From Hikkaduwa to hegemony dethroned

By Rajpal Abeynayake

(July 29, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) A post war Hikkaduwa beach festival is bound to be a smorgasbord —- some think a veritable orgy —- of hedonistic excess. At least it dispels a notion that there was a slow religious Talibanisation of Sri Lankan society in the general direction of the dominant religion, what with mathata thitha and all that.But the Hikkaduwa festival takes off at a time Sri Lanka is at the cusp of a veritable explosion in tourism and service related revenue generation.

Almost a death blow

But, each time the Sri Lankan economy was poised to similarly take off, there was a grinch lurking about the horizon. In 1989, the JVP rebellion almost dealt the tourism industry a death blow.

Now, its twenty years since 1989, and Rohana Wijeweera and Velupillai Prabhakaran are both dead, which means not only that the long national nightmare is over, but also that Sri Lanka’s demon phase is done.

Gananath Obeysekera famously got embroiled in controversy after publication of his anthropological work entitled Medusa’s Hair which gave a national narrative flavour to the practice of exorcism in traditional Sri Lankan devil dance.

The devil is in the detail, and the forgotten detail of the Sri Lankan southern insurrection and the long duration LTTE terror that followed, was the fact that both campaigns thrived on the devilish cult character of the leader at the helm.

Those who now say that a repeat of LTTE type terror is possible, forget that similar sentiments had currency when Wijeweera was eliminated 20 years ago, and the JVP uprising of 1989 was quelled.

They’d do well to remember that twenty years have elapsed since that almost apocalyptic era of terror, but there has been nothing other than the slow maturing of the JVP which was responsible for that rebellion, from being an armed guerilla group into a mainstream political outfit that is sometimes seen these days as a more responsible establishment organization than some of the errant traditional mainstream parties.

Eliminate them

One pocket political analyst claimed recently in a shrill pontificating political tract written in an incessantly loud rag that Sri Lanka’s answer to the youth rebellion was not to address the problems of the youth, but to eliminate them en masse.

How difficult it is to take one segment of the economy ahead of the others, probably does not occur to him —- and today, the general economic progress as there has been since 1989 has improved the lot of the youth in general, even though the economic angst of either the youth or the rest of the general demographic has hardly subsided.

The point being made is that rhetorical flashes against the establishment, or the ‘system’ are nothing more than immature rants which have political mileage and holier than thou resonance. But in the end they are not more than mere bombastic polemics.

This reality may have more intriguing explanations which are more of the anthropological persuasion or the psychological bent, and in the area of expertise of those such as Gananath and perhaps other more accomplished social psychologists if not anthropologists. The 1989 uprising can be traced to the lunacy of one man, Rohana Wijeweera, while the LTTE madness, has by almost everybody making a realistic assessment, been defined as the product of the sheer maniacal fanaticism of one Vellupillai Prabhakaran.

But now both the northern demon and southern demon have been exorcised, and it is this writer’s firm belief that as in the tsunami, there cannot be more than two of these demons for a given epoch.

Hope for tourism

In real terms, this translates as the end of the long post- independence national nightmare, meaning that from here Sri Lanka has nowhere to go but up.

It’s why, in an uncanny way, more hope for tourism is also seen, now that the industry has been transferred from the hands of the leadership of the bourgeoisie to the leadership of an ex -JVPer who was made minister recently.

In the way that test cricket flowered in Sri Lanka after the elite gave up their stranglehold on the game, there is a hunch I have that at this time of national catharsis, that the leadership of national institutions would do well in the hands of the indigenous intellectual strata as opposed to the category of the ersatz Westernized politico-technocrat.

The Hikkaduwa beach fest may be an aberration in this respect. Tourism would have a massive rejuvenation if the hard work is done in the areas of service and hospitality. Hard won gains in the industry would be made not with bursts of vulgar hubris (...read Hikkaduwa) but with dogged and disciplined work, for which the psyche of the rooted new indigenous elite is more eminently equipped than that of the flotsam and jetsam that represents the Colombo centered technocratic elite.

It’s also remarkable that despite the initial resistance, how the national discourse can be molded with the appropriate sub-text driving the national narrative. Four years ago, Colombo was anti-war and you could smell the cynicism against the war effort in the whiff of Colombo 7’s acrid noontime air.

Now, the dissenting elite have watched the reality, and are quickly getting ready to make the bucks enjoying the newly heralded peace. They can do so, but I have this strange feeling that in this department too, their skills would be wanting in comparison to the skills of a new indigenous rooted decision making elite, and their subaltern cohorts.

Courtesy: Lakbima News

(The writer, cheif editor of the Lakbima News)

-Sri Lanka Guardian