Features
US Supreme Court Indian Counterpart British Justice
by Kumar David
In choosing three jurisdictions I have chewed off a lot but my stern Editor will use his pruning blade as needed. My initial target was the Supreme Court of the Uniited States (SCOTUS) since the next period laps Trump’s re-election bid. The reactionary stand SCOTUS has taken by reversing women’s reproductive rights 50-years after Roe vs. Wade and the impending clashes with women, young people and progressives is dynamite.
However India is our big neighbour about whose courts my readers may not be up to date so I begin with a lengthy introduction on the Indian courts. In a Washington Post opinion piece dated 24 March 2020 Rana Ayyub asserted that “The destruction of India’s judicial independence is almost complete”. See https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/24/destruction-indias-judicial-independence-is-almost-complete/
Ayyub points out that the Indian SC crushed the bail petition of Anand Teltumbade, an advocate for the most disadvantaged communities and instructed him to surrender to the police. He was swept up in a broad crackdown of lawyers and activists accused of supporting Maoist militants (Naxalites) many of whom have been languishing in jail for decades. She says that Teltumbde’s work against the caste system and majoritarian politics made him a target of right-wing leaders, including Narendra Modi. Teltumbade has condemned Modi’s communal politics, compared him to Hitler and accused him of complicity in the anti-Muslim carnage of 2002 which left more than 1,000 people dead in Gujarat when he was chief minister.
I provide below quotes, edited for context, from Rana Ayyub’s Washington Post story.
BEGIN QUOTE:
“Teltumbde’s unfair treatment by our judiciary underscores the loss of independence by India’s institutions. The refusal by the Supreme Court to grant him bail came soon before a former chief justice, Ranjan Gogoi, joined Parliament after being nominated by Modi government. Gogoi delivered some of the most obnoxious rulings in recent times to enable the Modi administration’s majoritarian agenda. His appointment, just four months after his retirement (and after he was accused of sexual harassment), has raised big questions about justice in the era of hyper-nationalism that Modi has come to represent.
In November, Gogoi delivered a big victory to Modi when he ruled on Babri Masjid, an important mosque for Muslims demolished in 1992 by Hindu nationalists. Gogi’s judgment also cleared the Modi government of corruption in a defence deal involving the purchase of Rafale fighter jets. The government was accused of bypassing procedures and compromising national security in an arms deal to benefit an Indian billionaire. Gogoi has been rewarded with a high place in the Indian Parliament putting a spotlight on the unholy nexus between political power and the judiciary.
Recently, Justice Arun Mishra hailed the prime minister as a versatile genius, an internationally acclaimed visionary who thought globally and acted locally. The comment was widely criticized, including by the Supreme Court Bar Association. Mishra refused to grant relief to Teltumbde despite the flimsy evidence. The hall of shame of the Indian judiciary in recent times is sullied with brazen cases of human rights violations.
In February, when Delhi saw horrifying communal carnage that led to the loss of 53 lives, arson and hundreds injured, the Delhi High Court called out the state police for action against BJP ministers who made anti-Muslim hate speeches. The judge who delivered the order was transferred overnight!
The Supreme Court once called Modi a modern-day Nero looking the other way as innocent women and children were burnt in the 2002 in Gujarat. But those days are long gone. The appointment this former chief justice to the Parliament by the ruling government exacerbated the country’s governance and moral crisis. The Gogoi’s appointment strikes a blow at impartiality at the moment when India is heading down an authoritarian path”. END QUOTE
To complicate matters further the Canadian Government said on Sept 18 that it was actively pursuing allegations linking the Indian Government to the murder of a Sikh separatist leader (a Canadian national) in British Columbia. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told the House of Commons that involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a Canadian citizen was “an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty”. Hardeep Singh Nijjar was shot dead outside a Sikh temple on June 18 in Surrey, a Vancouver suburb with a large Sikh population. Nijjar supported a Sikh homeland in the form of an independent Khalistan and was designated by India as a “terrorist” in July 2020. Canadian security agencies have been actively pursuing “credible allegations” of a potential link between Indian agents and have expelled India’s top security officer. Trudeau said he had raised the matter with Modi on the side-lines of the G20 summit.
SCOTUS
(Supreme Court of the United States)
Oh dear the previous section on India was longer than I had planned, but I let it drag on because I reckoned readers may not be aware of this side of the story in our giant neighbour and may find it interesting.
Now to the Supreme Court of the US. Appointment is for life and if you get a bad-egg you are stuck with him, or her, till the bloke retires or the grim-reaper visits. The most ‘rightist’ judges on the bench at this time are Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. Thomas, a bad egg, and his wife are accused of accepting gifts from corporate lobbies and joy rides on their planes that if it had occurred in Lanka would have warranted impeachment. The Los Angeles Times quite openly declared on August 10, 2023 “Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ corruption is intolerable”.
They secretly accepted a long list of luxury trips from a cadre of conservative billionaires. The New York Times did say on February 26, 2016 “Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas secretly accepted a long list of luxury trips from a cadre of conservative billionaires”. The other reactionary judge on the court Samuel Alito is alleged to have accepted favours from corporate interests. Judges Alito and Thomas think they can accept lavish gifts without undermining the integrity of the Court. As an example look at:-https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-08-10/supreme-court-justice-clarence-thomas-corruption-gifts-propublica-ethics-congress
See also:-https://www.afj.org/article/justice-alito-cant-originalism-himself-out-of-corruption-charges/
The grading of judges from most liberal to most reactionary in the public mind is:
Sonia Sotomayor
Elena Kagan #
Ketanji Brown Jackson
John Roberts (Chief Justice)
Brett Kavanaugh #
Amy Coney Barrett #
Neil Gorsuch #
Clarence Thomas
Samuel Alito
# These four judges were nominated by Trump and he often refers to them as “my judges”.
The United Kingdom
Next a few words on the mother of all parliaments. George Jeffreys (1645-1689) known as the Hanging Judge was notorious for his cruelty and corruption. In “The Bloody Assize of 1685 he was sent to Somerset to try captured rebels after the Monmouth Rebellion. Estimates of the number he executed for treason varies between 160 and 1,380. It is arguable whether Jeffreys deserves his reputation as the “hanging judge” or whether King James II failed to use the royal prerogative of pardon.
The famous “Impeachment of Warren Hastings” (or to be precise the failure to impeach) is a complex issue of competing visions of empire. Hastings as Governor-General was tried in England 1788 for ‘high crimes and misdemeanours’ against the people of India. The prosecutor was the erudite political thinker Edmund Burke. The trial “was an act of imperial soul-searching” and though Hastings was acquitted it was a warning to imperial proconsuls that they could be called to account.
It was the first human rights trial of modern times but raised profound cultural issues. Hastings was curious and learned about Indian culture and famously declared: “I love India a little more than my own country”. He launched a cultural renaissance, was fluent in Bengali and Urdu and founded the Calcutta Asiatic Society under the chairmanship of the renowned Orientalist Sir William Jones who helped the flowering of Bengali culture.
A profound clash emerged between two visions of scholarship which resonates to this day; one led by Hastings, respectful of indigenous customs and traditions and labelled “Orientalist” by the other. The other a Westernised brand of liberal interventionism. I don’t know how many people know about this clash.
Hastings “rediscovered” the subcontinent’s classical Hindu and Buddhist past. His patronage promoted the revival of Sanskrit, the ancient classical language, and rescued it from the narrow confines of a corrupt and oppressive Brahmin priesthood. Under the Governor-General’s patronage, the Asiatic Society pioneered an ambitious programme to translate Hindu religious classics like the Bhagavad Gita from Sanskrit into English and the local vernaculars. Hastings’s introduction to the first ever English translation of the Gita said passages of it were “elevated to a sublimity which our habits of judgement find it difficult to pursue.”
Warren Hastings was the most popular of all British Governor-Generals among his Indian subjects. But he alone of all colonial administrators in India was put on trial for crimes against humanity, in a seven-year-long impeachment in the British Parliament, led by the great Whig orator and philosopher, Edmund Burke. Given his respect for Indian sensibilities, it’s ironical that the charges against him focussed on his alleged persecution of Indian subjects.
Edmund Burke, in his historic, four-day-long opening speech – an unrivalled model of parliamentary invective – accused Hastings of having “gorged his ravenous maw…feeding on the indigent, the dying and ruined”, like “the ravenous vulture…devouring the carcasses of the dead.” “I impeach him in the name of the English nation, whose ancient honour he has sullied,” Burke thundered. “I impeach him in the name of the people of India, whose rights he has trodden under foot, and whose country he has turned into a desert.” But Burke was wrong.
The great Whig historian and imperial policy-maker, Thomas Macaulay, though critical of Hastings’s alleged abuses of power, conceded that “he made himself beloved by both the subject many and by the dominant few” and “enjoyed among the natives a popularity…such as no other governor has been able to attain.” During his own years in Calcutta half a century later, Macaulay could still hear “nurses sing children to sleep with a jingling ballad about the fleet horses and richly caparisoned elephants of Sahib Warren Hosein”.
Hastings left British administration in India on a sounder footing than ever before. The corrupt excesses of the Company’s servants had been significantly curbed, French and other military threats had been resoundingly beaten off, and the “Company Sahib” was now the dominant power in the subcontinent.
Hastings survived in semi-retirement till the grand old age of 85. In 1813, both Houses of Parliament rose spontaneously to give him a standing ovation when he gave evidence on new legislation about India. In a letter which would be his last political testament he warned his successor, the Marquess of Hastings (no relation), that Indians had been misrepresented “as sunk in the grossest brutality and defiled with every abomination”, thereby justifying British attempts “to reform them, nay to ‘coerce’ them into goodness”. Instead, he exhorted his namesake, “it will be better to leave them as they are…” He concluded with a plea for racial equality, remarkable for its time:
Hastings’s sympathetic, “Orientalist” approach to India lost out to a Whiggish, Westernising sense of imperial mission, summed up by Burke’s dictum that “it was the duty of a British Governor to enforce British laws, to correct the opinions and practices of the people, not to conform his opinion to their practice”. Half a century later, British administrators led by Macaulay put this precept into practice with anglicising reforms designed to create a new class of “Brown Sahibs”. Warren Hastings would not have approved.
Despite its failure, the Hastings impeachment was an act of imperial soul-searching unparalleled in history. For seven long years, British MPs and peers examined and debated every minute detail almost every document that had crossed the desk of their Indian Governor-General. Many were inspired by hostility to the East India Company, whose tentacles were corrupting British politics. But there was also very genuine concern for the human rights of the Company’s Indian subjects and how their treatment reflected on British justice. Hastings was eventually acquitted and his impeachment trial was a warning to all future imperial proconsuls that they could be called to account by Parliament.
Impeachment in the UK today
: Whilst historically judges were removed by impeachment (and constitutionally still may be), the 1701 Act of Settlement provided that a judge of the High Court or the Court of Appeal may be removed by both Houses of Parliament petitioning the Sovereign. This is the procedure today and was described in the first edition of Erskine May. Hence the impeachment procedure is relatively simple and the buck is passed to the Sovereign. (There are in fact quite a few to-and-fro steps between the Commons and the Lords but too boring to detail here). My point is that a US style impeachment trial is largely avoided.
Sri Lanka
It would be sensible to assume that the Executive Presidency will sooner rather than later be abolished in Lanka. An expert who promised a few months ago to write a short proposal for a new constitution to place before the likely governments to be elected in a year or two (the JVP-NPP option or some UNP-Ranil-Sajith option) has backed out and gone silent. However a new constitution is a necessary and it is a great pity that proposals to replace JR’s vile contraption have not been published. To her credit Chandrika did make a genuine attempt in 2000 which was scuttled by RW’s short-sighted greed and the hostility of reactionary sections of the clergy. Lanka however cannot duck the issue forever.
Features
Education, democracy and unravelling liberal order
by Ahilan Kadirgamar
Sri Lanka is now at the crossroads with a new regime in formation that has to choose from different social and economic pathways for the country. In the United States, Trump is back with a fascist tide that is likely to sweep the world. In this context, what will become of the long journey of free education in Sri Lanka?
The trend in Sri Lanka after the open economy reforms of the late 1970s has been defunding free education, leading to the slow implosion of the education system. In fact, particularly over the last decade, there has been an insidious project of engineering the failure of state education, in order to create the environment for commercialising education. Privatisation, including fee-levying institutions, are now making education a cash earner – even as students become indebted – and a privilege of the wealthy. In this column, I sketch the ideological underpinnings of education that have to be debated and struggled for, as education, like other social pillars, are confronted with diverging paths ahead.
Kannangara and Dewey
When it comes to free education in Sri Lanka, we often go back to Kannangara’s Free Education Bill of 1944. Indeed, Kannangara claimed a new democracy like Sri Lanka needed universal free education. There were, however, great gaps in terms of those who continued to be excluded from free education after independence, particularly oppressed caste communities, the rural and urban subaltern classes, and the Hill Country Tamils in the plantations.
Few decades back, when I began thinking about the legacy of free education in Sri Lanka, I also read with much enthusiasm, the American pragmatist philosopher John Dewey’s classic work ‘Democracy and Education’. Dewey put forward an educational philosophy about the importance of critical learning and engagement for a democracy. Such advancements in educational thinking and policies were the backdrop for public free education with the emergence social welfare states in the post-Second World War era, including in the Third World after decolonisation. However, with the neoliberal turn following the long economic downturn in the 1970s, social welfare was rolled back with liberal democratic states abandoning education to the whims of the market.
Now, what happens when the liberal order itself comes under attack as with the re-emergence of Trump? Will it be more of market-oriented education or illiberal education – characterised by attacks, for example, on secularism and progressive values of gender equality – with the rise of conservative forces? Indeed, the story in the United States, in recent times, has been the merging of the two backed, by the Christian Right.
In this context, where is education in Sri Lanka headed? Will the NPP Government be able to redirect education towards universal free education from the commercialised educational thrust we have seen over the last few years? Much will depend on how the World Bank and the elite in Colombo engage with the Government and the resistance put forward by the people.
6% of GDP demand
The NPP claims it will slowly address the demand for 6% of GDP in state expenditure for education. Given the economic constraints and the drastic cuts to spending with the IMF programme, substantively increasing the allocation would require considerable political will on the part of the government, including walking away from the IMF’s austerity conditionalities.
Following the major FUTA struggle with its demand for 6% of GDP 12 years ago, in 2012, some of us took the issue of defunding general education seriously, and did some research on the state of rural schools in the Jaffna District. We found that even where there were adequate facilities and teachers, students did not perform well and many dropped out of school due to poor social and economic conditions. I published some of the findings of this research in a chapter titled, “From the Margins of Jaffna: A Political Economy of the Crisis in Education” (Crisis in Education, Dialogue, Vol. XXXIX 2012). I critiqued the World Bank claim that educational attainment will lead to higher earnings by analysing the opposite causal dynamics, where, in reality, social and economic exclusion undermines educational advancement.
All this is important today, as Sri Lanka goes through a long economic crisis. The social and economic impact in the country today is similar to the great disruption of social life during the decades of war in Jaffna where education deteriorated with intergenerational impact. We know that children are skipping meals, with increasing levels of absenteeism, and also dropping out of schools and universities to find cheap work for survival. While state investment in education is absolutely necessary at the current moment, economic rejuvenation and social protection programmes are also necessary to ensure meaningful education for the children of working people. In other words, the ongoing austerity measures pushed by the IMF, have a double impact on education, both defunding state education and disabling communities’ ability to access and engage in education. I believe, particularly amidst the economic crisis, there is need to think about the social determinants of education, along the lines of progressive analysis in health with their emphasis on the social determinants of health.
Emancipatory initiative
As Sri Lanka emerges out of presidential and parliamentary elections, the next six months are going to be crucial for education in Sri Lanka. While Dewey and Kannangara saw education as critical for democracy, I emphasise that the educational system is determined by broader political, social and economic changes. A polarised world with unrestrained extraction of resources and tremendous exploitation in the Global South will drastically affect the educational possibilities of the working people. In this context, what can a left of centre government, coming to power with support of a non-elite electorate, do to address the maligned state of free education?
I argue that demanding larger allocations for education alone will not be enough. We need to struggle against commercialisation of education and once again demand free education for all. Furthermore, free education has to come with the necessary social supports that enable the dispossessed sections of our society to meaningfully access education, which means an end to austerity. Moreover, in the troubling years ahead characterised by the rise of authoritarian and fascist tendencies around the world, the assault on education is likely to come in the form of both commercial extraction through educational businesses and an attack on the liberal freedoms.
In this context, I believe the idea of educational attainment leading to higher earnings and social mobility, in a time when an economic depression has disrupted livelihoods and people don’t even have the wherewithal to access education, for the moment has to be shelved. The struggle for free education needs to draw from more radical thinking in our times as we focus on self-sufficiency and the essential needs of our people. I draw inspiration from Paulo Freire’s ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’, and emphasise the need again to think of education as an emancipatory initiative for the millions in our country who have been dispossessed and reduced to poverty. We need to unconditionally reinforce free education as essential for democracy, equality and freedom.
(Ahilan Kadirgamar is a political economist and Senior Lecturer, University of Jaffna)
Kuppi is a politics and pedagogy happening on the margins of the lecture hall that parodies , subverts, and simultaneously reaffirms social hierarchies
Features
Govt. needs to consider broader coalition
by Jehan Perera
The government is aware as much as anyone else that the country continues to be in an extremely vulnerable situation with the possibility of reversal to a state of economic decline a possible scenario. Both national and international experts have pointed this out with the IMF saying that the country is poised at knife’s edge. The government’s care taken in navigating the situation has included accepting the IMF package, which the main opposition party is making so bold as to reject, but which the former government negotiated and considered to be its signal triumph. The government has also not been engaging in any high cost and self-interested activities unlike its predecessors who sooner rather than later made major wasteful expenditures.
The government has also demonstrated discipline most commendably by not abusing state resources for election purposes. This indicates a commitment to rule within the law, unlike previous leaders who saw themselves as above the law. The country’s leading election monitoring bodies have made this point, noting that at previous elections, including the recently concluded presidential election, governments were blatant in their misuse of state resources.
All of them used state vehicles, including helicopters, without any hesitation and allocated large sums of money for their party members to spend on the ground as development activities. The NPP government is however showing that it is clearly different from its predecessors and wishes to spearhead the formation of a new political culture.
The government’s desire to show that it is different from its predecessors may also explain the appearance of its aversion to joining hands with other political parties in the formation of a new government. Instead, the government’s leading spokespersons are openly saying that will not offer any positions in the government to the opposition member who appear to be falling over themselves to say that they would like to support the government in its noble endeavours and would want to join up to do the same.
President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has made it plain that after the parliamentary election, when it comes to forming the new government, the only persons who would be offered ministerial positions will be those from within the ruling party.
ADEQUATE REPRESENTATION
The government’s announcement that it will only be having members from within the ruling party appointed as ministers has been in reaction to members of other political parties publicly expressing their readiness to join the government as ministers if invited. Some of them have even claimed endorsement by the president himself for their plans of joining the government.
However, the president has been very specific that he will not be having any members of the two immediate past government in his government. This will rule out that the practices of the past whenever opportunities to move from one side to the other, they did so with gusto, only to find that they were not the only ones who had crossed over.
From the viewpoint of those who feel they have a lot of energies within themselves they would like to join the government to multiply the impact of their work. On the other hand, many of those same political leaders have very poor track records of governance, being highly corrupt and acting with impunity, without following the due process that was set out.
It makes sense for the NPP government to wish to keep a distance between themselves and the older generation of politicians. More or less all of them are now tainted with the brush of corruption and impunity that has made it possible for the more powerful among them to get away with murder.
However, relying on one’s own party to make decisions for the country is inadvisable. The fact is that Sri Lanka is a multi-ethnic, multi religious, multi lingual and multi caste society. The core decision making group within the NPP needs to have the ability the represent them directly.
However, this core group of decision makers is still not widely known but is generally believed to be from the Sinhalese ethnic majority. The question is whether they, even if ideologically driven by the Marxist belief in the equality of all persons, can represent the interests of the ethnic and religious minorities. The reason that adequate representation in decision making is essential is that it is difficult for those who are from one group to fully comprehend the needs and aspirations of those from other groups.
STAYING POWER
As a country that experienced over three decades of violent ethnic conflict which continues without resolution, the issue of ensuring adequate representation of ethnic and religious minorities in the government needs to be taken as a matter of primary importance. In a similar manner, the issue of adequate representation of women in politics also needs to be taken seriously, with a women’s quota of at least 25 percent becoming part of the political debate. The government will have many other priorities. But having the ethnic and religious minority representation to come from having been elected by the people, and not being simply selected from above, will be essential.
The absence of strong and independent minority representation can be seen in some of the cosmetic actions taken by the government which in their minds might be a worthwhile endeavour. A few weeks ago, a road that had been closed for nearly three decades in the Jaffna airport area was reopened. But the situation there is one of extreme poverty and underdevelopment, which the opening of the road contributes little or nothing to alleviate. They see the road as connecting nowhere special with another place at its end which is also going to nowhere special. The road is seen by the people living there in the north to be an action, but one that is not improving their lifestyles and life prospects.
The NPP’s reversal of its stance on the issue of abolition of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) has been discouraging to the people of the north and east. This law which is called a draconian law on account of its severity, discourages their activism as they do not want to protest about anything and taken in under the PTA. The Tamil and Muslim people see the PTA as a weapon to harass them and to subjugate them through fear of the fate of their compatriots. The way that Sinhalese people see the situation is different and focuses on the fact that for most Sinhalese, the PTA is simply the fastest and most efficient way to provide national security to the country and its people. This is the reason why power sharing between the representatives of the different parties is necessary that they may engage in repeated and frequent internal debates and find themselves rethinking the country and its laws.
Features
Sri Lanka not in the scene at Grammy Awards 2025
The Grammy Awards were much in the news, in our scene, the past few weeks, and that was mainly because our artistes were seeking CONSIDERATION for a Grammy Award.
Those who are not familiar with the criteria for nomination got the impression that submitting an entry for consideration is a great achievement, and there were congratulatory messages on social media.
One must remember that an entry that has been submitted for consideration is sent to the members of the Recording Academy, assuming that particular entry meets the criteria, to be voted on.
From these votes, nominations for each category are derived.
Being Grammy-nominated is a PRESTIGIOUS ACHIEVEMENT, but simply seeking consideration is NOT, and we were seeking consideration for Best Global Music Album.
Well, the nominees for Grammy Awards 2025 were announced last Friday, 8th November, 2024, and Sri Lanka is missing from that list.
Best Global Music Album brought into the spotlight the following:
Alkebulan II
– Matt B feat. Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Paisajes
– Ciro Hurtado
Heis
– Rema
Historias De Un Flamenco
– Antonio Rey
Born In The Wild
– Tems
Beyoncé added to her all-time record number of Grammy nominations with 11, for the 67th Grammy Awards, followed by Kendrick Lamar, Charli XCX and Billie Eilish with seven nods each.
Beyoncé now has a career total of 99 Grammy nominations – more than any other artiste – but she’s not yet won the Recording Academy’s top prize, Album of the Year. Who knows, we may see her do it this time!
The winners of Grammy Awards 2025 will be revealed at the event in Los Angeles, on 2nd February, 2025.
Yes, Sri Lanka did have a Grammy Award winner, and that was in 2014.
Hussain Jiffry won the prestigious Grammy Award as a member of the Herb Alpert Quintet. They won the Best Pop Instrumental Album Award for their album ‘Steppin’ Out.’
For the record, the renowned bassist, who is now based in LA, in the States, has performed with many artistes, including Sergio Mendes, Al McKay, Yanni, Dave Weckl Band, and Herb Alpert, and is said to be one of the most sought-after bassists in LA.
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