THE WEST, THEIR THEORIES AND THE SLFP
The government and the leaders of the Sandhanaya or the alliance have to be reminded that they are in power because of the stand that they took against Norwegian involvement in the affairs of the country, irrespective of how it is described officially, the partiality of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission towards the LTTE, the MoU that was imposed by Norway with the blessings of the other western countries, the ISGA, and other measures that were detrimental to the sovereignty of the country. However, after coming to power Ms. Chandrika Kumaratunga is acting as if the government of Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe has not changed.
The government turned a blind eye when the LTTE attacked Karuna's group and the latter was forced to retreat. Karuna may have done so for tactical reasons but the government and the SLMM by their inaction only helped the LTTE. It is true that the LTTE is being attacked by Karuna's group and already a number of LTTE terrorists have been killed. However, the government should not have allowed the LTTE to transport the terrorists and the weapons to the eastern province on the pretext that the MoU had to be respected. The MoU is not valid anymore as both the LTTE and the SLMM have violated it already, and there is no reason for "respecting" it.
Last week the LTTE killed another member of the intelligence unit. All that the government did was to condemn the action of the LTTE. Does the President think that she can get one of her ministers to condemn the murder by the LTTE and then proceed to have talks with the terrorists? The people did not elect this government only to condemn the actions of the LTTE. They want the government to put an end to these murderous activities and defeat the LTTE. The leaders of the Sandhanaya ought to remember that the people voted for them because they were against the so called peace talks conducted by the UNF government.
If the government is under pressure from the western powers then the ministers should say so and inform the people of the obstacles against defeating the LTTE. The so called transparency is applicable to the discussions that take place between the Sri Lankan government and the other governments as well. Are the constituent parties of the Sandhanaya being informed of the conditions imposed by Norway on so-called negotiations with the LTTE. The leaders of the JVP and the MEP have a duty by the people to inquire from the President the state of the discussions that take place between the Sri Lankan government and Norway. There are so many allegations against the Norwegian involvement not only in this country but also in regard of their interventions in the "peace processes" of the other countries as well. If the west through Norway is applying pressure on the government, and if the latter has an iota of respectability then the ministers should inform the public of what is happening and prepare for a long drawn struggle.
The government, instead has appointed a peace secretariat headed by a "well respected" diplomat. Mr. Jayantha Dhanapala may be one of the "well respected" diplomats produced by this country. However, the people of this country would like to know whether there was any pressure by the "international community" to appoint him as the head of the peace secretariat. How well respected is Mr. Dhanapala by the Indians? Do the Indians consider him as an unbiased diplomat? On the other hand was he appointed by the President to belittle Mr. Lakshman Kadirgamar? With Mr. Tyrone Fernando in the SLFP ranks, is the President thinking of some more appointments to the peace secretariat and the negotiating team that would have talks with the LTTE?
The Sinhala people, other than those who are dependant on the west, are now aware of the western bias against nationalistic movements in the world. Tamil racism was created, baptised and nurtured by the western powers against Sinhala nationalism. In the process the western social scientists branded Sinhala nationalism as communalism and Tamil racism as a nationalist separatist movement. The western "intellectuals" who have the hegemony in the academic world at present are in a position to create concepts, theories and even the so-called facts (facts are theory dependant and not "objective") to suit the agenda of the western Christian colonialism. It is well known that the western natural scientists, social scientists and even philosophers invented theories to establish that the non whites, especially the black Africans were inferior to the whites. As mentioned in the article on "Concept that legitimised slavery and colonialism" that appeared in "The Island" on the 21st of May, many people such as Darwin, Hume, Locke, Hegel have been involved in the game of establishing the superiority of the whites. Unfortunately they could not explain why this superiority had to wait till the fifteenth century to be observed and wait till the eighteenth century to "blossom". For thousands of years the whites had been as pail as white in their "intellectual achievements" and the theories of the western scientists and philosophers did not even mention what the whites had been doing till the fourteenth century.
The whites, meaning the western Europeans as far as this article is concerned, took this idea of a chosen race from the Jews and in the fifteenth century armed with the knowledge that had been created in the East in India, China, the Arab world and other places were able to change the course of the world with their newly created Chinthanaya which we have called the Greek Judaic Christian (GJC) Chinthanaya. What Weber called "The Protestant Ethic" stems from this Chinthanaya and it is with the latter that the western Europe and later its transplant in North America have been dominating the world not only economically and politically but culturally as well. It has to be emphasised that knowledge is part of culture and the west has been very careful to present the knowledge that they create as "objective" and "scientific" thus demeaning the other systems of knowledge. The western Political Scientists and Sociologists will take great pain to elaborate that the western states are secular when they are Christian. Thus in a sense Christian is equated with secular and the rest of the world is advocated to have their own secular states meaning Christian states. The Political Scientists in the rest of the world who have been directly or indirectly trained by the western academics would spend their energies using public money very often to tell the non Christian public in their countries how nice to have these secular states. If somebody calls for a Buddhist, Hindu or Muslim state, the western theories are there to baptise him or her as a fundamentalist, a fanatic or some such other creature. In the west nobody has to ask for a Christian state as all the states including those in the Catholic countries are Christian. In the twentieth century there were attempts to establish states based on the Catholic Chinthanaya in Germany, Italy and Soviet Russia. Hegel and Marx were based on the Catholic Chinthanaya more than on the GJC Chinthanaya. Their three valued logic known as dialectics is basically the logic of Catholicism. Dialectics being a kind of logic of change (please see the article on "Logic of Change" that appeared in the Midweek Review on 12th May 2004. ) cannot be two valued as in the case of the logic of GJC Chinthanaya.
The above goes against the hegemony of the western knowledge and would not be accepted by the western intellectuals. As the rest of the world, that includes Sri Lanka as well, would accept an idea or a concept or a theory only after it is accepted in the west, it is very unlikely that the above ideas would be accepted in this country. The knowledge is inextricably connected with politics and in general only that knowledge which is based on the Chinthanaya of the dominating political system would be accepted as official. A system of knowledge based on a different chinthanaya becomes official with a change in the Chinthanaya, which itself is a political act.
As a special case of the above situation we could take the case of theories and concepts on Tamil racism. The accepted theories, whether on nationalism, nation building, Chauvinism or anything else, are those created and propagated by the western intellectuals. The theories created by the westerners are those that safeguard the western political system and any nationalism that goes against western colonialism would be presented as Chauvinism, racism etc. On the other hand a racism against an anti colonial nationalism would be labeled as a progressive nationalism, separatism etc. The west would not only protect but even nurture such racism as it is in their interest. In politics as introduced by the west, what matters is self interest and the west having recognised theories and knowledge that is in their interest would go out of the way to promote a racism in their favour.
All those "recognised" social scientists in Sri Lanka are merely the imitators of western theories and their ideas are in the interests of western Christian colonialism. The Tamil problem has always been analysed in terms of western theories and many people, especially those who depend on the west for their survival as "intellectuals", diplomats and others, would not recognise how much the west is involved in the problem. The President of the country herself being dependant on the west, in spite of her rhetoric against Norwegian intervention, has to succumb to western pressure. It is time that the SLFP thought about a leader who is independent of the west, true to the spirit of the party that represents Sinhalathva in the minds of the Sinhala people. If the SLFP is unable to do that it would be the end of the party and the Sandhanaya would be forced to evolve into a party that represent the Sinhalathva.
Professor Nalin de Silva
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