The Morning Inspection
You can only be a nationalist if you are green
‘Green’ is a political colour in Sri Lanka and has been for many
decades. It got perverted by the modernist intervention in agriculture
which gave us mono crop cultures, high value crops, chemical inputs and
in these and other ways poisoned our soils, crippled diversity and
enslaved an entire sector of the economy to the whims and fancies of
poison peddlers and machinery manufacturers.
The modernist ‘moment’ is indeed a moment, when you consider the wide
span of known history. Resident in this moment is a kind of destruction
that surpasses in magnitude the total errors of the long millennia that
came before. It is a moment defined by the word ‘over’;
over-exploitation, over-reaction, over-consumption and other ‘overs’
that have sent not only over-zealous but everyone and everything
overboard. Almost.
And now the experts on development are telling us, ‘hey, it’s all
wrong, THIS and THAT are what you should be doing!’ where the THIS and
THAT were what we were once told is unscientific, inefficient and keeps
us underdeveloped. That which we were coerced into abandoning is now
being recycled back to us as some new found formula by the same peddlers
of misinformation batting for big time buck-makers. Now we are told to
go green, in a different sense.
Colonial rule
If there’s any lesson in any of these processes, it is to exercise
intellect and vigilance and complement such circumspection with
unrelenting collective engagement with the pundits and their backers. In
this case, it is time that we went green on our terms, by drawing from
the vast wealth of knowledge bequeathed to us in word, artifact and
example by our ancestors and resident in treatise, cultural sensibility
and custom.
These are days of nationalism. Chest-beating,
we-vanquished-terrorism, kind of nationalism. A proud nationalism that
is ready to defy the world’s big-name thugs in order to protect the
victory secured at great cost and after 30 long years of being held to
ransom by terrorism.
Nationalism, however, is not only about meeting external threat. One
cannot be nationalist in part. There is an internal and internalized
enemy, far more pernicious and resilient than the pussy cat in tiger
skin that was effectively eliminated in the battlefield. It is about
acquired bad habits in all things, especially in how we engage with
things pertaining to the earth, her creatures and resources.
We’ve been quite treacherous as a people and a nation to these
things, consciously or unconsciously. Part of it can be attributed to
the inevitable slave-mentality that is produced by five centuries of
colonial rule and continuing subjugation in indirect form since
independence. There are things we cannot control, but there are things
we can. It is in this sense that greening, or determining to be more
aware of the world around us, what we do to it and how our engagements
can become wholesome, less destructive and directed towards correcting
flaw that we can be more meaningful in our patriotism.
Green patriots
There are flag waving, anthem singing, satyagrahee patriots. And
there are those who in their every act resist the lies pertaining to
appropriate understanding of earth. Karl Polyani named ‘land’ as one of
three ‘fictitious commodities’ (the others being labour and money), but
the fiction lay not only in the fact that it is not a ‘discrete product’
due to inherent and sovereign dynamic but in the relation that the human
being has to it. This is the fiction that the true nationalist
recognized and rebels again, in thought, word and deed.
It is in this context that I salute the Central Environmental
Authority for instituting a mechanism to reward such green patriots on
the occasion of its 30th anniversary. At a time when it is imperative
that the world factors in environmental costs, it is important that
those enterprises marked by conscious, sustained and effective
initiatives in this respect are rewarded.
The ‘National Green Awards’, I am told, seeks to recognize
industries, local government authorities, public and private
institutions and schools that are ‘green’ in thinking, practice and in
outcomes produced. This initiative, I hope, will help create a
consciousness among consumer and producer regarding the importance of
‘being green’ with a view to making ‘greenness’ a sought-after brand
attribute. We must move consciously towards a future where the green
value of a brand defines the potential of a brand to survive in a
competitive environment.
Unnamed diseases
We’ve spat on the earth and in doing so, desecrated the work of our
ancestors. This is the time for remorse and a conscious effort to redeem
ourselves. Sadly, it comes not as a choice but an imperative. Not just
for our ancestors, but ourselves and the generations we spawn
collectively. And for the butterfly whose flight path enchants, the call
of the koha, the well that was never meant to go dry, earth-turning at
ploughing and then again at threshing time, calamities that are natural
and not precipitated by greed, arrogance and ignorance, a bird call at
twilight and freedom from the fear of contracting yet unnamed diseases.
There’s a question that every chest-beating nationalist should first
answer: are you green or are you not? A ‘green’ response necessitates a
particular kind of being and becoming. A negative response calls for
giving the chest a break.
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