The Importance of the Backbone-The Sri Lankan Perspective

by Nacholibre

(October 01, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The vertical backbone helped humans deviate from the more prostrate posture common in the members of kingdom animalia during evolution. Paleo-Anthropologists around the world must be working day and night to shed light on what caused the humans achieve this straightness of the backbone that helped them stand on the hind legs and be upright. I am sure, at this moment too, somewhere, some place across the world, they are still thinking and working hard to establish theories to patch up the missing pieces of evolution of the vertical backbone.

My father knew why we had one, though.

My father was no anthropologist, but a simple village man, and he knew of no clues to figure out how we humans got it. However, from what he used to tell me, I knew he had a pretty good idea as to why we got it in the first place. During my childhood, my father used to read out to me many stanzas of poetry written by the Tibetan Buddhist Bikkhu, venerable S. Mahinda Thero, of which this particular one remains engraved in my memory forever.

“jaathiya ran wimanak we
aagama mini pahanak we
eya reka gannata melowe
samath wethoth putha numba we”…

Which translated in to English would mean,


“The nation is golden territory, and religion, a jewel lamp. My son, if someone in this world could protect them, it’s you and nobody else ..”.

My father, each time he read it out to me, used to tell me that this is the reason why we have a straight backbone (pita konda, as we call it in Sinhalese). He opined that it is there to enable a person rise against all evil to protect one’s Nation and Religion from internal and external threats that we have it in the first place. If you can not do that, it is as if you do not have one, he opined.

I believed my father then, and I believe him even more now.

I wrote down this prelude to emphasize how important it is for a nation to have an unwavering stance in the matters relating to national security, especially when we have witnessed what Sri Lanka has faced from sustained terrorism for decades threatening its sovereignty, territorial integrity and survival. We, as Sri Lankans, have been unfortunate to witness right in front of our eyes the downside of not having a straight backbone in dealing with both terrorism in its elements, and, local and international factions supporting it in this country for much too long. However, we have also been equally fortunate as a nation to see how rewarding it is to have a straight backbone amidst heavy pressure and threats, even at these belated times.

We have passed many eras when the opportunistic politicians decided what was best for the national security, based on agendas that served, not the national interests, but the hidden interests of external forces. These external forces grew in strength to such a level that they were consistently feeding the hand of the separatist terrorists to undermine the existence of the tranquil harmony that existed between the Sinhala majority and the country’s ethnic minorities, especially the Tamils, for centuries. When the LTTE terrorists embarked on a brutal campaign to wipe out the Sinhala majority under the pretext of liberating the ill-treated Tamils, these sinister forces came to strengthen the terrorists’ cause by pressurizing many previous governments of Sri Lanka to give in to the separatists’ demands and divide the country according to their own whims and fancies. Some governments tried to put national security first among all others, but ultimately gave in to the pressure. Some simply played to the tune of the crusaders in many guises because to them, history, religion, national security, sovereignty and territorial integrity were just things of the past. Some did both, as and when it suited them.

It was a grave era, where a handful of terrorists belonging to a minority could wage a genocidal war against the majority and get away with it and could get recognition as liberators as well, at which same time anybody talking about the rights of the majority and the 2500-year long history were branded as Sinhala Buddhist chauvinists. It was a grave era where donor countries, NGO’s, INGO’s and various rights activists of various organizations ruled over the will of the majority of Sri Lanka. No government could take bold steps to annihilate the LTTE and end the terrorist insurgency they created. If such attempts were made, the powerful nexus of forces operating to checkmate the government was right on the scene undermining the effort by way of threats of cutting aid, prosecuting for alleged right violations and the like. The result was the successive governments having to kow tow to these puppet masters of the world, the pride of the nation hit for a six. Thus, we, as Sri Lankans, suffered immeasurably from the absence of a straight backbone that could have helped us stand up and tackle the pressure, the threats and intimidation coming from many quarters. Absence of such power did hurt in more than one way.

Sri Lanka has had different caliber of people at the helm of power from time to time having different stereotypes of backbones when it came to battling the LTTE. Their views, comments, and actions were as varied as the shape of their backbones. However, none suited to the mountainous task of defeating the LTTE. We have had high-ranking officials of the security forces, who opined that the LTTE could never be defeated. We have had prime ministers who have found fault the Navy for destroying an arms smuggling ship of the LTTE, while a ceasefire was on. We had administrations approving the release of high-tech communication and other equipment from the customs that really belonged to the LTTE. We have had politicians who said Thoppigala was just a jungle. We had politicians who queried as to why the security forces are wasting time in the East rather than attacking Killinochchi. Then again, we have had presidential candidates who said that if the JVP and the LTTE were able to come to any agreement on the ethnic issue, he would go with that as the President. Of course, we also have had Presidents who wanted to give the Northern region to Prabakaran for ten years too!

It was a crazy era, crazy in all permutations of its meaning.

Beginning 2006, things started to change. The country brought a set of people into power that showed signs of having a firm agenda and straight back that could take the pressure and the threats, evaluate them, neutralize them fairly and squarely and take the pressure and threats back to the enemy’s court. Majority of the people in this country welcomed the change and started supporting it whole-heartedly. The straight backbone approach saw donor countries, NGO’s, INGO’s and rights activists clamoring to crush the new wave of administration that was beginning to threaten to checkmate their terrorist-abetting devil dance in a variety of spheres.

Two good examples come to our mind here.

The first one was when the donor members met in Galle at the end of January 2007 and threatened to cut aid to Sri Lanka drastically if the government persisted with the humanitarian operations in the East. They wanted operations immediately stopped. The Secretary of Defence addressed the conference, stated that the government is committed to go all out to liberate the people from the LTTE, come what may. After that bold statement in front of a threatening global community, many quarters, both local and foreign, predicted immediate doom for the country and faulted the Secretary of Defence for having antagonized the “super powers” that could break the economy in days if not in hours.

More than two years have passed ever since and everybody knows of the result. The LTTE were driven out of the entirety of the East, their conventional military capabilities in the region destroyed and crushed, and government writ established in anew through elections. Post war development of the East continues with the help of assistance of world powers such as Japan and the US. The doom, which was predicted to happen with immediate effect, ceased to hold any water. The shrewdly veiled threats of the donors proved to be nothing else than cowardly attempts of intimidation to help the cause of the terrorists.

The second example is the battling of the rogue NGO’s and INGO’s that operated in the conflict zone under the cover of humanitarian assistance and development, but, effectively existing as a lifeline and a front line of the LTTE terrorists. The backbone-less governments that came and went were dead scared to utter anything insomuch as a word against these illegal operations and underhand dealings of these organizations with the terrorists, because they held the trump card, the ultimate international retribution. You touch us, and u will burn, was their attitude. Though the authorities had more than enough suspicion to question and interrogate the rogue organizations for alleged misdeeds, the country did not have sufficient laws to curtail them and nobody had the courage and will to try until the present administration decided to take the mad bull by the horns. When the present government announced its firm decision to order all INGO’s out of the Wanni, the usual threats and intimidations, condemnation came from the usual quarters hiding behind the veil of humanitarian catastrophes. Yet this time, the authorities had the backbone to survive the pressure and prove that their actions bore fruit, when the cat was out of the bag, that proof of some of the rogue organizations had indeed been helping the terrorist all the time masquerading as development projects and humanitarian work came out.

However, the past is past and now we are in a different era, where the LTTE have been crushed and reduced to fighting a losing battle for mere survival, which tantamount to crash landing from a relatively stronger position of strength and power, where they had even controlled demarcated territory of the island some three years back, while boasting that they were even on the verge of unilateral declaration of independence. Their hopes of separating the country successfully got wiped off the map and international branding of them as nothing else than ruthless terrorists has been stronger than ever. Their invincibility bubble was punctured and are crying for help to save themselves from extinction.

Thus looking back at the times when the sovereignty, territorial integrity and national pride were sold to the terrorists and their supporting forces by our own people through mollycoddling the LTTE and kow towing to the “intimidators” of many disguises, we feel that Sri Lanka has now successfully evolved from being almost “prostrate invertebrate” to “straight up vertebrate”, during the past two and a half years. Gone are the days that a handful of terrorists could hide behind a wall of masquerading local and international forces and take the peace loving people of this country hostage and demand a separate state. Gone are the days that Sri Lanka pacified the colonial masters and their cat’s paw terrorist organizations like the LTTE. Gone are the days that we kow towed to the common enemy of all communities of different ethnicity, cast, creed and colour and that is the pride of a nation that defied the multipronged assault by a versatile enemy, the most ruthless, the world has seen in modern times.

I now not only believe but also realize how right my father had been, when he said what he said, as to why we have a backbone in the first place. As my father, I, too, do not care how we got it, as long as I know what it is there for. - Sri Lanka Guardian