Features
AFTERMATH OF THE 1953 HARTAL
Motion of No Confidence in Government (Hansard of 1st September 1, 1953)
(Speech made by Dr. NM Perera published in his birth centenary memorial volume)
Dr. Perera:Before I deal with the subject, I want to say a word about the Hon. Prime Minister and his references to my good friend the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Bandaranaike). My friend the Prime Minister is not here. I hope that he has not had a recurrence of his affliction. Today while he was on the first part of his speech, he reminded me of the father; it was the same technique, the same type of personal attack on the Leader of the Opposition. I remember the last motion of No Confidence that we debated. I think it was moved just before the dissolution of Parliament, and it was one of the last debates which was attended by my good friend, the late Rt. Hon. D.S. Senanayake. He spoke in that debate and it was a tirade against my good friend the Leader of the Opposition.
The same technique has been adopted today by the son, my good friend the Prime Minister. It has nothing to do with the motion before us; it is not an answer to the case we have made. What did he say? That my good friend the Leader of the Opposition for the last eighteen and a half years or so, has apparently, not raised his voice sufficiently in protest against the policy followed since the days of the old Legislative Council and the State Council, and in the early years of Parliament. That is not an answer to the case we are making. It is a pity that my good friend the Leader of the Opposition had no opportunity of answering that charge himself. Procedure does not permit him to do so at this stage, But this much must be said. He fought as hard as he could, as long as he could. It is to his credit that at long last he himself realized that the best thing he could do was to walk out of that clique that has been dominating the political life of this country.
The Hon. Mr. Ponnambalam: Lust for power.
Dr .Perera: I am coming to that in a moment.
The second point was about his non-participation in the Hartal. Apparently there was an argument. The Hon. Prime Minister might have properly informed himself about the situation. In point of fact, the whole question of the Hartal was discussed by all sections of the Opposition together, as the only means of protest we had against a Government that refused to hearken to the cry of the people. The Hon Leader of the Opposition had a point or view. He said I think, this is a little too premature. That was his position, frankly stated in front of Members of the Opposition. He said “I want more time; I want at least to prepare, to go round the country and inform the people; it must be properly organized”, that is the point of view he took.
In our case the position was different because we had organized Trade Unions. He has no unions, his work is mainly in the rural areas, and it would take more time in his case. Therefore he wanted more time. We said “Very well; we have no other alternative”, and we had to go ahead in our various organizations. And we went ahead with the Hartal. That was the real explanation. The Hon. Prime Minister may have read out a letter that the Hon. Leader of the Opposition issued to the press, wherein he explained the position. He frankly and honestly stated that he was in full sympathy with the Hartal, with the aims and objects of the Hartal.
Mr. K.Herat (Nikaweratiya): He may have denied that.
Dr. Perera : That is your habit. You crossed over from this side to that side.
Mr. J.C.T. Kotalawala: And got something!
Dr. Perera: It is not fair to the Hon. Leader of the Opposition to say that, he in his case, decided against this Hartal because he thought it was going to be violent, it was against established Government. That is not correct.
I want to go back to the main issue. If this debate has served no other purpose, it has at least provided us with a remarkable speech from the Hon. Prime Minister. For that alone this debate has been worthwhile. I have never known him in a more chastened mood. He ended by referring to the Buddha Jayanthiya, the celebration that was to take place after 2,500 years. Therefore, he said, all of us must pull together, co-operate and work towards the one common ideal of looking after the interests of the people He asked, “Is it not in the interests of the Members of the Opposition as well that we should join hands and work together, pull together to give the people the maximum benefit?”
I was wondering whether he was appealing really to his own colleagues on that side, some of his own people behind him.
Mr. Suntharalingam:On the sides.
Dr. Perera:Who do not always pull together.
The Hon. Major Montague Jayawickreme: Do not be mistaken:
Dr. Perera :My Hon. friend can fool lots of people but let him not try to fool me. I know what is happening and what has been happening.
Mr. Herat: Wishful thinking!
Dr. Perera:No. I can give you the facts. As soon as the Prime Minister was known to be ill, the “Daily News” was, on a particular day not very long ago, ready with an editorial and the speeches of a certain Minister who was going to be Prime Minister. Everything was ready, photographs of his childhood days.
Mr. Suntharalingam: Some childhood
Dr. Perera: Once again, a colleague of theirs in the Cabinet is slowly but steadily, aided by interested parties, trying to undermine their unity. I warn the Minister concerned once again.
Mr. Suntharalingam: Be careful!
Dr. Perera: He has to be aware to safeguard his own interests. Let him not be caught napping.
Mr. D.P.R.Gunawardena: They are poison gas all over the place
Dr. Perera: So much for the Buddha Jayanthiya.
I come back to the actual vote of No Confidence. A strange theory of democracy was pronounced by my good friend the Member for Chilaw, “What right have you to move a vote of No Confidence? You have no right”. An eminent Q.C. also said “You have no right.” What is their concept of democracy? They say that according to parliamentary democracy we have no right to question the Government. What is the purpose of a vote of No Confidence? Is it merely to defeat the Government?. How often have votes of No Confidence ended in the defeat of the Government? A vote of No Confidence has, in point of fact, a much more important objective. It is a means of educating the electors, the voters.
They have the full case placed before them. There is a fundamental purpose of a vote of No Confidence. And yet these great democrats say, “You have no right to move a Vote of No Confidence. Wonderful democracy! And this coming from a Parliamentary democrat, the son of a worthy father who was one of the greatest democrats in this country sounds strange.
Mr. Keuneman:What a father, what a son!
Dr. Perera:That is by the way. Let me come back to the Motion.
The motion consists of three parts; firstly, it deals with the period prior to August 12. Harking back to the past policy of the Government, the motion states that the policy adopted in Government budgeting has disclosed mismanagement, tolerance of corruption, financial ineptitude. All these have led up to the removal of the subsidy.
The second part of the motion deals with the removal of the subsidy. Our good friend the Q.C. from Colombo North pooh-poohed the idea of these various democratic organizations like elected local bodies expressing their views on this matter. He compared them to bullock-cart drivers and motor car drivers. That is his idea of democracy.
Mr. Ian de Zoysa. (First M.P., Ambalangoda-Balapitiya) He drew an analogy.
Dr. Perera: It was not an analogy. He stated that in so many words. As a matter of fact, I noticed that even the Hon. Prime Minister was thoroughly ashamed of the Hon Member’s remarks. The Hon Members dropped the analogy, and it became a direct attack on these bodies.
The second part of the Motion points out that we tried every democratic method available to us, by way of meetings and other steps, as pointed out by the Hon First Member for Colombo Central, to protest through various organizations, elected bodies, against the withdrawal of the subsidy. We had no reply, no response from the Government. We have demanded that the Government holds another General Election and let the people judge. What did the Hon Minister of Finance say? Even the eminent Q.C. said “We were elected for five years. We have to go on”.
All these are strange doctrines. Is this the kind of democracy we now have? Hon Members know that even the British Government dissolved Parliament at times to go before the country and place their case before it. Did not even the Labour Government, when it completely changed its complexion in 1931, dissolve Parliament and go before the country so that it would endorse their position? In 1931 the McDonald Government was fully entitled to go on, it could have gone for another four years.
The Hon. Mr.Ponnambalam: It was to bring in Baldwin.
Dr. Perera: According to the theories propounded it does not matter what you do. People have no right to question you! They say “We have the right to decide what we want”. The Hon. Minister of Finance stood up there and said ” We have been chosen for five years. You have no right to make this request for the next five years. You have no right to express protest in this House. The people must take our decision.”
That is the kind of democracy against which we have agitated and all Leftists have agitated. This is the worst type of dictatorship today. This is a bourgeoisie dictatorship, if you want to know it. What is this democracy? You elect a person. He comes in here by hook or by crook, and for five years the electors have no right to express their point of view whatever damnable thing this particular member may do, however blatantly he may betray the promises given to the electorate. He is entitled to continue, whatever happens. Is this the kind of democracy which they are advocating? What is democracy?
My good friend the Hon Second Member for Ambalangoda-Balapitiya (Mr. P.H.W. de Silva) answered that question. It means a continuing responsibility of those who govern to the governed. You must be responsive to the needs of the people. The people are entitled to say that they do not approve of a certain policy and at a certain stage when it becomes unbearable they are entitled to say ” We protest against your actions. We want a general election.”
That is the right of democracy. What does that UNESCO right to rebel provide? Can anybody seriously maintain that this is influenced by the Kremlin? On page 271 of the report of an International Committee you find this right: “In the event that Government of his nation operates contrary to the fundamental principles of justice and the basic human rights in such fashion that no redress is permitted by peaceful means, man has the right to set up a Government more nearly in conformity with justice and humanity”.
That is the right to rebellion or revolution. Then have you forgotten the definition of Professor Laski – “What is liberty but the right to rebel, the right to revolt?” Have you forgotten that liberty and democracy go hand in hand? These are people who are now talking about the people of the country having no right to have a Hartal. I almost thought that the Hon. Minister of Industries and Fisheries was Mahatma Gandhi incarnate.
Hon Mr. Keuneman:Devil incarnate.
Dr .Perera:He was expounding this theory of the Hartal, this peaceful demonstration. The “Hartal” I understand was of Russian origin. It came from Leo Tolstoy. He was the first man who originated the concept. It is true it was put into practice in a practical way and demonstrated with success by Gandhi himself.
The Hon. Mr. Ponnambalam:The concept.
Dr. Perera: Quite right; but the manner in which the Minister of Industries and Fisheries went about the attack made us think it had nothing to do with Russia, that Russia was anathema to him.
The Hon. Mr. Ponnambalam: No, I spoke of nonviolence.
Dr. Perera:I shall come to the Minister in a moment. Let him not worry. This is only a passing reference. That was the second part of the motion to which I referred.
The third part refers to matters immediately before Aug. 12, even of the 12th and after August 12. Those are the three parts on which we are arraigning the Government. Nobody has seriously attempted to answer these charges. The Minister of Finance who spoke has not answered them at all. He merely tabulated a good deal of statistics. That is not an answer. If you start from zero and go up to 10 that is of course an advance to ten; but that is not the criterion to be adopted in determining whether a country has been properly served. It is much more important to find out whether in keeping with other progressive countries you have come up to their level.
When you put down your infant mortality rate to something like 178 did you think that was a credit to a civilized country? That you were able to bring it down to 178 is still not a credit to a civilized country. That is not an important criterion. The criterion is whether this Government has fulfilled the expectations of the people of this country. That surely is the deciding criterion in this matter.
That is not the answer to the case we are making. Once again the Prime Minister took up the position. “What can we do? We have no alternative. If we provided Rs.160 million as a subsidy then we would have been on the verge of bankruptcy, if not actually bankrupt. If we provided the subsidy what would have happened? We would have to cut down other votes, while yet the Opposition in this House is clamouring for more money for village wells, for village roads, for slum clearance, for maternity welfare, for milk feeding centres and so on”. He asked how they could have all that if they had provided Rs.160 million to continue the subsidy.
I cannot make again the speech I made in the course of the Second Reading Debate on the Appropriation Bill, but on that occasion I pointed out to Hon. Members how it was possible to find that money. In point of fact, taking the Minister’s own figures in column 806 of Hansard, Volume 10, if you leave out extraordinary expenditure, except for the year 1951-52, you will find that every year, after paying a subsidy, we have had a balance to the good, a surplus on the normal expenditure. It is only when you come to the Loan Fund Expenditure that you have an overall deficit, and that was only in respect of expenditure financed from National Development Reserve – food subsidy, advance to stores and material advance accounts, other advances and miscellaneous items. All that brought for you, your net cash operating surplus or deficit.
It was possible for this Government, according to the attitude adopted by the Prime Minister, to see that these loan funds were spread out and used purely as capital expenditure. That could have been done without seriously impinging on your normal day-to-day expenditure from normal revenue.As regards the Rs.160 million there were other ways, as had been pointed out, of meeting that expenditure. It is not necessary to go over that ground again.
There were two ways: you could either cut down expenditure or increase revenue. Surely both ways could have been used for the purpose? Does this Government, for instance, seriously maintain that it was necessary to spend Rs.30 million on the armed forces, to spend Rs.3 million on the shifting of the Supreme Court, to spend Rs.2 million on Police garages, and to spend money for an independence memorial and a new secretariat at this stage? Those are all dead weight expenses and could well have been held over until this particular crisis was over, instead of asking the poor people to tighten their belts. That was one way of looking at the problem. The other was to increase revenue by other means.
(To be continued)
In one of India’s coldest and most remote regions, a group of women have taken on an unlikely role: protecting one of Asia’s most elusive predators, the snow leopard.
Snow leopards are found in just 12 countries across Central and South Asia. India is home to one of the world’s largest populations, with a nationwide survey in 2023 – the first comprehensive count ever carried out in the country – estimating more than 700 animals, .
One of the places they roam is around Kibber village in Himachal Pradesh state’s Spiti Valley, a stark, high-altitude cold desert along the Himalayan belt. Here, snow leopards are often called the “ghosts of the mountains”, slipping silently across rocky slopes and rarely revealing themselves.
For generations, the animals were seen largely as a threat, for attacking livestock. But attitudes in Kibber and neighbouring villages are beginning to shift, as people increasingly recognise the snow leopard’s role as a top predator in the food chain and its importance in maintaining the region’s fragile mountain ecosystem.
Nearly a dozen local women are now working alongside the Himachal Pradesh forest department and conservationists to track and protect the species, playing a growing role in conservation efforts.
Locally, the snow leopard is known as Shen and the women call their group “Shenmo”. Trained to install and monitor camera traps, they handle devices fitted with unique IDs and memory cards that automatically photograph snow leopards as they pass.
“Earlier, men used to go and install the cameras and we kept wondering why couldn’t we do it too,” says Lobzang Yangchen, a local coordinator working with a small group supported by the non-profit Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF) in collaboration with the forest department.
Yangchen was among the women who helped collect data for Himachal Pradesh’s snow leopard survey in 2024, which found that the state was home to 83 snow leopards – up from 51 in 2021.
The survey documented snow leopards and 43 other species using camera traps spread across an area of nearly 26,000sq km (10,000sq miles). Individual leopards were identified by the unique rosette patterns on their fur, a standard technique used for spotted big cats. The findings are now feeding into wider conservation and habitat-management plans.
“Their contribution was critical to identifying individual animals,” says Goldy Chhabra, deputy conservator of forests with the Spiti Wildlife Division.
Collecting the data is demanding work. Most of it takes place in winter, when heavy snowfall pushes snow leopards and their prey to lower altitudes, making their routes easier to track.
On survey days, the women wake up early, finish household chores and gather at a base camp before travelling by vehicle as far as the terrain allows. From there, they trek several kilometres to reach camera sites, often at altitudes above 14,000ft (4,300m), where the thin air makes even simple movement exhausting.
The BBC accompanied the group on one such trek in December. After hours of walking in biting cold, the women suddenly stopped on a narrow trail.
Yangchen points to pugmarks in the dust: “This shows the snow leopard has been here recently. These pugmarks are fresh.”
Along with pugmarks, the team looks for other signs, including scrapes and scent‑marking spots, before carefully fixing a camera to a rock along the trail.
One woman then carries out a “walk test”, crawling along the path to check whether the camera’s height and angle will capture a clear image.
The group then moves on to older sites, retrieving memory cards and replacing batteries installed weeks earlier.
By mid-afternoon, they return to camp to log and analyse the images using specialised software – tools many had never encountered before.
“I studied only until grade five,” says Chhering Lanzom. “At first, I was scared to use the computer. But slowly, we learned how to use the keyboard and mouse.”
The women joined the camera-trapping programme in 2023. Initially, conservation was not their motivation. But winters in the Spiti Valley are long and quiet, with little agricultural work to fall back on.
“At first, this work on snow leopards didn’t interest us,” Lobzang says. “We joined because we were curious and we could earn a small income.”
The women earn between 500 ($5.46; £4) and 700 rupees a day.
But beyond the money, the work has helped transform how the community views the animal.
“Earlier, we thought the snow leopard was our enemy,” says Dolma Zangmo, a local resident. “Now we think their conservation is important.”
Alongside survey work, the women help villagers access government insurance schemes for their livestock and promote the use of predator‑proof corrals – stone or mesh enclosures that protect animals at night.
Their efforts come at a time of growing recognition for the region. Spiti Valley has recently been included in the Cold Desert Biosphere Reserve, a Unesco-recognised network aimed at conserving fragile ecosystems while supporting local livelihoods.
As climate change reshapes the fragile trans-Himalayan landscape, conservationists say such community participation will be crucial to safeguarding species like the snow leopard.
“Once communities are involved, conservation becomes more sustainable,” says Deepshikha Sharma, programme manager with NCF’s High Altitudes initiative.
“These women are not just assisting, they are becoming practitioners of wildlife conservation and monitoring,” she adds.
As for the women, their work makes them feel closer to their home, the village and the mountains that raised them, they say.
“We were born here, this is all we know,” Lobzang says. “Sometimes we feel afraid because these snow leopards are after all predatory animals, but this is where we belong.”
[BBC]
If elephants are truly to be given “freedom” in Udawalawe, the solution is not simply to open gates or redraw park boundaries. The map itself tells the real story — a story of shrinking habitats, broken corridors, and more than a decade of silent but relentless ecological destruction.
“Look at Udawalawe today and compare it with satellite maps from ten years ago,” says Sameera Weerathunga, one of Sri Lanka’s most consistent and vocal elephant conservation activists. “You don’t need complicated science. You can literally see what we have done to them.”
What we commonly describe as the human–elephant conflict (HEC) is, in reality, a land-use conflict driven by development policies that ignore ecological realities. Elephants are not invading villages; villages, farms, highways and megaprojects have steadily invaded elephant landscapes.
Udawalawe: From Landscape to Island
Udawalawe National Park was once part of a vast ecological network connecting the southern dry zone to the central highlands and eastern forests. Elephants moved freely between Udawalawe, Lunugamvehera, Bundala, Gal Oya and even parts of the Walawe river basin, following seasonal water and food availability.
Today, Udawalawe appears on the map as a shrinking green island surrounded by human settlements, monoculture plantations, reservoirs, electric fences and asphalt.
“For elephants, Udawalawe is like a prison surrounded by invisible walls,” Sameera explains. “We expect animals that evolved to roam hundreds of square nationakilometres to survive inside a box created by humans.”
Elephants are ecosystem engineers. They shape forests by dispersing seeds, opening pathways, and regulating vegetation. Their survival depends on movement — not containment. But in Udawalawa, movement is precisely what has been taken away.
Over the past decade, ancient elephant corridors have been blocked or erased by:
Irrigation and agricultural expansion
Tourism resorts and safari infrastructure
New roads, highways and power lines
Human settlements inside former forest reserves
Sameera
“The destruction didn’t happen overnight,” Sameera says. “It happened project by project, fence by fence, without anyone looking at the cumulative impact.”
The Illusion of Protection
Sri Lanka prides itself on its protected area network. Yet most national parks function as ecological islands rather than connected systems.
“We think declaring land as a ‘national park’ is enough,” Sameera argues. “But protection without connectivity is just slow extinction.”
Udawalawe currently holds far more elephants than it can sustainably support. The result is habitat degradation inside the park, increased competition for resources, and escalating conflict along the boundaries.
“When elephants cannot move naturally, they turn to crops, tanks and villages,” Sameera says. “And then we blame the elephant for being a problem.”
The Other Side of the Map: Wanni and Hambantota
Sameera often points to the irony visible on the very same map. While elephants are squeezed into overcrowded parks in the south, large landscapes remain in the Wanni, parts of Hambantota and the eastern dry zone where elephant density is naturally lower and ecological space still exists.
“We keep talking about Udawalawe as if it’s the only place elephants exist,” he says. “But the real question is why we are not restoring and reconnecting landscapes elsewhere.”
The Hambantota MER (Managed Elephant Reserve), for instance, was originally designed as a landscape-level solution. The idea was not to trap elephants inside fences, but to manage land use so that people and elephants could coexist through zoning, seasonal access, and corridor protection.
“But what happened?” Sameera asks. “Instead of managing land, we managed elephants. We translocated them, fenced them, chased them, tranquilised them. And the conflict only got worse.”
The Failure of Translocation
For decades, Sri Lanka relied heavily on elephant translocation as a conflict management tool. Hundreds of elephants were captured from conflict zones and released into national parks like Udawalawa, Yala and Wilpattu.
Elephant deaths
The logic was simple: remove the elephant, remove the problem.
The reality was tragic.
“Most translocated elephants try to return home,” Sameera explains. “They walk hundreds of kilometres, crossing highways, railway lines and villages. Many die from exhaustion, accidents or gunshots. Others become even more aggressive.”
Scientific studies now confirm what conservationists warned from the beginning: translocation increases stress, mortality, and conflict. Displaced elephants often lose social structures, familiar landscapes, and access to traditional water sources.
“You cannot solve a spatial problem with a transport solution,” Sameera says bluntly.
In many cases, the same elephant is captured and moved multiple times — a process that only deepens trauma and behavioural change.
Freedom Is Not About Removing Fences
The popular slogan “give elephants freedom” has become emotionally powerful but scientifically misleading. Elephants do not need symbolic freedom; they need functional landscapes.
Real solutions lie in:
Restoring elephant corridors
Preventing development in key migratory routes
Creating buffer zones with elephant-friendly crops
Community-based land-use planning
Landscape-level conservation instead of park-based thinking
“We must stop treating national parks like wildlife prisons and villages like war zones,” Sameera insists. “The real battlefield is land policy.”
Electric fences, for instance, are often promoted as a solution. But fences merely shift conflict from one village to another.
“A fence does not create peace,” Sameera says. “It just moves the problem down the line.”
A Crisis Created by Humans
Sri Lanka loses more than 400 elephants and nearly 100 humans every year due to HEC — one of the highest rates globally.
Yet Sameera refuses to call it a wildlife problem.
“This is a human-created crisis,” he says. “Elephants are only responding to what we’ve done to their world.”
From expressways cutting through forests to solar farms replacing scrublands, development continues without ecological memory or long-term planning.
“We plan five-year political cycles,” Sameera notes. “Elephants plan in centuries.”
The tragedy is not just ecological. It is moral.
“We are destroying a species that is central to our culture, religion, tourism and identity,” Sameera says. “And then we act surprised when they fight back.”
The Question We Avoid Asking
If Udawalawe is overcrowded, if Yala is saturated, if Wilpattu is bursting — then the real question is not where to put elephants.
The real question is: Where have we left space for wildness in Sri Lanka?
Sameera believes the future lies not in more fences or more parks, but in reimagining land itself.
“Conservation cannot survive as an island inside a development ocean,” he says. “Either we redesign Sri Lanka to include elephants, or one day we’ll only see them in logos, statues and children’s books.”
And the map will show nothing but empty green patches — places where giants once walked, and humans chose. roads instead.
By Ifham Nizam
SAARC or the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation has been declared ‘dead’ by some sections in South Asia and the idea seems to be catching on. Over the years the evidence seems to have been building that this is so, but a matter that requires thorough probing is whether the media in South Asia, given the vital part it could play in fostering regional amity, has had a role too in bringing about SAARC’s apparent demise.
That South Asian governments have had a hand in the ‘SAARC debacle’ is plain to see. For example, it is beyond doubt that the India-Pakistan rivalry has invariably got in the way, particularly over the past 15 years or thereabouts, of the Indian and Pakistani governments sitting at the negotiating table and in a spirit of reconciliation resolving the vexatious issues growing out of the SAARC exercise. The inaction had a paralyzing effect on the organization.
Unfortunately the rest of South Asian governments too have not seen it to be in the collective interest of the region to explore ways of jump-starting the SAARC process and sustaining it. That is, a lack of statesmanship on the part of the SAARC Eight is clearly in evidence. Narrow national interests have been allowed to hijack and derail the cooperative process that ought to be at the heart of the SAARC initiative.
However, a dimension that has hitherto gone comparatively unaddressed is the largely negative role sections of the media in the SAARC region could play in debilitating regional cooperation and amity. We had some thought-provoking ‘takes’ on this question recently from Roman Gautam, the editor of ‘Himal Southasian’.
Gautam was delivering the third of talks on February 2nd in the RCSS Strategic Dialogue Series under the aegis of the Regional Centre for Strategic Studies, Colombo, at the latter’s conference hall. The forum was ably presided over by RCSS Executive Director and Ambassador (Retd.) Ravinatha Aryasinha who, among other things, ensured lively participation on the part of the attendees at the Q&A which followed the main presentation. The talk was titled, ‘Where does the media stand in connecting (or dividing) Southasia?’.
Gautam singled out those sections of the Indian media that are tamely subservient to Indian governments, including those that are professedly independent, for the glaring lack of, among other things, regionalism or collective amity within South Asia. These sections of the media, it was pointed out, pander easily to the narratives framed by the Indian centre on developments in the region and fall easy prey, as it were, to the nationalist forces that are supportive of the latter. Consequently, divisive forces within the region receive a boost which is hugely detrimental to regional cooperation.
Two cases in point, Gautam pointed out, were the recent political upheavals in Nepal and Bangladesh. In each of these cases stray opinions favorable to India voiced by a few participants in the relevant protests were clung on to by sections of the Indian media covering these trouble spots. In the case of Nepal, to consider one example, a young protester’s single comment to the effect that Nepal too needed a firm leader like Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was seized upon by the Indian media and fed to audiences at home in a sensational, exaggerated fashion. No effort was made by the Indian media to canvass more opinions on this matter or to extensively research the issue.
In the case of Bangladesh, widely held rumours that the Hindus in the country were being hunted and killed, pogrom fashion, and that the crisis was all about this was propagated by the relevant sections of the Indian media. This was a clear pandering to religious extremist sentiment in India. Once again, essentially hearsay stories were given prominence with hardly any effort at understanding what the crisis was really all about. There is no doubt that anti-Muslim sentiment in India would have been further fueled.
Gautam was of the view that, in the main, it is fear of victimization of the relevant sections of the media by the Indian centre and anxiety over financial reprisals and like punitive measures by the latter that prompted the media to frame their narratives in these terms. It is important to keep in mind these ‘structures’ within which the Indian media works, we were told. The issue in other words, is a question of the media completely subjugating themselves to the ruling powers.
Basically, the need for financial survival on the part of the Indian media, it was pointed out, prompted it to subscribe to the prejudices and partialities of the Indian centre. A failure to abide by the official line could spell financial ruin for the media.
A principal question that occurred to this columnist was whether the ‘Indian media’ referred to by Gautam referred to the totality of the Indian media or whether he had in mind some divisive, chauvinistic and narrow-based elements within it. If the latter is the case it would not be fair to generalize one’s comments to cover the entirety of the Indian media. Nevertheless, it is a matter for further research.
However, an overall point made by the speaker that as a result of the above referred to negative media practices South Asian regionalism has suffered badly needs to be taken. Certainly, as matters stand currently, there is a very real information gap about South Asian realities among South Asian publics and harmful media practices account considerably for such ignorance which gets in the way of South Asian cooperation and amity.
Moreover, divisive, chauvinistic media are widespread and active in South Asia. Sri Lanka has a fair share of this species of media and the latter are not doing the country any good, leave alone the region. All in all, the democratic spirit has gone well into decline all over the region.
The above is a huge problem that needs to be managed reflectively by democratic rulers and their allied publics in South Asia and the region’s more enlightened media could play a constructive role in taking up this challenge. The latter need to take the initiative to come together and deliberate on the questions at hand. To succeed in such efforts they do not need the backing of governments. What is of paramount importance is the vision and grit to go the extra mile.
Colorado funeral home director sentenced to 40 years for corpse abuse
Scotland opt to field against West Indies
Faheem Ashraf drags unconvincing Pakistan over the line after big scare
Trump threatens tariffs for countries trading with Iran
Advisory for Severe Lightning for the Western and Sabaragamuwa provinces and Galle and Matara districts
Decisions and judgments of the Supreme Court are a reflection of justice in the country – PM
‘Dates have the highest sugar content to fight Coronavirus’
Sunday Island 27 December – Headlines
#SundayIsland 17th December – Headlines
Sunday Island – 28th March
Sunday Island Headlines – 21 March
Sunday Island – 21st February – Headlines
-
Business4 days agoSLIM-Kantar People’s Awards 2026 to recognise Sri Lanka’s most trusted brands and personalities
-
Business6 days agoAltair issues over 100+ title deeds post ownership change
-
Business6 days agoSri Lanka opens first country pavilion at London exhibition
-
Business5 days agoAll set for Global Synergy Awards 2026 at Waters Edge
-
Business4 days agoAPI-first card issuing and processing platform for Pan Asia Bank
-
Business6 days agoESOFT UNI Kandy leads the charge in promoting rugby among private universities
-
Editorial2 days agoAll’s not well that ends well?
-
Features2 days agoPhew! The heat …