Features
First Provincial Council election, intrigue intensifies and disastrous IPKF helidrop
(Excerpted from volume ii of the Sarath Amunugama autobiography)
In Paris I learnt that JRJ, urged on by the Indians, had called for Provincial Council elections. He did not have the support of Premadasa who left the country on a long foreign tour telling the President that his astrologers were forcing him to leave the country as he had entered a ‘malefic period’. The SLFP too boycotted the election paving the way for Vijaya-Chandrika’s SLMP to be the chief adversary of the UNP at the hustings. As expected the UNP won the besieged election and proceeded to appoint Chief Ministers from the ranks of their second tier Parliamentarians, who deprived of the fleshpots as MPs, preferred to lord it over in their home towns and also put their hand into the till of the provincial budget.
JRJ’s earlier idea of appointing senior public servants as Chief Ministers was shot down by the Cabinet that did not welcome another set of competitors who were bound to emerge as grandees in their own bailiwicks. JRJ already enfeebled politically was in no position to oppose the politically oriented Chief Ministers who had their individual patrons in the Cabinet. He however used his authority to shift many non-performing seniors as Governors in the Provinces giving them powers to checkmate the excesses of the CMs.
Having strong Governors was a way of reinforcing the center as they were his representatives upholding the unitary nature of the State. All this had to be done in the face of implacable hostility by the JVP which unleashed its killer squads on each and every one who supported the Indo-Lanka agreement and the 13th Amendment.
In the North and East the Indians had established a client Chief Minister Varatharaja Perumal who had to bear the brunt of the LTTE assault. It was indeed a ‘time of trouble’ with murderous violence in all parts of the country. The growth model which had shown much promise was ripped apart and its chief advocates like Ronnie de Mel and Nissanka Wijeratne resigned signaling that the JRJ regime had lost its way.
While in Paris I was asked by WIF to visit the UN in New York for a consultation. Since my wife and daughter, Ramanika, were living in Rue Cambron in Paris at that time I thought of taking them also to the US as they had not been there before though they had traveled extensively in Europe. The main attraction was that my lifelong friend, Professor H.L. Seneviratne and his family had settled down in Charlottesville where the famous old University of Virginia was located. This was a University established by Thomas Jefferson and was one of the oldest in the country.
After my meeting in New York we took a train through Washington to the American South, past many famous civil war battle sites, to Charlottesville where we were met by the Seneviratnes. This was my first visit to the south though later as Minister of Finance I would visit Washington at least twice a year for IMF and World Bank meetings. Most times I would spend those intervening weekend holidays with the Seneviratnes in Charlottesville. At that time it was a peaceful small University town and certainly not the hate mongering venue of Trump’s fanatics that it later became.
Virginia is famous because Jefferson’s home and farm were located there. Many important events relating to the early days of the Republic are associated with his home which was called ‘Montecello’. We visited ‘Montecello’ which is now a historical site. Jefferson is reputed to have had a tolerant view of race relations, even having a black mistress who was relocated to Paris. The University of Virginia which was a brainchild of Jefferson was partly designed by him. Today it is better known because Edgar Allan Poe lived and wrote his macabre poems there.
We spent a wonderfully peaceful holiday with our lifelong friends and flew back to Paris and its bustling social life. This included visits by Lester and Sumitra Peries who were recognized as leading Asian film makers and promoters of serious cinema, especially after the incapacitation and eventual death of Satyajit Ray. I remember a visit to the Nantes film festival which had the Asian Cinema as its theme that year. We drove all the way and back in the Ambassador’s car and had a chance to enjoy the French countryside as well as provincial cuisine in small inns along the way.
A fellow participant at these French film festivals was Adoor Gopalakrishnan who was a friend of Lester and Sumitra and an award winner for his simple tales of South Indian life which were a welcome relief from the mega Hindi and Tamil extravaganzas which made India [Bollywood] a bigger film producer than Hollywood. But they were not recognized as art by the managers of French Film festivals.
Political Intrigues
I went back to Colombo to find it seething with intrigue. The Prime Minister was making it clear that he did not approve of the decisions of the President regarding the Indo-Lanka issue. Relations between the two had deteriorated to such an extent that they were loath to talk to each other. Premadasa appeared to be planning to make his own bid, if his claims for Presidential nomination were overlooked byJRJ and the party. He started using a different color [saffron] to distance himself from the ‘greens’ in his publicity campaign. This was replicated when he painted bridges and buildings constructed by his ministry in saffron.
Premadasa also started to build up his own coterie of supporters within the parliamentary group. He had banked heavily on senior Justice Raja Wanasundera prevailing on his colleagues of the Supreme Court to call for a referendum regarding the 13th amendment. When that failed he made it clear to the country that his heart was not in the Provincial Councils as he had been the progenitor of the concept of empowering the Pradeshiya Sabhas which he supervised as the Minister of Local Government. In spite of the political imperatives for devolution, particularly to the North and East, Premadasa saw no need for a second tier represented by the Provincial Councils.
At last JRJ appeared to be retaliating when he removed the PM’s favourites Sirisena Cooray and Mallimaratchchi from the working committee of the UNP. He also overlooked Wanasundera’s claims and appointed Parinda Ranasinghe as the Chief Justice. Insiders knew that it was a blow aimed at the PM. With Premadasa sulking in his tent and Ronnie de Mel resigning his crucial portfolio when the President was isolated, JRJ was in an unenviable position. But he was making his political calculations and realized that Premadasa’s candidature was necessary if the UNP was to face the looming presidential election successfully.
In this he was fortified by the views of Mrs Jayewardene and her ’round table’ in Braemar which echoed the public perception that without the Prime Minister as candidate UNP chances of victory were slim. All this confusion was adding to the confidence of the JVP and its military wing which was going on the rampage particularly in the south against both the UNP and the traditional left. Later when Mrs. Bandaranaike refused to accept JVP conditions during their dialogue with the SLFP, the JVP turned on her as well and even hatched plans to assassinate her.
Violence Intensified
This was perhaps the most unsettling period in JRJ’s two terms of office. He was constantly disturbed by daily reports from the countryside. In the south the JVP was threatening to bring the administration to a halt. In the North the IPKF was increasingly acting on their own and could not be controlled either by the President or by Dixit the Indian High Commissioner.
The Indians were severely embarrassed by their inability to militarily defeat the LTTE which was inflicting heavy blows to the IPKF. The IPKF in the early stages was manned by ‘peacekeepers’ rather than fighting generals and senior military staff officers. They were more keen on winning the ‘hearts and minds’ of the LTTE than in fighting them.
RAW intelligence was of little use because the LTTE were outsmarting them. This inadequacy was clearly seen in the Indian para drop which was planned at their highest levels to eliminate the LTTE leadership, which I will describe later. While this turn of events tended to isolate JRJ, he turned to Gamini Dissanayake as a reliable ally and a credible interlocutor with the Indian High Commissioner and New Delhi. I was drafted by Gamini to be his advisor at this difficult time. We did not know at that time that JRJ had authorized Lalith Athulathmudali to open negotiations with the JVP to end their violence by lifting the proscription and electing a new Parliament.
He would accommodate the JVP which would be given three portfolios. In this the JVP even scared the SLFP when they demanded the portfolio of Defence. Lalith jumped the gun and announced a successful result with a representative of the JVP leadership. But the JVP denied any involvement and the purported negotiator fled the country.
It was later found that if the JVP had been given more time for their internal consultations a deal may have been concluded .This period was traumatic for JRJ because his party network built up as his political legacy which he referred to when he boasted that ‘the countries electoral map’ could now ‘be rolled up’ echoing Napoleon’s claim that he had rolled up the map of Europe, was being dismantled through violence by the JVP. This was clear when the UNP Chairman and Secretary who had been handpicked by JRJ were assassinated within a few weeks of each other. His response was to appoint the military trained Ranjan Wijeratne to hold both these positions.
I was present in ‘Braemar’ when JRJ received the news that his Mirissa retreat ‘Red Cliffs’ had been burnt down with all the antique furniture in it. He was disturbed by the irrationality of it all. The MPs and party leaders of the South met him and demanded stern measures. The MP for Habaraduwa, Mr. GVS Silva had been killed a few days earlier. They asked for police powers of an ASP. Gazetted officers were authorized to bury victims without an inquest under Emergency powers. It is an indication of the critical state of affairs of that time that JRJ was willing to give into them. The note that he penned agreeing is now in my possession.
However Sepala Attygalle who had been summoned for this conference argued against issuing that order on the grounds that it would confuse the armed services and the police. He prevailed when he gave an assurance that he would personally respond to requests for the safety of the MPs and their supporters.
IPKF Helidrop
Perhaps the biggest debacle of the IPKF in their war in Sri Lanka was the air drop of its elite paratroopers onto the grounds of the Jaffna campus with the objective of eliminating the leaders of the LTTE. It is an irony of history that the food drop from the air into Jaffna which humiliated JRJ (Parippu drop) was matched by the disaster of the Indian helidrop which humiliated the Indian army and is considered even today as a low point in its modern history. I can recount here what happened that day because by chance I became the liason between the Indian High Commissioner and JRJ that fateful evening.
CHOGM or the conference of Heads of Commonwealth governments was to be held in Vancouver in mid October 1987. JRJ was very keen to attend this meeting because Rajiv Gandhi and Margaret Thatcher were to attend and he could discuss the local conflict, which was going from bad to worse, at the level of heads of state. He had made plans to leave that very night for Vancouver on an assurance given by Dixit that the LTTE will be decisively beaten in Jaffna following the helidrop. Perhaps the plan, which would have been approved by Rajiv himself, was for him to go with an IPKF victory to the Vancouver meeting with JRJ.
JRJ asked me to personally proceed to the Indian High Commissioner’s residence and get the latest information on the air drop. 1 drove to Dixit’s residence to find him deep in conversation with General Sunderjee who had come to Colombo to oversee the IPKF offensive planned to give a decisive turn to the northern war. ‘The Indians were severely challenged by the LTTE fighters – an intolerable situation for the biggest fighting force in South Asia.
Sunderjee was a small made but physically trim and active general who was in Colombo in his army uniform with Dixit signifying that he was actively engaged in the operation. He wanted me to inform JRJ that everything was going according to plan and that he could leave for the Vancouver meeting early in the morning.
I reported this to JRJ but he was anxious to get an assurance from Dixit himself and wanted me bring him to “Breamar”. So I drove Dixit and Sunderjee in my car to JRJs residence and after their brief meeting drove them back to India House and went home to sleep.
When I got up the following morning all hell had broken loose. Acting on RAW information that the LTTE were to meet in their office in a building on the Campus of Jaffna University, crack Indian paratroopers were airdropped to round up the LTTE central committee which would have meant the virtual end of the fighting.
The top LTTE leadership was to have been arrested and held in Indian custody. But this plan had gone horribly wrong notwithstanding the confidence of Sunderjee and Dixit. What had happened was that information regarding the airdrop had been leaked and the LTTE gunmen were ready and waiting to shoot at the descending Paras who were sitting ducks as they floated down from the Jaffna skies. Suspicion fell on the Indian army top brass in the North. Many of them were “peace keepers” not fighting units and they had established close ties with LTTE leaders.
After the debacle military inquiries showed their incompetence and some officers were cashiered and others were shunted aside. After retirement some of these officers published their memoirs and sought to justify their activities in Jaffna. But they were not believed and were later seen at seminars in New Delhi intervening vehemently when the airdrop disaster was discussed. Let us listen to General Shanta Kottegoda on the Helidrop fiasco.
“The LTTE having intercepted the IPKF radio communication had prior information of the impending raid and fortified the defences in the University and were prepared to take on the IPKF. When the airborne troops landed in the University complex they came under heavy fire from small arms, machine guns and snipers of the LTTE from all directions. The IPKF could only helidrop the first group of paracommandos and had to abort the air operation. The operation ended in disaster and the IPKF lost almost 35 men who died in action”.
In the event JRJ did not go to Vancouver as planned. He nominated Gamini Dissanayake to take a message to Rajiv much to the annoyance of Hameed who was the nominal leader of our delegation in JRJs absence. One can speculate that this airdrop disaster marked the “crossing of the Rubicon” as far as both the Indian Government and the LTTE were concerned. The Indian army intensified its attacks on the LTTE. The LTTE in turn killed 25 `Jawans’ in Mannar. Prabhakaran and his intelligence units may have decided that they would not have traction with Rajiv who was therefore to be assassinated. It also marked the depths of despair of the proud Indian Army and is recorded as a “black mark” in its history. General Sunderjee retired not long after.
Sri Lanka becoming a Macbethian sick state?
The traditional ritual of anointing medicinal oil (or ‘hisa thel gaema’ in Sinhalese, literally, applying oil to the head) is unique to the Sinhala Aluth Avurudda observances. This year, the ritual was performed at the auspicious moment of 9:04 a.m. (Sri Lanka time) on Wednesday April 16. It was observed at appointed venues across the country at the same time. The anointing was done, as usual, mostly by Buddhist monks in their monasteries.
Where they were not available for the purpose, a senior citizen would do the needful. The oil anointing ceremony was held to invoke blessings of good health on all the individuals who subjected themselves to the ritual. Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya was shown participating in the oil anointing ceremony at the historic Kolonnawa Raja Maha Viharaya. There were many social media videos showing similar oil anointing scenes that included even elephants and hippos in a zoo receiving the compassionate treatment; this is not seen as going too far with traditions, for extending loving-kindness even to animals is taken for granted in the majority Buddhist Sri Lanka. Watching this ritual (that used to be so familiar for me in my childhood and youth) from abroad I couldn’t help my eyes filling with tears, feeling kind of homesick, in spite of me having spent more than forty-three years of my adult life living and working away from my Mother Country Sri Lanka.
Though usually Buddhist monks do the anointing, it is not considered a religious practice by the ordinary Buddhists. It is only a part of the completely secular Sinhala Aluth Avurudda festival. The most important annual religious festival for the Sinhalese (especially Sinhala Buddhists) is Vesak, which will be held next month. However, the oil anointing ceremony impresses on the Avurudu celebrants the great importance of maintaining their physical and mental health throughout the coming year, reflecting the high level of attention that our traditional culture pays to that objective.
Prof. Snyder
However, the actual discrepancy that is noticed between the ideal and the reality in the mundane world, as in other countries, is a different matter. Shining beacons like ideals of a long-evolved culture are important for what they are; their importance doesn’t go away because those ideals are only imperfectly realised by the people of that culture. But the values endure.
The news of this happy occasion and my awareness of a deepening political and cultural malaise in my beloved Motherland back home reminded me of a book I read during the Covid-19 lockdown period of 2020-2022: OUR MALADY by American historian and public intellectual, the Yale University professor Timothy D. Snyder published in 2020. The book, whose subtitle is ‘Liberty and Solidarity’, is about the weakness of the American healthcare system that he himself got a taste of, privately.
Professor Snyder came to know first-hand how America failed its citizens in the public healthcare sphere as an inmate of a hospital ward, where he was admitted to the emergency room at midnight on December 29, 2019. He was complaining of a condition of severe bodily ‘malaise’. Doctors later told him that he had an abscess the size of a baseball in his liver. The emergency operation to remove the abscess was done after seventeen hours of his having had to wait confined to a hospital bed!
‘Rage’ is the word he repeatedly uses to describe how he felt during his hospitalisation. He was not raging against God or any particular person or a group or the bacteria that caused his illness. ‘I raged against a world where I was not’, Snyder writes in the Prologue to the book (implying how much he was angry about there not being a healthy enough healthcare system to look after Americans who fell ill like himself. The book grew out of entries he made in a diary that he maintained while recuperating in hospital. Proficient in a number of European languages including English, French and Polish, he adopts a sort of poetic idiom to deal with his naturally dull subject.
He imagined he was not suffering in solitude, though. He thought about other Americans in his situation, and empathised with them. The absence of a sound healthcare system is America’s malady according to Snyder. Probably, the current situation in America is different, having changed for the better. We must remember that the time he is talking about was the last year of the first term (January 20, 2017-January 20, 2021) of the 45th US president Donald Trump of the Republican Party.
Currently, Trump is serving as the 47th US president. The ideas that professor Snyder develops in the book have global topical relevance, I think. They are organised into four Chapters or ‘Lessons’ as he dubs them, which in my opinion, have implications that could be utilised even by the citizens of the Macbethian ‘sick state’ that Sri Lanka has become today, complete with a Macbeth (though a muppet) and a shadowy but more determined Lady Macbeth.
Timothy Snyder offers the four Lessons for his fellow Americans, and by extension, to fellow humans around the world including us, Sri Lankans. Perhaps these are uniquely American issues, with little direct relevance to a small country like Sri Lanka with no stake in the international pharmaceutical industry. But then no country can escape from the implications of the following facts (taken from Wikipedia): In 2023, the global pharmaceutical industry earned revenues of US $ 1.48 trillion, whereas the top 10 arms manufacturing companies earned only US $ 632 billion. In the same year, the global life and health insurance carriers industry, which is the biggest industry in the world in terms of revenue, earned US $ 4.3 trillion.
Our own late medical professor Senake Bibile (1920-1977), a pharmacology expert and a rare philanthropist and compassionate social activist of the Trotskyite Sama Samaja party persuasion who always had the welfare of the suffering poor at heart, met his death allegedly in mysterious circumstances in Guyana where he was attending a UN conference, promoting the domestic drug policy that he had developed for Sri Lanka, as a model for use in other countries and by the World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) for developing policies for ‘rational pharmaceutical use’.
It goes without saying that Sri Lankans are also highly vulnerable to the deleterious effects of the inhuman excesses of the purely profit oriented international Big Pharma; these harmful consequences get transferred to the innocent citizens magnified several times through the unholy alliance between the local corporate drugs mafiosi and corrupt politicians. Be that as it may, Snyder adds another three equally important related points, covering all four, each in a Lesson that must receive the utmost attention of all adult Sri Lankans: health care for children and children’s education, truth in politics, and the supremacy of the doctors’ role in a malady situation. We will look at these briefly, intermittently taking our eyes off America to reflect on our own country Sri Lanka.
Lesson 1 is ‘Health care is a human right’.
Despite its wealth, professor Snyder complains, America is a sick nation; life expectancy is falling for Americans. Moody’s Analytics suggests that US millennials will die younger than their parents or grandparents, though there is no lack of money spent. What is causing this decline in life expectancy? Snyder’s unsettling answer is that the American healthcare system prioritises profit over people’s lives. America still lacks a universal healthcare system, in spite of being a supporter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and this leads to unequal access to health care, as Snyder asserts.
Exorbitantly priced commercial medicine has a devastating effect on the protection of the health-care rights of the people. It has robbed the American citizens of their health, in Snyder’s view. The American health-care system’s profit-focussed approach and lack of investment in protective equipment for medical professionals jeopardised their safety during the Covid-19 pandemic. In America, 20 million people lost their jobs and over 150,000 died from pandemic. Health insurance became too expensive, and health care unaffordable. Without a diagnosis, many became dangerously ill or unknowingly infected others with the virus.
Though poor, Sri Lanka beats America in respect of looking after public health. It has a better record in providing satisfactory health care for the citizens. The state runs an almost 100% free medicare service for all the citizens. There is a (kind of) parallel paid private hospital system as well, that caters to the better off segment of the population that can resort to it if they prefer to do so. This potentially eases the burden on the free state medical services, which can then focus more on attending to the needs of the economically weaker section of the population.
The maintenance by the state of such a public welfare-based healthcare system is desired and supported by our dominant socio-cultural background that strongly resonates with the humanistic spirit of the Aluth Avurudda that prioritises health over all forms of wealth. This is embodied in the principle Arogya parama labha ‘Good health is the greatest wealth’, the antithesis of the American attitude towards citizens’ health.
Sri Lanka was among the handful of countries that contained the Covid-19 pandemic most efficiently, minimizing deaths, whereas in America, according to Snyder, flaws in the healthcare system were aggravated by the contagion. This led to more deaths in America than in other wealthy nations like Japan and Germany. But the not so well-to-do Sri Lanka escaped with a minimum number of Covid-caused fatalities amidst obstacles mounted by antinationalist ill-wishers as I saw it at the time. That is Professor Snyder’s Lesson 1, which is about the human right of easily accessible health care. Sri Lanka is actually ahead of America in this respect in spite of relative poverty.
by Rohana R. Wasala
(To be concluded.)
I received a video that announced Japan was considering changing to a four-day work week. Suspicious of such news in my cell phone, I googled and found that certain countries had already opted for work weeks of four days and thus three-day weekends. This change too is a consequence of closedowns of work due to the Covid pandemic.
“Several countries are experimenting with or have implemented four-day work weeks, including Belgium, Iceland, Spain, the United Kingdom and Portugal. Other countries like Germany, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands and the US have also shown interest in, or have tested the four-day work week model.”
The video I got was about Japan changing its government work week to four days from mid-April with many projected objectives. One is to improve government employees’ work-life balance and to address the country’s declining birth rate. Also, the hours of the work day are to be reduced so parents can spend more time caring for their kids termed: ‘Childcare partial leave’. Flexible work hours for women to be implemented so choosing between careers and family will not be necessary.
In Germany experimental trials were carried out in 2023-24 involving 43 companies; 73% plan to continue with the new work structure. Noted for productivity and efficiency, Germany has in addition to one day less working, on average only 34 hours per week. A five-day week of 9 to 5 has 40 work hours per week. Fewer hours at work has been found to promote smarter and more focussed effort with employees happier and more engaged.
Long ago in the 1970s Cassandra shifted from employment in the private sector to a semi government job. She was shocked at the laissez faire attitude of her co-workers in an information centre. Most came to work at around 9.00 am: discussed the bus journey and home; had breakfast; read the morning newspapers; did a bit of work and were ready to have lunch by 12.00 noon. Two hours for this and half for a small snooze. Work till 3.30 pm or so when books/files were closed and grooming selves commenced, to depart at 4.30 pm sharp.
The work ethic in a remote government school and a private school in a city were as opposed to each other as the proverbial chalk to cheese. Do minimum against teaching; don’t care attitude to dedication and commitment; take leave to maximum vs hardly taking leave in consideration of the fact parents of students pay fees; non disciplining principals to dedicated pedagogues who set an example.
Cassandra supposes, and correctly, that with the change of government and a system change, even though many offices are overstaffed, employees put in a solid day’s work. The public is better served, most definitely.
Hence how would it be for Sri Lanka to lop off one work day a week? There will certainly be benefits, but aren’t many of us complaining about the presence of too many public holidays; we enjoy 24 to 30 a year including every full moon Poya Day. A travesty!
Pope Francis
The utter mayhem of Poya weekends
Those who lived through the period when the calendar in this overzealous Buddhist country went lunar (sic) and made the four Poya Days of a month and half the pre-Poya Day as the country’s weekend. It was a total mess since many a week had more than five week days in it till the moon changed from one phase to another. Ceylon was completely out of sync with the rest of the world. That was in 1966 with Dudley Senanayake as Prime Minister. Mercifully, in 1970, the Saturday Sunday weekend was reverted to, and sanity regained.
Conclusion is that making our week of four days’ work and weekend three days has to be carefully considered, tested and implemented, or kept as it is. Better it would be if government offices were pruned of excess staff recruited on politicians’ orders and genuinely legitimate officers made to work efficiently.
VVIP Mother in queue
A photograph made the rounds on social media of a frail looking, white haired lady in a queue in Kandy moving slowly to pay homage to the Sacred Tooth Relic. It was said to be President AKD’s mother who was hospitalised just a couple of months ago. Admired is her devotion as well as the fact she came incognito; not informing her son of her intended travel.
But Cass is censorious. Here was a genuine case of needing a bit of stretching of points and helping her to fulfil her desire to pay homage with ease. After all, he is working hard and very probably long hours to get this country on an even keel. He needs appreciation and if he refuses advantages, let a less able person benefit.
A truly honourable Pope
Roman Catholics across the globe mourn the death of the 266th Pope on the Monday after the Easter weekend; and the world respects and reveres him. People comment he must have willed himself to live through Easter, even presenting himself to crowds gathered in the huge grounds of St Peter’s Basilica.
Pope Francis was born Jorge Bergoglio on December 17, 1936, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He was inspired to join the Society of Jesus or Jesuits in 1958 after a serious illness. Ordained a Catholic priest in 1969, he was the Jesuit provincial superior in Argentina from 1973 to 79. He became the Archbishop of Buenos Aires in 1998 and was created a cardinal in 2001 by Pope John Paul II. He was elected in the papal conclave following the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI as head of the Catholic Church and Sovereign of the Vatican City State in 1913, claiming many firsts: a Jesuit becoming Pope; first from America, from the Southern Hemisphere. He chose his papal name in honour of Saint Francis of Assisi, kind to all living beings. “Throughout his public life, Francis was noted for his humility, emphasis on God’s mercy, international visibility as pope, concern for the poor and commitment to interreligious dialogue. He was known for having a less formal approach to the papacy than his predecessors.”
We remember his visit to Sri Lanka from January 13 to 15, 2015, when he travelled to the Shrine of Our Lady of Madhu and canonized Sri Lanka’s first saint, Joseph Vaz. He conducted a Mass and bestowed blessings to the multitude at Galle Face Green. As he entered and left the Green, he placed his hands on the heads of infants, children, the very poor, the old and infirm; never mind oil and dirt on heads. A truly great and good person.
The most urgent need for the South Asian region right now, in the wake of the cold-blooded killing by gunmen of nearly 30 local tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir two days back, is the initiation of measures that could ensure regional stability and peace. The state actors that matter most in this situation are India and Pakistan and it would be in the best interests of the region for both countries to stringently refrain from succumbing to knee-jerk reactions in the face of any perceived provocations arising from the bloodshed.
The consequences for the countries concerned and the region could be grave if the terror incident leads to stepped-up friction and hostility between India and Pakistan. Some hardline elements in India, for instance, are on record in the international media as calling on the Indian state to initiate tough military action against Pakistan for the Kashmiri terror in question and a positive response to such urgings could even lead to a new India-Pakistan war.
Those wishing South Asia well are likely to advocate maximum restraint by both states and call for negotiations by them to avert any military stand-offs and conflicts that could prove counter-productive for all quarters concerned. This columnist lends his pen to such advocacy.
Right now in Sri Lanka, nationalistic elements in the country’s South in particular are splitting hairs over an MoU relating to security cooperation Sri Lanka has signed with India. Essentially, the main line of speculation among these sections is that Sri Lanka is coming under the suzerainty of India, so to speak, in the security sphere and would be under its dictates in the handling of its security interests. In the process, these nationalistic sections are giving fresh life to the deep-seated anti-India phobia among sections of the Sri Lankan public. The eventual result will be heightened, irrational hostility towards India among vulnerable, unenlightened Sri Lankans.
Nothing new will be said if the point is made that such irrational fears with respect to India are particularly marked among India’s smaller neighbouring states and their publics. Needless to say, collective fears of this kind only lead to perpetually strained relations between India and her neighbours, resulting in regional disunity, which, of course would not be in South Asia’s best interests.
SAARC is seen as ‘dead’ by some sections in South Asia and its present dysfunctional nature seems to give credence to this belief. Continued friction between India and Pakistan is seen as playing a major role in such inner paralysis and this is, no doubt, the main causative factor in SARRC’s current seeming ineffectiveness.
However, the widespread anti-India phobia referred to needs to be factored in as playing a role in SAARC’s lack of dynamism and ‘life’ as well. If democratic governments go some distance in exorcising such anti-Indianism from their people’s psyches, some progress could be made in restoring SAARC to ‘life’ and the latter could then play a constructive role in defusing India-Pakistan tensions.
It does not follow that if SAARC was ‘alive and well’, security related incidents of the kind that were witnessed in India-administered Kashmir recently would not occur. This is far from being the case, but if SAARC was fully operational, the states concerned would be in possession of the means and channels of resolving the issues that flow from such crises with greater amicability and mutual accommodation.
Accordingly, the South Asian Eight would be acting in their interests by seeking to restore SAARC back to ‘life’. An essential task in this process is the elimination of mutual fear and suspicion among the Eight and the states concerned need to do all that they could to eliminate any fixations and phobias that the countries have in relation to each other.
It does not follow from the foregoing that the SAARC Eight should not broad base their relations and pull back from fostering beneficial ties with extra-regional countries and groupings that have a bearing on their best interests. On the contrary, each SAARC country’s ties need to be wide-ranging and based on the principle that each such state would be a friend to all countries and an enemy of none as long as the latter are well-meaning.
The foregoing sharp focus on SAARC and its fortunes is necessitated by the consideration that the developmental issues in particular facing the region are best resolved by the region itself on the basis of its multiple material and intellectual resources. The grouping should not only be revived but a revisit should also be made to its past programs; particularly those which related to intra-regional conflict resolution. Thus, talking to each other under a new visionary commitment to SAARC collective wellbeing is crucially needed.
On the question of ties with India, it should be perceived by the latter’s smaller neighbours that there is no getting away from the need to foster increasingly closer relations with India, today a number one global power.
This should not amount to these smaller neighbours surrendering their rights and sovereignty to India. Far from it. On the contrary these smaller states should seek to craft mutually beneficial ties with India. It is a question of these small states following a truly Non-aligned foreign policy and using their best diplomatic and political skills to structure their ties with India in a way that would be mutually beneficial. It is up to these neighbours to cultivate the skills needed to meet these major challenges.
Going ahead, it will be in South Asia’s best interests to get SAARC back on its feet once again. If this aim is pursued with visionary zeal and if SAARC amity is sealed once and for all intra-regional friction and enmities could be put to rest. What smaller states should avoid scrupulously is the pitting of extra-regional powers against India and Pakistan in their squabbles with either of the latter. This practice has been pivotal in bringing strife and contention into South Asia and in dividing the region against itself.
Accordingly, the principal challenge facing South Asia is to be imbued once again with the SAARC spirit. The latter spirit’s healing powers need to be made real and enduring. Thus will we have a region truly united in brotherhood and peace.
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