The 11th death anniversary of Sri Lankan journalist
and Editor Mervyn de Silva falls today:
No hostage to the past
An encounter with Mervyn de Silva:
Asanga Welikala
I once had an extraordinary encounter with Mervyn, although sadly as
it turned out, at the very empennage of his life. In a wholly
spontaneous chat that lasted less than two hours, we (mostly he) talked
about the international use of force for humanitarian interventions and
Robin Cook’s ‘ethical foreign policy’ in the then
Mervyn de Silva |
fashionable Blairite project (Mervyn wasn’t impressed), FC de Saram
and M Sathasivam (and the politico-sociological implications of their
fractious dispute over the All Ceylon captaincy in 1947), billiards and
snooker and the relative merits of a pre-prandial aperitif at lunchtime
(for one of which he was on his way).
It was one of those conversations one remembers forever, and it was a
near complete pastiche of Mervyn de Silva, the journalist, the
intellectual, the conversationalist, the man.
The intellectual
It was a sparkling demonstration not only of the breadth of his
intellect and the depth of his knowledge, but also his palpably genuine
interest in the human condition, both underpinned by the total absence
of that plague that afflicts progress in every sphere of Sri Lankan
life: deferential hierarchy. He knew he was a living legend, and saw no
need to reiterate it.
This conversation was prompted by my telling Mervyn that I had
implicitly relied on his dispassionately analytical, yet deeply
empathetic essay about the politics that led to and followed Black July
1983, in my first editorial in the Michaelmas term of 1995 as co-editor
of the S. Thomas’ College Magazine (which, incidentally, was a case for
a federal Sri Lanka).
That intelligent and elegant, but disquieting essay was published as
‘Paradise - and Hostage to the Past’ in the Far Eastern Economic Review
in January 1984, a chilling coincidence with the dystopia Orwell
described in his novel ‘Nineteen Eighty Four’. Two and a half decades
later in post-bellum Sri Lanka, its major themes are as relevant as
ever.
Foresaw dangers
In anatomizing the conflict of ethnic nationalisms, Mervyn expressly
relied on the history of Evelyn Ludowyck, who like him was part of
mid-twentieth century Sri Lanka’s admirably urbane, liberal
intelligentsia associated with the golden age at Peradeniya.
It is history that celebrates pluralism, embraces modernity, and
above all, enables tolerance and coexistence.
Mervyn saw clearly the impending dangers of the clericalism that has
become such an insalubrious feature of democracy in our country today.
As he explained with both truth and economy, “...as in the Shah’s Iran,
suppressed dissent has found refuge in an impregnable forum, the temple,
and an articulate spokesman whom nobody dares to touch, the monk.”
The ghastly intolerance that is associated with monks in politics
requires no retelling, but the wider lesson is about the failure of
democratic institutions in delivering good governance and prosperity
which might have obviated these electoral adventures with monks in
politics in the first place.
A social democrat
Like many in his generation, Mervyn was a Butskellian social democrat
who believed in the power of government to do good, and in the
developing world context, public ownership of the commanding heights of
the economy. He could therefore be expected to be sceptical of the
post-1977 liberalization of the economy, and he warned of “...the
question of whether the new economic strategy has in fact exacerbated
old conflicts [which] presents unexpected dilemmas for both policymakers
and their foreign advisers and patrons.”
Sri Lanka of course has never experienced genuine capitalism, in
which the full potential of free trade and commerce to generate wealth
in ways in which consumption, savings and investment become a mass
phenomenon rather than the preserve of a privileged few, and which
enable government to ensure the level playing field, reinvest in growth
and development, and escape assistance dependency.
Instead of a properly functional free market under the rule of law,
what we have had was colonial capitalism, then a disastrous experiment
with State capitalism, and finally various forms of what has been
accurately called ‘crony capitalism’.
Aside from this, the role of economics in the exacerbation of
conflict in Sri Lanka has been in the failure of both the State and the
markets to generate sufficient prosperity so as to enable any kind of
meaningful stake-holding by citizens in the economy, not whether one or
the other was the better mechanism of redistribution.
But Mervyn was right to draw attention to the fact that unplanned and
inequitable growth would generate discontent and add impetus to existing
conflicts.
Haunting
No model of economic development is likely to succeed in Sri Lanka
without certain key foundations, which include less politicized and
stronger institutions, the rule of law and a sustainable settlement of
our political problems.
The post-war economic paradigm of State-led developmentalism we see
in 2010 may well succeed in the medium term, but it will not be
sustainable in the longer term without also addressing those broader
institutional and political issues. And those have been the issues which
time and again have come back to haunt peace, democracy and development
in our country.
“Each fresh confrontation and every violent eruption becomes an
instant invitation to an overpowering onrush of self-righteous
recidivism,” wrote Mervyn, “against which reason can only erect the
feeblest defences.”
Mervyn made this observation in the context of what had transpired in
1983 generally, and in relation to Cyril Mathew and his toxic brand of
Sinhala-Buddhist supremacism in particular.
It is unlikely to be what the evangelist Reginald Heber had in mind
when he wrote of Ceylon as ‘where every prospect pleases, and only man
is vile’, but it surely is what the stanza, of which Mervyn was fond,
means in present day Sri Lanka. |