Features
Race or class: A critique of the Jathika Chintanaya (Part I)
Somewhere between adolescence and adulthood, from 18 to 21, I read Nalin de Silva. It was hard for anyone to miss him, especially anyone who read the Divaina and The Island. While I cannot remember when I read his first piece, I do remember that piece well: a polemic on the relevance of philosophy, science, mathematics, and English. What caught my attention was its ending. Reflecting on Arundhati Roy and Noam Chomsky, de Silva contended that had the Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan remained in Chennai without meeting the British mathematician G. H. Hardy, his contributions would have been more perennial.
For de Silva, philosophy remains a monopoly of the West, since for centuries the West had determined its trajectory, leaving the rest of humanity with very little to contribute to. In that sense, and in his estimation, Ramanujan erred: he should have continued to formulate his own theories, appealing to Namagiri Thayar in much the same way de Silva had appealed to Natha not too long ago, without seeking validation from a Westerner.
What I find interesting about the essay, characteristically didactic and pugnacious to the point of acute hostility, is what it reveals about the thinking behind not only the author, but more pertinently the ideology he spearheaded with Gunadasa Amarasekara four decades ago: the Jathika Chintanaya. It is also interesting in what it says about its foes: not just Arundhati Roy and Noam Chomsky, but the very idea of English education and Western culture.
What did de Silva think of science and philosophy, and of politics – domains which centuries ago remained bound together, and not cordoned off from one another like they are now – and what did he want to do with them? If for de Silva Ramanujan remained a failed intellectual – and there are many other intellectuals his contemporaries have deemed failures, based on the same criteria – who were his preferred scientists, artists, politicians? The more I searched for answers, the more questions I found and the more those answers evaded me. That does much credit, I suppose, to the amorphous appeal of the ideology he avers.
Looking at it in retrospect now, the Jathika Chintanaya achieved a great deal as an ideological outfit, even if it didn’t count many allies on its side. Yet it was hardly unique: various other outfits had cropped up, or were cropping up, in other parts of the world, at around the time it was coming into being in the 1980s. The Jathika Chintanaya represented a cultural response to economic forces; it evolved a cultural critique of neoliberalism and globalisation: issues of political provenance, but which, with the slow demise of the Left during the 1980s, turned into subjects of nationalist, specifically ethno-nationalist, polemics. Again, hardly unique to Sri Lanka: across much of Asia and even in Reagan’s USA, these debates were undergoing an epochal transition, from political economy to ethno-nationalist ideology.
To give due credit to these outfits is only fair: in its critique of such topical issues, the Jathika Chintanaya took the place of, and gained more credence than, the Marxist and post-Marxist outfits it ended up opposing. An anecdote would help here. Somewhere in the 1990s a Left politician confessed openly that there was no alternative to privatisation. At that time no less than the daughter of the country’s most prominent socialist head of state, elected president on a popular mandate, was going about preaching the virtues of free market economics. Yet only a few years earlier, Nalin de Silva had launched a campaign against Coca-Cola and Fanta in local universities, and had got involved in protests against the Kandalama Hotel.
I find these contrasts intriguing: a Marxist confessing to the wonders of globalisation and the inevitability of Marxism’s fading away, versus an avowed anti-Marxist protesting against the symbols of those wonders from a non-Marxist perspective. This contradiction, intriguing as is, becomes disconcerting when you explore it further. Since lack of space prevents me from delving into it in detail, I’ll concern myself with two pertinent issues, issues which reveal for me both the enduring appeal, and the inherent flaws, of the movement: firstly its relationship with the Left, and secondly its contradictory array of class interests.
The tenuousness of the Jathika Chintanaya’s relationship with the Old Left had a great deal to do the latter’s relationship with Sinhala nationalism, for by the late 1980s the Old Left had ceased to be of any concern or relevance to a burgeoning Sinhala Buddhist middle-class. The reason isn’t too hard to find. With Old Leftists seen to be either Indophile (given their support for the Indo-Lanka Accord) or integrated into foreign funded and NGO-driven civil society, vast swathes of a newly bourgeoisied middle-class, disillusioned with Marxism, converted from a radical cosmopolitan perspective to an insular communalist one.
To be sure, not everyone made this transition so deterministically or dramatically: there were some who took a longer ideological route, from the Old Left to the JVP and later to Sinhala nationalism. A few even stuck through the Old Left in spite of the Indo-Lanka Accord before turning to the nationalist Right. All in all, though, that transition remained the same for most: disillusionment with Marxists turning into disillusionment with Marxism itself.
It should be mentioned here that no less than Nalin de Silva began his political journey with that same Old Left, in a party that had as its founder a man who was later to praise the leader of the LTTE in public; a man ensconced today in the same party whose leader stripped him of an academic post, and blacklisted him, in the 1980s. Like Wordsworth pondering his youthful ardour over the French Revolution, de Silva eventually absolved himself of these associations by formulating and evolving a cultural critique of Marxism in toto.
It should also be acknowledged that the crisis of the Old Left predated the 1987 Accord. The crisis had its roots in the then government’s crackdown on trade unions, and its deployment of a brutal military-security apparatus to crush every real and imagined vestige of dissent. Yet despite this indisputable fact, nationalists see it differently; for them the Left’s crisis sprang from its siding with India, an act which “betrayed” its anti-nationalist character.
Race…
Such critiques of the (Old) Left did not materialise after the Indo-Lanka Accord. Gunadasa Amarasekara had made them years before with his Anagarika Dharmapala Marxvadiyekda?, in which he reflected on the links between Marxism and nationalism and lamented the failure of contemporary Marxists to maintain those historical links. What the Indo-Lanka Accord did was to provide a litmus test, a testing ground, for these critiques; having set up the Left as a straw man, the Jathika Chintanaya naturally saw in the support given by prominent Leftists to the Accord a confirmation of its fears, and suspicions, about Marxists.
Its response to India and the Old Left – and the Indophile section of the UNP, not to mention the fiercely nationalist SLFP-MEP – do not, however, explain its response to the JVP, i.e. the New Left. This is problematic when you consider the interests which brought these outfits together. Apart from the SLFP, the party most opposed to Indian intervention happened to be the JVP. The Jathika Chintanaya opposed it too, resorting to the same rhetoric vis-à-vis India: if not so chauvinistically, then certainly in the same communalist breath.
In fact the founders of Jathika Chintanaya went as far as to sympathise with the JVP (“a complex grouping of people representing thousands of rural youth who want socialism” was how Amarasekara saw them in 1988, before the peak of the second insurrection). Insofar as the JVP’s socialism cohered with the Jathika Chintanaya’s nationalism, a value congruency thus prevailed between the two (“We must give them every possible opportunity,” implored Amarasekara). Yet despite this congruency, the two never came together. Why not?
I suggest that this failure of consensus despite congruence has a great deal to do with the difference in tactic, strategy, indeed ideological grounding, between the JVP and the Jathika Chintanaya. When I pose the question as to why these groups could not reconcile and unify, the two most frequent responses I get from followers of the Jathika Chintanaya are, that the JVP resorted to violence antithetical to Sinhala Buddhist tenets during the insurrection, and that it has shed its Sinhala Buddhist character today. These represent two distinct failures of tactic and strategy from two distinct periods: back then and right now.
On the face of it, the Chintanawadi perspective is right: the JVP did engage in excesses which marginalise any sentiments condoning violence and group supremacy that the founders of the Jathika Chintanaya espoused back then, and it has through its entry into the democratic mainstream been co-opted today by a left-liberal intelligentsia, who for Sinhala nationalists remain as “anti-nationalist” as their Old Left counterparts from the 1980s. But this difference of ideological grounding between these groups does not in itself explain the failure to reach a consensus, and must not be assessed on its own. Instead it must be compared with the second of those points I highlighted earlier: the class composition of the Chintanawadeen.
To be continued…
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.
The British School in Colombo celebrated the 2025 Sinhala and Tamil New Year with the traditional rites and rituals and customs unique to the island nation, during a special Avurudu Assembly held at the school premises.
Students from all over the world, who are part of The British School in Colombo, gathered to celebrate this joyous event.
The special assembly featured traditional song and dance items from talented performers of both the Junior and Senior Schools.
On this particular day, the teachers and students were invited to attend school in Sri Lankan national costume and, among the traditional rituals celebrated, was the boiling of the milk and the tradition of Ganu-Denu.
Boiling of
the milk
In the meanwhile, a group of swimmers from Lyceum International School, Wattala, visited Australia to participate in the Global-ISE International Swimming Training Programme in Melbourne.
Over the course of 10 days, the swimmers followed an advanced training schedule and attended sessions at the Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre (MSAC), Victoria’s Nunawading Swimming Club, and Camberwell Grammar School.
In addition to their training, the group also explored Melbourne, with visits to key landmarks, such as the Parliament House and the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), along with city tours and cultural experiences.
Traditional dance item
Tug-of-war contest
On arrival in Melbourne, Lyceum International School, Wattala, with Sri Lankan officials
Got a few more beauty tips to give you … for a perfect complexion, or, let’s say, a healthy skin.
* Honey Face Mask:
Take a tablespoon of raw honey and then warm it up by rubbing it with your fingertips. Apply the warm honey all over your face. Let this natural mask stand for about 10 minutes and then wash it off gently with warm water.
* Coconut Milk Face Mask:
You need to squeeze coconut milk out of a grated raw coconut and apply this milk all over your face, including your lips.
(This will help you gain a glowing skin. It is one of the best natural tips for skin care)
* Orange, Lemon, and Yoghurt Moisturiser:
To prepare this moisturiser, you need a tablespoon of orange juice, a tablespoon of lemon juice and a cup of plain yoghurt.
Mix them together and apply the paste all over your face, leaving it as a mask for 10 to 15 minutes. Next, take a damp handkerchief and use it to clean your face.
(This moisturiser brightens the complexion of your skin)
* Cucumber and Lemon:
Apply equal parts of cucumber and lemon juice on your face before taking a bath. Allow it to sit for 10 minutes before rinsing it off. This natural face beauty tip will brighten your skin tone and lighten blemishes if used on a regular basis. The best aspect is that it is appropriate for all skin types!
* Healthy Diet:
Aside from the effective home remedies, there are certain other factors to consider for skin care – and the first of them is your diet. Without the right nutrients, your skin cannot reverse the damage it suffers every day.
Eat fruits that are high in vitamin C because they contain antioxidants.
Adjust your diet to get the right amount of protein and unsaturated fats, as well as fresh green vegetables. All of this provides the right amount of nutrients so your skin can heal and improve itself naturally.
* Sun Protection and Care:
Another thing to keep in mind is not to step out of your home without sunscreen, especially with this awful heat we are experiencing at the moment. The hard rays of the sun can do you more damage than you could ever imagine.
By the way, you can prepare your own sunscreen lotion with glycerin, cucumber juice and rose water. You can also keep this lotion in the fridge.
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