Physical independence and mental shackles…

Sri Lanka just commemorated the 64th year of its independence from colonial rule, and in fact it is a period long enough to bring forth a whole new generation of citizens in this country who knew nothing of how life would have been under colonial rule. The 443 year colonial domination of ‘Sinhaley’, Anglicized to call ‘Ceylon’, is now part of our history but commemoration is also a time for evaluation of the 64 year path, the lessons learnt and the shackles we still carry, in our journey towards building a sovereign and sustainable nation.

The time the British left our shores, our country’s economy was heavily dependent on the production of tea, rubber and coconut. It was the export of those three raw materials that enabled us to import all the wearwithal required into this country including our staple food, rice. Local production of our staple food was so abysmal hence it is the timely arrival of ships that saved our nation from starvation. Even the hair pins and the rubber slippers were imported into this country. Although we were not referred to as a ‘banana republic’ in the British sense we were a tea/rubber republic of a sort.

Life expectancy

There was so much poverty around at that time that the government had to give rice at subsidized rate of /25cts to wade off hunger and possible death of the masses.

There were more loitering urchins than those who attended school and even those who attended school did so dressed in rag tag clothes minus even a pair of slippers. Statistics were not available on gauges like per capita income at the time and of what was available our literacy was 43 percent on vernacular language and 6.4 percent in the official language. The life expectancy was 46 years for men and 41 years for women.

Today after 64 years, we are not only self-sufficient in rice but are planning to commence the export of rice in a big way. We no longer have rice ration books to save people from starvation and our problem today is to wean the people from the consumption of wheat flower. Malnutrition is marginal and poverty has been brought into a single digit percentage ratio. We are categorized by the IMF as a ‘middle income earner country’ today and hence have ceased to be a ‘poor country’ any more.

Our literacy rate is the highest in Asia at 95 percent and all our children attend school wearing good clothes and shoes. Our life expectancy has gone up to 74 for men and 79 for women.

The reason why the life expectancy of women has gone up above that of men is because we have less female deaths today at child birth. Our child mortality too is the lowest for the countries in our region and we have even achieved the Millennium Development Goals, set as a human development index, a few years in advance.

Foreign exchange

Tea has been pushed to the third position in foreign exchange earnings signifying less dependent on its Western consumption and more than 50 percent of our rubber reaches the foreign markets as finished products. We make a considerable earning from the export of industrial goods and our number one export earning today is expatriate wages, a dividend for placing faith in human development. People in this country are no longer dependent on ‘white collar’ or ‘blue collar’ jobs and the Banks do not lend only to the wealthy.

However, despite this sanguine picture of our performance, certain sections in our own country appear to be always waiting to cast aspersions on our ability to take this nation forward. Such advocacy was especially intense during the time Prabhakaran held sway in the North holding the rest of the country to ransom.

What fuelled such thinking is the well ingrained myth in the psyche of our people, that all our post independent problems are a result of our dethroning English as the official language and as our medium of education in 1956. Such mentality signifies our mental dependence even after 64 years and all we could do to question that mentality is to pose the simple question; ‘did we not have English as the official language of this country for 144 years (from 1812 to 1956) and where did that take us as a nation?’

English education

The sad truth is that during those years 93.6 percent of the population of Ceylon was governed by a language they did not understand and that would not have augured well for any progressive country.

This ‘seed of dismay’ therefore is essentially propagated by the vested interests who never had it so good under colonialism and what they are against is democratization of this country. English has been good to the few who learnt it but has it been inclusive or exclusive in the country’s forward march?

Over the past many years, we experienced ‘brain drain’, a loss of our educated, mainly to England. Then we have had these innumerable problems with pro-LTTE expatriates, again a result of English education. In that light the role of Prabhakaran also becomes questionable; was he a product of Tamil grievances as we mythically believe or a result of some sections of the vested interests trying to re-impose the colonial status quo? What are the forces in this country that made Prabhakaran, the demagogue and the criminal he was, in to the freedom fighter he reigned to be?

Therefore, when Sri Lanka stands as an independent nation of 64 years, many questions still remain unanswered as to its status and of its way forward. This is because even though we feel the physical pulse of our independence, we are still far away from shaking free of those mental shackles of ‘depending on those who granted us independence’.

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