Sri Lanka: Shangri La or Sodom and Gomorrah

 "Can you sincerely revere and worship a career politician? In Sri Lanka, can we sincerely say that we have political figures like Gandhi and Mandela; I think most of our politicians are like Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein. Based on what I have seen, most Sri Lankan politicians are odious subhuman beings: cruel, violent, deceitful, and willing to do anything to anyone to gain the wealth and power they crave. Our politicians partner with thieves; most of them love bribes and chase after gifts."

by Jagath Asoka

All things have I seen in the days of my vanity: there is a just man that perisheth in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man that prolongeth his life in his wickedness. - Ecclesiastes

(May 19, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) In a few days, we are going to celebrate our National Heroes’ Day in Sri Lanka. So, I have been asking these questions: Who are my heroes and heroines? What have they done to deserve my reverence and admiration? Who is a hero, a person who is constantly striving for aggrandizement of his ego, or a person who has given his life to redeem our society? I sincerely invite you to ask these same questions, and I think the answers you get depend on your ethos, because our heroes represent our best attributes.

When I was a child, my archetypal heroes—Hercules, Achilles, King Arthur, and pacifist, like Jesus and the Buddha—had many common elements in their heroic deeds. Often, heroes were men of adventure and war: Hercules performed twelve labors in order to gain immortality; Achilles is the hero of Homer's Iliad; Jason adventured to secure the Golden Fleece to reclaim his crown; Percival searched for the Holy Grail; Gilgamesh, afraid of death, searched for immortality; and Odysseus sailed for the lands beyond the sea.

There is a universal pattern that is common to heroic tales in every culture; however, in Sri Lanka, nowadays, these mythical figures are slowly disappearing from our consciousness because our unctuous politicians relentlessly try to portray themselves as heroes, using the elements of hero's quest that touch all of us profoundly.

While most real heroes who have sacrificed their lives to redeem our country remain nameless, faceless, and unappreciated, our unctuous politicians are revered by the mentally impaired inert masses.

Think of all the young sons and daughters who sacrificed their lives and limbs to eradicate terrorism in our country. These young men and women were living ordinary lives in their villages when they were compelled to join the armed-forces, mainly because of their financial needs, not because of their patriotic feelings. Most of them paid the ultimate prize in this ordeal. Some were fortunate to stay alive and return home without limbs. “Because of their financial needs” is the key phrase in this ordeal, because while the sons and daughters of desperate and destitute parents fought and died in this meaningless war, the sons and daughters of affluent and influential parents continued their lives as if they were living in some ruritatian land.

While our real heroes remain nameless, faceless, and unappreciated, unscrupulous politicians are bilking our nation and continue to batten on public funds. It seems to me that Sri Lankan politicians live in their own cloud-cuckoo-land—a realm of fantasy and whimsical behavior—and the hoi polloi have created a euphoric dreamlike mental la-la land to detach themselves from the harsher realities of life.

Can you sincerely revere and worship a career politician? In Sri Lanka, can we sincerely say that we have political figures like Gandhi and Mandela; I think most of our politicians are like Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein. Based on what I have seen, most Sri Lankan politicians are odious subhuman beings: cruel, violent, deceitful, and willing to do anything to anyone to gain the wealth and power they crave. Our politicians partner with thieves; most of them love bribes and chase after gifts. We all know what happens to crusading journalists if they attempt to fight corruption in government by casting light on venal politicians and their obsequious cronies: the cuspidors of our nation.

In the phantasmagoric realm of Sri Lankan politics, the enigmatic behavior of most Sri Lankan voters remains something of a riddle to me. While raffish politicians continue to flaunt their powers impudently and flout the laws of the land ostentatiously with impunity, the voters keep electing the same venal politicians. Was Lincoln unaware of Sri Lankans when he said, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time”?

Our myopic politicians are steering our country towards the gates of Hades, and it is already far beyond their ken to steer out of it. How can anybody with a tincture of moral sense elect these clownish cockalorums and nitwitted ninnyhammers?

It is your duty to oppugn the scurrilous behavior of our elected officials; we must vociferate vehemently as often as we can, and if we do not reexamine our ethos and actions, soon Sri Lanka will end up like Sodom and Gomorrah, not like Shangri-La.

On our National Heroes’ Day, I will think—with gratitude—of our nameless, faceless, and unappreciated sons and daughters—the unsung heroes of our nation—who sacrificed their precious lives to redeem our society.