Image credit: Nazly Ahmed
I was introduced to the existence of a publicly shared negative attitude towards SWRD Bandaranaike for the first time at a book launch held at Barefoot Cafe in Colombo, several years ago. The author had decided to sensitize the assembled audience to the themes and style of her book through the dramatization of certain scenes from it. One of these scenes portrayed SWRD on his death bed, having just been shot on the verandah of his home, by a person dressed in the robes of a Buddhist monk. The actor playing this part in the dramatization used a rich, plummy British accent, which induced much merriment in the assembled self proclaimed lovers of the arts that evening. The presentation was a caricature: SWRD did not speak in such an exaggerated, upper class English accent so many years after returning from his studies in England.
Mocking a man on his death bed could be seen as rather a crude and mannerless thing to do, and although it seemed surprisingly vulgar to me, it was in fact a good introduction to the highly personalized, irresponsible and careless way in which people’s characters are routinely assassinated in this country.
Despite being immortalized in the form of statuary within the BMICH, and outside The Presidential Secretariat, and having the primary international airport named after him, here was a man being laughed at by a group of people decades after his death - in a way, at that time, I had not seen happening to the elected leader of any country.
Since then, of course, we have seen the way that the 45th President of the United States was pursued by the media, who threw off any restraint or attempt to present a balanced and unbiased presentation of the surreal events in North America’s seat of power. Publications like The New Yorker became almost unreadable, because of the hatred and contempt visible in every article of its contents towards Donald Trump and his dynastic ambitions.
But recently in Sri Lanka, on Galle Face Green, where peaceful protestors have occupied public space for the past weeks to call for the resignation of the current government, the personal disrespect shown to the current President has eclipsed anything I have ever seen or heard before. The statue of SWRD seemed to stand amazed amidst the performances of anger, revenge, accusation, contempt and grief for losses of loved ones which are taking place around his plinth. Even ritual public exorcisms are being performed to free the country of its karmic distress.
Sri Lankan people tend to personalize their politics. And this is a national trait which I think should be re-evaluated. Why are the Bandaranaikes - and especially SWRD - blamed so much and so often for what the country has become? When it is clear by now that other leaders have acted in many ways - both overtly and covertly - that have greatly damaged and impoverished the country?
The Sinhala Only Act of 1956 was a piece of legislation. Like any piece of legislation, it can be repealed or amended, to better reflect the wishes of the people. And it could have been repealed or amended at any time since 1956.
For 74 years, it has not. Successive governments across the spectrum of politics have not succeeded in summoning the collective will to pass such amendments and make them law.
At its core, the majoritarian bias of the Act, the way it excludes the Tamil language and subjugates those who speak it into secondary citizenship status, is fundamentally flawed. It has been seen as an expedient political choice, made with a short term perspective of its consequences.
In 1959, the same year that SWRD was assassinated, parts of the ‘disastrous’ Act were reversed in a ‘Sinhala Only, Tamil Also’ attempt at amendment and greater ethnic parity, via the Tamil Language (Special Provisions) Act. Nearly 30 years later, in 1987, the 13th Amendment to the Constitution stated that ‘the official language of Sri Lanka is Sinhala’ while ‘Tamil shall also be an official language’ with English as a ‘link language’.
The fact that SWRD is seen as a key factor in the passing of the Act was symbolically shown in the public tying of a black blindfold around the face of the statue of him standing outside The Presidential Secretariat. Next to him, a large sign was erected, saying ‘Wake Up’, in all 3 languages: Sinhala, Tamil and English. This event occurred on April 29th, and photographs of it and comments have been circulated on social media. Social media figures have for the past several months been selectively citing only SWRD as the sole architect of the 'disastrous' Sinhala Only policy. Education is needed.
Majoritarian politics has been played for 74 years, in bloody and terrible ways, by opportunistic people, many of whom have brazenly showed no sincere feeling for this country despite taking oaths to serve in its highest positions of responsibility. Can SWRD be solely blamed for all of this? It doesn’t really seem fair.
It is as if we are all meeting someone in the present day, called Sri Lanka, who tells us that his or her life has been ruined forever by decisions made nearly 3/4 of a century ago, by an ancestor of theirs. They believe it when they say it to us, we can see that all the people citing the initials of the person whose government initially enacted that legislation genuinely feel injured, and there is certainly evidence that the original decision was flawed, but to allow this belief that what was done in the past has to be lived with forever and permitted to dictate the subsequent shape and direction of their life - in the present day - is a choice taken by themselves. Especially when the power now exists to reshape and redirect our lives, with greater self awareness and accountability. This of course requires effort and self reflection, taking responsibility as well as asserting our own rights.
I would say that solely blaming actions taken in the past by other people for our own current condition is not only unjust, but disempowering and morally unintelligent. It inflicts a state of passivity and victimhood on us, and this powerlessness combined with self pity, frustration and hatred has led continually to violence in the country. Volatility is one thing, but a state of perpetual potential violence which underlies all our actions and reactions is toxic and dangerous. Scapegoating and blaming of others is avoidance of direct accountability. Suggesting lynching through visual symbolism links this peaceful protest with degraded politics the world over.
SWRD is a name which is associated with ad hominem attacks. People foam at the mouth when his family name is mentioned, making assumptions often without investigating the facts of what has actually been said or done, and he himself is spoken of as if this one piece of legislation was the sum total of his life’s contribution. The focus is on the person, or what people think they know of the person, and not on the crucial systemic issues of governance.
If we want better governance, in 2022, we should as a people educate ourselves to govern our own - often manipulated - impulses on the one hand to elevate and worship our leaders, and on the other to denigrate them and drag them in the dust. Why not wake from our extremist stupor and interrogate the myths with which we have comforted ourselves through the devastations inflicted by multiple colonization? Why not make the decision that it’s just not only ‘Sinhala Only’ any more? And make space for the co-existence of other citizens with equivalent centres of self?
This piece of legislation was fractured, and it has resulted in a skewed and deformed system which badly needs reform. It has not been changed until now because - clearly - many people have profited in the past from the way things were.
High literacy rates are praised in Sri Lanka, but it is literacy in a language the majority of the world does not speak or understand. Keeping English only as a link language would have enabled what operated as walls to become bridges. But giving equal status to Tamil from the start would have really decolonized the country and given us a foundation on which to build a resplendent and vibrant nation.
Our wells have been poisoned. We have been encouraged to personalize our politics, and to indulge in decrying each other too easily. Our tendency to stereotype each other out of ignorance and laziness has been used against us. Ad hominem arguments are fallacies, and they dominate in the world of social media because they are highly dramatic, and performative and crowd pleasing. When media figures do it: Eg ‘I got real questions’ - it gets high social media traction for little effort - the opposite of fearless journalism or objective commentary. We need to consciously dismantle these insidious dynamics that have set us against each other. To do so will be a true exorcism of what has bedevilled us for so long.
In that context, it’s really important that the traditional Sinhala and Tamil New year rituals of boiling the milk and asking for blessing and prosperity were publicly performed in the protest space. Singing the national anthem in Sinhala was an important part of asserting the patriotism and national pride of the protestors, who from the start of the protests in March have refused to be portrayed as marginalized and lawless rebels. The Tamil version of the National anthem should also have been sung, and was - on the next day.
The events of May 9th, when these peaceful protestors found their tents - including those housing Legal Aid, medical supplies and the GotagoGama Library - attacked and damaged by a group of violent thugs, have shown what an irritation their continued request for effective governance has been.
It is not only external forces they have to contend with, but internal cultural conditioning, which has unfortunately promoted division and segregation, and the frustrations and distortions of mind and spirit which trying to survive and create a life in a broken societal structure brings with it.
It is not too late. 75 years after the legislation was passed, it can be amended. In 26 years, in 2048, 100 years after Independence, if we act now we could see that the mechanism of an inadequate partial independence was eventually taken down because it simply wasn’t satisfactory. After all the pain and anguish caused by that wrong and long upheld decision has finally been openly expressed and acknowledged, it is a problem to solve: a simultaneous equation, with a simple and elegant solution. No hierarchies. No imagined or assumed superiority or inferiority. A rich and inclusive diversity, represented by Ministers of the State whose primary goal is actually to serve the citizens of the country - and not themselves and their families.
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Image credit: Nazly Ahmed
I am informed that 90% of the protestors are Sinhala language speakers, and from non-elite backgrounds. What has been happening organically in the people’s peaceful protests directly challenges the official narrative. That is why I would suggest that the focus of the movement should be on creation rather than destruction: the demand for just and effective structures and processes of governance, rather than overthrowing regimes or revenge and retribution against individuals.
Allegations of corruption may be difficult to prove, and called ‘baseless’, as they will involve the uncovering of sophisticated instances of intimidation, bribery, threats and cronyism which will be in the interests of the perpetrators to diminish and deny.
The additional challenge is the Sri Lankan appetite for spice - in their news, gossip and scandal as well as their food. They add curry to everything, even bolognaise sauce and roast chicken rub. For example, in a widely shared and approved Facebook post recently, I saw cited as fact an inaccurate anecdote about SWRD.
On Sunday, April 17th, a month ago, it was stated:
‘When SWRD declared “Sinhala Only” in 1956, he was asked “ What about the Burghers, how will they cope?” Banda famously replied “Well they can Burgher off”. And they did! They never stood up and protested, because NO ONE ELSE STOOD WITH THEM. They were on their own, and so they all left in droves, depriving this country of their awesome culture, music, education, traditions, food. What a loss for Sri Lanka!’
This callous jibe which operates to further denigrate the former PM reminds me of the quotation falsely ascribed to Marie Antoinette, that the starving poor of France could not afford bread, so ‘let them eat cake’.
In fact, SWRD was quoting.
The phrase ‘Burghering off to Australia’ is the last line of a play titled ‘Fifty-Fifty’, written by the Sri Lankan playwright H.C.N. de Lanerolle, and it is spoken by the character Dionysus Sumanasekare, whose initials ‘D.S.’ have generally been read as an allusion to Mr. D.S. Senanayake, the first Prime Minister of Sri Lanka.
This was noted in an article by Wilfred Jayasuriya titled ‘Merging Literature and History’ which was published in The Sunday Observer on 20th September, 2009. In the context of the ‘Fifty-Fifty’ political debate which was current in the buildup to the drafting of the legislation, the character Dionysus asserts that he is even willing to give 100 percent representation in the State Council to minorities. Sumanasekere was thus presenting the ongoing debate about minority representation in dramatic form.
Anyone who used the term ‘Burghering Off’ after 1948 in Ceylon was re-phrasing in local and contemporary terms an expression that was habitually used by men in England and the Commonwealth countries of that era.
To be unaware of this cultural context is to enable the scapegoating and disproportionate blaming of SWRD for legislation which he himself tried to amend in his lifetime. When the statue of SWRD was blindfolded a few weeks ago, comments were made on social media by a number of activists and media figures which singled him out as the sole cause of all Sri Lanka’s political troubles and ethnic tensions for the past 7 decades.
A commentator on Twitter stated that The Sinhala Only Act was ‘the first step towards an inward looking nationalistic Sri Lanka that drove minorities away... Much of them were highly qualified public sector professionals who went on to build great lives in the West.’
Another activist posted photographs of a man in a sarong standing on the shoulders of the statue in the act of blindfolding it, and called SWRD ‘responsible for the disastrous Sinhala Only Act that set this + most of our recent history, in motion.’
Another activist, posting similar photographs of the same event, and calling SWRD ‘Bloody Banda’ declared: ‘Perhaps a noose would have been more apt for a man whose racist actions paved the way to brutal Tamil pogroms and a 30 year war!’
In October 1957, after a month of self serving pro-nationalistic publicity, J.R. Jayewardene undertook a 72-mile march from Colombo to Kandy to publicly oppose the Bandaranaike-Chelvanayakam Pact. Various dramatic performances were intended to be staged to invoke Buddhist blessings at the sacred Temple Of The Tooth and to invite divine retribution against those seeking to make provision for the minorities through that Pact.
This was performative Sinhala Buddhist nationalism, designed to raise public opposition to the creation of regional councils, and brazenly playing the racist majoritarian nationalistic card for political gain. This card was not played by SWRD, but by Jayewardene and Senanayake, who headed the procession, and who later brought crowds of people to protest at Tintagel, SWRD’s private home in Colombo.
In 2022, to accuse SWRD for ‘creating the strategy that every Sri Lankan government has since used to their benefit’ is to be either ignorant or careless of the other significant political agents who impacted the legislation.
Before scapegoating one man - which is easy to do but unjust, and inaccurate - commentators should research the Bandaranaike-Chelvanayakam pact, and see what was actually included in that important agreement by SWRD, prior to the passing of the ‘disastrous Sinhala Only Act’. His own later attempts to pass legislation to bring into effect what had been lost by the deletion of the Pact were constantly opposed by nationalists who did not want concessions to minorities being made.
At many stages along the journey towards full sovereignty and inclusive nationalism, mistakes and mis-steps were made, and could have been amended. At this juncture, while looking at how we have reached this point, it would be wise not to blindfold ourselves to the real complexities of the issues which have brought us here. Simplification is an easy way out; and short term, stop gap facile assumptions, and reflex biased stereotyping of others are not going to serve any of us well, today.
Does racism symbolically reside in a piece of statuary? Or in a piece of legislation? Or is it enshrined in the human heart and mind, toxically attached to inherited and unquestioned notions of nationalism?
If we externalise and project it onto one person who is supposed to carry the sins of an entire race - does that free us or exonerate us collectively from our own failings?
We don’t have to look far to access another way of viewing SWRD Bandaranaike. In the open access resource of Wikipedia, we are told that ‘Amid the growing opposition to the pact, Prime Minister Bandaranaike continued his efforts to convince the people of the country that it was the best solution to the communal problems of the country. He equated the pact to the Middle Way doctrine of Buddhism. However the (extremist nationalist) demonstrations continued, and came to a head on April 9, 1958, when approximately 100 Buddhist monks and 300 other people staged a protest on the lawn of Bandaranaike’s Rosemead Place residence.’
That lawn is paved over now, and the residence is a boutique hotel. Not even a placard commemorates the place where SWRD was assassinated.
If we want to see the truth of our complex history, we need to not only to wake up but to open our own eyes and see things as they are, and not the way we have been told they are, or may prefer them to be.
Applying logic and scepticism to an emotive issue is not easy, but it is necessary. SWRD died before The Sinhala Only Act could be amended and in his absence he is an easy target to hang it on. But plenty of people endorsed it, and profited from it.
I believe a closer look at the prevailing context in which the Act was drafted and made into law will challenge the view of SWRD as the sole person responsible for all of Sri Lanka’s ethnic tensions, and the uncaring architect of all our suffering. At this stage, we need to develop the capacity to form a more complex and composite view of life, including history - both political and personal. Black and white thinking, lifting up heroes one minute and destroying villains the next is childlike. Simplified versions of history and politics will not accurately represent or help us effectively navigate the reality we experience as we finally develop maturity and sovereignty as a nation.
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