LTTE, JVP and campus politics –(Part II)

By Nalin de Silva

(March 11, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The early Marxist movement did not do much to establish a communist state or a socialist state (forget the withering away of the state in Classical Marxism), and in the eyes of the JVP which was a party in the Maoist tradition with a so called nationalistic outlook the old left had been a traitor. The JVP as we said last week vacillated between the internationalism of Marxism and nationalism, and reduced Marxism to a few slogans and five classes. However the party undertook to carry forward the class struggle though not in the name of the proletariat but of nirdhanin (those without wealth), and establish a socialist state taking up arms against the bourgeois state.

The LTTE on the other hand was a product of Tamil racism and separatism, and was disillusioned with the old Tamil parties that did not do much to establish an Eelam in the opinion of the former. In the eyes of the LTTE the old Tamil racist parties were traitors just as much the old left parties were reckoned so by the JVP. The LTTE (and the other parties of the Tamil youth) ironically learnt from the JVP and took up arms to establish a separate state in the early seventies. The LTTE unlike the JVP did not have to vacillate between separatism and any other "ism" and the political outfit and its leader Prabhakaran from the very beginning had only one objective which was to establish a separate state in the northern and the eastern provinces. However it could be said that the westerners and the LTTE would have been thinking of establishing the Eelam in the entire country not confining to the northern and the eastern provinces. If UK and USA had continued with supplying so called developmental material through Norway and if the humanitarian operations were delayed by an year or two nobody could say exactly what would have been the outcome of the "struggle" of the LTTE.

The LTTE carrying on a struggle against Sinhala Buddhist culture on behalf of western Christian modernity had the support of the west from the very beginning (in fact Tamil racism was created and nurtured by the west from about the seventeenth century) but the JVP with traces of Sinhala nationalism was opposed by the west from its inception in the sixties. It should be remembered that in 1971 as well as in 1989-92 the west gave all the support to the Sri Lankan government to defeat the JVP. During the periods when the JVP activities had reached the zenith there were no human rights organisations to campaign on behalf of the JVP, and so called unbiased media such as BBC had no hesitation in calling the JVP a terrorist movement though they do not refer to the LTTE as a terrorist outfit. For these media saints the LTTE is a liberator of the Tamil people. In general to the west an organisation becomes a terrorist outfit only if it is against western Christian modernity and/or Judaic Christian culture. Thus for them Al Quaida is a terrorist organisation but the LTTE per se is not.

Both the LTTE and the JVP have fascist tendencies. Though only a very few people will agree with me, fascism is capitalism attempted in a Catholic Chinthanaya. Capitalism is a mode of production that can be implemented only within the western Christian modernity based on the Greek Judaic Christian Chinthanaya, and any attempt to execute capitalism in any other Chinthanaya is doomed to fail. Even Communism and utopian Marxist socialism are theoretical results of trying to work out schemes to accomplish capitalism (in this case state capitalism) within the Catholic Chinthanaya with its three fold logic, and cannot succeed. As we have seen communism of Stalin was not much different from fascism in practice, and communism under any other person would not have been much different. Though the LTTE is not a Marxist party it is based on Catholic Chinthanaya and the mode of production it advocates is nothing but capitalism.

The western Christian modernity knows how to separate issues (subjects from one another, individuals from other individuals etc.,) and for persons who have been given a "good" education under modernity it is not difficult to separate policies of an individual from the individual himself. Thus those who were educated in elite schools, and central schools before the educational system embarked on its downhill path somewhere in the early sixties knew in general how to separate an individual from his policies, ideologies etc. The modernity education was diluted and nobody knew how to replace/amend it with the educational system we had in the country before the introduction of the western Christian modernity education or even to absorb the western system to our culture. The Vidyodaya Vidyalankara Pirivenas were given some form of the western university structure around the same time and the pirivena system in general was tinkered with simultaneously. It is wrong to say that Vidyodaya and Vidyalankara Pirivenas were given university status in 1959 as it is said that the education given in these two institutions in what could be called oriental studies (praceena adhyapanaya) was of a higher standard than that was given in the universities including University of London. What really happened was to bring the two Pirivenas under some form of the structure of the western universities, and the graduates under the cloaks of the western Christian universities. What was given was not university status but a western university structure to the two Pirivenas.

The "new" education given to the students in schools was substandard from the point of view of the western Christian modernity education in pre sixties and the students began to identify individuals with their policies, attitudes, politics etc. It is not a result of the change of the medium of instruction nor segregation of students into different media. The students on the other hand were not given a holistic education in a subject as separation of units of a subject was given priority. It was a complex process that took place under the influence of the American new education introduced after the Russian satellite was launched in 1957, and we tried to divide subjects more and more into units, modules etc., and at the same time could not cope with the separation of the policies of an individual from the individual. This was reflected in the students who entered the universities and in general the new generation of students was satisfied with pieces of knowledge rather than holistic knowledge. They were slogan shouters and were satisfied with knowing some terms rather than what the terms meant. If the older generation was able to discuss and debate among themselves the intricacies of Marxism, though they did not fully understand the concepts, without losing the friendship among them, the most of the new generation was not capable of doing so. They did not have any understanding of the concepts and were satisfied with shouting slogans that the others had written for them. They did not make any distinction between the individual and his views. Thus instead of attacking the ideas and points of view they attacked the individuals.

The campus politics at present is based on this principle. The students who are manipulated by the JVP do not know how to engage in a debate with the other students. They attack not only the other students but the buildings that accommodate these students. They threaten staff members who do not see eye to eye with them and attack the police forgetting that they had only the other day put up posters appreciating the services of the armed forces including the police.

However, they have another characteristic other than what were mentioned above, that they share with the LTTE. They are lie machines capable of creating lies. They pretend as if the police had attacked some innocent students. The police action of dragging a female student cannot be condoned but at the same time one cannot turn a blind eye to female students attacking and abusing police officers. The LTTE which has no respect for human rights turn to international and local human rights organisations whenever they are attacked by the armed force, creating lies in collaboration with the human rights industry. There was a time when the Sri Lankan forces were intimidated by the "intellectual thugs" in the human rights movement local as well as "international". In the case of the JVP only some of the local human rights people are agitated as the "internationals" knowing that the JVP is useless as the latter does not attack the Sinhala Buddhist culture as such in public. The JVP in the universities adopt the same policy that the LTTE adopts with respect to the Tamils. There may be a few who would say that the JVP has no right to engage in politics in the universities, but what a large majority has to say is that while the JVP has a right to express their views, they should allow the others to express their opinions without fear. The LTTE wanted to be the sole representative of the Tamils. Similarly the Inter University Student Federation instigated by the JVP wants it to be the sole representative of the university students. -Sri Lanka Guardian