So say shall we all

BY HARINDA Ranura Vidanage

"PEOPLE feel that they are curtailed in their possible developments in a variety of directions and they create an imaginary of transcending these limitations and that is what the place of hope could have been.

Now I think there is in some sense an end of hope if by hope we understand something which is transcending all possible human conditions in terms of the fulfilment of a perfect state of liberation, emancipation etc.

But, on the other hand, there is a proliferation of new hopes, new demands, and these demands can be put together to create some kind of more cessable social imaginary.

This is not to say that our expectations are any less than in the past, but that at any moment in time we have to construct partial social imaginaries of transformation that can push emancipatory politics in many directions.

But we no longer have these eschatological notions of hope yet hope is something which is very much populating our dreams, present in our struggles and so on." - Ernesto Laclau

INDEPENDENCE DAY, many question what one can put to his/her pen on our ritualistic celebration of the independence day. Symbolically celebrated with all the political vanity at Galle Face and formally celebrated in few governmental agencies.

What does the common man feel about it? Oh great its just a holiday where we can take some rest, or if the day falls on a Friday or Monday it will be the coolest retreat one can get.

This was a rapidly deployed probe to scan the un-conscience of the Sri Lankan mind. Irrespective of whether it's a serious study on the attitudes of Sri Lankans to February 4th, the above will be the general response.

The trouble is that as a nation we have lost control predominantly the ideological attachment to the most significant day of our time.

The painfully silent, as some critiques say lame national movement in Sri Lanka has never given any meaning to the independence day that we celebrate today..

Few Sri Lankans passionately celebrate the Independence Day Vis a Vis their neighbours India. India fought a significant liberation struggle against the colonial rule and the essence of the Independence Day is a spiritual presence.

The writer is not concerned about focusing on the historical significance of this event. But for a country which is desperately struggling to forge an alliance of diverse cultures and simultaneously arresting the state from withering away from fault lines appearing among all ethnicities and religious groups, 4th of February is a date to be repositioned as a day of national integration and the day we struggle against all our internal foes.

The British colonized our state in 1815, they left a state struggling on its move towards nation building endeavours and state formation mechanism riddled with defects. But the significant hand over of political power to Sri Lankan state still symbolize the day of our Independence.

Today we are re-colonized by dreams of building Sinhalese Hinterlands, Buddhist states, Tamil Eelams, separate powers of self autonomy to Muslims. This is the existing reality. This is the status of Sri Lanka today. I see this as a colonization project unleashed from with in side this state, a 'colonization from below'.

There is a battle cry from some remnants of the failed Left project still screaming to defeat the neo colonialism of the West.

Their presence and voice is overshadowe by the more radical so called reds demanding a patriotic state of what structure of architecture no body knows. Today in the current context the notion of patriot is a problematique.

This is a simulation of existence, to create an 'other' which we think is trying to colonize our state. This is ploy for the virtual political existence for individuals and political set-ups who thrive on chaos and push towards hinterlands.

Today we need Independence from "colonization from below", or else face the wrath of massive ruptures on fault lines of cultural identities.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa emerged as the new force in Sri Lankan politics, feared by his own and hated by ultra right wing neo liberalists in this country. This is an opportunity for him to start fresh, declare a new meaning to the Independence Day.

The one unique element of February 4th is it does not belong to any identity group in this country. It belongs to the whole of Sri Lanka.

It is uncontested and non negotiable thus this is the day that should be renamed the day for the new struggle for independence. To rid the internal ideology dragging our people to be imprisoned in hinterlands carved out of diverse identities.

Unless this political initiative is taken and then hooked on to the polity and a mass national movement launched we as a nation cannot recover, we may win the war against terrorism, or will achieve peace with a long term negotiation process, but yet people of this nation will never think as one.

It will become a Matrix of simulation, where Sri Lankans will just live a life of sedation, where feelings will be compromised for ideals and unwanted passions. A few agents of the power blocs like the goons of the hinterland will rule over a surreal polity.

The country needs its "people back". In the current context there is a merciless hijacking of human conscience, virtues of humanity and traded in name of patriotism, Eelam and religious states.

This reminds me of a quote, not from an intellectual in the higher echelons of the global academia, but from the first chapter of the Matrix trilogy, This was what Morpheus the convener of the humans tell his prot,g,, of the life in Matrix,

"That you are a slave, Neo. That you, like everyone else, was born into bondage... ... kept inside a prison that you cannot smell, taste, or touch. A prison for your mind." (The Matrix, 1999)

The state still lacks a national conscience, it's just been a year since the massive waves of the Indian ocean Tsunami ravaged the country.

Tsunami is now a topic less favoured as the media, in this overtly media society exhausted its real value to the limit, but I recall President Rajapaksa's appeal in a peace conference just before he was elected President of Sri Lanka held in the context of post tsunami peace building.

"This is a window of opportunity for Peace" He said, this is a significant statement and now under his regime he has shown utmost courage in ensuring we go their.

Since he came to power we see a man tremendously under siege and victim of conspiracies, hatched nationally and internationally. But he has seen the storm and is trekking ahead, though he is fully aware his journey has just begun and challenges are plenty in time to come.

Its great to see the populist move of physically locating the Independence Day celebrations away from the elitist enclosure of the Sri Lankan parliament to more popular Galle Face. It's a start, but nowhere sufficient for the ultimate objective.

Thus the first citizen of this country now has a chance to change the future of this nation. This is the day for the symbolic struggle to be launched. The battle to win the hearts of a nation and free them of the colonization from below has just begun.

I am not denouncing the political movement that led to the achievement of 1948 Independence, but this is an appeal to provide meaning for the psyche of the nation for the importance of a day that belongs to all Sri Lankans.

A day that can be celebrated irrespective of any diversity and all Sri Lankans home and abroad will in chorus utter, 'I am proud to be a Sri Lankan',

"So say shall we all!, So say shall we all !!, So say shall we all!!!"