Patriots were cursed not too long ago...
‘You’ve been writing a lot about intersections lately,’ a friend
observed. I don’t know. I never planned it that way. I’ve come to a
point where I think life is nothing but a set of intersections. We see
some while some remain invisible. We notice some and un-notice others.
Maybe this is true for coincidences too. The how and why of it is I am
sure made for stimulating exploration and perhaps it is laziness and
nothing else that make me wary of engaging with such questions. All I
know is that certain things happen when they are needed.
For several months I’ve wanted to write about a man and a book. Since
I know him and since he’s a friend, he and his book have got constantly
pushed aside. Friends can and will wait, I’ve always believed. This
morning I was determined to do justice to the book he had kindly sent
me, not by way of review, but comment. Frankly, I would not dare attempt
review simply because of the voluminous nature of the information within
the covers and the lack of academic training to evaluate the worth of
the same.
War-mongers
As always, before I set out to write this column, I checked my email.
Here’s what was on top: ‘During a time of change, the patriot is a
scarce man. He is hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds however,
the timid join him. For then it costs nothing to be a patriot.’
That was Mark Twain. When I saw Palitha Senanayake’s ‘Sri Lanka: the
war fuelled by peace’, a 600 page account of the struggle to come to
terms to history, politics, deprivations, suspicion, disenchantment and
terrorism and of course all the tragedies that are part and parcel of
war-making and war-ending, similar thoughts about patriots and
patriotism came to mind.
‘Time of change’ is of course relative. Sometimes change of any kind
takes so long that it is tough to figure out if one is located before,
during or after the relevant process. In this case, we can safely say
that the nineties and the early years of this millennium was about
believing certain well crafted lies and suffer vilification for refusing
to go along.
Many went along out of convenience, fear and of course the temptation
for pocket-lining. Some did not. They were called racists, chauvinists,
extremists, war-mongers. No one paid them any money for expressing and
defending the truths they subscribed to. No one paid them any
compliments. It was all about convictions.
Public profiles
Palitha Senanayake was convinced. He was convinced that Eelamist
posturing had no foundation in history. He was convinced that the
‘unwinnability’ vociferously proclaimed by those in the high seats of
power and their darlings in academe and the media, and of course the NGO
circuit was a monumental lie. Palitha was not alone but neither was he
in the company of thousands of the like-minded. To be honest, the
numbers were hand-countable. Some, like the indefatigable Dr Nalin De
Silva and Dr Gunadasa Amarasekera as well as the redoubtable S L
Gunasekera were known names. They had public profiles. Palitha
Senanayake did not.
And yet he wrote. And he wrote and wrote. Not all newspapers
accommodated him. I believe he would have to write four-five articles
before some kind editor carried something he had sent. He was one of the
few ‘scarce men’ at the time.
He called a lie a lie and pointed out that what had to be done had to
be attempted. Change came eventually and there was no scarcity of
patriots after that, i.e. when it became apparent that the Palitha
Senanayakes were correct: the LTTE could be and had to be militarily
eliminated. In the rush of patriotic fervour, the scarce men of that
earlier time were conveniently forgotten. They had not asked for
recognition then, they did not demand acknowledgment later. They did
what they had always done: did their utmost given constraints of time,
energy and ability, to protect the land of their ancestors and to defend
the truths they believed in.
Extensive reading
It was, as Palitha says, a war that was fuelled by peace. The war
came before the peace that fuelled it arrived of course and Palitha is
not unaware of this. Indeed, his book details all that history as well
as the myths that Eelamist presented to the world as fact.
He traces a history which no doubt is framed by preferences (as all
histories are of course). It is open to contestation, but this book
indicates that the author has not conjured things out of thin air.
It shows extensive reading and study of a wide range of material, a
literature from many quarters, agreeable as well as distasteful. That he
has mixed into it thought, reflection and an acute sense of the present
and the future is itself praiseworthy.
Histories are about those who wave the flag at the tail-end of
‘change’. They would not have got to hold flag had not others, like
Palitha, stuck to their guns, bore the insults with stoicism, dug their
feet deep into the soil of the land they loved and resisted.
That’s all I can say about intersections right now. It should
suffice. As for the book, may it be read by those who remember the hard
times as well as those who made those times hard. They’ll all learn
something about history and about themselves.
During a time of change, the patriot is a scarce man. He is ha
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