(June 10, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) I refer to Dr. V. P. Vittachi’s comments on Dr. Tissa Vitarana’s piece on Dr. Colvin R. de Silva. Vitarana’s pronouncements tend to bore me when they do not actually cause nausea. In his chosen ‘career’ of ‘go-getter’, he has betrayed all the values, and the knowledge they were based on, of his relative, Dr. N. M. Perera.
By way of example, not long ago, (as probably now, with renewed vigour), he was a passionate advocate of ‘globalization’. That was at a time when he was engaged in insinuating himself to titular office in the LSSP.
He’s since taken to quoting Lenin; he knows less about Marxism-Leninism than I do about, say, microbiology.
What he does know is that ‘globalization’ can be Good, finger-lickin’ good, for those who kow-tow to cross-national predators, damn anybody else, especially those ‘else’s’ in whose name such, well, persons, as he have taken pains to obtain a veneer of being their spokesman.
His current pronouncements on Dr. Colvin R. de Silva seem part of a spiel that he believes would best suit him in these times when the ‘top value’ is duplicity.
I worked closely with Colvin as his Senior Assistant Secretary in the Ministry of Plantations, and was sometimes called in for discussions on the draft constitution that was transformed into law in 1972. (At his request, I drafted the letter by which the Prime Minister convened the Constituent Assembly).
Colvin had the practice of holding some kind of ‘open court’ with all his staff once a month; he kept matters of State policy open for discussion by all the staff in the Ministry, including the minor staff, peons and drivers. A couple of ‘instances’ that are relevant to V. P. Vittachi’s comments on Vitarana, come to mind. At one such discussion, S. Kanesan, a clerk, who was Vice President of the GCSU at the time, told him, "Sir, you have destroyed all the gains we have made", and Colvin, as I have mentioned before, was rendered speechless.
The other such has to do with an observation made by E. W. Jayawardena, K. C. ("Jew’), whom he had chosen to be his Permanent Secretary for Constitutional Affairs. Jew said, "Colvin is an excellent advocate; he has never initiated a philosophy or an idea of his own."
In a light piece in your columns some years ago I gave a personal example of that feature in his practice, or maybe his view, of ‘time-management’.
In what he said in the parliamentary debate on the Official Language Bill, who briefed him? That question is relevant when one considers that, as Vittachi has pointed out, Colvin took another tack altogether in 1972. Any biographer of Colvin the man should seek out what (non-philosophical) considerations weighed with him at any given time.
I do not suggest here that Colvin was some kind of time server/fraud. He was an excellent advocate, as Jew put it, and he was, typically of some - there were few in his situation and ambience who had such a range of gifts. So many indeed that he sometimes allowed himself to be tripped up among all that wrapping. He distinguished himself as a historian, as he did, at a personal level and with many people, as a humanist, but as an active politician (where all those features would, ideally, have come to be meshed), he chickened. I did not have the privilege of his confidence, in sufficient measure, at the time to sort such questions out with him.
- Sri Lanka Guardian
Post a Comment