A nation on its knees

by Leo Panthera

(April 04, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Moralists and historians when called upon to reflect on the capricious fate of those great human collectives called ‘nation-states’ will surely be unhesitating in their identification of ‘pride’, arrogance’ and ‘racial hauteur’ as the harbingers of fratricidal conflict and eventual downfall.

Hitler’s Germany can be considered as archetypical in this regard - a nation of gifted people who regarded outsiders as a threat to the genetic purity of the ‘Herrenvolk’ or master-race. The bloodletting and disaster that followed this flawed perception of things are too well known to be dilated on here. In a less flamboyant form this prideful exclusivity was a feature of the Classical Greeks for whom the word ‘foreigner’ was synonymous with ‘ignoramus’ or ‘godyatic fool’ - in the parlance of the Anglicized Sinhalayas. The haughtiness (or snootiness) of the White Britisher in the hey-day of colonial power had a proverbial quality to its offensiveness and, we Sri Lankans being the sad recipients of this brand of macho racism, there is no need to remark on its unloveliness. While arguably a moral blemish that is self-defeating in the long term, it is hard to overlook the fact that pride - the public celebration of the achievements of one’s cultural species - pays a handsome dividend in terms of national cohesiveness and he will to overcome challenges that others less well-endowed would fecklessly turn away from.

The Greek masterminded an intellectual revolution whose reverberations are felt to this very day — it is their questioning arrogance that made this possible. A nation of god-addicted poltroons intoning ‘mea culpa’ cannot be vigorously intellectual. Nor can they be imbued with that spirit of innovation that makes human progress possible. Notwithstanding its very evident shortcomings, there is no gainsaying the fact that White Arrogance transformed the world in ways that are very difficult to place on an unambiguous scale of right and wrong. While being hugely destructive in many of its key aspects, the transforming dynamism of Western Imperialism has acted as a needy cultural astringent to the sloppiness and torpor of many an Eastern nation.

All of which brings us to the condition of our own nation - Sri Lanka - within this extraordinarily wretched and forlorn chapter of our long history that is currently being written. If one is asked to characterize in a single word the mood of our nation it, surely, must be that which is antonymous to ‘pride’. Lacking something stronger, let us agree that ‘cravenness’ is a good candidate-word. When the national mood is one that sees the sustaining traditions of one’s own forebears as a drag and a hindrance to social advancement, there is an inevitable nakedness of spirit and rootlessness that is hardly likely to engender the sense of collective pride that we remarked earlier as being the principal leitmotif of cultural achievement. To belittle and to spit upon that which generations have treasured as the defining ornaments of our indigenous culture are blatant indices of this cravenness.

The Sinhala language is widely considered to be an atavistic stumbling-block not only by our ‘sankara’ leadership but also by a miscellany of captains and power-brokers that currently rule the roost in this tight little island. In that fiercely proud Gallic nation that produced (among others) Jean d’Arc, there is an august body constituted of the nation’s foremost scholars to protect the language that they regard as the quintessential bulwark of their well-being as an historically-defined collection of people. Contrast this, dear friends, with what obtains within the ancient shorelines of this craven nation - from platform and lectern the cry echoes and reechoes throughout our land that we must learn English if we are to pull out of the doldrums we are currently in. It is not Supplementary English that these Trojan of the Anti-Swabhasa brigade have in mind when they pontificate indefatigably on the inadequacies of the native language in this age of Quarks and Quasars - it is the throwing off of an otiose and outdated culture rooted in the archaic tongue. There are great and foreboding question that we must put to these would-be wreckers of our native language and the ancient way of life inseparably anchored to it. Must modernity be purchased by a wholesale auctioning of that which defines us? Must we be naked and nondescript before we cravenly and humbly seek admission to that Global Society that we here so much about? A people proud and brave would have delivered a bone-rattling kick in the butt to the treacherous proponents of such an agenda craven submission. In Sri Lanka they get away - indeed, they are lauded for their splendid hard-headedness - in edifying contrast with the maudlin sentimentality of those supposedly obsessed with race and culture.

Sadly, these are not ordinary times. To dismiss and disown is fashionable and our universities specialize in this genre of deconstructive programming of the young. To grovel before the oppressor - and to wallow exultantly in miasma that he deigns to leave behind as the by-product of his triumphalism - these are among the astonishing features of our age. His extortions are shamefully acquiesced in while the public is made to believe that the whole exercise is another glorious instance of anti-majoritarian democracy. On this we shall say no more - except to remark that the perpetrators of this nonsense have an easy time in a nation on its knees in an attitude of hopeless supplication.

Must we be on our knees? This is the issue that will decide our future as a nation. Let us move to something that at first glance appears quite tangential - the seeming ineptness of our fighting men in that epic confrontation with desperado forces of our Northern Enemy. Why do our soldiers fight so badly? The Socratic riposte ought to be - ‘what are they fighting for?’ Surely, it cannot be that they fight to dispel the spectre of hunger and unemployment that menace the rural populations of this poor island - a theory trotted out with great satisfaction by no less an authority than the State-Controlled Press. They can carry guns for a decent pay - but it is unlikely that they would lay down their lives in a high-stakes game of Russian Roulette. Let us ask again -what are our soldiers fighting for?

The nation is for sale. The disputed territory has already been conceded to the enemy. The language that underpins their culture is reviled. The ancient religion with which they identify is challenged by a vicious brand of global monotheism that is allowed to pasture freely in the green fields of Lanka without let or hindrance. Given this landscape of socio-cultural disaster, can we be sanguine about the fighting quality of our men? Can a nation bereft of pride, ceaselessly bereted by those on high for an abomination that they call ‘chauvinism’ turn out heroes? Heroism is instantiated when certain antecedents are furfilled - when there is a perceived threat to something that is gloried, esteemed and flaunted as a birthright. It cannot bombinate in a vacuum.

The ‘genuflection syndrome’ has our entire nation in its thrall. out leaders - so witheringly contemptuous of anything that savours of the native-born culture - think nothing of the weeks, days and hours spent in alien climes to humbly beseech the indifferent attention of the Pale-Skinned Masters who, not so long ago, placed that racial time-bomb whose catastrophic effects blight us at this very hour. Our great neighbour to the North - for centuries our fearsome rival that was pertinaciously denied a role in the affairs of our proud country - is now seen to be our ‘overseer’ and is routinely consulted by a new generation of lackluster and unpatriotic leaders. Third-rate minions of organizations that carry dog-tags and identification-labels marked ‘World’, ‘Global’ or ‘International’ are treated as Demi-Gods by our native Pooh-Bahs (or ‘Vissalayas’).

They are lectured to as ignorant yokels in an insignificant corner of the world and they receive the dressing-down with exemplary meekness. Indeed, our Big One was publicly berated on a score of painful issues by a Nipponese Lady who had (as preparation for the educational exercise) assiduously poured over a file marked ‘Sri Lanka’ in the archives of some international body. Unmatched in effrontery is the attempt by aliens to ‘prove’ that the so-called ‘ethnic conflict’ is the result of the Sinhala Fools not being sufficiently knowledgeable in the Laws of Conflict Resolution. Our kossata-brained politicians have been sent to global hot-spots (the Philippines, Northern Ireland etc.) to lap up the distilled wisdom of the Masters in matters that the untrained natives would find too recondite for easy assimilation. Strangely, the chief side-kicks of Pirapaharan - Antonius Gala-Singer and Dravida-Chelvam have not been sent for training. But then - the White ones always regarded the Tamils as the smarter lot.

Many and varied have been the solutions proffered and strategies advocated to resolve the horrendously difficult problems that face our nation in this miserable moment of our history. Dear readers, there is a precondition that, unfulfilled, makes nonsense of these efforts. It is the restoration of pride in our indigenous culture - the Sinhala-Buddhist Culture, not the crazy mishmash that is assiduously being promoted by our enemies far and near. Lacking this identification we are a people in vassalage - a nation on its knees.
- Sri Lanka Guardian