Midweek Review

We, the people, must pay more taxes

Published

5 years ago

2021/02/17

by Usvatte-aratchi

Everyone, including voluble politicians, give tongue that ‘the last government’, no matter which, was responsible for the crippling debt burden that we have suffered from for well over 30 years. No matter which party ran the government, the present debt burden is the accumulation of overspending by the PEOPLE under the baleful leadership of shortsighted governments. None, university professors and pundits included, have blamed us the people who have lived beyond our means. Joan Robinson, who came here in 1958 (?) politely upbraided us somewhat. The government is but us organized for the purpose of governing ourselves democratically. If government overspends and borrows domestically or abroad, it is we who borrow to spend beyond our means. We, the people, will pay back the loans.

Our government leaders kiss babies and shout out loud their deep concern for the next generation. Yet at the same time they set huge loads of debt on the slender backs of presently five-year-olds to pay back when older, huge amounts of taxes to pay interest on accumulated debt and the debt itself. Think about it: government who act as agents of the people have the alternatives of either collecting revenue out of taxes or loan proceeds. In the absence of government income as profits or rent, there are no other sources of revenue. Our governments receive 98 percent of its revenue from taxes and loans. Loans are repaid by people as much as taxes are. They are two different ways of taxing the same public: tax the living or tax the unborn. (You ‘tax the dead’ if there are death duties.) To shout out that they care for future generations and at the same time to leave them burdens paying back what we now consume is either utter folly or contemptible hypocrisy. The people who cheer them and hold them as parodies of statesmanship are similarly not using their minds. The people must realise that either as taxes or as loans they part with their income to the government. When the people permit a government to borrow, they simply agree to pay another part of their income to the rich whether here or abroad who lend to government. Payments to government whether as taxes or loans are certain as death, with some payments to government, unlike death, shiftable in time. I remarked that government is but an agent of the people. On the principle that the principal is responsible for actions of the agent, we the people are responsible for all actions of government. Our constitution goes on to lay down: sovereignty lies with the people and it is inalienable. All authority, legislative, executive and judicial is derived from the people. When Parliament decides to tax you or borrow on your behalf, it is you with government behaving as your agent, as the law permits. You have no exit from your responsibility that it is you who decide to borrow and pass on the costs of your profligacy to the younger generations whose wellbeing that you so volubly attempt to promote. Stop lying and being hypocritical; tax yourself; pay for the garbage trucks that help keep your corner of the street clean.

Last week, I paid my municipal rates. I had noticed that the trucks that collect garbage on my street were gifts from the people of Japan and the people of Sweden. We are a city that cannot pay for the collection of its garbage. And yet city taxes here are pitifully low. I understand that taxes are hard to pay but it is harder to live in garbage dumps, unless you are Oscar the monster who devours garbage and lives in a garbage can in Sesame Street. It might surprise Oscar that there live and mightily prosper in this land whole clans of garbage (jarawa) monsters, although of different feathers. To connect up with the earlier paragraph, it is borrowing that generates far more garbage than tax revenue. Loans are often tied to large infrastructure projects, the execution of which is undertaken by an organization in the lending country itself that generates so much garbage (jarawa). Oscars that live here on Main Street in the city and in magnificent mansions in back-of beyond, grow in mass with surprising velocity. (Simply keep an eye on members of Parliament, who become ministers. It is a fundamental law of physics that faster an object moves, the heavier it grows.) When the lending country itself is mired in garbage, this arrangement blesses both the lender and the receiver. That often explains why large and expensive infra structure projects are so popular with our politicians, the loot they collect is a percentage of the cost of the project, larger the loan the larger the garbage (jararawa) collected. The people must understand that they or their progeny pay the taxes with which to service these loans and eventually pay back the loans. If the collector of the garbage lives on a street other than Sesame, well then, he grows rich on the loot and flies back to the temperate climes far north, ‘where …. and the buffalo roam… and where the sky is not cloudy all day.’ Here it is cloudy always, at least in the afternoon. The darkness helps theft.

There is a highly influential large group of economists who would say that I am out of my mind. Their ideal society is one in which the state is minimal. Leave it to the market, cut down government interference to the minimum and innovation and enterprise in competitive markets will maximize public welfare. The models they run are perfect and even beautiful in their elegance and simplicity. However, new research has solidified widely prevalent suspicions that those models produced societies where inequalities in the distribution of income and wealth are beyond tolerable levels. The situation in the US is the best researched and known: ‘… black American households earned around 60% of what White households did, and the typical Black family had less than 10% of the assets of a typical White family’. But more stunning in the face is China, which once was poor and almost everyone was poor and rapidly became rich mostly in southern China and that along the coast, with Xingjian, Qinghai, Heilong Jian in the east and the north and Yunnan in the south-west, all of them yet mostly poor. In China in 1981, GDP per capita was about $2,000 and the Gini coefficient was 0.31 and in 2016, $ 6500 and 0.46, respectively. Gini coefficient is and index of the degree of inequality in a set of data: the closer it is to 0, the less inequality and higher the number is and closer to 1, the closer to complete inequality. While China grew richer it also nursed a more unequal society. Jack Ma and others rival Ambani and others in India. Society in that land mass now identified as India has been for millennia one of inequality and a land of epic inequality, whether in wealth holding or in income and in social distancing. (It is but the other day, thanks to Covid-19, that social distancing stopped being a dirty word that was ostracized in civilized company.)

I am not raising a question about capitalist or socialist economies. Those are decisions that the people must take. I am talking about priorities in spending. Huge amounts of money spent by the government of the United States is actually used by private corporations like Boeing or Ford and General Motors. Large research funds generated by government are spent in labs in non-government research institutes, including those in universities. Government revenue may foster private enterprises.

Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez brightly highlighted the rising inequality in the distribution of income and wealth in countries which by and large emulated the ‘free market’ model. Emmanuel Saez’s Distinguished Lecture before the American Economic Association last month demonstrated the importance of factors other than free markets in the efficient functioning of economies.

We must grant that ideology the credit that the enterprise and innovation in regimes where freedom was high permitted the rapid growth of income and standards of living in the long run. Yet we cannot deny that the ‘causes of the great divergence’, from roughly 1700 to 1950 between say Great Britain and China was ‘the role and function of the state’ (Peer Vries, 2017). Daniel Kahneman in 2002 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for demonstrating that motivations of people as economic agents were quite different from those were different from those commonly assumed by free market economists. In my mind there is no contesting that the way governments function is determining in the growth and development of economies. Where governments are periodically elected by the people, the PEOPLE are responsible for what happened in their economies. Stop blaming political leaders; look into your mirrors and see the culprit: you. It is not by accident that Singapore elected Cambridge educated lawyer Lee Kuan Yu as their Prime Minister nor Malaysia elected University of Malaya and UK trained physician Mohammed Mahathir as their Prime Minister.

These were both multi-ethnic poor societies which under the leadership of these two great men achieved spectacular prosperity admirable peace among communities. We who had better educational facilities when Singapore and Malaysia were poor continue to elect persons well below those in the greater society. Move a bit further west on the Indian Ocean and you come to Mauritius. It has a population which is as mixed as we are: 68 % Indian, 27% African, 3% Chinese and 2% French. (Google.) James Mead of Cambridge in 1952 headed a Committee that looked into the society and the economy of Mauritius, then a British colony. It was a very poor country with malaria raging all over. It was riven by interethnic rivalries. Its GDP per capita in 1985 was $ 1100 and in 2019 $11,100. The average expectation of life at birth in Mauritius is 75 years. These three societies managed inter-ethnic relations far better than we did, even after a disastrous civil that ate up massive resources and we missed three decades of spectacular growth in the rest of this part of Asia. The leaders that they elected to office there were learned and wise. Learning that matured wisdom helped them overcome what seemed impossible odds to forge poor and splintered societies into united and prosperous ones. We as a people distinctly were not very bright in selecting our leaders. And continue to be so. Our predecessors were right to provide state sponsored education, especially of women.

They were splendid to provide state paid for health services. Fortuitously, food came to be distributed equitably and at a controlled low price. Malaria was effectively controlled with chemicals applied by trained and committed public health personnel. Infant mortality fell rapidly from 141 per 1,000 in 1939-40 to 71 in 1955; it is now about 6 per 1000 live born. Infant mortality fell precipitously from 1939 t0 1949. (N.K.Sarkar has a lovely graphic bringing this out.) There is no way that government expenditure in this land can be cut down except by the action of the public who refuse to pay for it. If we don’t pay taxes, why ask our children to pay for our needs. Borrowing, no matter from where, is only another and dishonest way to rob future generations from their entitlement to their earnings. If you do not pay more in taxes, you will have to cut down public services. Corruption on the part of those whom you elect to office takes a large chunk of the taxes you pay. If you eliminate garbage Oscars you will pay so much less in taxes; or better you have so much more money to do other desirable things. The remedy is to run them out of town rather than make heroes of them on various irrelevant grounds. That they have not been found guilty in courts is a more a tale of wholly inadequate judicial administration. The evidence stands glaring you in the face. On balance, a decision to drop someone out of suspicions of corruption is a less costly choice than weakening incentives to pay taxes for public services.

If the public do not pay taxes, there is no choice but to cut down public services. Don’t be fooled with the paniya that self-appointed kapuva, driven by evil kali yakkhini, offer us. If you want more universities, pay for them. If you want to get to Mahanuvara faster, pay for the highway. Drive away garbage monsters. Their progeny, as you can see already, will have grown manifold by the time your five-year-olds can vote. You cannot expect your children to pay for these. If anyone is honestly interested in the benefit of the next generation, build a better education for them, construct roads and harbours and establish research labs and pay for them. Let them complete and add to them. Don’t talk of benefitting them, whilst at the same time, with cunning subtlety, you rob them of a part of their future income. We, the people in this generation, must pay more taxes.

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Midweek Review

Squeaky clean image of JVP in tatters

Published

3 days ago

2026/04/22

Sahan Weerasooriya

During the recent debate on the No-Confidence Motion (NCM) against Energy Minister Kumara Jayakody, Illankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK) Batticaloa District lawmaker, Shanakiyan Rajaputhiran Rasamanickam, warned that the next NCM would be moved against Fisheries Minister Ramalingham Chandrasekaran. Rasamanickam accused the National List member of corruption, a charge vehemently denied by the NPPer. The NPP/JVP needs to initiate an internal inquiry before corruption allegations overwhelm the party that received the full advantage of Aragalaya to transform the outfit from just a three-member parliamentary group, in 2024, to a staggering 159, a year later. The UNP and SLFP led alliances were dealt harshly by the electorates for want of action to curb corruption. Today, the UNP and SLFP are not represented in Parliament, while the SLPP, that secured 145 seats at the 2020 general election, was reduced to just three with its parliamentary group leader Namal Rajapaksa entering Parliament through the National List. Rajapaksa junior obviously feared to face the Hambantota electorate at the last general election. That is the undeniable truth.

By Shamindra Ferdinando

The ongoing controversy over Agriculture, Lands, Irrigation and Livestock Minister K.D. Lal Kantha’s three-storeyed luxury house has intensified pressure on the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP)-led National People’s Power (NPP) government struggling to cope-up with the devastating coal scam, blamed on Energy Minister Kumara Jayakody forcing him to resign.

Jayakody, one of those who financed the NPP/JVP campaign in the run-up to the 2024 national polls ,resigned on 17 April, along with Prof. Udayanga Hemapala, Secretary to the Energy Ministry. Their resignations happened eight months after the Frontline Socialist Party (FSP), a breakaway faction of the JVP, revealed the alleged coal scam. The Lal Kantha affair received significant public attention though the primary issue at hand is the massive coal scam that ripped through the government.

Jayakody will continue as a National List member of the ruling party. The NPP/JVP won an unprecedented 159 seats, including 18 National List slots at the November 2024 parliamentary elections.

The Opposition dismissed government claims that the resignations were meant to facilitate the Presidential Commission of Inquiry into the procurement of coal, since the commissioning of the country’s only coal-fired power plant during the onset of Mahinda Rajapaksa’s second term. In the wake of the much delayed resignations, NPP/JVP heavyweight Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath, addressing the media at the Information Department, pathetically vouched for Jayakody’s integrity.

Let us discuss the accusations directed at Lal Kantha who had served the SLFP-led Cabinet for a short period, years ago, in terms of an agreement between the SLFP and the JVP. Lal Kantha had never been accused of corruption and was, in fact, one of those lawmakers who raised the issue both in and outside Parliament. Political parties may have forgotten that the UNP got rid of Lacille de Silva, Director General of Administration, Parliament, during Ranil Wickremesinghe’s premiership, in the 2001-2003 period, alleging he passed on information to Lal Kantha to attack the government.

The NPP Executive Committee member, as well as JVP politburo and Central Committee heavyweight, has publicly defended his right to own a luxury house amidst a section of the social media pushing for police investigation into the lawmaker’s wealth.

Unlike the owner/owners of the mysterious Malwana mansion, built on a 16-acre land overlooking the Kelani river, Lal Kantha didn’t try to disclaim the house ownership at Jusse Road, Welivita, in the Kaduwela area. The Malwana house was built towards the end of Mahinda Rajapaksa’s second term as the President. The hullabaloo over the ownership of the Malwana mansion, and construction costs, dominated the 2015 presidential election campaign. On the basis of the Malwana mansion, the UNP and the JVP built a strong case against the Rajapaksas, accusing the family of corruption.

It would be of pivotal importance that the JVP backed Maithripala Sirisena’s 2015 presidential polls candidature. The campaign was built on an anti-corruption platform that earned the appreciation of the public who disregarded the unprecedented development work successfully carried out by the Rajapaksas, while also fighting a war to defeat the most ruthless terrorist organisation that was out to break up the country.

During a US-India backed violent protest campaign, in March-July 2022, an organised gang set the stately Malwana mansion ablaze. The general consensus was that the Malwana mansion belonged to Basil Rajapakasa, though he vehemently denied having anything to do with it.

Yahapalana Justice Minister Dr. Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe, PC, is on record as having declared that the Malwana mansion would be renovated and used to accommodate a state institution. Lal Kantha’s newly acquired wealth has to be examined and discussed, taking into consideration his long standing claim that as a fulltime member of the JVP he entirely depended on his wife’s monthly salary and help provided by friends and associates. If that was the case, Lal Kantha couldn’t have ended up among the richest group of politicians, within less than two years after the last presidential election, held in September 2024.

Lal Kantha couldn’t have been unaware of the possibility of the Opposition, particularly the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), attacking him and the NPP/JVP over his Kaduwela house. Responding to critics, the Anuradhapura District lawmaker has claimed, on YouTube, that he sold a property he owned in Anuradhapura and used that money to acquire the Jusse Road land.

The outspoken Minister is also on record as having said that the existence of his new house, to which he moved in late 2024, was disclosed by him. However, incisive Youtuber Dharma Sri Kariyawasam has claimed that he made the revelation on 01 October, 2025, while another You-Tuber, Abeetha Edirisinghe, rammed up pressure on the NPP by lodging a complaint with the police, via the special number 1818. Edirisinghe’s SL Leaders YouTube posted a video of him lodging the complaint.

What made the complaint really interesting was Edirisinghe’s declaration based on ‘Dark Room’ YouTube allegations that wealthy businessman Nissanka Senadhipathi, who had been one of the closest associates of the Rajapaksas, provided the wherewithal required to acquire land, build and then furnish the Jusse Road mansion. Defending his position, Lal Kantha claimed that he acquired a piano for his daughter, about 15 years ago, while declaring he enjoyed the capacity to raise large sums of funds if necessary. A smiling Lal Kantha explained how he could effortlessly collect Rs 500,000 each from 100 associates/friends. Programmes posted by Dharma Sri Kariyawasam and Abeetha Edirisinghe are must-watch for those genuinely interested in knowing the explosive story, from different angles.

Close on the heels of debates on Lal Kantha’s mansion, the media reported the Minister’s last available asset declaration, sent to the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption (CIABOC), dealt with over Rs 80 mn worth of property, vehicles and gold, etc. The JVP heavyweight’s annual income has stunned even the staunchest supporters of the ruling party. Lal Kantha, through his lawyer, demanded Rs 10 bn in damages from ‘Hiru’ for wrongly estimating his properties, etc., at Rs 460 mn.

Both Dharma Sri Kariyawasam and Abeetha Edirisinghe propagated that police wanted the public to complain to special the number 1818, created to accept such complaints in case they felt suspicious about newly acquired property, regardless of who owned them.

Unexpected disclosure of Lal Kantha’s unprecedented wealth obviously stunned the public who genuinely believed in the unshakable NPP/JVP stand on corruption. Lal Kantha, who had joined the JVP in 1982, before becoming a full time member, in 1987, had no qualms in defending his new lifestyle, having repeatedly and bitterly complained about the difficulties experienced by him and his family.

In his defence, Lal Kantha emphasised that he hadn’t been accused of robbing the taxpayer or public sector corruption. However, the NPP/JVP all-out attack on all previous governments, over waste, corruption, irregularities and mismanagement, and branding all their MPs corrupt, cannot adopt such a stance. The Kaduwela mansion has sent shockwaves through the electorate. Dharma Sri Kariyawasam, in his response to Lal Kantha, repeatedly stressed that his wealth was being questioned by those who exercised their franchise in support of the NPP/JVP at the national elections and Local Government polls, in 2025.

Growing public resentment over what various interested parties, including the NPP/JVP called ill-gotten wealth of members and henchmen of previous governments fuelled Aragalaya (31 March-14 July 2022). Those who set houses and other property, belonging to various then government politicians and their associates ablaze, operated on the presumption that they were beneficiaries of ill-gotten wealth. The NPP/JVP powered the campaign, alongside the breakaway JVP faction, styled as Peratugami Pakshaya (Frontline Socialist Party) as well as the UNP.

Ranwala and others

Against the backdrop of Auditor General Samudrika Jayarathne’s devastating report on coal procurement for the 2025/2026 period and Lal Kantha’s declaration that he owned a three-storeyed house, the resignation of Asoka Ranwala, as the Speaker of Parliament, over his failure to prove his declared academic qualifications seemed uncalled for. Jayarathne signed that report on behalf of the National Audit Office (NAO).

The Gampaha District MP resigned on 13 December, 2024, just 22 days after being appointed the Speaker. The main Opposition Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) relentlessly attacked Ranwala over his fabricated or unverified educational qualifications, specifically a Ph.D. from a Japanese university and a degree from the University of Moratuwa.

The NPP/JVP tried to defend Ranwala but quickly succumbed to SJB pressure. We never managed to establish whether Ranwala resigned on his own accord or the NPP/JVP asked him to resign to save the party. Similarly, the resignations of Energy Minister Jayakody and Prof. Hemapala, who cut a sorry figure before the Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE) recently, must have been demanded by the ruling party. Had the NPP bosses acted prudently, much earlier, after he was indicted before the Colombo High Court on a previous corruption case, they could have easily asked Jayakody to resign his ministerial portfolio before the Parliament debated the no-confidence motion against him.

Another case that really embarrassed the ruling party was accusations directed at Dr. Jagath Wickremeratne, who succeeded Ranwala as House Speaker. The Polonnaruwa District MP was the next to face fire, following a dispute with the Deputy Secretary General of Parliament Chaminda Kularatne who is also the Chief of Staff of the House. Kularatne hit back hard after Parliament sacked him over alleged irregularities. In a petition, dated 2 February, 2026, sent to CIABOC, Kularatne disclosed the circumstances the Speaker reacted angrily after he brought to the NPPer’s notice illegal actions and corruption, as well as his (Kularatne) recommendation in his capacity as the Right to Information (RTI) officer, to release certain information sought by civil society activists. Kularatne further claimed that the situation deteriorated further over an incident that happened on 18 June, 2025, or a date closer to that date, in the room where Speaker Wickremeratne had his lunch. Kularatne refrained from revealing the incident.

There hadn’t been a previous instance of a senior parliamentary official moving the CIABOC against the Speaker. The allegations directed at the Speaker, in respect of abuse of vehicles, taking two fuel allowances, misuse of equipment belonging to the Media Unit of Parliament, inadequate payment for lunch obtained for Chameera Gallage, Speaker’s private secretary, who had lunch with him, illegal payments made to retired Ministry Additional Secretary S.K. Liyanage, who was appointed to inquire into Kularatne’s conduct, suppression of release of information in terms of RTI, and uncalled for interventions in administration.

Kularatne’s complaint to the CIABOC failed to result in an expeditious inquiry, though a complaint lodged against a sacked parliamentary official appeared to have received much more attention. The NPP has responded cautiously to Kularatne vs Wickremeratne battle as pressure mounted on the ruling party over the coal scam that threatened to cause further increase in already unbearable electricity tariffs. The Auditor General’s report, in no uncertain terms, has implicated the Energy Ministry and Lanka Coal Company in the sordid operation that resulted in low-grade coal ending up at the Lakvijaya coal-fired power plant that earlier met about 30 to 40% percent of the country’s power requirements at essentially low cost, barring hydroelectricity.

The report declared that the term tender for the supply of coal was awarded to Trident Champhar, an Indian company that hadn’t been registered at the time it bid for Sri Lanka’s largest tender and procedures in respect of loading and unloading the cargo. To make matters worse, Minister Jayakody, who had been implicated in the coal scam, was recently indicted on corruption charges in the High Court of Colombo. There hadn’t been a previous instance of a sitting member of the Cabinet being indicted for corruption. Therefore, the NPP government cannot be happy over its steamroller majority in Parliament having defeated the no-confidence motion moved against Jayakody who remained confident in the parliamentary group’s support at the behest of the top party leadership.

The NPP/JVP finds itself in an extremely embarrassing and pitiful situation over the coal scam. The damning report issued by the Auditor General pertaining to the coal scam has to be examined taking into consideration the failure on the part of the government and the Constitutional Council to reach a consensus on filling the vacant Auditor General’s post in 2025. The post of Auditor General remained vacant from early April 2025 to early February 2026.

Role of NAO

The NAO functions as an independent body answerable to Parliament. The recent NAO report that dealt with coal procurement exposed the utterly corrupt system in place, regardless of assurances given by the government. The report proved that irregularities can be perpetrated and corrupt practices continued, regardless of assurances given by the current dispensation.

Over the past several years, tangible measures were taken to strengthen the NAO. Parliament certified the National Audit (Amendment) Act, No. 19 of 2025 on 22 September, 2025. That act introduced reforms meant to enhance public sector accountability, enforce audit findings, and streamline the surcharge process. The no nonsense report proved that in spite of interference and undue influence exerted on the NAO, those responsible did their job without fear or favour.

SJB lawmaker Mujibur Rahman, during the debate on the no-confidence motion against Minister Jayakody, alleged in Parliament that COPE (Committee on Public Enterprises) Chairman Dr. Nishantha Samaraweera directly intervened when the NAO was in the process of finalising the report. The former UNPer called for an investigation to establish whether the Galle District NPP MP visited the NAO on several days to meet those handling the investigation.

We are not aware whether the COPE Chief, who called for the NAO to inquire into allegations in respect of coal procurement, visited the NAO.

However, the NAO report on the coal scam, now available online for all to study, underscores the pivotal importance of the anti-corruption fight.

In September 2025, the SJB asked the CIABOC to probe how some NPP/JVP Ministers amassed so much property. The SJB raised the issue with the focus on Trade, Commerce, Food Security and Cooperative Development Minister Wasantha Samarasinghe (like Lal Kantha, he, too, represents the Anuradhapura District) amassed Rs 275 mn. The SJB’s complaint to CIABOC sought investigations on Ministers Sunil Handunetti, Bimal Rathnayake, Dr. Nalinda Jayathissa and Kumara Jayakody, and Deputy Minister Sunil Watagala.

Lal Kantha, who has now acknowledged having as much as Rs 80 mn worth property, was not among the lawmakers targeted by the SJB. Having falsely propagated an anti-corruption campaign to deceive the public, the NPP/JVP stand literally exposed before the public. The coal scam and Lal Kantha fiasco have caused irreparable damage to such an extent, their anti-corruption campaigns may not carry any weight with the public at future elections.

Midweek Review

Some languages confine you; some languages free you

Published

3 days ago

2026/04/22

Sahan Weerasooriya

‘… where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls; ….

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;

Where the mind is led forward….into ever-widening thought and action…’

With wide apologies, I am going to put snatches of that poem into more dreary uses, though not quite desert sand.

What are those narrow domestic walls which break up the world into fragments? Languages.

Amiya reads the Gitanjali but does not read the Tirukkural. Hong Li reads Kong Fut Ze’s Analects but not Plato’s Republic. Paul reads Miton’s Paradise Lost but not Njal Saga. Sarath Kumara reads Wickremasinghe’s satva santatitya but not Darwin’s Origin of the Species. Ngidi does not read Thomas Picketty’s Capital in the 20th Century or Anthony Atkinson’s Inequality at all. Hirono uses Large Language Models to do homework but Rasolomanana has not seen a computer. And so on and so forth. The world is broken into fragments by languages, but not by languages alone. The daughter of a rich black man living in Howard County in Maryland goes to Stanford but a brown dweller in Dharavi cannot enter Jawaharlal Nehru University. The lesson is that it is not only languages or orthodoxies that break up the world into ‘fragments’ but also many other barriers, about one of which Tagore sang.

Language is a marvellous ‘invention’ of nature well cultivated by humans. No other species has the faculty to use language to know. Ludwig Wittgenstein expressed it epigrammatically, ‘whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.’ It is language that carries forth knowledge. It is not only language that carries forth knowledge: mathematics, in its own right, is a powerful carrier of knowledge. One can write something simple like if x-y=0, then x=y, as well as whole pages of complex and complicated arguments using mathematical notations. Mathematics may and often does write nature and about nature; it also writes about things that exist only in the mind. That is not different from languages: heaven and Vishnu exist in some minds but not in others or elsewhere. Galileo Galilei learnt ‘Nature is an open book but it is written in mathematics’. Much of nature is a closed book to those to whom mathematics is alien territory. But today, I am interested in how some languages ‘break the world into fragments by domestic walls’, while a few others fly about regardless. When a team from India played cricket with a team from Pakistan a few weeks back, the commentary was broadcast in India in 14 languages and in Nigeria national news is read in several languages. That same game of cricket also was broadcast to the rest of the world in one language: English.

When and how do some languages come to ‘lead the mind forward into ever widening thought and action’? The transformation occurs when users of one language become conquerors and rulers of peoples using other languages and when the users of a language become generators of new knowledge which are eagerly sought after by users of other languages. Greek, Latin and Arabic contributed mightily to the vocabulary of modern Western European languages. When new ideas in law, government, philosophy, medicine and science had to be expressed, they went to Greek, Latin or Arabic. Consequently, you will bump into Greek terms the moment you begin thinking about those disciplines. The serious study of Greek was introduced to England by Erasmus (of Rotterdam) about 1500 AC. The use of Latin began with the Roman Empire but took on new functions when Latin became the vehicle carrying Christianity east and north (of Europe) and elsewhere later. Until about the 18th century AC Latin was the language of learning in most of Europe. At its inception, Manchester Grammar School was a Latin school and the Boston Latin School which started in 1635 still thrives in that name. The two medieval universities in England were mostly seminaries teaching in Latin well into the 19th century. A wide swathe of languages is written with the Latin alphabet: European languages from the Black Sea to the Atlantic and from the North Sea to the Mediterranean, America from Canada to Chile, sub-Saharan Africa including Togo, and Indonesian, Malaysian and several others. The exodus of Jewish, Arabic and other scholars, after the fall of Constantinople (1453) to the Ottomans, brought Greek and Arabic to Western Europe including England. From about the 14 to the 18th century, European indigenous vernaculars grew to be carriers of new knowledge, especially in sciences. Luther’s reformation and the development of German had much in common. Gutenberg’s new printing press (1450 AC) helped the growth of European vernaculars and the spread of reformed Christianity.

Four western European languages stood out as both conquerors and carriers of new knowledge: Portuguese, Spanish, French and English. Arabic performed the same function from about 800 AC to the 13 AC when that language carried a new religion and new knowledge in mathematics, astronomy and medicine. Arabic replaced the indigenous languages in the entire Maghreb. The language of governance and learning from Mexico south to Chile is Spanish with Brazil using Portuguese and are collectively called Latin America, because Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian and Romanian are Romance or Latin Languages. French is the language of governance and learning in several parts of West Africa. English was a phenomenon in itself. It destroyed the use of hundreds of languages in North America. It conquered almost half the world and English is the language of governance and higher education in a good part of the land it once ruled. As a language carrying new knowledge, English excels all others. As the collapse of four European empires, including the Ottoman, went on from about 1915 to about 1960, English, which produced new knowledge faster than any other, began to break ‘domestic walls’, the world over. China, which had little love for the English-speaking world, had millions of its citizens schooled in the US, the UK, Canada and Australia during the last 30 years and continues to do so, to date. In contrast, during that time how many rushed to Niger to learn Fulfulde or to Lanka to study Sinhala? The prominence of English was promoted by two other processes: one was translation into English of major works in other languages and the other the growth of a class of indigenous writers and readers in the conqueror’s language. One reads Oblomov, Gilgamesh and, indeed, Gitanjali translated into English. India now probably has more readers in English than any other single country. Persons in Western African countries have crafted in French and English, masterpieces in fiction, poetry and drama. Modern European languages have been both conquerors’ languages and carriers of new knowledge.

Several people recently have written in The Island and in Lankadeepa about the importance of using the ‘mother tongue’. They have stressed the importance of the ‘mother tongue’ in creative writing. As with observations regarding empirical phenomena, it is necessary to test those generalisations against reality. Samskrt is a language not entirely unfamiliar to many in this land. Samskrt was nobody’s mother tongue. (After all, it is deva bhaashitam.) There is not a shred of evidence that Kalidasa’s mother talked to him in Samskrt. But Kalidasa wrote rtusmahara and shakuntalam.. The vedas and upanishads were first spoken and later written in samskrt. Pali is nobody’s mother tongue but Theravada writings are almost entirely in that language. Isaac Newton wrote Principia Mathematica in Latin; we have no evidence that baby Isaac babbled in Latin. Paul Dirac wrote about particle physics in mathematics rather than in his father’s beloved French. Leopold Senghor’s mother tongue was not French nor Chinua Achebe’s English. More casually, check your own libraries. I had a collection of about 2,300 books until last year. There weren’t even 200 written in Sinhala and that 200 included editions of works from the 13th century. Check how many books written in Sinhala and English you bought in the last two years. There were far too many writers and scientists who brought forth highly acclaimed work in languages other than their mother tongue, contradicting the argument that the mother tongue was essential or even desirable for original work, in science or in literature.

Most languages ‘break the world into narrow fragments’. A few coagulate them into large masses: 900 million people speak Mandarin and 325 million, Bengali. A half dozen bind themselves together speaking a conqueror’s language. Four languages stand out as having ‘led the ‘mind forward into ever-widening thought and action’: Greek, Latin, Arabic and English. English, so far, is unrivalled.

by Usvatte-aratchi