words also made Sri Lankans look at themselves in a way that made them sad, and angry, and laugh. That story and the broader content of his speech, has since held a mirror for Sri Lankans look and understand themselves and the world more deeply. Cricket writers all over the world invariably wove it into the story of Cricket too, and thus Kumar grabbed the conscience of the world on that day in a way that it could never escape. Those who doubted him before could not resist his charm afterwards. His moving lecture at Lord’s was perhaps the inception of his heroic status in the international game, and the way he spoke and conducted himself outside the field has been the foundation of its longevity. But the roots of his legend lay buried deeper in the land and its history, up in the hills of Kandy.

Through much of the island’s history, the irrigated lowlands of the North and the fertile South Western plains nurtured Sri Lanka’s cultural, political and economic centres. The wealth of ancient Sri Lanka and its heroic architects were made in its northern and western plains. Vestiges of great monuments that had witnessed bygone times of immense prosperity and creativity, as well as the continuous cycles of conflict that raged over them, still lie in ruins there. Kandy did not feature in any legend or myth in all that time; no hero of consequence in Sri Lanka’s glorious past was ever known to have been born or raised there. Even with the ripening of time, Kandy could not produce a hero on its own accord, but required a long and remarkable collaboration with an occupying enemy and a struggle with its own geography.

A game like Cricket could never grow organically in the mountains around Kandy. Even when it was brought in as a foreign implant, roads had to be straightened and mountains - quite literally - had to be moved before the game could dig in its roots and draw from its fertile soil. One such effort was sparked by the vision of a man named Alec Garden Fraser who took over as Principal of Trinity College at the turn of the twentieth century. He wanted the school to have a Cricket field and ambitiously acquired crown land spanning over two nearby hills to build one. There was no heavy machinery or equipment at hand, so the students and staff of the school made their way to the site a few hundred yards from the school premises, every day; where over a couple of years, they cut down the bigger hill and filled the valley below to make their field. Yet it would be Kandy, in Kumar and Murali, that would produce the two greatest Cricketers ever to play for Sri Lanka to date. Kumar learned his Cricket at Trinity and played much of his Cricket as a schoolboy on the Ground that Fraser built; and nearly a century later, scored two test centuries and a double century there.

Fraser was not done however. Much to the displeasure of his own colonial secretary, he envisioned that his school should nurture Sri Lankan leaders who were immersed in their own culture and learn about their own history and proud heritage. Fraser made social service, the teaching of local languages and comparative religion a cornerstone of his education policies, much to the dismay of the colonial authorities at the time. Perhaps Kumar Sangakkara was innately predisposed to reach out to his own people with respect and empathy and speak against injustice. Perhaps it was instilled in him by the individuals and institutions that nurtured him. Whatever the case may be, the qualities that people of Sri Lanka would later celebrate as his ‘heroism’ were not cultivated on the Cricket pitch alone. His empathy for the struggles and triumphs of life in many corners of Sri Lanka and of the world not only reflects the best features of the rebellious past and proud heritage of his people, but is also informed by a deep and soulful knowledge of it.

Heroism is always bestowed by popular consensus. It is the common man who elevates heroes to their status and immortalise them in legend. Heroes are made exceptional among the common and ordinary men and women of the land and that relationship is symbiotic. The legend of Kumar Sangakkara the man was made among victims of a Tsunami and inhabitants of a war-ravaged landscape in the North and East as much as by a fairy-tale test century at Lord’s. Kumar still speaks of the power of Cricket to unite and heal the diverse communities of his war ravaged country. If the reception he gets whenever he visits the north and east of Sri Lanka is anything to go by, few Sri Lankans have personified that message as effectively as he has. That is what makes him a hero. If heroes like him had lent themselves to previous generations, Sri Lanka could well have been a different place. Loved and respected by Sri Lankans of all cultural and religious backgrounds, as well as fans and opponents all over the world – the power of his personality has been unique among Sri Lanka’s pantheon of heroes in its ability to unite as well as inspire humility.

Especially in contemporary Sri Lanka - emerging from three decades of war - celebration of the lives of ‘war heroes’ comes naturally. Cricketers - at least until they won the World Cup in 1996 - were not more than celebrities, among actors and music stars. Merely six years after the war ended, Kumar and Mahela in particular have become iconic and exceptional heroes of their time - eclipsing even the heroes of contemporary military campaigns. The association of Cricketers to heroism - even after 1996 - especially in a country at war, was not only improbable but cut against the grain of the traditional mould of the nationalist heroes of the past. Yet, the privileged place that Cricket occupies in hearts and minds of people has deep roots in the grand and conflicting historical narrative of the island. ‘The boys’ – as Arjuna and Aravinda often referred to their teammates – have been a beacon of hope and an example of what Sri Lankans could be as a nation and as individuals. Heroics on the Cricket field infused hope during the most hopeless of times – and that hope was very different from the kind that military victories inspired. Kumar Sangakkara’s sensitivity to the heartbeat of his people and the humility with which he served the game and its fans has entwined his story and the story of Cricket with the proud history of his country and of the people for whom he played the game.

But it was with these famous words, that he united them;

I am Tamil, Sinhalese, Muslim and Burgher. I am a Buddhist, a Hindu, a follower of Islam and Christianity. I am today, and always, proudly Sri Lankan.

Through those words, he epitomised the hero that Sri Lanka, in his generation, so desperately needed. Described by Prof. Michael Roberts as an ecumenical Sri Lankan; in him, the diverse ethnic, religious and cultural communities of the island have found a hero they could all love and possess in equal measure. For a country that enjoys neither great influence nor privileged status among world powers, he has risen to capture the love and admiration of the world and represent the best of the proud history and rich culture of his people in a way that hardly any Sri Lankan has been able to do before. For that alone, he is without equal among all the heroes of our generation, and is arguably unparalleled in Sri Lanka’s history and civilisation.

In a post-match interview, Kumar once famously called on his team mates to understand their place in history. As much as history is made by heroes, they are nevertheless fallible human beings. As much as they reflect what we can hope to be, they also stand to warn us against blindly attaching our future hopes and ambitions to individuals no matter how brave or virtuous they may be. Very few Cricketers have retained their ability to inspire and awe in life beyond the boundary. Some have even turned into villains. Therefore, being the astute student of history that he is, he will have an important message to deliver to his fans and team mates on the eve of his retirement; that the legends of heroes like him are not meant to be venerated, but to inspire. Their heroism is worth nothing if all they inspire is nostalgia and longing. The greatest heroes are those who make others feel they too can, and indeed must, become heroes themselves. Kumar is the son of a lawyer and a teacher, and perhaps could have achieved even more if he had been born to a Jewish carpenter and his virgin wife. But in the years after his retirement, he will probably devote his time to raising his own children to be independent and productive citizens, because every parent must by default, also be a hero. As much as he became a hero to his people when his country desperately needed one, the greatest tribute to his legacy would be to see more heroes like him emerge in years to come; not only from the Cricket fields but from every other walk of life.

Leading Change

2015-08-15T12:34:00.005+10:00

Originally published here

Change is difficult to manage when it is imposed, forced, mandated, and made necessary as a result of a failure to anticipate the contours of perpetual transformation in the environment. This is true for both organisations and individuals. Successful change is inspired; with clarity of vision and purpose. It appeals to our desire for creative expression rather than to our fear of failure or loss.

Therefore, change that wrests the initiative rather than reactionary – where the objective is not to adapt to an environment that has already changed without us being able to anticipate or notice, but proactive; aimed at shaping the environment and improve it - not only has greater potential for success, it is less costly even when it ‘fails’. That kind of change is a source of growth - regardless of the outcome. We even have a different word to describe it: 'innovation'.

The blue-green tinge of teenage memories

2015-08-09T10:14:00.005+10:00

*Not the actual model

The communication age arrived through the backdoor into my household. The Sri Lankan airwaves did not carry a television broadcast until the late 70s'. Even then, if it created any hype or hysteria, it did not catch-on immediately with the folks that would soon be my parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins. When they finally bought a TV half-way through 1981 - just a few months before I was born - it was not so much out of a will to occupy their place in the information age that would dawn over the decades that followed. Instead, they were caught up in the excitement of being able to watch the Royal wedding! Ironically, it was a lingering memory of once being subjects of the British empire that pushed them into the river of information technology - which now holds us captive in its torrents.

My father would eventually come to summarily dismiss TV as evil - even though he never missed political discussions and the like. But thankfully my grandfather had an old TV and radio to satisfy the whole spectrum of our family's cultural and technological curiosities. Whatever my grandfather lacked in terms of mastery of the technology, he compensated for by the abuse of it. Equipment that communicated an entire world's news and follies passively over family dinners, failed miserably to make its own functions and purpose intelligible to the elder of the house.

In hindsight, perhaps the power buttons, volume dials and tuners that made up the interface to technology of the 80s, seemed ill-designed for a generation whose competencies were measured by the benchmarks of the Great War. For that singular failing, they endured uncounted years of rugged abuse. Yet, they built things sturdy and strong in the 80s. Cars of that era didn't have any safety ratings. Collapsible chassis and airbags wouldn't have been appealing innovations when only the strongest and sturdiest was thought to be good value for money. The quality of TVs and radios were also judged not by counting pixels or sound quality, but by how well they endured rugged use.

My grandfather's radio was arguably the toughest piece of equipment I ever knew. Thrown into the trenches all by itself, it would have won wars for him. Even though the TV endured the odd catastrophe, the radio endured - and often won - battles of attrition on a daily basis, and yet remained as graceful in its victories as it was in the many stalemates (it never lost). It would stretch the tape of a C. T. Fernando cassette to the point that it sounded more like a gramophone, but the five-year-old who fell asleep to those romantic tunes couldn't care less. Its worn-out tuner was dysfunctional and only my grandfather knew how to tune it. I always suspected that if he shook it violently, it would tune into 'Yes FM', fling it from side to side and it caught up with 'Gold FM', turn it upside down and it was Sirasa... and so on.

The TV was more precious of course, because everyone knew that my father would have no interest in replacing it if it broke down. So, it was an absolute horror when everyone was woken up by a loud bang early one morning to find that Rex - my dog - had pulled on the power cord and the TV had fallen off the stand - screen first!!! But of course, it survived. There was not even a scratch on the screen, despite a gaping crack in its casing on top and a dent on its outer metal frame. Placed on its stand and plugged back in, the screen flickered back on as if from a concussion - except the red cathode tube had a loose connection. It never fully recovered right through my teenage years, forever casting my memories of the 90s in a blue-green tinge!

Sri Lanka’s political moment (1)

2015-02-05T00:13:00.000+11:00

A change of guard

The future of Sri Lanka’s democracy has reached a pivotal point. On the 9th of January, it awoke after decades of paralytic slumber. The nepotism, corruption and excesses of the Rajapakse regime were not unknown or unsuspected; but Mahinda himself was seen as a strong leader – especially based on his credentials as the leader of an unprecedented military success that defeated a 30-year brutal separatist movement. Their successful execution of the war effort earned his ‘family-led’ government its popular perception as the more stable and secure choice as opposed to the opposition which for 29 consecutive elections, had failed to win the confidence of a majority of the electorate.

However, the events of January 9th give as much reason for celebration as for continued vigilance and concern. The breakdown of the rule of law, broad impunity with which those close to the regime were able to abuse power and public wealth as well as the widespread nepotism and cronyism that characterised the Rajapakse regime were social cancers that had to be removed. The only democratic option for doing so was through the electoral defeat of Mahinda Rajapakse; on whom the political capital and legitimacy of the regime largely rested. The president and his cronies had everything to lose with the looming electoral defeat and therefore had every incentive to subvert the will of the people if it threatened to change the regime. There are allegations that they planned to do precisely that. The outcome of investigations into their alleged attempts halt or annul the results of the election and remain in power with the support of elements of the armed forces are expected reveal the full extent of the threat they posed to Sri Lanka’s democratic framework and culture. It is the highest form of treason and anyone found guilty must be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

The other extraordinary - though not unexpected - development on the 9th of January was the swearing in of Ranil Wickremasinghe - leader of the longstanding and virtually unelectable opposition - as prime-minister. The Sirisena manifesto also made it explicit that Mr Wickremasinghe would be appointed as prime minister under his presidency. The appointment was accepted by the electorate based on the perception that Mr. Wickramasinghe would discharge the responsibilities of a prime minister more competently and honourably than the incumbent at the time. Yet, the change of government and the appointment of prime minister was done through a political manoeuvre; while Mr. Wickramasinghe’s party was still a minority in parliament; and thus lacked an explicit mandate from the electorate to govern. The process sets a precedent that is concerning and does not bode well for Sri Lanka’s democracy. Therefore, the future of Sri Lanka’s democracy and shape of the nation state it cohabits remain open to be negotiated by the political forces that this reflection intends to identify and analyse.

Politics and political movements in Sri Lanka still have a tendency to crystallize around a cultural memory of feudalism and class that is woven into the historical identity of the modern nation state. A strong democratic outcry and social conscience combined to drive the Rajapakse regime out of office. The political actors and movements that made up the broad coalition will be a main focus of this reflection. Their existence, organisation and increased political relevance needs to be celebrated and nurtured. However, it must also be acknowledged that - by all accounts - the future and very existence of Sri Lanka’s democracy hung by a thread in the early hours of the 9th of January. It was left in the hands of a few individuals to rescue and reclaim. Those events highlight the need for stronger and more independent democratic institutions that are accessible to all citizens equitably. Such reforms require political leadership - not only to design and implement structural reforms to the state and its architecture, but also to broad-base the social political conscience and its underlying sense of justice. In my analysis of the political leadership, stakeholder and elites, I will aim to highlight the opportunities and threats that the present political moment holds for the integrity of the state as well as its democratic framework.

The feudal and class-based political conscience of the island’s society manifests even today in the political aspirations and vocabulary of the ‘common man’ who is yet evolving into a ‘citizen’ in thought and action. The majority of Sri Lanka’s electorate has a rural base that has been conditioned by culture and history to cooperate with the intentions of political elites - if not be subservient to them. The presidential election of 2015 was contested on a platform which was conducive to - perhaps for the first time - shifting that political conscience away from its feudal underpinnings in a more liberal direction.

Sri Lanka - throughout its history - has been ruled by exclusive classes of political elites. From Kings whose right to the throne was based on their caste and clan and whose legitimacy to govern was based on having custody of a sacred relic, and colonial governments that were led by the white colonisers, to the handful of families that have dominated the two major political parties since independence; the common man has not been afforded access to national-level political power. The only exceptions were the Presidency of Ranasinghe Premadasa from 1989 - 1993 and that of Mahinda Rajapakse from 2005 - 2015. Ranil Wickremasinghe is the nephew of President J. R. Jayawardena, and Ranil’s nephew Ruwan Wijewardene who is now the state minister of defence is the great grandson of Sri Lanka’s first prime minister D. S. Senanayake. It is clear therefore, that political power in post independent Sri Lanka has shifted between the UNP dominated by the Senanayake-Jayawardena-Wickramasinghe clan and the SLFP dominated by the Bandaranaike clan.

Cultural memory and the political conscience of a society cannot be fixed of course - they evolve and transform with time and changes in the political environment of a country and of the world. The biblical account of the birth of the Jewish nation – in the book of Exodus – recounts how the liberated slaves of Egypt had to wonder the dessert for forty four years before they were ready to build a new nation and state. History often suggests that it takes at least two generation to significantly transform the political conscience of a society. Just over two generations after independence, the people of Sri Lanka was also ready to break-away from the established political dynasties and elect a ‘common man as our President - in Ranasinghe Premadasa. It is unthinkable that such a political figure from an ‘ordinary’ background, could have emerged democratically in colonial Ceylon before independence or soon afterwards. Indeed, it was in the late 80s that the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty also began its steady decline and loss of the monopoly it held on political power in India - which it has not reclaimed convincingly since Rajiv Gandhi. Yet, in Sri Lanka, Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga would reclaim the stake of the political elites yet again in the 1990s. In the absence of a viable successor from the Bandaranaike clan to succeed her – in Mahinda Rajapaksa, someone who came from outside the Bandaranaike clan was able to become leader of the SLFP for the first time. Notably in that time, the electability and political viability of the Ranil Wickramasinghe led and middle-class dominated UNP declined dramatically to unprecedented electoral lows.

I have in the past, reflected on the demographic constitution and political relevance of the middle class of Sri Lanka, and will therefore not revisit that analysis here. It suffices to note however, that the present make-up of the UNP and its cabinet members in the current government is disproportionately weighted towards the middle-class. Perhaps there is a correlation between the repeated electoral losses of the UNP in the previous two decades and the erosion of its popular base among the masses - which Dr Dayan Jayatilake and others have characterised as the patriotic nationalist base of the Sinhalese - under the leadership of Ranil Wickramasinghe.

It is from such an unelectable proposition that Ranil Wickremasinghe has been able to expertly manoeuvre himself and his party back to government - bypassing the need to win a general election and thus without a clear mandate to govern that can only come with such a victory. The risks and opportunities that such a subversion of the electoral mandate poses for the democratic framework of the country requires closer scrutiny. Firstly, it must be conceded that the current government has a clear mandate to implement the series of democratic reforms that won broad support of the electorate at the presidential election - including the intelligentsia, civil society movements and even the opposition. It must therefore be held accountable for implementing those reforms within the promised time-frame. Secondly, it must be made clear that the electorate has not had a fair opportunity to evaluate and vote on the domestic and foreign policy frameworks of the present government. Instead what they actually voted for was the ouster of the Rajapakse regime. Therefore the government does not have a clear mandate to make wholesale changes to the domestic and foreign policy frameworks of the country apart from administrative reforms and course-corrections to re-align with accepted and long-held norms where necessary in the national interest. The new government’s West-leaning foreign policy that risks weakening or damaging ties with China and Russia as well as the potential neglect of countries of the global south is a matter of serious concern - not only for its potential implications which will be explored separately, but also because it lacks a clear mandate from the people, and thus any legitimacy to make serious changes of course and direction on such matters.

In electing Maithripala Sirisena as president, the the electorate has yet again opted for a leader who understands the aspirations of the common man and who is able to represent their interests in policies and structure of the political machine. Yet, in the re-emergence of Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga and Ranil Wickramasinghe, the old political elites have regained their grip on the two main political parties that are also the power centres of the country. The emergence of the JVP as a serious third contender in the Sri Lankan political sphere under the leadership of Anura Kumara Dissanayake is perhaps the most progressive outcome in the Sri Lankan democratic process. His role, and the role of the JVP and other movements in creating the present political will be analysed in subsequent reflections. It remains unlikely at this stage however, that the JVP would emerge as a serious contender to become the leading party in opposition. Yet the possibility that they will challenge the dominance of the SLFP and UNP remains – unless credible reforms are made to the structure and representative makeup of those two main political parties. Whether the threat of being overtaken by the JVP proves sufficient motivation for the SLFP and UNP to undertake such a serious reform agenda remains to be seen.

In the course of post independent Sri Lankan politics, there is much to be said in defence of times when the middle and upper-classes were over-represented in the legislative, executive and judicial functions of the state. Yet, the promise of true democracy is the equitable distribution of power in society and the political empowerment of the economically and socially marginalised masses so that they too may have guaranteed, equal and independent access to justice and opportunity. Mr Wickramasinghe and Mrs Bandaranaike Kumaratunga may yet be the last of the elite political dynasties that dominated the first two generations of post independent Sri Lankan politics. They may also represent the last of the upper-class, pro-western, neoliberal interests in Sri Lanka’s governing ideology and foreign policy framework. On the other hand, their reclamation of the two - still dominant - power centres of Sri Lankan politics may represent a resurgence of elite interests and thinking in the country’s governance. Wickramasinghe’s stubborn hold on the UNP leadership and the re-entry of Mrs. Bandaranaike Kumaratunge into the higher echelons of the SLFP are significant events that requires more attention and scrutiny by public intellectuals and political analysts alike.

Arguably, every country, organisation and team needs elites to lead and carry them to greater heights, and Sri Lanka would not be an exception. However, those elites must be chosen based on their capabilities and performance. A culture that celebrates elite performance will inevitably grow, but one that fosters ‘elitism’ that is not based on talent and high-achievement, but purely on lineage and affiliations will be doomed to fail in a competitive world order. A highly disproportionate majority of political leaders in post-independence Sri Lanka had achieved that status through their affiliations to political families or a few prominent ‘elitist’ institutions.

Perhaps the single most significant liability of the Rajapakse regime were its brazen embrace of nepotism and cronyism and the broad social resentment that built up against it. In that light, the make-up of the new Cabinet and occupants of the higher echelons of political power in the country at present also represent a narrow and disproportionately privileged slither of Sri Lankan society who have little defence against similar allegations that could be made against them.

Yet it remains that the result of the presidential election on 9th January – allegations of a failed coup notwithstanding – not only bodes well for both the state and its democracy. There were legitimate fears – though perhaps never to be known for sure – that democracy itself would have retreated into the Rajapakse’s iron grip, in the aftermath of the alternative result. Indeed the Rajapakse campaign strategy was nothing but an attempt to securitise every conceivable political issue that the country was facing. Their projection of the opposition itself as a threat to national security, left little to the imagination about how they would have acted to ‘mop-up’ their political opponents if they has managed to retain their grip on power – and the security apparatus in particular. However, subsequent developments also raise substantial concerns that purging one burgeoning political dynasty should not pave way for two more to replace it with. It is clear that 9th January represents a change of guard in Sri Lankan politics. What is not so clear is whether the old guard was replaced with the new, or whether the new was replaced with the old.

Balancing or band wagoning?

2014-08-09T23:09:00.000+10:00

Sri Lanka's relations with India and China

Image: Awantha Artigala

As the centre of global power shifts eastwards, competition is brewing between the great powers in Asia to define their respective roles by expanding their spheres of influence and securing their interests in the emerging order (Mahbubani 2009). While China, India and Japan remain regional great powers, the United States (US) still maintains a significant presence in Asia; pursuing shared interests through strategic alliances and economic partnerships with key countries including India and Japan (Twining 2007). The Indian Ocean bears great geopolitical significance to all stakeholders in the aforementioned great power balance. As a vital trade and communication link between resource-rich Africa, the energy-rich Middle-East, influential markets in South-East Asia and China and the population Centres in South Asia, it is heavily contested for its strategic and economic significance (Kaplan 2011).

Here I do not intend to cover the political history of the region or of individual states, but focusses on Sri Lanka’s foreign policy challenges as a small and weak state placed in a geographically advantageous position at the middle of the highly contested Indian Ocean, vis-à-vis the great power rivalries between India and China. The focus on India and China is based on the evidence that they have assumed preeminence in Sri Lanka’s foreign policy while considerations of Western and Japanese interests have become secondary (2014a; The Canberra 2012; Wijesinha 2013). The question of whether these two countries have displaced the US as the dominant power in the Indian Ocean is beyond the scope of this discussion, but will be raised where relevant. It must be noted on the outset that Sri Lanka’s foreign policy considerations are dependent on a complex web of domestic, sub-regional, regional and global considerations (Desilva-Ranasinghe 2013). However, Sri Lanka’s relations with Russia, Japan and the West – though important factors – must be analysed in detail as a separate topic. Unlike during the cold war era where weaker countries were more explicit in declaring their allegiances or policies of non-alignment, most Asian states today are actively cultivating relations with multiple great powers to secure diverse interests (Goh 2007). Sri Lanka also has exploited the great power rivalries between India, China, Japan and even Europe to a limited extent; to maximise investment, aid and strategic cooperation during and after the end of its recently concluded civil war (Srinivasan 2004). Yet, domestic and sub-regional pressures pose serious challenges and add complexity to its foreign policy questions at present. Here, I wish to address the central research question of whether Sri Lanka can afford to balance its relations with India and China or whether it will be forced to bandwagon with either one; and the risks and opportunities that each of these choices entail.

Sri Lanka currently faces challenges in defining a clear foreign policy direction (Yusuf 2012). These have three notable dimensions. The first two can be framed in reference to a global diffusion of power from the West to the rising population and economic centres in Asia which is creating two separate contests for power in the region. One contest is played out between the US led West which is ‘pivoting’ back to retain their relevance in Asia against rising Asian powers – led by China - which are arguably displacing Western influence in the region (Friedberg 2011). The second contest is between the rising great powers within Asia; to define their spheres of influence – if not dominance - within key subregions such as the Indian Ocean and East Asia (Gilboy and Heginbotham 2013; Srinivasan 2004). Sri Lanka as a small and weak state located at a geographically advantageous position in the Indian Ocean, is particularly vulnerable to be entangled in both these contests. Apart from these external factors, Sri Lanka’s foreign policy faces a third challenge; of defending the legitimacy of its actions against allegations of human rights violations – particularly during the conclusion of its long-running civil war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE) (Kumar 2012; Wickramasinghe 2014). The country’s foreign relations apparatus is under pressure to fend off international scrutiny of its human rights record that may threaten to make Sri Lanka vulnerable to external interference and weaken its sovereignty.

Relations with India

Historically, Sri Lanka’s foreign policy has been anchored to India – its closest neighbour and regional hegemon. Geographic proximity and cultural links stemming from their shared history and colonial experience have reinforced close ties between the two countries (Krishna 1992). Sri Lanka’s position in the world has been tied to that of India since Arab traders plied the Indian Ocean for spices, then during European colonisation and independence and afterwards through the non-aligned movement and commonwealth heritage. India is Sri Lanka’s largest trading partner; a position further strengthened by the FTA signed between the two countries in 2000 (Look 2014). India also benefits from transhipment facilities in Sri Lanka for its trade with the world (Look 2014). However, there are two emerging trends that are straining this symbiotic relationship. The first is growing Chinese interests in the Indian Ocean that is attracting Sri Lanka closer to China (Behuria and Sultana 2013). Even though stronger ties with China need not be at the expense of the close relationship Sri Lanka enjoys with India, the great power rivalry between India and China makes India suspicious of being contained by Chinese strategic and economic partnerships with countries in its periphery. The second factor straining India-Sri Lanka relations is domestic pressure from Tamil Nadu including the Tamil National question and incursions by Indian Fishermen into Sri Lankan waters; that threatens to make India less accommodating and at times hostile to Sri Lanka’s interests (2014c; 2014d; Mayilvaganan 2007; Radhakrishnan 2013). Sri Lankan foreign policy, though pivoted on India, has shifted its stance from a West facing one to an East facing one, where relations with China have been significantly strengthened during the last two decades. Sri Lanka’s recent focus on India and China is arguably indicative of a relative weakening of US influence in the region and a perception that the US is acting via proxy through India. What is of concern however, is that Sri Lankan foreign policy has lost its emphasis on neutrality and made India cautions - if not suspicious - of Chinese dominance (Gunaratne 2013).

India has considered China to be its primary security threat since suffering a swift defeat in the 1962 war. Its relations with the West – particularly US and Japan - have strengthened during the time Sri Lanka has shifted its focus from the West towards China (2011; Majumdar 2012). This misalignment with India’s priorities make Sri Lanka more vulnerable as a small state in the Indian Ocean; to be torn between the hegemonic interests of India and China’s increasing economic and strategic interests in what India considers its own sphere of influence. Sri Lanka’s West-leaning foreign policy in the late 70s and 80s aroused similar suspicions in a pro-Soviet Indian government, which nurtured Tamil separatism in the island and then intervened in the conflict on two occasions (Dixit 1998; Rao 1988; Silva 2013). These involvements did come at a cost though – as the disgruntled LTTE assassinated Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Ghandi. From that and other historical experiences, India has recognised the value of a stable and prosperous Sri Lanka and has since provided crucial diplomatic assistance to end Sri Lanka’s long-running civil conflict and invested heavily in its post-war rehabilitation and redevelopment (2009). Sri Lanka is also sensitive to India’s security concerns and regional interests. Even while strengthening economic and strategic relations with China, Sri Lanka has often kept India informed and appeased (2013) with preferential access to major development projects and key economic and strategic assets – including bunkering facilities at the Trincomalee harbour (2005). However, issues of fishing rights and Sri Lanka’s strict enforcement of its maritime boundaries have caused problems in recent years.

Relations with China

Chinese interests in diversifying and securing its energy supply routes through the Indian Ocean and their strategy of building ports along the Northern half of the Indian Ocean rim including Hambantota in Sri Lanka is already well documented (Chellaney 2007; Holmes and Yoshihara 2008; Khurana 2008) . But Chinese cooperation with Sri Lanka’s interests in recent years extends beyond investment in infrastructure. China is one of the largest arms suppliers to most of India’s neighbours including Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh (Dutta 1998; Malik 2001). As a member of the P5, it also provided vital diplomatic cover for Sri Lanka to conclude its long-running civil war in the years leading up to 2009 (Weiss 2011). As great power competition in the Indian Ocean intensifies, China can be expected to draw Sri Lanka even closer due to the strategic and economic value of the island – much like the US have done with Taiwan.

Sino-Sri Lankan relations predate the visit of the Chinese monk Faxian to Sri Lanka in 410 AD. Sri Lanka understands that its present relationship with China will be of vital importance in the emerging order within Asia and the world; and has immensely benefited from it since the 1990s (Samaranayake 2011). China as a member of the P5 - together with Russia - is an indispensable diplomatic partner of the Sri Lankan government that is currently facing significant international pressure regarding its conduct during the recently concluded civil war (Kumar 2012). The relationship with China as a major supplier of weapons to the embattled island, is also of key strategic importance; especially when Sri Lanka’s strategic partnerships with India and major Western arms exporters have been constrained in recent years (Rao 1988). Perhaps the greatest impact of Sri Lanka’s relationship with China has been on its economy and infrastructure development. Chinese investment in major infrastructure projects including two large ports, one international airport, Coal power plants, commercial and entertainment complexes and a highway network are prime examples (Samaranayake 2011). Sri Lanka even launched a communication satellite with help from China, symbolising ever deepening ties between the two countries (Reuters 2012). In effect, China has displaced Japan as Sri Lanka’s largest foreign donor and continue to invest in infrastructure and development projects (Goodhand and Klem 2005).

Domestic and subregional factors

Sri Lanka, with a Sinhalese majority and Tamil minority is adjacent to Tamil Nadu which forms a subregion that has a Tamil majority. Therefore grievances of the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka has inflamed Tamil nationalist elements in the subregion that includes Tamil Nadu which had significant clout in the recently ousted Congress Party led government of India (Mayilvaganan 2007). Domestic pressure from Tamil Nadu have constrained the ability of successive coalition Indian Governments from deepening their natural relationship with Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan government too - because of its dependence on ultranationalist parties – have been slow to respond to Indian interests and Tamil concerns; often resulting in strains on the relationship across the Palk Strait (Behuria and Sultana 2013). India’s regional rivals such as China and Pakistan have sought to exploit such weaknesses to fill the gaps left by India’s inability to engage too broadly with Sri Lanka. For example, despite the LTTE assassination of one of its Prime Ministers, India was too constrained to supply weapons and strategic support to the Sri Lankan armed forces in their final push to eliminate the LTTE which India had already proscribed as a terrorist organisation. That opened up a gap in the strategic relationship between the two countries which Pakistan and China were quick to exploit (Dutta 1998).

Sri Lanka’s increasing dependence on China and the resultant leverage it gives China in the Indian Ocean has been a matter of increasing concern for India. India’s unease of China’s growing presence in the region – though at least in part a result of India’s inability to cultivate natural alliances with its culturally homogenous neighbours – should be a matter of concern for Sri Lanka too. A cold-war like rivalry in the region will be especially detrimental to the security and economic interests of weaker states within the region. Sri Lanka and India has a shared interest in neutralising separatist movements within the respective states – particularly of Tamil Nationalists with shared identity and grievances in the North and East of Sri Lanka and adjacent Tamil Nadu in India (DeVotta 2005; Irschick 1969). The recent election of a BJG government with a clear majority in India provides a valuable opportunity for Sri Lanka to normalise and strengthen ties with India with minimal interference from Tamil Nadu, but the relationship could turn brittle given that the BJP led government is likely to adopt a tougher stance against growing Chinese presence in Sri Lanka (2014e). Some political analysts have pointed out that Sri Lanka must not compel India to annex its North Eastern regions as Russia was able to do with Crimea in recent months (Jayatilleka 2014); as a forced final solution to both the Tamil national question as well as to neutralise Chinese influence in the Island.

It is clearly not in Sri Lanka’s interest to neglect or abandon its relations with China in order to appease India or vice versa. A stronger partnership and a greater level of trust between India and China is the most desirable outcome for Sri Lanka, and therefore the island’s foreign policy should be aimed at building confidence between the two great powers. Recognising Sri Lanka’s limited capacity to influence relations between these two great powers, it should instead focus on assuring both countries of cooperation with their peaceful interests aimed at trade and development. Sri Lanka and other South Asian countries can also benefit by following the example of ASEAN (Goh 2007) in actively seeking the inclusion of India and China in regional organisations; and working with partners to enmesh them through norms and shared interests.

Analysis

Despite being nuclear armed states, given their no-first-use nuclear doctrines, both India and China are rapidly modernising and broadening their conventional military capabilities partly in response to each other and in part to balance perceived external threats from the US (Gilboy and Heginbotham 2013; Jae-Hyung 2002). Evidence points to a volatile strategic build-up between the two states. Even though the growing volume of trade between China and India hints of economic integration and cooperation between the two countries, the trade deficit in favour of China remains a matter of contention for India (Holslag 2013). While China is increasingly seen to be occupying strategic and economic interests in the Indian Ocean – ranging from patrolling Somali waters against piracy, to investing in infrastructure projects in India’s periphery – India is seen strengthening its ties with countries in China’s periphery such as Japan and Vietnam (2011). All these factors point to a brewing rivalry between Asia’s two rising giants.

However this rivalry between China and India in Asia is unlikely to mirror the cold war – because China in particular as a nominally communist country – recognises the economic cost and political risks associated with such a build-up, based on the Soviet experience (Ong 2013). If Sri Lanka anticipates the emergence of India and China as primary great powers in Asia, its main foreign policy priorities should be aligned with the role that it foresees India and China playing in its own security and economic development. Distancing itself from the rivalry between China and India by taking measures to assure India that the island will not be a strategic base for China and reassuring China of full cooperation on its trade and economic interests in the Indian Ocean will be pre-requisites for pursuing such a mission. Understanding its own limitations and weaknesses, as well as regional threats to its foreign policy interests, Sri Lanka must diversify its foreign relations by strengthening ties with ASEAN, Japan and particularly the global south with whom it shares economic and development interests. Sri Lanka must work with smaller regional actors in South and South East Asia to enmesh India and China in an extra-regional framework that facilitates greater dialog between the two.

The West remains a key market for Sri Lankan exports, while historic links and commonwealth traditions offer opportunities for normalising relations that have been strained in the recent past due to the Sri Lankan government’s allegedly poor human rights record. While good relations with India is vital for peace, security, trade and its international standing, China remains a vital source of trade and investment, as well as a key P5 veto-wielding defence against external interference in Sri Lanka’s internal affairs. Hostility from domestic elements within India must be balanced using responsive and progressive domestic policies that addresses the Tamil National question. The full implementation of the 13th amendment to the constitution would provide a platform for engaging with India and its subregional actors in good faith and help build confidence (Behuria and Sultana 2013). Sri Lanka must also recognise external balance of power considerations - such as India and its allies working to neutralise Chinese influence in South Asia - that shape India’s policy towards the island. Given that countries such as Pakistan have strategic and diplomatic clout to withstand Indian pressure against Chinese influence in ways Sri Lanka does not, the Indian government may adopt a tougher stance against Sri Lanka for allowing Chinese influence to grow in the Indian Ocean. Sri Lanka’s foreign policy must therefore take these risks into account and leverage the complex balance of power considerations in South Asia to secure its interests. US and Japanese influence have already become comparatively less pronounced – though they maintain a significant presence directly and in partnership with India. Yet in a stable and norms-based world order, the emergence of the rival population centres of China and India as dominant powers in Asia may be inevitable. In the absence of a strong friendship between India and China, the regional power balance will largely depend on two main factors. The first is how smaller and weaker states in Asia such as Sri Lanka define the scope of their relations with their two giant neighbours. The second will be how those weaker states act in concert to enmesh the two great powers in a norms based order.

Internal political instability and interference by the powerful defence establishment are threatening to distract Sri Lankan policy makers from recognising, prioritising and addressing these foreign policy objectives (2014b). The misconception within the Sri Lankan policy elite that relations with China and Russia could be used to balance against India could prove to be costly.

Conclusion

My focus in this essay was to identify opportunities and risks in Sri Lanka’s foreign policy towards India and China. Much of the policy discourse in Asia with regards to China is limited to discussing the relative merits of balancing or band-wagoning. However, it is my contention that Sri Lanka as a small but geopolitically and strategically valuable asset in a highly contested part of the Indian Ocean within India’s immediate periphery, must look beyond these two options and adopt policies that enmesh India and China in a cooperative order that enhances options for greater peace and prosperity. Even though Sri Lanka’s relationships with these emerging great powers have come into sharp focus because of the vital importance and challenges associated with them, I have shown that they should not be pursued at the expense of a broader engagement with the world. Sri Lanka must maintain its traditionally strong links with friends such as Russia, Japan and Pakistan as well as countries of the global south, while improving engagement with the West.

Another important point I have raised in my argument is that Sri Lanka must pay attention to the great game being played out in the Indian Ocean region between India, China and also the US whose interests have come into focus in its pivot back to Asia. Sri Lanka must be sensitive to the concerns and interests of India, China, US and Japan or risk being embroiled in a great power contest in the Indian Ocean. China and India are conscious of how a super power rivalry like that of US and USSR can be costly; impeding economic progress and how they could ultimately undermine their great power ambitions. Therefore Sri Lanka in concert with other Asian states can help build a platform that engages India and China in particular – facilitating greater cooperation and understanding between the two traditional rivals in a way that help normalise relations over time.

Lastly, I have identified internal and external factors that threaten to undermine Sri Lanka’s foreign relations in coming years. Sri Lanka must foster strong democratic governance and independence from domestic political concerns as prerequisites for a strong foreign policy that serves regional as well as national interests of Sri Lanka. Failing to do so may imperil a weak state like Sri Lanka by making it vulnerable in a rapidly transforming regional and global political order.

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How must we respond to religious extremism?

2014-06-17T22:57:00.002+10:00

Sourced image

(As published on Groundviews.org)

1. Do not despair. Much of the world was already broken before you were born, and parts of it will remein broken long after we are gone. It is the purpose and function of life to re-order the disintegrating world in defiance of the second law of thermodynamics. So it helps to try to understand the situation as it evolves, rather than crystallise our view of it in judgment.

If you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.

Sun Tzu – The art of war (Chapter 3:18)

Those who incite hatred and violence, their supporters, victims, onlookers, observers, those who are dismayed by communal violence and those who secretly support it, those who want to stop it, criticize it and others who don’t care as much: they all act out of their innersprings of motivation and covert or overt desires. It is almost universally true that every individual is spurred to action by any their aspirations and desires, because we all need something to aspire to. Some aspire for material wealth, others desire power. Yet others may desire fame, skill, wisdom or enrichment through service. We are also contained by our fears. The less fearful we are, the deeper our capacity for tolerance and the broader our range of choices for action. If we are not driven by fear, we are also less likely to harm or hurt others and more likely to be more accommodating generous and calm. However, people’s actions and words are fundamentally informed by their beliefs – but they are also the least tangible or conspicuous and therefore the most puzzling factor to understand. Beliefs entail not only our religious and moral inclinations but the manifestation of each person’s self-identity. So we must pay attention to all these factors that influence individuals and groups – so that we can understand why people act and speak the way they do.

Also, keep in mind that the present is not an isolated moment. As much as what transpires in this moment is a product of history, it will also shape the future in ways that we may not be able to fully understand or anticipate. Moments of adversity demands that we all become keen and humble students of history. The very existence of people whose actions are so far removed that we utterly and completely fail to understand them point to deficiencies in our knowledge of the world and how it works – that it could produce members of the same species, civilization, culture and time that yet remain incomprehensible to one another. Not everything about our anthropology and history may be immediately knowable, but it helps to be chastised by an acknowledgement of our own fallibility and imperfect knowledge before seeking to critically engage with the fallibilities of another.

Document what you see, read and hear. Especially at times when we least know what’s going on. Keep as detailed a record of what people say and do, so that our future selves and future generations may have a more detailed account of history than we do now, to analyse the actions and inactions of individuals and groups – and their far-reaching and unpredictable implications.

2. Do not discard religion. Understand religion for what it is; especially in times darkened by hatred, violence and intolerance motivated by religious sentiments, it seems not only tempting, but quite reasonable to assume that religion is the problem. While such a conclusion may be justified in many ways, it is most unhelpful – because that makes us lose sight of the fact that – for better or for worse - religion is arguably the most powerful force for social transformation that humanity has ever known. Those who argue that technology has been a more powerful transformative force than religion, ignore the fact that technology only serves to facilitate and amplify social change, while religious beliefs -and in more recent times, political ideology- inspires social change and perpetuates social norms. The greater the sanctity that people attribute to their religious beliefs, rituals and priests; the greater their power to influence the way societies function and the decisions they make collectively. Because a community of people – or even an organised mob – can have far greater power over a multitude of unorganised individuals, religious beliefs and their induced fears and aspirations can easily be appropriated by individuals who desire to gain political power.

Most religious beliefs and even political ideologies are also rife with ideas and visions for peace, justice, equanimity, tolerance and love. So, rejection of religion as a force for evil rather than good – not only misses the point altogether, but more critically deprive those who hold that view of a potent tool that can also be a force for immense good and constructive visions of influencing progressive social change.

3. Speak out, engage in dialogue and publish. Use every opportunity to discuss and debate what’s taking place in society with friends, children, parents, relatives and – within reason – even with strangers. Do so at the well, on Facebook, in your blogs, in the mainstream and mass media. Talk to people who know people, make sure that those who are responsible for social leadership, security, peace and justice know you are watching them and keeping note of their action or inaction. Also, as importantly, listen. Engage equally with those who do not agree with you as much as those who do. Gain new perspectives by paying attention to what they have to say.

Do not be distracted or discouraged by those who call you “Facebook heroes”, “armchair critics” or hurl any number of derogative remarks at you instead of – or while – engaging with what you have to say. Those who criticise free expression and critical debate online and on social media, do so out of ignorance about how technology have transformed our world. Organising online petitions and voicing our opinions in social media can be as powerful as any rally or protest at a busy street junction. They reach a broader audience, can often engage otherwise apathetic or ill-informed people in vibrant social discussions (even if only to complain about those who speak out). Social media also expose people who fail to speak out; those who avoid expression of their views either because they believe they cannot make a difference or have doubts about the moral defensibility of what they have to say.

The world has moved on and the Internet has become a public place where we can engage in civic life and discharge some of our civic duties legitimately, effectively, and relatively safely to a broad audience; though perhaps one that is limited, not representative of society at large and too homogeneous to be of critical value. It is not only a viable alternative to street protest in some circumstances, but can be more effective and channel much broader participation of an audience that is not constrained by their geography or mobility.

4. Promote social integration. Intolerance and communal disharmony are results of isolation and lack of empathy. People who are fearful or uncomfortable with the diversity of beliefs, preferences of gender, language, ethnicity and culture are - more often than not – those who have grown up and lived in isolated homogeneous clans. It is difficult – though seemingly not impossible – to hate Muslims for being Muslims if you have close Muslim friends that your grew up, shared food and laughter, and played Cricket with. Unfortunately, ethnic and religious communities remain cloistered among their own in most rural areas all over the world – unlike in some big and cosmopolitan cities. That is still a generalisation and doesn’t always hold true. But it takes time for people and entire communities to mix and integrate – and will possibly require at least a few generational shifts in our political structure as well as religious and cultural attitudes to marriage for true integration of communities to happen at a significant scale.

But much can be done in the interim. If you are a senior manager or a leader of any capacity in any organisation, you can take tangible measures to promote diversity within your organisation and teams. In workplaces and clubs, in schools and sports teams, you can lead the way in eradicating unfair discrimination of people based on their background or identity. Expose organisations that do unfairly discriminate in their recruitment and in the course of doing business. Ministers who award government contracts unfairly to members of their own clans and consumers who discriminate where they shop based on the identity of the shop owner are just as culpable for propagating communal violence and perpetuating social inequality as much as any hatemonger or militant extremist.

Even as ordinary citizens, it is ingrained in our culture to share food with people from all communities, backgrounds and walks of life, to travel, to strike up conversations with strangers and to stand up in defiance of unjust authority. Inter-faith and community dialog doesn’t require extraordinary commitment or radical change – it is something we have experimented with for well over two thousand years. Even though our tainted history of seemingly perpetual violence bear testimony to the fact that we have often failed to live amicably for long periods of times, it is nevertheless as rich in cautionary lessons as it is with sobering examples of our recklessness and fallibility. Which leave one lesson above all for us to embrace…

5. Embrace non-violence. No matter how dire the situation, how imperilled our hopes and how threatened our very own existence; bear in mind that violence can only deepen our fears and hasten our destruction. I can add but little to what has already been said about it.

Hope

2014-04-12T00:26:00.001+10:00

One step after another,
I'll scale this mountain high,
Two eyes to greet and gather
What my heart may never pry
Three wishes to carry me thither
When feet and limbs are tied
Four seasons and merry weather
In this blessed life to bide
Five friends to kindle or smother
And hearts and minds that rhyme
Six strings to strum and tether
The beautiful and sublime
Seven days to carry me nether
For unknown tomorrows to prime
To grow and then to wither
In the fires of unending time

~

Whither Democratic Peace?

2014-03-20T12:00:00.000+11:00

The democratic peace proposition (DPP) is a liberal theory of peace (Oneal et al. 2003) complimented by constructivist arguments in support of it. Its central and simplest edict posits that ‘democracies do not go to war with each other’ (Owen 1994). There is a high degree of consensus among its proponents, that both statistical and empirical evidence indicates the “absence of war between democratic states comes as close as anything we have to an empirical law in international relations” (Levy and Thompson 2010). Yet, the ‘democratic peace proposition’ is - at best - an incomplete theory of peace. However, historical evidence of conflict between democracies as recently as the Indo-Pakistan and the Israel-Lebanon wars illustrate that shared democratic principles alone cannot be a sufficient guarantee of peace between nations. In critically evaluating existing literature on the subject, it becomes quite apparent that the spread of democracy is just one of many factors that have contributed to a reduction in the number and intensity of conventional wars between nations. Advancements in technology and multilateral organisations on the other hand are increasing the relative military, economic and diplomatic cost of conventional war. Therefore, states, including liberal democracies, still engage in unconventional warfare and other forms of conflict; in an environment where the global battle space has shifted into alternate arenas.

CONCEPTION

The foundations of the theory were laid by Immanuel Kant in his 1795 essay titled “Perpetual Peace” in which Kant conceives three main criteria for a peaceful world order. The first is ‘republican constitutions’ which would engender and enfranchised and empowered citizenship in every nation; secondly ‘a federation of free states’ which would bring governance and order to interactions between states; and thirdly ‘universal hospitality’ or goodwill between citizens of different nations (Kant 2008). Kant’s propositions for perpetual peace saw resurgence in the 1980s with Michael W. Doyle among its leading proponents (Doyle 1983a, b).

The DPP that emerged in the early 1980s must be understood in the context of Cold War politics, and the ideological battle that was polarising nations along pro democratic and Communist arguments. Doyle as a proponent of democracy used Kant’s logic as a basis for his argument of the democratic peace proposition. However, the criteria he specified for ‘perpetual peace’ differs from Kant’s in two out of the three elements. Doyle retains “republican representation”(Doyle 2005) from Kant’s original thesis as a criterion for peaceful relations between nations, but deviates from Kantian thinking in the next two. The “ideological commitment to fundamental human rights”(Doyle 2005) requires states to agree on values that inform their political ideology, whereas Kant merely specifies a federation of states which may or may not share the same values. Contemporary Southeast Asia is an example of a region made up of states with different political values, therefore not meeting Doyle’s criteria, but still manage to retain peaceful relations along the Kantian thesis of federation (Kivimäki 2001). Doyle’s third requirement of “transnational interdependence” is also a deviation from the spirit of Kant’s idea of universal hospitality. Liberal as well as conservative states – perhaps with the singular exception of North Korea – share a high level of interdependency with many other states through trade and shared human security interests (Farber and Gowa 1997).

Doyle further insists that his argument “rests on a simple and straightforward proposition that connects those three causal mechanisms as they operate together and only together, and not separately”(Doyle 2005). Doyle’s insistence that all three causal mechanisms must be fulfilled for the DPP to apply to a given nation, raises questions that will be addressed below - about the definitional challenge of what ‘democracy’(Danilovic and Joe 2007) itself, and ‘peace’ between nations entail.

PROPONENTS OF THE DEMOCRATIC PEACE PROPOSITION

The DPP has been advanced by many contemporary liberal thinkers, including Michael Doyle , Francis Fukuyama , John Rawls , and Bruce Russett . Other scholars have extended the core proposition to argue that democracies are less likely to start wars (Lake 1992) and once engaged in war, they are also more likely to win them (Gelpi and Griesdorf 2001). Some go even beyond to argue that democratic states fight shorter wars or that they suffer fewer casualties compared to nondemocratic states (Bennett and Stam 1996).

Various proponents of the DPP attribute it to different characteristics of democracy . Their merits and shortcomings will be reviewed below. However Lipson himself agrees that there is a lack of theoretical basis for their claims – even though he insists there is irrefutable empirical evidence supporting the DPP . The absence of a theoretical basis for the DPP and the reliance of its liberal proponents on statistical evidence to support their arguments, raise the question – if the DPP is to be accepted – whether democracy is the cause of peace or whether it is just a statistical correlation (Ray 1998).

CRITIQUE OF THE DEMOCRATIC PEACE PROPOSITION

It must be noted on the outset that any claim of Democracies never going to war with each other must necessarily ignore or disregard the Indo-Pakistan wars of 1947 and Kargil war of 1999 , Israel-Lebanon wars of 1978, 1982 and 2006 and the United States (and allies) backed coups in Iran (1953)(Abrahamian 2001), Guatemala (1954), Indonesia (1955), Brazil (1960s) and Chile (1973)(Forsythe 1992). Wars have also been waged by democracies against other functional or constitutional democracies in the name of promoting democracy and on the contention that they were in fact fighting dictatorships – such as the Kosovo war in 1999 against the Milosovic regime. The American Civil War (1861-65) was waged between democracies of United States (United 2007) and those of the Confederate States (2009).
Scholarly critiques of the DPP has been based on the realist view that nations go to war to secure their interests; where shared democratic ideology is not a determining factor for a nation considering going to war or choosing not to. Farber and Gowa argue that the statistical correlations that support the DPP are a result of cold war politics (Farber and Gowa 1997). David Spiro contests the statistical significance of the perceived absence of war between democracies, to argue that there is no significant correlation between democratic nations and peace (Spiro 1994). Sebastian Rosato attacks the causal logic of the DPP to argue that (a) there is no basis to assume that democratic institutions or citizens are biased against war or more effective in non-violent dispute resolution and (b) there are no inherent attributes in democracies that prevent them from going to war against another democracy (Rosato 2003). However the purely realist analysis of the problem also fails to sufficiently address the ideological reasons that influence political decision making, which is at the core of argument in the DPP.
The lack of a consistent definition of ‘democracy’, or of ‘peace’, may help proponents deflect empirical scrutiny of the DPP by being selective in what they consider to be liberal democracies and what constitutes ‘peace’. Filtering the statistical evidence in favour of the DPP weakens it even further and definitional issues erode its utility. It is instructional to note that in recent years, wars that otherwise would have been avoidable, have been fought for the propagation of democracy in the hope that the will lead to greater peace (Kellner 2005).

In almost every democratic nation, media, lobbyists and businesses compete with citizens for influence over government. Rule of law, accountability and individual freedoms are subjective measures at best. Democracies also do not have an impeccable record of electing honest leaders or evolving efficient bureaucracies that most DPP theorists would rely on to deter respective nations from war. According to the definitional boundaries that Doyle sets out for ‘liberal democracies’ (Doyle 2005), such ideal democracies may never exist – least of all outside of the global West.

AN ALTERNATIVE CRITIQUE OF THE DPP

Theorists who identify either a correlation or causation between peace and democracy overlook a host of other factors that influence political decision making and conflict. The lack of a theoretical framework for the DPP as admitted to by Lipson et al, stems from the fact that other significant global and historical factors have contributed much more to the reduction in number and intensity of conventional inter-state wars. They include (a) Nuclear deterrence and the standoff during cold war years, (b) emergence of the UN and a global governance structure (c) prevalence of multilateral organisations with effective diplomatic as well as trade tools to check state behaviour, (d) end of colonialism and international consensus against invasion and occupation of foreign lands, (e) interdependence and integration in the global economy and (f) the increase in global travel and information exchange. It is possible to argue that nuclear deterrence – particularly the US nuclear umbrella over its allies – has played a far more significant role in preventing war than the propagation of democracy in the post World War II world order. It is also telling that even nuclear deterrence could not prevent the democracies of India and Pakistan from going to war in 1999 over Kargil (Dixit 2002) – albeit briefly.

The proliferation of independent democratic states outside Europe commenced with the end of World War II and vastly accelerated to become the most common form of governance after the end of the Cold War (Thor Torfason and Ingram 2010). The spread of democracy after the Cold War was hastened more by the lure of capitalism than by democracy itself (Gartzke 2005). Indeed Capitalism has even penetrated non democratic countries such as China and Vietnam. Economic interdependence has also been a powerful deterrent of war even with rival democracies (Tang 2012). In the backdrop of a distinct shift of power from individual states to non state actors (Strange 1996) such as large and multinational corporations, NGOs and Multilateral organisations such as the WTO, World Bank, IMF and the UN Security Council, the role of democracy as a factor in international peace must not be exaggerated .

NEED FOR A MORE COMPLETE THEORY OF PEACE (AND WAR)

The DPP has its origins with the ideological battles of the cold war in its backdrop. It may have been a potent tool for promoting the virtues of democracy during such a political climate, but by synthesising a weak correlation between democracy and peace, scholars have overlooked many exceptions to the theory on one hand and a number of significant factors that may have contributed equally or more towards peaceful relations between nations.

Given that the bulk of empirical evidence supporting the DPP are sourced from post WW II history of the world, it is worth contemplating other factors that may have prevented conventional wars between nations in that time. The advent of the United Nations and related multilateral organisations including the Security Council, the GAT/WTO, World Bank, IMF as well as other groupings of nations have brought some structure and governance to international politics. These have made arbitration and peaceful resolution of conflict possible, more effective and cheaper than the option of conventional war. The spread of capitalism has integrated global markets binding the economic interests and fate of nations – serving to deter war.

As nations become more economically integrated and dependent on technology, conflicts between them have shifted to new realms. Where nations do have unresolved disputes, trade levers and cyberspace for example have become a new battle grounds where they can and do attack, spy and extort concessions from each other in ways that escape the conventional definition and understanding of war and conflict. Therefore, the understanding of ‘peace’ as the absence of conventional war - that is attributed to the propagation of ‘democracy’ - is itself questionable.

SEEDS OF WAR AND CONFLICT

History has consistently demonstrated that neither democratic nor totalitarian governments can survive without the implicit (or complicit) support of a majority of the population. The French revolution in 1799 and the Arab Spring of 2011 and many other historic events demonstrate that. For a government to have the implicit support of the people, it must fulfil at least two conditions. First, it must be seen to have the capacity to guarantee the physical and material safety of its citizens. Secondly, it must have influence – if not control - over the political beliefs of its citizens including their beliefs about justice. For example, a feudal system will prevail so long as the citizens believe that their society is justly organised by the class or caste system and that belonging to a noble bloodline is a legitimate claim to political power. Totalitarian regimes in North Korea and China demonstrate how the respective government’s ability to control the political beliefs of citizens and capacity to provide material safety is sufficient to retain power. Liberal democracies are no different – liberal leaders are elected by majority citizens who believe in liberty and egalitarianism. Such societies exist mainly in the Global West. Democracies in other regions may never be as ‘liberal’ due to differences in political legacies, culture and beliefs.

What compels nations at a political level, to go to war or refrain from doing so, are factors that affect their capacity to fulfil the two criteria outlined above: perceived threats to their material or physical security or to their political beliefs. North Korea threatens to attack any country that jeopardize its political beliefs for the same reasons that the words ‘socialism’ and ‘communism’ are derided in the liberal democratic United States (Ceplair 2011) – because they are perceived as threatening entrenched political beliefs. Any two countries who share similar political beliefs – be they democracies or feudal states – will not have ideological grounds to go to war with each other and will only fight for reasons of material security. In a global economy of shared resources, nations may be pushed to fight other nations who threaten or stand in the way of their material or physical security regardless of shared political beliefs.

The realist view, that a nation’s ability to defend its physical and material security and political beliefs through military means depend on their relative military strength, tactical advantages and the overall likelihood of being able to militarily achieve their political objectives, has its merits. Peculiarities of individual leaders, national values and nationalistic fervour can also be major influences. The present world order offers non-military options for conflict resolution that are cheaper and less destructive.

CONCLUSION

The point is not that democracy does not engender peace. Indeed, there are attributes inherent to democratic governance that put tighter controls on nations going to war; such as political accountability, budgetary oversights and policies weighted more towards citizen welfare than government ambitions. Democracies also make desirable and trust-worthy friends – because of the collective wisdom of the crowds (Surowiecki 2005) and their general bias towards justice. As argued above, nations that are perceived to have shared political ideologies have one less reason to go to war against each other. In the past and present, wherever religious belief is the source of political power, shared beliefs have kept the peace and divisions have caused war. For example, the shared beliefs of ‘Christendom’ kept Europe relatively peaceful (Hillerbrand 2007) until their theological split in their beliefs during the reformation destabilised it. Wars such as the crusades were fought against competing ideologies rather than for material or physical preservation. With the spread of democracy, more nations have shared political values than those who don’t and therefore one less reason to rally against each other. Religious terrorist groups that threaten liberal democracies also do so, on ideological grounds.

The main opposition to the Democratic Peace Proposition presented here is aimed at its singular attribution of democracy as the source of peace between democratic nations because that ignores more compelling reasons why democratic as well as non-democratic nations have often refrained from fighting each other. Neither does the DPP deal with definitional challenges that limit the scope of what ‘democracy’ and ‘peace’ means in the modern world. The material and diplomatic cost of conventional warfare has increased, causing a shift of the battle space from the conventional theatre to covert operations, political manoeuvres, economic warfare and even cyber warfare. There is no evidence that democracies are, or have ever been, immune to such attacks or backed away from using such tactics to attack other democracies.

Understanding that political and ideological beliefs of nations are as defensible as their physical and material security; not only bridges the liberal and realist views on security but also provides a platform for more comprehensive theorisation. If a democracy is threatened; economically, ideologically or on their sovereignty by another democracy, conflict will inevitable ensue. Whether that culminates in conventional warfare, diplomatic wrangling, trade disputes, cyber attacks, espionage and blackmail or covert and proxy attacks depend on the political priorities and avenues available for nations to pursue the optimal outcome.

I have outlined a theoretical framework based on national security interests and national political values that provide a more complete framework for understanding the factors that influence nations to attack one-another or fight for self preservation. The argument presented here is that these factors are common to democracies as well as others, and provide the foundation on which a comprehensive theory of international relations can be formulated.

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Power games: why did America bomb Japan?

2014-03-14T12:00:00.000+11:00

On August the 5th 1945, a B-29 bomber, named “Enola Gay” after the pilot’s mother, took off from North Field in Tinian, in Mariana Islands, carrying in its cargo bay, the first nuclear weapon to be dropped on a populated city. The world was about to find out the destructive capacity of nuclear weapons, though it is not clear whether even the Japanese, against whom it was used, immediately understood the grim fate of Hiroshima and its citizens. The development of the atom bomb had been urged by scientists – Albert Einstein among them – who warned the United States administration about the risk of Germany developing such a weapon first. Germany – and not Japan – was the intended target of the bomb all through its development. Furthermore, the very scientists later urged the President of the United States not to use the weapon on humanitarian concerns.
The United States air force had been flying unchallenged over Japanese skies for months before, bombing Japanese cities including Tokyo and destroying them almost completely with conventional and incendiary bombs. It was calculated at that rate, they would run out of targets by September 1945. By July, The U.S. knew that Japan’s war cabinet led by Prime Minister Suzuki, was already searching for options to surrender. Yet those who made the decision to use ‘the bomb’ against Japan had agreed unanimously to do so, with substantial knowledge of its capacity for indiscriminate destruction. Why did the US administration decide to use the weapon on an enemy who had already been military overpowered and a step away from surrender? Why did they decide against issuing a prior warning? It is worth exploring these questions, even though definitive answers – even if they existed – would not be readily determinable. The commonly held belief that the atom bomb brought World War II to an end need to be questioned as the historic narrative is deconstructed. It may not be possible to scrutinise key personalities in great detail, but the focus instead must be on how the pivotal decisions they took have shaped the world political climate for decades to come.

STATES OF MUTUAL DISTRUST
The alliance between Western nations and the Soviet Union in World War II was an unlikely one, forged against many odds. Ideologically poles apart, they were deeply mistrustful of each other. Back in 1917, soon after the Bolsheviks assumed power in Russia during the latter stages of World War I, Vladimir Lenin wrote:

“World history is now undoubtedly leading, on an incomparably larger scale [than in 1852], to the "concentration of all the forces" of the proletarian revolution on the “destruction” of the state machine.”

Two years later Lenin and his Comintern colleagues openly advocated a world revolution of the proletariat and planned the abolition of capitalism and democracy. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk signed with imperial Germany and obstruction of the Czechoslovak Legion during the latter stages of World War I, and the Treaty of Rapallo afterwards, deepened western suspicion of the Bolsheviks in Soviet Russia and had supported the white army against them.
Having seen the way the West conceded Czechoslovakia to appease Hitler’s Germany in 1938, Stalin feared that the West would never stand up to Hitler. The Soviet Union thus signed the “Treaty of Nonaggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics” on 23 August 1939, and cooperated with the German invasion and occupation of Poland, much to the dismay of Western countries. It is in such a historical background that the alliance between Western nations and Soviet Union is forced upon all parties by common enmity towards Germany which invaded Russian territory with the launch of ‘Operation Barbarossa’. Such was Stalin’s suspicion of the British that he had ignored intelligence warnings of the impending German invasion with the now famous response; “English provocation! Investigate!” Germany’s declaration of war on America and the Japanese attack on Perl Harbour forced these unlikely allies to unite against their common enemies – Hitler’s Germany and the axis powers.

STALIN’S WAR
Russia fought World War II on its own on Europe’s eastern front, where the U.S. and Great Britain only provided material aid but did not deploy their troops in support of the Russian war effort though western troops had fought with the White Army against the Bolsheviks decades earlier. Russian casualties of World War II are generally estimated to be thirty times that of U.S. and British Commonwealth casualties combined - perhaps the best indicator of Russia’s disproportionate war burden. During negotiations with British Foreign minister Anthony Eden in December 1941, Stalin had demanded that the Soviet Union should retain influence over the Baltic States as a precondition for cooperation with the allies. As World War II approached its end in 1945, Stalin would feel an entitlement to a greater share of its spoils – which would in turn frustrate President Truman and Secretary of State Jams Byrnes and arguably become a key factor that influenced them to use the atom bomb to keep the Soviet Union out of the war in the Pacific.

THE BIG THREE
As the directors of the allied war effort, heads of state from the U.S., Soviet Union and Britain played a critical role not only in the strategic decision making, but also in negotiations about the war burden and eventually how its spoils will be shared. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Marshal Joseph Stalin and Prime Minister Winston Churchill - ‘Big Three’ as they were known - met on three occasions during the height of the war and toward its end in what turned out to be pivotal meetings that had a historical impact beyond the war itself.

TEHRAN 1943
The first of their meetings was in Tehran in 1943 and here the Russians repeated their demand that Poland and Eastern Europe should come under its influence in the post war world. Here, Even though Russia had yet to declare war on Japan, Stalin reluctantly agreed to join the allied war effort against Japan in the Pacific. The keenness of the U.S. and Britain for Russia to join the war against Japan at this state of the war is noteworthy.

YALTA 1945
As the defeat of Germany seems imminent, the ‘Big Three’ met again in Yalta where Britain and America insisted that countries in Eastern Europe should have democratically elected governments after the war – particularly Poland where they hoped to establish a pro-western government. The Soviet Union was keen to have a pro-Soviet government in Poland which was a buffer between Europe and the Communist Soviet Union. The discussions were ambiguous and all parties believed they had an agreement.
However, as the Russian troops marched across the Eastern frontier immediately before Germany’s surrender, occupying Poland and German held parts of Eastern Europe, Stalin saw no incentive to concede influence in the states that his troops already occupied. Russia helped establish a Pro-Soviet government in Poland in a move that would sour relations with its Western allies and led to a ‘tough’ exchange of telegrams with President Roosevelt. Then in a twist of fate, Roosevelt passed away in April 1945 to be succeeded by Harry Truman whose lack of diplomatic tact has been cited by U.S. State Department officials at the time such as Averell Harriman and Alger Hiss as a reason for the deterioration of U.S. relations with the Soviet Union.
All these events combined to pave the way for what would be a flashpoint between Stalin and Truman at the final meeting of the Big Three at Potsdam. But Truman had assured his War Secretary Stimson, that he would delay Potsdam until the bomb was all but ready, and just four days after Potsdam, America would drop the first atom bomb on Hiroshima.

SUPERPOWERS IN TRANSITION
The war effort had drained Britain’s treasury but America was much richer and more powerful than when it initially joined the war. Although the U.S. economy had surpassed that of Britain decades earlier, its participation in WW II and ability to project power on multiple fronts far from home, made America the predominant military power in the world. Britain’s Superpower status had diminished and would later have to concede it’s colonies in the years immediately after the war. The planned economy in Russia was already ailing and its population famished, but the damage and casualties of war had further debilitated the Soviet Union. In this backdrop, America emerges as the world’s newest super power and has an interest in dominating regions of the world beyond the American Continent. Demonstrating its ability to attack distant targets with nuclear weapons would make America an unassailable military power.

JAPAN’S LOST CAUSE
By the time Germany surrendered, Japan was also battered to the point of submission. Prime Minister Kantarō Suzuki and his war cabinet were seeking a negotiated settlement despite the army minister General Korechika Anami’s determination to fight on, insisting that they will fight to the death to preserve their honour and the emperor. Japan still had a nominal neutrality pact with the Soviet Union but Foreign minister Togo Shigenori was unsuccessful in his attempts to obtain Soviet mediation for a negotiated peace with Western allies.
Continental America was largely untouched by the War. However, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in the Hawaiian Islands was a particularly painful and humiliating memory in the American psyche and both the soldiers fighting on the Pacific front as well as their leaders had little sympathy for Japan. Debilitated as Japan was, Japanese resistance in Iwo Jima and Okinawa in particular had demonstrated to the Americans, the near impossibility of a land invasion of the mainland where nearly three million troops still remained. With the Japanese Air Force grounded without fuel, Ariel bombardment of the Japanese mainland was the only viable option. Hatred of the Japanese and their dehumanisation on one hand, and the determination with which the Japanese resisted on land and in the air, would somehow enable Americans to justify to themselves, the indiscriminate Ariel attacks they would carry out towards the end of the war, mostly on Japanese civilians, culminating in the nuclear attacks of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

POTSDAM DECLARATION
The final meeting of the Big Three had been postponed by the Americans who expected the delay would give them time to complete a full-scale test of the atom bomb to enter the negotiations from a position of unrivalled strength – particularly against Stalin. Their calculations paid off and Truman received news of the success at ‘Trinity’ while he was in Potsdam. If Truman hoped it would bend Stalin’s stance, the Marshal’s moderated – if not cold - response upon hearing about the bomb may have been a disappointment. If Truman had any doubts whether Stalin understood the message, he would be able to erase them all a few days later when it was dropped on Hiroshima.
Truman had declared in front of congress that the U.S. would not accept anything short of a full unconditional surrender of Japan. U.S. intelligence intercepts of Japanese communications had however revealed Japan’s difficulty in agreeing to an unconditional surrender that would submit their emperor, and the willingness of the Japanese army on the mainland to fight till the end. As the dropping of the bomb became an imminent reality however, President Truman modified the allied stance in the Potsdam declaration and demanded the unconditional surrender of “Japanese forces” allowing room for the emperor to be retained. In what turned out to be a fatal decision, Prime Minister Suzuki interpreted the U.S. concession as a weakening of allied resolve and ignored the Potsdam Declaration, using the word “mokusatzu” to describe how he would ‘kill it with silent contempt’. Lack of a positive response from the Japanese would later make it easier for the U.S. to justify dropping the bomb on Japan.

RUSSIA’S ABSENCE IN THE FAR EAST FRONTIER
Historically, Russia’s presence in its Far East frontiers has been weak and sparse due to the inhospitable geography that separates it from western Russia. Russians never migrated East in significant numbers and even though its South-eastern parts closer to China supports some agriculture, its isolation from Russia’s industrial and economic bases in the west made them dependant on foreign resources. Russia’s Far East remained vulnerable to foreign migration and even at the turn of the 19th century, the vast majority of its civilian population was either Chinese or Korean. In the Russo-Japanese war in 1904/05, Japan’s successful naval blockade managed to destroy the Russian Pacific and Baltic Sea Fleets. Their solitary military victory against a major East Asian power came in 1939 against a depleted Japanese force that was being pulled out by Tokyo.
However, with Japan on its knees in 1945, Russia saw an opportunity to get a foothold in the Pacific with a front to Asia. Stalin was under no illusion that Russia’s position was too weak to sustain itself in the Far East. His late, but hasty invasion of Manchuria hints that he may have sensed an opportunity to gain control of a population centre in the Pacific, with access to open seas in the East.

DROPPING OF ‘THE BOMB’
The reasons for America’s execution of two nuclear attacks on an already debilitated enemy who had no capacity to attack the continental United States can only be speculated, in the absence of a clear justification for doing so. As a new and soon to be nuclear-armed superpower, America had the will and capability to project its power into the far reaches of the globe and demonstrating that capability would give the U.S. unassailable power in the post-World War order. Indeed the effectiveness of this new weapon on real targets such as cities or fortified military installations was not known when the decision was taken to drop them on Japan. There were two types of bombs – the gun-type assembly used in the Uranium bomb (Little Boy) which would be ‘tested’ on Hiroshima and the more complicated ‘implosion triggered’ Plutonium bomb (Fat Man) on Nagasaki.
It is likely that Truman would have felt that the difficulties encountered during the partitioning of Germany and Eastern Europe may repeat themselves if Russia is allowed to join the Pacific war and claim a share of the spoils. With Russia merely days away from entering the Pacific theatre, America had every reason to keep the Red Army out of Japan and secure exclusive access to Asia. If Russia succeeded in occupying any significant population centre in East Asia, America would have been faced with the Russian threat on both the Eastern European and Pacific fronts. Therefore, if it was going to take a nuclear attack to keep Russia out of Japan, there was no reason for Truman to hold back that trump card.
Yet, the bomb was made to be dropped on Germany – not Japan. America’s suspicions of Russia and the difficult negotiations over post war control of Europe were not sudden developments; they have been contentious issue for a few years. America’s superpower ambitions and the prospect of establishing a presence in the west Pacific seem to have been planned out well in advance - at least by the time its ‘island hopping’ strategy and occupation of key Pacific islands was developed. And yet it was the Western allies that urged Russia join the war in the Pacific. Trinity had proved the atom bomb was possible and the extent of its power. If Truman wanted to prove American superiority in nuclear technology, all he had to do was to demonstrate his new weapon to the world at a remote location – rather than on civilian populations of an already defeated enemy. So why did America drop the bomb in Japan? The answer may lie hidden in the explanation for doing so, offered by perhaps its most important decision maker besides Truman himself. In Henry Stimson’s own words;

“[America was] at war, and the work must be done.”

Therefore, it is my contention that; even though history may offer many a reason or justification for America dropping the nuclear bomb on Japan, the general lesson to be drawn from it is about the utter brutality of war itself. The nuclear arms race that followed has been a clear example of how limitations of the human capacity to understand the full implications of our actions can disastrously combine with the unlimited human propensity to imperil ourselves.

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A failed test and lost identity

2014-01-22T22:08:00.000+11:00

Image: Reuters

At the post match conference after the third test against Pakistan, the captain of Sri Lanka said that his team lost; not because they were too negative in their approach to the game, but on the contrary, because his batsmen weren't defensive enough. His words not only failed to convince, but it all seemed like a scene from a tragic movie about a total amnesiac who had lost all memories of his past, including his own identity and pedigree. Those who let their imagination wander, would have even heard Daft Punk's 'Within' playing softly in the background;

There are so many things that I don't understand
There's a world within me that I cannot explain
Many rooms to explore, but the doors look the same
I am lost I can't even remember my name

Sri Lankans have prided themselves on playing a certain ‘brand of Cricket’ that was fearless and entertaining. Before 1995, it may have been carefree and uninhibited by the prospect of losing, but even after becoming the world champions in 1996, the cautious defence of players like Asanka Gurusinghe and Hashan Thilakeratne was conspicuously out of sync with the unbridled aggression of Romesh Kaluwitharana and Sanath Jayasuriya, or the calculated attacks of Aravinda De Silva and even Arjuna Ranatunga who would rather perish in the fight than be dominated by the opposition. A combination of that skill to execute aggression without falling victim to it and the ability to calculate the state of a game and adapt to it became the foundation on which the greatness of Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene would be built in the following decade and a half. Even though the bowling unit almost always lacked menacing seamers on either side of Malinga's brief test career, it was well served by the reliable swing of the likes of Chaminda Vass or Nuwan Kulasekera who plugged one end while Murali or Herath attacked from the other. Despite limitations, nothing compelled captains to set fields that hinted at any weakness or timidity.

Perhaps the most endearing aspect of Sri Lanka’s Cricket was that no captain or player and not in the least their ardent fans, were ever inhibited in their drive for victory by the paralysing fear of losing. The drums and trumpets only intensified at the prospect of a steep and improbable chase. Even at the closing overs of a second world cup final loss in 2011, the pervasive smile on Kumar Sangakara's face never dissolved into the look of anguish that most competitive athletes would have borne quite naturally. Yes, that loss was difficult to bear, but the country and their team never lost sight of the joy of being there in that time and place, playing the game they loved. That is the passion with which we play the game at every dusty street corner, between rows of desks in a class - with thick Maths text books for bats and the previous day’s homework crumpled into the shape of a ball. We play the game for the sheer joy of connecting an improvised bat with an orb - so defined by imagination than by geometry.

Not even the most astute observers may have noticed the absence of that joy and energy in Sri Lanka’s premier playing eleven at the end of the first day of their third test against Pakistan in Sharjah. Despite the absence of any vicious turn or signs of uneven bounce, it was far more intuitive to attribute the miserly rate at which they scored on the first two days to a tricky playing surface, and expect a tough battle for batsmen to unfold in the following days. If the average Sri Lankan fan was infused with a bit more optimism than usual, about a second consecutive overseas test win against a side that has never lost a series in the UAE, those shards of hope had been reassembled into an improbbable dream by a team that fought their way back into a glorious draw in the first test, after conceding a lead of 179 in the first innings. Thier execution of a perfect game plan to win the second inspired new hope in a new crop of players who aspired for greatness, and yet knew their place in history. Given how slowly and cautiously Sri Lanka had batted to reach 428 in nearly two days of paralytic defence, a first innings lead of 87 seemed sizable enough to infuse hope of a possible victory; or a tame draw if Pakistan’s top order could muster enough discipline to resist the probing lines and lengths of the newly confident Sri Lankan bowling attack. Even though this was test match Cricket, and nothing could be taken for granted, even as late as the fourth day it seemed decidedly Sri Lanka’s game to lose. Though the openers failed to provide as solid a start as they had by then allowed their fans to expect of them, and despite Kumar Sangakkara ending a series at the crease without scoring a century (a rarity in recent years), the batsmen made proceedings look tough enough to make a history defying feat by Pakistan’s top order to get close to scoring the 302 in the 55 overs beyond improbable and near impossible.

It is unlikely that the Sri Lankan Cricket fan was heartbroken by the sight of Azar and Misbah executing so perfect a chase to reach the impossible. Being lovers of the game, they were in awe and admiration of their opponents' courage and flawless execution of a difficult game plan. Yet, those who have long loved and craved for the brand of Cricket that Sri Lankans have loved to play and watch over the years were left despondent at the sight of all nine fielders - bar the bowler and wicketkeeper - retreating to the boundary. Their heroes seemed to be scrambling, not so much in a helpless and desperate defence but rather in fearful trepidation of losing a game. In those last few hours, Sri Lanka lost more than a test match and a series win. In the last two ignominious sessions of pusillanimity, a nation of Cricket lovers that had endured the heartbreak of losing four world cup finals with resilient smiles and unshakable faith in the courage and determination of their heroes, felt forsaken and rejected. A team that was not rattled or terrorised by gunfire and mortars, were debilitated by a fear of something far weaker and invisible. The loss of a test match will take considerably less to make up for. The honoured ambassadors, of a nation that had emerged from a 30 year civil war with their optimism and passion for Cricket enhanced, seemed to have either forgotten how to play their game or forsaken the true identity and spirit in which Sri Lankans have played in living memory. The tragedy of that game was not merely that we lost out of timidity and lack of imagination and self belief; but in how our heroes remorselessly betrayed the joyous abandon with which we have always played the game of Cricket; the kind of joy that a bunch of kids were probably just beginning to discover just down the street.

A good year

2013-12-31T17:50:00.003+11:00

(Illustration by Traci Daberko)

I was with my mother and sister who were visiting me, and surrounded by friends and a magnificent fireworks display overhead when it started. As I sit here at the end – a bit enfeebled but recovering after a few weeks of illness – to reflect on a year gone by, I am astounded but how much of what filled the past twelve months, I was able to plan for, anticipate, hope for, dream of and believe in. And yet, not all dreams came true in 2013, some hopes were dashed and some of the deepest desires of the heart remained unfulfilled. Yet it had enough wonderful surprises, disappointments, challenges and moments of utter helplessness to make it all the more life-like rather than dream-like.

Looking back, I will remember the year that’s about to end for the wonderful people who autographed some of its most memorable days – the thoughtfulness of my family that remained so far away and yet so close, old friends and new who brought old memories alive and new ones to be recalled for years to come, teachers who taught as much about life as of the subject matter and whose example and friendship will always inspire me, classmates and housemates with whom to share ideas and laughter in just the right measure. Generous bosses and a great mix of colleagues made transitioning to a new role that much easier and rewarding, despite being forced to part with perhaps one of the most inspiring leaders and friends i have had the honour of working with. A new house, a new neighbourhood, a new bike and an old car to explore new routes and go on new adventures; things that by themselves could never make 2013 a great year, but made sure that it was a good one.

Perhaps one day many years from now, when the intricate details and memories of 2013 blur and become no longer distinguishable from any other year, the one thing I will remember it for will be as the year that taught me ‘gratitude’. For all the years I had lived in hope and anticipation, the year that is about to end has taught me to be thankful and grateful for all I have received and for all that I can dare to hope for. Most of all, I am thankful for the people – every individual with whom I was able to share a minute, a word or a thought. As tempted as I am to wish you all good wishes for the coming year, perhaps I am tempered enough to realise that we may not know what the coming year will bring. All I can wish for you – and for myself – is that we may all have enough love and gratitude to last another year, because if we do, I feel fairly confident that it will turn out to be a wonderful year!
Blessings!

Absence

2013-12-29T20:39:00.000+11:00

He had lived there for more than eight months now, so he was a bit surprised that he hadn’t noticed it until now. It had been invisible - like dead flies behind closed blinds - at the break of dawn as in the dim ‘energy saving’ lights at night, and concealed by the shimmer and glow and noise of a TV. But it would appear in the midday sun on a warm summer day. On such days, he would occasionally catch glimpses of it when distracted from a book. It would appear through cracks in the ceiling or in perfect edges of plasterboard; in the cobwebs on the patio roof or in the hot glass panels; sometimes even through the peephole in the main door or in the in the scent of freshly pressed couch covers...

The Perpetual Conflict (3)

2013-12-23T00:45:00.000+11:00

Image: Multicultural Arts Victoria

The politics of language and identity

It seems all too obvious that the regular cycles of violence that have emerged in Sri Lanka’s recent history since 1915 are distinctly communal in character. Indeed, every battle of every war in our history has always been characterised as those between communities on either side of cultural or religious divisions. However, there are two problems with that characterisation. First, Sri Lanka is – generally – an ethnically homogenous country consisting of an ancient mix of North Indian, South Indian, Persian, Arabian and South East Asian ethnic groups that have long lost much of their distinct differences. We were right in the middle of the Indian Ocean and for a very long time, the only country that had cinnamon; when spices and elephants were pretty much the only commodities worth trading and the entire Muslim world believed that it was the island that Adam and Eve got banished after tasting the forbidden fruit. Vestiges of the diverse cultures that settled and mixed in this tiny cosmopolitan island that lay in the path of the busiest sea routes of the ancient world, can be found in the names of its peoples. The fact that Sinhalese has always been natively spoken uniquely in Sri Lanka bear testimony to the fact that we were never a distinct ethnic group that migrated to this island en-mass, but that our unique identity evolved as a result of the mixing of diverse cultures over hundreds – I f not thousands - of years.

Before the British built our modern road network and motorised transportation made it possible for us to traverse the length or breadth of the island in under a day, we only travelled long distances to migrate and settle. Much like the Sri Lankan migrants who settle in foreign lands adapt the native tongue of those countries, those of our ancestors and their children who settled in Tamil speaking areas became Tamil and those who settled in Sinhalese areas became Sinhalese. That is why Sri Lankan Tamils share closer genetic ties with their Sinhala brethren than they do with their Indian cousins. Those from similar caste backgrounds inter-married and when Sinhalese kings could not find suitable brides from among their clansmen, they married Tamil princesses from South India. It was a country whose population was made up of migrants – shivaite hindu’s from prehistoric times who settled in the island saw many waves of migrants; those who came from the southwest of India spoke Tamil and cooked ‘thosai’ and ‘vadai’ while those who came from the south east of India ate 'aappam'' and 'idi-aappam'. Muslims and Persian Christians came to trade and some settled down in and around the major trading hubs and ports. What differentiated communities in that feudal society was ‘caste’ – not language.

But the West came to the East and the world became one empire. Anyone who aspired for power or wealth had to learn the emperor’s language. To the extent that information makes the world work, and all its human inhabitants think in words, those who could speak and read English would not only gain access to larger portions of wealth and power, but they would also inevitably be transformed by it in ways that monolingual Sinhala and Tamil speaker weren’t. On one hand, they were exposed to a broader flow of information; and on the other, they would absorb western liberal values and worldview. The masses who were the kingmakers in our democracy, spoke only their mother tongue for the most part. That not only shielded them from the liberal democratic values that are usually associated with a vibrant democracy, but also limited their ability to interact with and understand the diverse cultures and communities that constituted the modern state of Sri Lanka. Even though the British empire had waned after WWII, English was still the language of the new ‘American’ empire. While small nations like Singapore realised that and structured their language policy accordingly, the burden of history weighed too heavily on Sri Lanka to be able to carve out a more visionary language policy. The leaders who inherited the reigns of democracy in Independent Sri Lanka and their citizens perceived their newly acquired independence from British colonial rule as a dismembering of the empire. What they failed to realise was that the world remained as connected and interdependent as before, and ruled by a new superpower to whom the words “conquest” and even “empire” meant different things; even though they spoke the same language. Politics in those early years since independence would give rise to a narrow and fiery brand of nationalism. Four centuries of colonial rule had eroded and adulterated the newly independent nation’s historical and cultural memory; paving way for overly romanticised notions of history and grandiose perceptions of cultural superiority.

Even though we have coexisted in this land from time immemorial, most Sinhalese and a large number of Tamils do not speak or understand each other’s languages. Is that why the Sinhalese and Tamils went to war against each other? Well, it’s not so clear that they did. Apart from the riots of July 1983, Sinhalese and Tamils not only coexisted but mingled with each other in the southern half of Sri Lanka largely on peaceful and cooperative terms. The tales we still hear about Sinhalese families sheltering their Tamil friends weren’t aberrations of reality – those who did were merely acting on their natural impulses. Even through the riots of 1915, a majority of Sinhalese and Muslims got along just fine. Therefore, differences in language, culture and faith do not offer straightforward answers to questions about the causes of conflict.

The cycles of violent conflicts in post independent Sri Lanka are described in the language of identity politics, as “youth insurrections”, “race riots” and “religious tension”. Yet we do not pay attention to who was involved and who wasn’t, why did some choose to fight while others chose not to? These are not easy questions to grapple with, let alone answer. But when one inspects more closely, the demographics of those who participated in and endured the violence, a clearer pattern emerges. It was predominantly the poor, historically oppressed and marginalised classes and casts that have been directly involved in each of these conflicts while the educated and privileged classes and casts have – by an large – have been commandeering it from a significant distance behind the frontlines.

The greatest burden that the British Empire left behind in most of the regions that they occupied was the useful, but nevertheless unnatural, idea of the modern nation state. In the many thousands of years that a myriad nationalities and tribes had lived side by side in the East, we never had state borders. Yet in the wake of independence, the various constellations of nationalities that the British had mixed and matched throughout the empire were hastily grouped together and state boarders were drawn by novice barristers to contain them for a thousand years to come. The words ‘class’ and ‘caste’ have not entirely lost their socio political relevance in the Indian Subcontinent. The decades that followed have pitted historical grievances between nationalities and castes, classes and religions, the native and the foreign, historical and modern against each other; where no river or mountain exists to mediate the conflicts that would inevitably erupt among them.

Un-rhyme

2013-11-01T21:21:00.001+11:00

This verse will come one day; I know it will crawl to me
But not tonight; maybe it is not meant to be
Dissolved in whispers, or touched, or seen
Because all of that it has once been,
And lost, before time or light or memory...
This rhyme is not feeble, perhaps it's weary
Of dreams dared not dreamt, and eyes teary...

Words that change my life

2013-09-19T23:33:00.001+10:00

Source: Wikipedia

Power of words
As one who likes to think of himself as a writer, i am beginning to appreciate the fact that words don’t just give expression to our thoughts – they are often the source of our thoughts. We think and feel in words; if there is no word for it, then we can’t think or feel it. The breadth of our vocabulary shapes our attitudes and the depth in which we understand the words we use has a profound influence on way we live and how much meaning we are able to extract from life. I don’t think it is a coincidence that St John’s Gospel begins with: “In the beginning was the word, the word was with God, the word was god….” Much of human culture, civilisation and art is a product of and dedicated to the power and influence of words. One of my favorite descriptions of the power of words is by Maya Angelou, who says “Someday we’ll be able to measure the power of words. I think they are things. They get on the walls. They get in your wallpaper. They get in your rugs, in your upholstery, and your clothes, and finally into you.” Two words and one phrase stand out among the many words that have, and that continues to shape the trajectory and arc of my life.

Respice Finem
The phrase is “respice finem” and it is the motto of my school - Trinity College, Kandy. It means ‘look to the end”. It’s first recorded use is in a book called ‘Gesta Romanorum’ or ‘Deeds of the Romans’ of which nothing is known for certain about authorship or place of first publication. in its 103rd chapter is a verse that reads: ‘Quidquid agas, prudenter agas, et respice finem’ which means ‘Whatever you do, do cautiously, and look to the end’. In a way, it is about keeping our end goal in mind. Quite often those who have common objectives often have vastly contradictory views about the details of how to achieve them. For example, those holding opposing political views often have the best interest of the country at heart and want more or less the same end result. The more challenging and complex the common final objective is, the more it requires united and collective effort, and it becomes imperative for those with opposing views to ‘look to the end’ and acknowledge the common objective for them to work together to achieve it.

Trinity College Kandy was lished as a Christian Missionary school and it is possible that its founders were influenced more by the 36th verse in the 7th Chapter of the book of Ecclesiastes in the Holy Bible which says “Whatsoever thou takest in hand, remember the end, and thou shalt never do amiss”. Here, “the end” refers to death itself. Christianity’s strong emphasis on ‘salvation after death’ brought death and mortality to the forefront of Christian thought and philosophy. “Respice Finem” has been used as a “memento mori” in post classical European literature. I would have thought that reminding young schoolboys about death may sound grim and therefore an unlikely bit of advice; until Steve Jobs touched on the subject in his now famous commencement address at Stanford in 2006. In it he acknowledged that “...remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

Introspection
‘Introspection’ is one of the words that continue to influence me too. Children become self-aware at age one. by that age, I would have been able to recognise myself in a mirror as most toddlers that age do, but i did not encounter the word ‘introspection’ until i was much older - when I first read it in a poem that a friend had written for the School Officers’ Guild magazine in my senior year in school. It refers to “the examination or observation of one's own mental and emotional processes” - which means a lot more than mere ‘self awareness’ and requires the development of a mental capacity that is not necessarily innate but acquired. Ultimately, finding out that I could have an exciting, hilarious, probing, painful and honest conversation with myself was a pivotal moment in my life.

Being introspective doesn’t necessarily make me an introvert - i think. However, it draws focus inwards - away from the frustration and helplessness one feels at one’s inability to change the world and recreate it in our own image or one that pleases us - to how i can make a positive difference by the way live and and how i react to life’s challenges. For example, the introspective and examined life helps us contextualise big problems we face in our time such as pollution, climate change and corruption in terms of what we can and must do rather than worry about what everyone else should be doing. Mahatma Gandhi put it most eloquently when he said “...be the change that you wish to see in the world.” Introspection is as much about finding inner strength as it is about self-criticism, it is as much about humility as it is about self-awareness.

Love
The other word that has shaped my life is, of course, Love.

Eskimos have 30 words to describe snow, because exact descriptions of snow is a matter of life-and-death for them. Sanskrit (from which much of my mother tongue – Sinhala – is derived) has 96 words for love; ancient Persian has 80, Greek three, and English only one. Perhaps the result of having only one word to describe a vast universe of emotion and driving motivation has led to a poverty of awareness of what love means. On the other hand, maybe it is an acknowledgment of the fact that no matter how many words we have to describe it, we may never understand the full breadth and depth of what it means - or can mean to us. We already know that ‘love’ can mean so much more or less than what each of us understand it to be. We love things and people, seasons and places. It is sometimes a word we use to describe our desire to possess things, and yet quite often we love what we know we will never possess. We love some things only for a short time – like a cold drink after a long run on a hot summer day. Some things we love may last an entire lifetime.

It is an important word because invariably, we all devote our entire lives to searching for love; both the intimacy of pure unconditional love and the love and acknowledgement of broader society. Our assessment of self worth is often dependant on what others think of us and how they perceive us. Expensive cars and big houses only make us happy (or feel loved) as long as there are people in the world who judge and assess our relative worth by those possessions. How beautiful we feel, how comfortable we feel about being ourselves and how much we are ‘worth’ is often defined by the ‘love’ and acceptance of a society that oscilates between complete neglect and harsh judgement of what we do and possess.

What we love also transforms us more than anything else. Society may unfairly pigeonhole us based on our occupation or the company we keep, but we do conform to our surroundings to a great extent. If all the complexity of ‘living’ were to be narrowly simplified it would eventually get condensed to a mission in search of the things we love to do and the people we love to be with. Chances are, while pursuing what we love doing, we will find like-minded individuals, among whom inevitably be will be those who will heighten our understanding and appreciation of what love means and by that, add meaning to our lives.

The Perpetual Conflict (2)

2013-07-25T22:45:00.000+10:00

Image: thuppahi.wordpress.com

Fault-lines

Perhaps it is a tragic coincidence of our time; or maybe it was inevitable given the passage of generations, that we are marking the thirty year anniversary of Black July at the same time as we are approaching a centenary of such violence since the communal riots of 1915. With the escalation of religious intolerance and communal tension in recent months resembling the events of a century ago, we are faced with a peculiar dilemma: which anniversary shall we commemorate? The commemoration of historical events may be about preserving those memories for future generations to learn from, and for its darker chapters never to be repeated. But they must also compel us to be vigilant, and pay attention to the history that is in making today. In the space of four years since the war ended, communal intolerance is spreading its deadly tentacles through the cracks in our fractured national identity. Are we an inherently violent people who are incapable of peace? Of course not! But despite the significant influence of Buddhism on our civilisation, there is no evidence that we are inherently peaceful either. Ours is not unique among the ancient civilisations of the world. We adapt to our times and react to our environment like any other and we have always had choices to make about how we do so.

Before European colonisation, our society was organised hierarchically along social classes and castes. It may have been a strange twist of fate that the civilisations of the East and the colonial project of the West had to collide on our shores in the renaissance years, but in many aspects, it was only a matter of time. When that did happen, it was inevitable that our ancient social order which organised society in a stable – but broadly oppressive – caste based social structure would face direct competition from an alternative model for social organisation based – at least in principle - on the egalitarian aspirations that the reformation has unleashed in Europe.

A successful empire needed an efficient bureaucracy. Even though we tend to think of the colonial project in Sri Lanka as a time of foreign occupation, in truth it was run mostly by Sri Lankans who carried out the will of the British Crown. The colonial government and missionary movements were expanding an education system that the British had pioneered and perfected – aimed at producing the cogs and wheels of the machinery of empire. As a result, the late 19th century saw the emergence of a distinct class of educated Sri Lankan professionals and bureaucrats who symbolised avenues for upward social mobility that had never before existed in the island. The Ceylon Civil Service and other professions saw an influx of a new band of local elites. Aspirations of social mobility would no longer be restricted to those with a birth-right.

Education in colonial Ceylon; was designed to produce an efficient bureaucracy and disciplined professionals. It was not designed to produce leaders who could inspire the masses which may challenge the empire. The products of most elite missionary schools were accused of being ‘brown sahibs’ who thought and spoke like their imperial masters and far removed from their own countrymen and women who constituted the masses. Such accusations were not unfounded; nor were they broadly unfair. Students who spoke in a native tongue was often punished for it – and such punishment was accepted by parents who was adamant that their children must learn English – if they couldn’t wholly shed their own identity and learn to be English. This philosophy was not without its detractors and peculiarly enough, its dissenters were mostly found among the foreign educators. A. G. Fraser who became Principal of Trinity College, Kandy at the turn of the twentieth century was one of those few dissenting voices. Early into his tenure at Trinity, he wrote that:

“A thorough knowledge of the mother tongue is indispensable to the culture of real thinking power. More, a college fails if it is not producing true citizens; and men who are isolated from the masses of their own people by ignorance of their language and thought can never fulfil the part of educated citizens or be true leaders of their race”
~ Fraser of Trinity and Achimota by W. E. F Ward, Ghana University Press, 1965 (p 49)

The views articulated by Fraser and others like him were radical then, and they remain at the fringes even today. They found little traction even in the institutions they built – which had to cater to the aspiring middle class parents who send their children to them. An ‘English education’ in an elite school still offer the safest – if not the only – avenue of entry to the middle class of Sri Lanka.

The Ceylon Legislative Council which was established in 1833 was expanded in 1889 to accommodate more ‘unofficial local members’. The idea that the colonial government had even symbolic local representation even in those early years would be obscured by the fact that those local members had little to do (and even less in common) with the ‘local people’ they were meant to represent. More significantly however, those local representatives to the legislative council were chosen based on their ethnic and religious identity – giving birth to the divergent ‘communal’ ideas about what it meant to be Sri Lankan that would eventually penetrate the public conscience – if not the political discourse in our country that persist to this day. The currents of democratic politics, as they flowed through the land in subsequent decades, would entrench those communal divisions in a society that was also remained stratified by caste and class. Those divisions would eventually become the fault lines along which subsequent conflicts would erupt for the next century and more.

Neither the colonial government nor the local intelligentsia that emerged from the education system would ever actively challenge – let alone try to dismantle or undermine – the hierarchical social order of the old world that persisted. Instead, they would perpetuate it with their own elitist ambitions and by using their privileged position in society as an entitlement to high status. They would use their education to gain proximity to power centres of society rather than to serve the underprivileged masses.

The democracy we enjoy today was prematurely inherited – long before it was demanded or earned. Therefore our political values have remained feudal, allowing the existing social divisions to get further entrenched. That is why political parties in independent Sri Lanka have often been tempted to carve out constituencies along the same narrow communal lines; which the unofficial representatives to the Legislative Council had been chosen from long before, by their colonial masters. Nothing really changed except that the old order that stratified our society by notions of caste and class had been democratised. A society that had in turn been fractured along communal divisions allowed the long subjugated majority to rise up on its own. They would do so in the form of a “pancha maha balawegaya”, to impose their own cultural and religious identity on the state. They would redefine what it means to be Sri Lankan in their own image.

As Fraser had feared half a century before Sri Lanka gained her independence; very few of the English speaking, cosmopolitan elite that inherited political power in the newly independent country were able to understand – let alone empathise with – the masses that they ruled. They represented, and rose to power, on the back of a powerful middle class that dominated industry, land and enterprise. Ironically, those elites who led the nationalist movements in newly independent Ceylon, could hardly speak the language of their constituents. The republic that subsequent generations inherited had been shaped irreversibly by the communal divisions and unbridled political forces that they had unleashed for petty political gains. Even today, political parties are forced to balance those same communal interests as well as class or caste interests in the constituency; both to assume power and to retain it amidst the many conflicts that would inevitably arise along those historical fault lines.

Starting with the land reforms of the mid 1950s, the tables would turn on the dominance of the middle class. Details of the subsequent social transformation may be analysed elsewhere, but today the English speaking middle class is too weak and not found in sufficient geographic concentration outside Colombo to be politically relevant. Outside of the sports and business pages of the English media, only the local blogosphere and Internet forums bear any evidence of their ghostly existence. The leaders they vote for do not get elected and the thoughts and ideas they express – mostly in English – rarely penetrates the public discourse (and its irony is not lost on me).

The tragedy of the middle class elite in Sri Lanka is not merely that they are politically or socially irrelevant. On the contrary, middle class Sri Lankans of all communities distinguishable not so much by their communal identity but rather by their shared liberal values and progressive political outlook. The small and shrinking numbers of Tamils, Sinhalese, Muslims and Burghers of middle Sri Lanka who listen to the same kind of music, watch the same movies, read similar books and discuss very similar topics have more to do with each other than with rural cousins from their own ethnic or religious communities. Yet their ‘education’ separates them from the rest of their countrymen and women. The promises they make to never allow events such as Black July to happen again – though honest and well intentioned - are inherently unreliable; because they never understood the communal tensions and class struggles of the masses that have torn the social fabric of our country for over a century. They still remain ignorant of the dangers that A.G. Fraser had warned them about a century earlier.

The Perpetual Conflict (1)

2013-07-25T12:48:00.004+10:00

Image: newmatilda.com

The dark clouds of history

When I look back, I do not see the black smoke rising, or the cries of hapless countrymen, women and innocent children – victims turning into victimisers, turning into victims – caught in a cycle of violence that has persisted beyond living memory. Whatever I have seen of that time and moment of our flawed history; I have seen through the eyes of others. The picture has at times blurred with their tears and at times its intensity has been sharpened by the raw emotions that still engulf those who bear them; who are still griped by what they experienced in the deepest and rarely visited corners of their souls. But I do feel the heat of those fires that were lit long ago when I was barely two years old. No longer a toddler but not yet a child, I had been born into the violence that erupted then and accompanied me well into my adulthood like a dark shadow that still tug me at my feet wherever I go. I do not know how the events of that July should be remembered, because the embers of those fires still linger in the world we inhabit.

Must we reassemble those columns of thick black smoke and smell of burning rubber and burning flesh from the collective memory of a forgetful nation? The rich and eventful lives of even the most unforgettable people are eventually summed up in a short epitaph on a gravestone – if that. And so it is that the collective suffering, shame, pain and tragedy of the events of July 1983 has been etched in the gravestone of history merely as ‘Black July’; filing away the abridged events of preceding years and months that led up to the riots in a colour-coded folder in our collective memory. The mention of “Black July” evokes images of the sooty columns of smoke that would have risen up from the burning buildings, but the term also robs our imagination of the broad spectrum of colours that were lost in those fires. It says nothing of the vibrant lives that were consumed in that violence and the subsequent war that escalated. After thirty years, can we now hope to resurrect those vivid memories? Do we seek out the victims who have since lost their conception of ‘home’; picking up the pieces of their shattered lives in different parts of the world, trapped in places that cannot contain their memories and yet unable to return to where their journey began? Perhaps we should go in search of those dark faces of men who perpetrated the most heinous crimes in our recent history. We owe it to ourselves and all those who have paid the price for their mindless acts - to ask them and their loved ones whether they are proud of what they did back in July of 1983. Will their voices betray any guilt or shame? Are they haunted by the ghosts of their victims or troubled by their inner conscience?

But with each attempt we make at reconstructing those memories, we move away from their reality towards a constructed narrative and a new conception of how those events should be remembered. Because even the most intimate memories are never pure or uncorrupted – they are born tainted by the prejudices and affections of those who bear them. All our memories are continually reshaped for as long as we hold them – carved by emotion, chipped away by our biases and infused with other memories that cohabits the neural spaces they occupy. The actual history of the past three decades can never be fully reconstructed with fractured accounts of what happened in that fateful month in 1983. We must realise that even in their totality; all those accounts may never paint an accurate picture of those long bygone events. The narrative will inevitably evolve with each subsequent retelling, and if we are lucky, it will be retold more meaningfully and in ways that are relevant to their time and place.

Three decades on, as we seek to reconstruct the narrative in a way that is relevant to our time, perhaps we need to cast our nets in deeper waters and look beyond the events of 1983. Even though the smoke towers have dissipated long since, the trail of violence perpetrated by Sri Lankans on Sri Lankans extends for at least a century; well beyond ruins of July 1983. It is imperative that we recognise that the embers of that violence continue to burn today, undermining the very foundation of our society, four years after the end of a brutal civil war. Memories of the different cycles of violence have transformed and grown feeble with time, and resurrecting their fragile recollections from a century ago is going to be a precariously difficult task. Especially on emotionally charged days and anniversaries like these, we must be cautious not to assume that the recollection of historic milestones and anniversaries is the same as learning from our history’s long and painful passage. Breaking this cursed cycle of violence that we have been born into, requires more patient analysis and introspection than the frenzy of penning a moving memorial to one of many watershed moments in history usually affords.

Having been born in the early 80s, my generation has endured a series of significantly violent events starting with the riots of July 83’ and the insurrection of 1989. The war that raged in the 80s would escalate through our teenage years in the mid 90s and a great number of us would eventually be enlisted in the military or recruited to the LTTE in subsequent years. The remaining years of much of those recruits would be left to decay in the corrosive concoction of violent memories they bear. Yet for a majority of us – including myself, and I suspect, a disproportionate number of those who read this – are likely to belong to a demographic that could afford to distance ourselves from that physical mayhem, though not from the images of war. Hence, even though our entire lives have been engulfed and defined to a large extent by the events of 1983 and their consequences, we do not have any real experience of the violence that we were born into and grew up with. We must strive harder to broaden our understanding of how war and violence has shaped our thinking and expectations. The physical violence that ended in 2009 has left mental scars that will persist in our generation and influence the decisions that will shape our country in years to come.

But our generation is not unique by any stretch of the imagination. Preceding generations – for nearly a century – have all grown up in a vortex of violence that we have so far been unable to escape since the anti-Muslim riots in 1915. Every generation since, have inflicted and endured violence and conflict to the extent that we no longer have any living memory of peace. Having endured World War in the 1930s, a newly independent Sri Lanka was unable to resist the temptation of asserting the dominance of its majority on language policy in the mid 1950s, leading to the anti-Tamil violence in 1958. The generation that followed in the 1970s fractured both the North and South of the country. The northern conflict would endure for three decades while the south that ignited in the early seventies would flare up again in the late 80s. In the mid 1990s, war would resume with greater intensity, conditioning us to accept the loss of thousands of lives within the span of hours in single battles; not as some of the greatest tragedies in the history of our country, but as facts of daily life.

Indeed, at no point in the history of our tiny island have we known what a peaceful and equitable state looks like. Therefore we still do not know what to expect of one. It should have been clear to us even as we celebrated the end of war in 2009; that our collective imagination was unable to capture the true essence of peace. Because, for over two millennia, we have only experienced the subjugation of monarchs, the exploitation of empires, the coercive power of an insecure majority and the domination of a powerful presidential state that still unleashes violence to maintain its power over unarmed citizens as well as on the rule of law.

It is ironic that we take so much pride in being heirs to an ancient and rich history. Perhaps it is that rose-tinted perception of history that inspired us to celebrate in May 2009 – filled with optimism about the prospects of peace at the end of a thirty year war. But, not everyone who set off firecrackers in the streets on that bright and unforgettable day would have really understood the prematurity of their celebrations. As we look around today, it is quite apparent that the violence has not ended with the events of May 2009 – just as much as they did not begin in July 1983.

Given the pattern of events that have persisted for over a century, it is not altogether surprising that four years since war’s end, we have allowed ourselves to loop back in time to an eerily familiar place. Where we are now is not too dissimilar from the events and collective mindset that led to the Sinhala-Muslim communal violence almost exactly a century ago. The details of those events need to be explored separately, but every generation since then have been offered unique opportunities on separate occasions, to recognise our shared identity. Each generation was invited to the high table of history, to conceive of a state (and a state of mind) that is broad enough to contain our rich diversity. But today, we stand among the ruins of our past, where each of those subsequent generations failed. May 2009 was our moment. It still is. Are we destined to falter like those before us who never understood their place in history, or will we be the generation that will be remembered for constructing a new history, and a successful alternative path to a more equitable future? But even as we reflect on that moment, the bountiful reasons we had to celebrate at the conclusion of war in 2009 are dissolving one by one, eroding away what little remains of any faith we may have had in our ability to escape this multi generational cycle of violence.

The responsibilities and burdens of history rest on our shoulders now; notwithstanding that ours is a generation that is at a greater disadvantage than any before us. If we are to succeed, we must first have the courage to reject the violence and intolerance that has conditioned us over a lifetime. We cannot afford to take the unprecedented bloodshed and rule of violence which engulfed the North and South, for granted as facts of life. The thirty years that has passed since July of 1983, is significant not only for the victims of those despicable acts of violence, but for our generation that was born into it, grew up with it and is not called to on to be the ones to prevent our country from relapsing back into the ever more familiar cycle of violence. The history of violence in Sri Lanka runs much deeper in our collective memory than we are able to recall as individuals. That is why we must now reconstruct our history not merely as Sinhalese, Buddhists, or both, but together - collectively in a space that is large and hospitable enough to accommodate all communities that make up Sri Lanka.

So far, we have been learning the wrong lessons from history. Rather than learning how to avoid making the same mistakes we have made in the past, we seem to have instead learned how to use history to inflame and repeat those mistakes more competently. Perhaps if we can understand our place in history better than previous generations were able to, we may yet hope to break the cycle that made events like those of July 1983 possible. That is not going to be easy – and the odds of history are stacked heavily against us. However, if we can understand this moment in our history, and succeed in disentangling the truth about our past and present from the myths and falsehoods that have taken root in our belief system; we will have reason to be optimistic.

Solstice

2013-06-20T23:28:00.001+10:00

Beachline, originally uploaded by halwis.

When senses have all retreated

Into the frosty shadows of starlight
And the Earth is submerged in darkness

From ocean depth to mountain height

Only the faithful hearts keep beating

Enduring in faith, and hope’s delight

Waiting for the sun to reclaim its place

And rescue dawn from the depths of night