When hatred is thicker than love

Didn’t you know that the revolution begins with poetry and that it ends with the abandonment of love? Jayantha Chandrasiri’s debut feature film, Agnidahaya, had the following tagline: ‘Aadaraya vairayata vadaa ghanakamya’ (love is thicker than hatred). Nice line.

Good for love of the romantic kind and of course love stories, but doesn’t necessarily work for the kinds of politics that deserve the label ‘usual’.

There’s one word that I find irresistible: ‘change’. And over the years I’ve learnt that if there’s any word that should be treated with caution, should be scrutinized and suspected, this is it. Change. Over the years I’ve learnt that there’s a lot of sense in that timeless song by the Eagles, ‘Sad Cafe‚’ which has the following unforgettable lines: ‘We thought we could change this world with words like “love” and “freedom.”

“But things in this life change very slowly if they ever change at all”.

I am not taking issue with those who embrace change, those who are idealistic and optimistic. Indeed, I would cheer them on and help in whatever way I can, but before I purchase shares in Adventurism Inc., I do a bit of thinking, some research and background checks, just to see how hollow or otherwise the rhetoric is.

I check things out in terms of the quote on top. I need to see if there’s poetry in the rhetoric and based on my limited understanding of things literary I do a quick assessment. I ask myself, “Good poetry or putrid, pedestrian stuff or something in between?” If it is good, I take another look. I would hang on until love is abandoned, i.e. I would not be too passionate about things if at any point I realize that the springs of poetry have dried, that it is no longer about people but ‘some people’, not about community but personality, not about change but power.

‘Change’ is an easy word to utter. Too easy, I think. It is also a too often uttered word, so often that it no longer gives goose bumps, no longer inspires, no longer awakens people to action. In other words, ‘change’ has become unhealthily ‘sloganish’. It doesn’t turn too many heads.

What would make ‘change’ poetic? Well first of all the integrity of the poet. A crook or a power hungry moron with some word skill does not a revolutionary make. His/her life, track record, friends and acquaintances and the substance or otherwise of the ‘poetry’; all these add up to believability. Or otherwise. Revolutions are serious affairs. There has to be coherence in ideology, a certain ideological bind among the companions of the journey, consistency, a plan and a radical departure from things as they are or have been.

The ‘change-mudalalis’ of this election, unfortunately, are not exactly poets. I don’t see ‘love’ in what they do. There is no ideological coherence.

That is to be expected when the two main backers of the swan happen to be like the proverbial cobra and the mongoose. It is ok to have a nice slogan but one that is not buttressed by substance and lacks any serious consideration of practical realities is unacceptable. In short, there is nothing about the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ of the main slogan, ‘the Executive Presidency will be abolished’ and worse, positions on the said abolition keep shifting with the candidate himself being wishy-washy and the backers squabbling over the leftovers after a hypothetical abolition.

That’s too confusing to be ‘revolutionary’ and far too vague to sit well with the word ‘change’. Conclusion: there is no music, no ‘lyricality’ in this campaign; no poetry.

Does this mean the other guy(s) are poetic and full of love? Not necessarily, but that’s hardly relevant to the issue. What the challenger needs to establish is ‘difference’. He has not. Indeed to the extent that he is ‘different’ it appears that he is so in the direction that is not desired!

There is love of self of course. Not a bad thing. On the other hand, when that self-love seems to be far more important to the candidate than community, when revenge is valued over solidarity, crudeness preferred over tenderness, then this ‘change’ campaign is clearly a classic example of the reverse of Chandrasiri’s contention: revenge is thicker than love.

We have a man called Fonseka spouting venom not at his opponent but his opponent’s brother. His campaign is laced not with the kind of poetry that one would expect with the word ‘change’ but unadulterated hatred. We have his key campaign strategist, Mangala Samaraweera, another hate-driven individual who can’t get over his quarrel with the President. There is Tilvin Silva and Anura Kumara Dissanayake whose hatred for Wimal outweighs all ideological considerations and is powerful enough to iron out historical class antipathies. There are others like those displaced by the dismantling of the Eelam project motivated by a general hatred for the regime that stumped Prabhakaran and the LTTE. Nothing about change; all about vairee deshapalanaya, the politics of hatred.

What happens if and when hatred supercedes everything else? Do we get change? Do we get love? Here we have a situation where poetry has been dragged to the trash-can before the campaign even began. From Day One it has been nothing but a hate-driven exercise.

It is thick. To be honest, it is thicker than I expected and certain unacceptable from a candidate and a campaign that is running on a ‘change’ ticket. If ‘change’ is what is most important, the campaign is telling the voter: ‘Look somewhere else, Mr/Ms Voter; I am no better than the man I want to replace and in fact I may be worse!’

When hatred is thicker than love and too thick for something as tender as poetry and solidarity, the first casualty is ‘change’. This is something we could think about as we observe how things unfold. And as the spitting of venom intensifies, we can ask ourselves, ‘Can such a man produce any poetry, can such politics ever change anything, slowly or otherwise?’ We would be lucky if this would have a Sad Cafe‚ ending. Sadly it has all the marks of ending in Hotel Hate.

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