“1971. It has been described as an adventure, as a CIA plot and as the first decisive strike against the bourgeoisie since independence. Now it is time to remember. The current leadership of the JVP, predictably, has organised a commemoration titled "Sada Samaramu Sohoyuro". Nothing of the sohoyuriyo, though, and this is surprising since of all the political parties around it is the JVP that has an active and strong women's wing.” File Image: The bodies of JVP followers lie on the ground with posters tied around their necks December 2, 1989 in Tihagoda, Sri Lanka. Violence continues daily as the JVP, a Buddhist-Sinhalese Nationalist Marxist organization, the DJV and other militant groups fight for the removal of Indian peace keeping force in the cities of Sri Lanka and attempt to overthrow the government.___________________________
by Malinda Seneviratne
(April 01, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) April is the season of flowers and the celebration of renewal in this country. But there was an April, thirty years ago, where the fragrance of death drowned the Avurudu spirit, and blood replaced milk in the inauspicious drama of life. For it was a festival of death. And there was nothing to celebrate.
Thirty years is a long time in a party's political life, and especially in a modernist party which harps on the crisis of capitalism and predicts its imminent collapse. The JVP has certainly had a colourful if bloody history, including two failed insurrections. And it has over the years emerged as the principal and, according to some, the only Marxist party worthy of that name. This will no doubt be countered on the grounds that the JVP is or was essentially a fascist outfit, the key finger-pointers being the remnant shards of the many-times splintered local claimants to the 4th International crown, and of course the academic and largely irrelevant self-styled "left intelligentsia". Still, insofar as there is no such thing as a "pure" Marxist tradition or a uniform canon of the doctrine, the general public cannot be faulted for going with the self-definitions offered by the particular group, and among those who still make a claim to a Marxist heritage, the JVP is the most visible, best organised and most articulate defenders of the faith. As of now.
It will be thirty years this April 5th since the JVP launched its first armed insurrection. Time to evaluate? Actually, there have been many analyses of that adventure from many quarters over the past three decades. In fact people have launched academic careers out of such studies. Others, by virtue of being participants in what later came to be considered a more romantic thrust, especially in relation to that other drive in the late eighties which was certainly anything but innocent, made careers out of the burgeoning NGO industry. Some started newspapers and promoted themselves as king-makers and queen-makers. Some found a niche market in the peace business. Some found evangelists to be good paymasters. Some continued to believe in the dream of socialism and never lost their faith in the party. Many of them died. Exceptions such as JVP parliamentary member Jinadasa Kitulegoda stayed with the party, weathering all the storms it faced and unleashed.
1971. It has been described as an adventure, as a CIA plot and as the first decisive strike against the bourgeoisie since independence. Now it is time to remember. The current leadership of the JVP, predictably, has organised a commemoration titled "Sada Samaramu Sohoyuro". Nothing of the sohoyuriyo, though, and this is surprising since of all the political parties around it is the JVP that has an active and strong women's wing.
Regardless of the ideological imperatives that led those young people to attack 74 police stations on April 5, 1971, regardless of their "role" in weakening or strengthening the capitalist class, I believe that there were elements in that clearly ill-informed (with respect to Marxism at least) group that demonstrated unadulterated heroism. They deserve commemoration, and I add my salutations without reservation.
And yet, it is not possible to give the JVP in any of its various avatars a blank cheque. The party has planned a "Samaru Gee Dehena" as part of its commemoration. A long time ago young people in our villages were enthralled by another collection of songs. It was called "Vimukthi Gee". That collection must enjoy a privileged space in the history of popular revolutionary culture in this country. The lyrics were generated by the fertile mind of one Nandana Marasinghe. It was this man that led an unsuccessful expedition to Jaffna in order to rescue Patabendige Don Nandasiri Wijeweera (who later took the name Rohana) who was being held prisoner there. This man who later left the party on ideological grounds, was gunned down in 1987 by the "revolutionaries". Some gratitude, one might say, but Wijeweera was like that, a coward and an envious man.
For the record, Nandana Marasinghe's name and contribution have been erased off the ledger of history. The true revolutionary, I believe, would not complain being written-out of the JVP book of revolutionary fairy-tales.
The JVP would like the country to forget that particular chapter of their history. They want us to close the book. Yes, they have re-invented themselves, and their current manifestation is certainly endowed with elements that are to be admired. And I am not talking about their "embracing" of the democratic path, for they do on occasion deliberately cover the posters of their main rivals for the radical and youthful constituency, the Sihala Urumaya. I am talking instead of what I perceive to be a clear departure from the Marxist text in their political practise. Next week, an affiliated organisation of the JVP will be celebrating the "deshiya," promoting cultural heritage in a festival titled "Erabadu Yaya". A couple of weeks ago, the Inter University Student Federation which is for all intents and purposes controlled by the JVP's student wing came out with a poster announcing a campaign to safeguard the heritage of a generation, viz "Parapuraka Urumaya Udesa".
It seems that their rhetoric notwithstanding, the JVP is clearly taking cognisance of culture in their practice and is thereby questioning the fundamental assumptions of Marx respect to the primacy of the economic and the material base, the structure-superstructure formulation etc. Only time will tell how genuine they are in this new venture, but I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Their exemplary record during the last general election alone makes them deserving. And I am not being superior in any way here. They do not need my permission or approval.
However, I have problems with their close-the-book plea. The JVP holds two separate commemorations every year, the April one for 1971 and the "Il Maha Samaruwa" in November for those who died in the late eighties. As I said earlier, these are important landmarks of our post-independence history and should not be relegated to oblivion. At the same time, commemoration of either event, the JVP should understand, clearly leaves the door open for the critical gaze to fall on everything these events symbolised, all the bloodshed and all the villains.
As of today, the JVP is yet to come up with a no-holds-barred self-criticism of its role in these tragedies. They have limited themselves to a few mumblings about "the mistakes of the party". I would suggest that they make a clean break with the violent and fascist past of the party by saying, for instance, "The then leadership of the JVP made critical errors, among which was the decision to engage in individual terrorism. The party terrorised workers, students and the general public and although this was in response to state terrorism, which is the primary villain, it can by no means be justified. The party was responsible for the murder of Daya Pathirana, and was complicit in the murder of exceptional student leaders like Ranjithan Gunaratnam. Yes, we were party to that tragedy that took the most courageous and most honourable of our youth."
Yes, there is a problem with such an "apology" because the official leader of the party, Somawansa Amarasinghe, was part of that "party leadership". The way out would be to drop him! But all this is for the JVP politburo to decide. All I can say is that if the JVP has the courage to come clean on their record, they will certainly stand taller in eyes of the public and especially its progressive sections.
It is not just about reminiscing. Comm-emoration necessarily involves taking a look into the possible tomorrows. So what of the JVP in 2001, and the JVP in the coming tomorrows? They seem to have adopted a social-democratic line, at least on the surface. My sense is that their deeper intentions have not lost anything of the original revolutionary fervour. They remain ideologically stagnant in the murky and largely out-dated Marxism of the 3rd International. Overall they are more populist than anything else. Still, they remain the one party that is committed to a class project and as such will continue to draw into their fold all those that capitalism chews on in its diurnal grind to churn out profits.
This class, more rural in the earlier manifestations of radicalism, will increasingly include more urban elements left out of "development" and less blinded by the materialistic glitter of modernism. They will choose the forces that offer a cogent alternative (count Marxism out of that) around which to rally. This political space of the politics of power, if left unoccupied, will fall to the JVP by default. And, whether we like it or not, the JVP will give its all to capture power at that point, even if the motivation, like in 1971, is to hold the cadres together. And the state will respond as it always has, with guns.
The JVP, officially, did not engage in violence or armed struggle. It merely "responded to the mardanaya." And the mardanaya will come. Perhaps the way to circumvent this bloody "inevitable" would be to root itself more firmly in the cultural ethos of the country and thereby earn the support of a wider spectrum of society. There has to be a way to do this without compromising the class project. Time will tell if the JVP has the intellectual resources to do the necessary thinking and the political will to execute. In any event, I wish them well.
- Sri Lanka Guardian
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