By Gamini Weerakoon
Naturally historic figures keep jumping out from these contemporary records of Sri Lankan history. Mercifully, some of these ‘historic’ events are confined to sports pages such as those of the exploits of Kumar Sangakkara and his merry men in the playing fields of England.
There are pages and pages in the press controlled by the state, privately owned as well and hours and hours on TV and radio of the personalities behind these historic developments. Of course it is acknowledged in general that the heroes, are those who saved the motherland on the battlefield but their names are lost to history among the thousands who perished biting the dust, sand and mud of the Wanni.
They are the ‘unknown soldiers’ who perished in anonymity. There is already a memorial for the Unknown Soldier. But we have the real breathing, walking, talking, smiling heroes of the war in the media. Such is the cruel nature of war and the fate of the poor soldiers. Who remembers Napoleon’s soldiers?
History, news and heroes
Real history of a war is usually written decades after the war by professional historians. But war is both news and politics and has to be made into instant history in the media by instant historians, most of them who are obliged to create history by their paymasters. Perhaps real historians will start penning about the war and its heroes a long time after the dust has settled on the battlefields.
Sri Lankans have a great historical tradition that goes back to 486 BC as recorded in The Mahavamsa or the Chronicle of Sri Lanka. While it is laced with legends, myths and miracles amidst substantive history, a noteworthy point is that at the end of every chapter the chroniclers ends thus: ‘Here ends the chapter called…… in the Mahavamsa compiled for the serene joy and emotion of the pious.’ (The quotation is from the German historian Wilhelm Geiger’s translation of the chronicle.) What is meant of the words ‘the serene and the emotion of the pious’ has been the subject of debate for long years.
Serene joy and emotion
Contemporary history now written about the defeat of terrorism and the ‘unification of the motherland’ leaves us with no doubt that it is written for ‘the serene joy and the emotion of the pious,’ particularly of the government and Rajapakse clique.
Emotions are still running high after the crushing defeat of the LTTE and are threatening to be carried away by the momentum of victory into the realm of the ridiculous. Last week we read of a proposal to construct replicas of Sri Lanka’s biggest dagoba, the Ruwanveli Seya in all nine provinces! There is every likelihood of this proposal being implemented because brave would be the man who would say ‘No’ at this time. Nine replicas of the Ruwanveli Seya — does it mean ninefolds greater than Dutu Gemunu’s efforts?
The purpose of the reproduction of original historical monuments is questionable. The Ruwanveli Seya or the Maha Stupa as referred to in history has been an object of veneration for millennia and replicas of it in another location would hardly result in the veneration of the people as it still does. Nine replicas would make it a common place object. Sri Lankan Buddhists are well aware of the inspiration generated by instant concrete Buddha statues of the Aukana mould strewn over the island.
The victory over terrorism has drawn an outburst of sentiments that is overwhelming rationality and common sense. It is like the ‘Bandaranaike historic victory’ in 1956 when highways, byways, lanes, hospitals, schools and everything imaginable was named after Bandaranaike and later on in his wife’s name. Certainly the victory over terrorism has to be celebrated and remembered but let sense of proportion and sanity prevail.
Western concerns of human cost
In contrast to the overwhelming euphoria of victory in Sri Lankan, the West sees it in terms of ‘human cost.’ The latest issue of The Economist under the headline “Too many heroes” saw in the Victory Parade alongside some of the “government’s finest military hardware dozens of disabled soldiers in gleaming wheelchairs” and said it was the heavy price for the rout of the LTTE.
The journal quoted Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapakse admitting that 6,261 soldiers were killed and 29, 551 wounded in three years of fighting. Rajapakse was also quoted saying that a total of 23,000 troops died since the first casualties in 1981. It quotes Army Commander Gen. Sarath Fonseka saying that 22,000 Tigers have been killed in the past three years while 9000 have surrendered.
Battle of Normandy
While most Western countries lamented the human cost of the war in Sri Lanka, Western leaders including Prince Charles gathered at Normandy on June 6 to remember the storming of the French beaches by allied forces in 1944.
Sixty five years after the event, a historian Anthony Beevor (author of the best seller Stalingrad) has come out with another book: D-day: The Battle For Normandy, that has revealed hitherto unknown facts about civilian casualties to the public in Western countries.
The Economist of May 30 carries a review of the book under the headline: Unexpurgated –France Liberated, The Full Version. The review in The Economist of Beevor’s book says: “In the Normandy campaign, the American and British sought to minimise their casualties by bombing places to smithereens before their soldiers went in.
Asked how it felt under the bombardment, one elderly survivor in the town of Caen replied: ‘Imagine a rat sewn up inside a football during an international match.’ As a consequence of this tactic, 70,000 French civilians were killed by allied action in the war, more than the number of British killed by German bombing.”
Poor Westerners they had not known the human cost involved in gaining a toehold on Europe to defeat Germany!
German resistance
Beevor also brings out a factor that is not often spoken about by the victorious allied forces: The courage of the German troops. ‘Many wonder what the Germans would think when they caught sight of the allied armada, the largest fleet that had ever put to sea. Nearly 5,000 landing ships and assault craft were escorted by six battleships, four monitors, 23 cruisers, 104 destroyers, 152 escort vessels, while 277 minesweepers cleared channels ahead of them.’
‘The Germans did not flinch. Their doggedness earned them bitter admiration of the allied forces as they fought their bloody way through Normandy to liberate Paris.’
An American commander is quoted: ‘We outnumber them 10 to one in infantry, 50 to one in artillery and an infinite number in the air.’
The review says: ‘Beevor believes that military analysts… are undoubtedly harsh when they criticise a reluctance to make sacrifices on the allied side. The essentially civilian soldiers of a democracy, he argues, could not be expected to show the same level of commitment as indoctrinated German soldiers convinced that they were fighting to defend their country from annihilation.’
We reproduced these observations 65 years after the Battle of Normandy to show that the ‘ human cost’ particularly to the opposing side or for civilians was of no consideration although now military action of a far lesser scale brings out allegations of war crimes. There are parallels to be drawn between Mullaitivu and Normandy even though the magnitude of the military scales differ vastly.
Instant historians and their heroes are however not worried about history. Politics is their immediate concern.
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