O' LONDON
We were sad to here that London had been bombed. Our sympathies go to the kith and kin of the dead, though we know that no amount of sympathies would bring the dead back to life. However, is there anything that the so called civilised world do to stop these attacks by the terrorists. Or do we have to learn to live with bombs?
The leading politicians of the world including our own have sent their customary messages condemning violence and terrorism, and appealing to the others to unite to defeat terrorism. However, the million dollar or the million pound question is what would they do even if they manage to unite with each other.
Terrorism, when it is against a nation or state, is declared or undeclared "war" by a group of people united to fight for something that is justifiable in their eyes. In terrorist attacks innocent people who are not members of the armed forces are also killed, and it makes it different from conventional war of the past. However, we have to remember that when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed not only the innocent people were killed but even the unborn were affected by the bombing. It was also the case when London was bombed by the Germans and Germany was bombed by the British and the allied forces. In that sense most of present day wars are nothing but terrorist attacks.
We have to make a distinction between innocent people getting killed unintentionally and innocent people being killed intentionally, as in the case of air attacks and blasting bombs. Modern warfare in that sense employs terrorism and even the so called civilised states could be accused of terrorism. However, as we all know these are only definitions, and western political scientists would come out with other definitions of terrorism that would make sure that states would not be accused of terrorism.
It is believed that Al Quaeda is behind the recent bomb blasts in London. Is Al Quaeda a terrorist organisation? On the other hand is the LTTE a terrorist organisation? It is again a question of definitions and there may be people and states who would identify Al Quaeda as a terrorist organisation but not the LTTE. They would claim that the LTTE "struggle" is justifiable whereas Al Quaeda struggle is not. These deductions are based on the assumption that only certain means adopted by organisations that fight for an unjustifiable "cause" could be branded as terrorist activities.
Then the question arises as to what makes the LTTE a non-terrorist organisation, and what makes this so called non-terrorist organisation a body that fights for a just cause? Of course the answer depends on what is meant by a just cause, and whether the LTTE has a just cause according to its definition. However, these definitions and "facts" do not stand by themselves, and they depend on other "facts" as well. The definitions and all the "facts" should constitute a consistent whole, and this consistency is the acid test that we would like to impose on the former. This consistency is achieved in cyclic formulations and not in unilinear formulations that the western knowledge is saddled with.
This is something that the so called postmodernists of the western world (our "postmodernists" are a lot of imitators who cannot think independently, and moreover who cannot understand what their masters and mistresses in the west have to say) cannot grasp as they end up in a kind of relativism where the law of free for all exists. What these postmodernists do not understand is that free for all follows from western Christian modernity where the individual in the binary opposition (I am using the jargon of the postmodernists) individual-society becomes the dominant component.
The Catholic Chinthanaya that prevailed in Europe before the fifteenth century emphasised the society which became the dominant component of the above binary opposition or the dichotomy. One of the important differences between western pre modernity and western modernity is the change that took place with respect to the dichotomy between the individual and the society as a whole. The transition from the society to the individual with the associated "freedom of the individual" and the prominence given to the individual liberation in the form of Lutheranism, the religion of modernity, individual property as in capitalism the economic mode of modernity, individual or private life and emphasis on privacy etc., would naturally lead to a relativism of knowledge where a kind of "free for all" becomes the "meta narrative", though the postmodernists would claim that in postmodernity there are no "meta narratives", thus exposing another contradiction in the body of knowledge called postmodernism. There is a way of resolving this problem in Sinhala Buddhist Chinthanaya, where a "constructive relativism" (nirmanathmaka sapekshathavadaya) is formulated, and where the middle path is taken as far as dichotomies of the above form are concerned. Thus there could be a balance between the individual and the society instead of going from one extreme to the other following Aristotelian logic where the middle is excluded, and where either/or prevails.
Coming back to the LTTE and Tamil racism associated with it, it is not difficult to show how inconsistent is their claim of injustice to the Tamils. The histories that the Tamil racists have been trying to create beginning with "Yalapana Vaipava Malai" have failed miserably and their attempts to discredit Mahavansa have boomeranged on them. There is no injustice to the Tamils in Sri Lanka, and in fact unlike in India where the majority of the Tamils live, Tamil is a medium of instruction even in the Universities. It is only one example, and in Sri Lanka the Tamils enjoy many freedoms that they do not have in the so called democratic west.
The Arab nationalism, on the other hand, has a justifiable cause viz a viz Israel. One of the reasons that the Christian west wanted to create a state for the Jews was their need to "free" their countries from Jews, though the Chinthanaya of the west is very much influenced by Judaism. The west would not publicly claim that they wanted to "reverse" the Exodus for the benefit of their countries, but it was obvious. In order to justify the creation of an Israel they went back to a history that was more than three thousand years old. The western Asia had changed during this time, and the west could ignore it simply because they had the military strength to do so.
However, this does not justify the terrorist activities of Al Quaeda, assuming of course that they are involved with the bomb explosion in London, and we are back at where we began this column. How is the world going to end terrorism. Going by what the western Christian world has prescribed in Sri Lanka we would have thought that by this time the western world would be thinking of creating a joint mechanism with Arab nationalism and especially with Al Quaeda. They could have established a three tier structure for the joint mechanism with a high level committee consisting of one western representative and a representative from Al Quaeda and may be a representative of Lebanon Christians. Then a committee for the west Asia could be established with a member of Al Quaeda as the chairperson. Finally local committees could be formed one each for the countries in the region.
All they need is a Solheim and our own Ms. Chandrika Cumaratunga could play that role with all her experience in peace talks. With people like Jayantha Dhanapala who do many things such as presiding at launching of books on culture, in our midst, Sri Lanka is the best candidate to play Norway in this exercise. After the formation of the joint mechanism we would have peace on the planet and there would be no terrorism and perhaps we may be able to close down the United Nations, thus ending India's trouble of becoming a permanent member of the security council.
However, there is a problem. Would US finance this exercise as Al Quaeda is a terrorist organisation as declared by that country. Would they request Sri Lanka to channel their money to the joint mechanism so that officially they could claim that they are not giving any money? I have my doubts as knowing the "commissioners" in Sri Lanka the US would know that most of the funds would end up in the joint accounts and not in the joint mechanism. Good old Britain would neither be very enthusiastic about a joint mechanism between the west and Al Quaeda and they would think of ways and means of defeating the latter in "war".
Thus joint mechanism will be only for us the Sinhalas and especially for the Sinhala Buddhists who are supposed to be not only non violent but anti war as well. The war appears to be the prerogative of the Christian west. I do not know what the NGO "intellectuals" would do when UK "declares" war against Al Quaeda, but it will certainly expose the nudity of London.
Professor Nalin de Silva
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