Eliminating Crime and Corruption

S. Pathiravitana

While crime and corruption cannot be totally eliminated, we may look for the reasons why they surface from time to time in epidemic form. A glance at history shows that these two social ailments were relatively less when compared with today.

Some people think that the reason for this is the severity with which the kings of those times are said to have dealt with them. But that is not all the truth, and we should not rush to implement more laws hoping that crime and corruption would disappear.

Island Of Zeilon

The more laws we have, as the philosophers caution us, the more thieves we breed. The thriving of the legal profession is the more recent proof of this. Incidentally, in those ‘primitive’ times, there were no lawyers, so said Robert Knox about the island of Zeilon. The aggrieved and the accused conducted their own cases. One reason for crime being less in those days is that a king like Hammurabi in Babylonia, the land which today Saddham Hussein ruled, suffered the complainants to undergo the same punishment that were asked for if the charges failed.

Unwritten Constitution

Does the king exempt himself from any charges brought against him as the Sri Lankan constitution has laid down for the head of state? Strangely enough, no. What we had in the past was an unwritten constitution.

And the unwritten constitution said, as the greatly surprised Dr Davy records in the book he wrote soon after the failure of the 1818 rebellion, that the people had the right to remove him from the throne if he failed to live up to the ten conditions (Dasa Raja Dharma) he was expected to observe.

Let us see how Dr Davy lists these ten conditions. A king had to be munificent. Strictly follow the rules of his religion. The deserving were to be remunerated. His conduct had to be upright. And also be mild. He had to be very patient. Never malicious. No torture could he inflict. Merciful to all. And heed good counsel.

And Dr Davy adds: “Should a king act directly contrary to these rules, contrary to the examples of good princes, and in opposition to the customs of the country, he would be reckoned a tyrant, and the people would consider themselves justified in opposing him, and in rising in mass and dethroning him; nor are there wanting instances of extreme cases of oppression, of their acting on this principle, and successfully redressing their wrongs.”

Only one man in our post-colonial history tried to revive, at least nominally, the just society of governance in this country that prevailed before the country fell into the hands of the “rapacious West.” But what a caricature he made of it. Having called it the “dharmishta samajaya” the first thing he did was to invite whom he called the ‘robber barons’ to kill even each other in the process of enriching, as he said, but in fact would have happened, plundering the country for the ‘greater glory of the motherland’. Such language, such imagery, what a horrible mistake it all was!

It is not my intention to point a finger at a particular person or a particular party. But many may agree that the Dharmishta society he re-introduced is right at the bottom of our present misery.

Problems Than Solutions

It is inevitable that society changes. But it is best that the changes come almost imperceptibly. An overnight change, violently for immediate results, as some of our Marxist friends dream about, is self-defeating. It creates more problems than solutions. In the instance I have in mind, the change that was brought about in 1977 was not violent. But it also gave rise to a soul-searing violence that this country has not seen in nearly two centuries.

The changes we now see in our economy followed the first installment of changes the British introduced after the downfall of the Kandyan kingdom. The comment of our historian, Paul Pieris. when Browning opted to change our economy, the first time is worth repeating:

“The Sinhalese were to be compelled to provide the funds needed for Browning’s experiment and on an outlook on life based on money with the degradation of values involved in a system founded on the search for profit, was thus forced on a country with a civilisation so much more venerable than Britain’s. There is still alive a bhikkhu who remembers his grandfather’s criticism of the new order. ‘This government is not like that of our devi hamduruwo. It is a government of velanda minissu.” (Sinhale and the Patriots)

There is no doubt that the sudden replacement of the traditional kingship with the substitution of Mammon, whose aim in life was the accumulation of money and not merit, did incalculable harm.

social disturbances

‘The degradation of values,’ the destruction of the social structure that prevailed for centuries and the sudden change in direction of our economy is at the bottom of our social disturbances today.

This in turn has more recently seen a galloping increase in both crime and corruption, soon after the changes made after 1977. A parallel development has been occurring in Europe after another social change - the Industrial Revolution. Although the Industrial Revolution began towards the end of the 18th century. its full horror we are beginning to see only today - land, sea and water pollution. global warming.

Their work still goes on. And the wonder is that both reformers and politicians still believe that material prosperity and comfort through more economic development will bring joy to the world. But facts prove otherwise.

In the export trade, for instance, we have launched in the Middle East a trade in women - our future mothers, wives and daughters. It is now either the second or third largest dollar spinner for our country. But in the twenty or more years this trade has flourished, no politician or academic thinker has upped to deplore the cultural degradation it has brought about in the country.

Adam Smith, founder of modern political economy, is praised for the many things he had said about the pre-industrial economy.

But about the degradation of values that modern economics has necessarily brought with it, or as he called it “the depletion of the moral legacy,” it is only now when that depletion is being spread over the entire globe under the name of globalisation, that a few discerning people have begun to stir. Nonetheless, we are in for more crime and more corruption.