WAR AND PEACE
The UNP claims that if Mr. Mahinda Rajapakse becomes the President he would lead the country to war. As far as the "theoreticians" of the UNP are concerned it is a foregone conclusion, and they are absolutely certain of the outcome. According to some, Mr. Rajapakse with his policy on a unitary state has no room for negotiations and war is inevitable. The UNP on the other hand seems to claim that if Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe becomes the President then there will be peace and a political solution would be found for the so called ethnic problem.
This is nothing but scare tactics adopted by the UNP. It is not different from the "billa" stories related to the small children when the adults want the former to behave the way they want. The war has become a "billa" to scare the adults in Sri Lanka. There is a very powerful anti war lobby in Sri Lanka who claim that they are humanistic and that they have a "mahakarunawa" towards humanity that the others do not have. The anti war lobby while claiming that they are anti war, labels the others who are of the opinion that war is inevitable as the pro war group. The anti war group of "great humanists" includes the directors of third rate films, who nevertheless win awards at film festivals both here and abroad. These film directors as we mentioned in these columns last week, though claim to be objective, are only the servants of western Christian modernity which wants the whole world to be unicultural, and not multicultural as described by the theories of the western intellectuals.
There is no objectivity in any field from Anthropology to Zoology, and all the theories are created in a given culture based on a particular Chinthanaya. The humanists in Sri Lanka true to the values of modernity, would claim that what they represent through cinema is a reflection of the objective world, and that nothing can be done as individuals to the outcome, if they allow the "reality" to be portrayed objectively. This implies that a work of "arts" reflects "reality" objectively. What these "great humanists" do not tell us is that any work of Arts or even Mathematics is culture based, and that they produce films in accordance with western Christian modernity. They are anti war in Sri Lanka but they would not have been anti war in Vietnam, and would have expected the armies of Ho Chi Min to win. They would not have advised Ho Chi Min to give up arms and enter into a dialogue with the Americans. Marxism is after all a product of western Christian modernity though based on a paradigm different from that of liberalism.
As Rear Admiral Sarath Weerasekera has pointed out the "great humanists" in the form of film directors are silent on the atrocities of the LTTE not only against the Sinhalas but against the Tamils as well. As he has mentioned they do not produce films on the wives of soldiers who have looked after their husbands with devotion after they come back as disabled personnel. The humanists are up to bring discredit to the Sinhalas, the Sinhala culture and the Army in particular. It is not the "objective reality" that is portrayed in the so called films of these "great humanists" but "their ideology". (There is no objective reality as such) However, they have no ideology of their own, and it is the ideology as handed down by the western Christian modernity that has gone into their heads. They are paid servants of western states or political parties. Rear Admiral Weerasekera has also mentioned that in India this type of films are never produced, though India has a much bigger middle and upper middle class. As we have mentioned earlier, the Hindu culture in India is very much strict unlike the Sinhala Buddhist culture which is open to ideas from other cultures, and in India it is not easy as in Sri Lanka to find "great humanists" prepared to insult and ridicule the Hindu culture or the Islam culture. However, we should not forget that even in India there are Rushdies and Roys produced by a middle class whose ideology is that of western Christian modernity..
The anti war lobby that includes the film directors are hell bent on ridiculing the Sinhala Buddhist culture and demoralising the armed forces. They are for peace and not for war as if the others are for war. It has to be said that we are neither anti war nor pro war. I do not think that there are either anti toilet or pro toilet people. People go to the toilet when there is a necessity. The states decide to go to war if there is a necessity. If somebody claims that he or she is anti toilet and refrain from attending to the necessities of life he or she would end up with severe disorders. If a state refrains from fighting when it is necessary to do so, the country will end up with disastrous results.
None of these "great humanists" would give up their jobs, property etc., even if they are forced to do so, for humanistic reasons. They would find out what they could do according to the law or sometimes even outside the law in order to protect their jobs and property. However, under the yoke of western Christian modernity, they want the Sri Lankan state to give up part of the country in the name of humanity. In the final analysis, it is not the humanity that has made these people to be anti war but the requirement of western Christian modernity which is trying to wipe out all the other cultures from the world. In the last five hundred years or so that has been the first item on the agenda of western Christian modernity, and they have been partially successful, especially with the spread of the hegemonic western Christian education that has been imposed on the people in the so called third world countries.
The anti war "great humanists" work on many seemingly different fronts. However, their objective is the same. They want to weaken the armed forces and make the people scared of war. They always have their propaganda south of Killinochchi and not north of that town. They never preach to the LTTE that it is wrong to go to war or that child conscription is against humanity. They want to strengthen the fighting capacity of the LTTE while weakening and demoralising the armed forces. This is in accordance with the agenda of western Christian (non Catholic) modernity, that uses Tamil Hindu elements to weaken if not destroy the Sinhala Buddhist culture. If the westerners succeed in their attempt, they will next turn their guns against the Tamil Hindu culture in Sri Lanka, and then we would not see Solheim shaking hands with Thamilselvam either in Vanni or in Oslo.
Though the westerners want us to have so called peace negotiations with the LTTE, what do they practice in their own countries? Would Bush ever think of negotiating with Saddam Hussein or bin Laden? He is out to bomb Iraq, and any place he thinks bin Laden is hiding. Will Tony Blair negotiate with the IRA as long as they are armed. What is the UN doing under these circumstances? Where are the peace negotiators and other experts on conflict resolution? In Britain after the recent bombings in London, the home secretary Charles Clarke introduced "new ways of dealing with preachers of intolerance and hatred who try to exploit the openness of our society to oppress others." Tony Blair in his characteristic way has said that "the rules of the game have changed" apparently since the bombing of London. Not to be outdone the shadow home secretary has said that those who cannot integrate with the British society would be deported.
What do all these statements mean? Is Clarke, the home secretary, expressing some absolute truths? All these three gentlemen, gentlemen as defined by the British society, as there are no absolute gentlemen anywhere in the universe not to mention the planet called the earth, are fond of preserving the English Christian culture, and intolerance and hatred are defined relative to that culture. Anybody of foreign origin, even those who were born in Britain, who preach against the English Christian culture would be deported. If we apply the same rules of the game many high commissioners, ambassadors, diplomats, the so called monitors and the film directors would have to be deported. However, the "most intolerant Sinhala Buddhists" would not do so. In fact some of them would attend the cocktails given by the diplomats, they and their wives dressed up for the occasion, receive awards from them, and would engage in so many other activities with those Tony Blair would have deported without thinking twice if they were up to similar behaviour in his country.
When the Europeans allowed the Asians and others to immigrate to their countries they expected the immigrants to assimilate into their culture. It is not a Sinhala Buddhist who states this but one Dr. Mike Poulsen, a senior lecturer in Geography at Macquarie University in Australia. He has said " some of these people are just not going to assimilate in the way they were previously expected to do. The danger is the assimilation process is so slow that for many it is just not possible." So naturally the rules of the game have to be changed. It was only recently the Church of England was accused of being racist, and a Moroccan woman had to defy the law banning burqa in Belgium. The picture is getting clearer. When Clarke threatens to take "action against extremists even if it fell foul of human rights restrictions" we know what he is talking about. An extremist is defined by the western Christian culture not only in England but even in Sri Lanka. The JVP in 1987 became an extremist party but the LTTE has never being described as one in the context of the Sri Lankan situation. LTTE has been banned in certain countries simply because that organisation has links with what are called extremist organisations in those countries., and not because of its activities in Sri Lanka. One has to be very careful in using words as they have no absolute meanings or values. The words, concepts and theories have a meaning only in respect of a context in a given culture.
I am of the view that the so called multiculturalism in the west is gradually coming to an end. Multiculturalism was a temporary trend followed by the western countries until those who migrated to those countries from Asia and America assimilated into the western Christian culture. Western Christian modernity, with its ideas on a unicultural world if not a unicultural Universe, would not have allowed the immigrants to develop their own cultures. The westerners paid only lip service to multiculturalism, and as Dr. Poulsen has mentioned the immigrants were expected to assimilate into the western Christian culture. The westerners were prepared to tolerate multiculturalism until the immigrants assimilated into the western culture. However, it is not going to be so at least in the case of the Muslims, and the western Christian countries are now busy formulating other principles. As long as creation of knowledge is a monopoly of the west, the western countries would get away with all these "changes of rules". However, as there is a time lag between production of knowledge in the west and transfer to the other countries (somebody from these countries has to go to the west and do a Ph. D. in the relevant field and come back) the knowledge on end of multiculturalism, assuming that the west formulates this phenomenon that way, will not reach Sri Lanka immediately. In any event the western intellectuals by a play of words could even say that multiculturalism has not ended.
In Sri Lanka the "great humanists" have been financed by the western Christian countries to commence courses in conflict resolution to university students who are given T shirts and other items free, and taken to peace camps giving them free food and lodging. They are also assured of jobs most probably in the NGOs and also in the government sector. These boys and girls would be sent to the camps of the armed forces to preach the soldiers that the war is a horrible thing. However, they would not be sent to meet the terrorists with their conflict resolution messages.
It is perhaps only in Sri Lanka that the anti war people are allowed to preach the soldiers and convert them against war in the name of conflict resolution. Have these conflict resolution people done anything to resolve the conflicts in the universities or in the work places? No, they have only one objective. That is to weaken and demoralise the armed forces. It appears that anti war "great humanists" think that the Tamil racist problem created and nurtured by the western Christian modernity could be resolved through negotiations. However, this could be done only if the "government" of Sri Lanka is prepared to bow down to the demands of the LTTE. It is clear that a "government" of Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe would do so to achieve a kind of peace that would only suit him, the west and the LTTE. If at a certain stage any other "government" decides to say no to the demands of the LTTE, then obviously there will be a "war". It is not Mr. Mahinda Rajapakse who would lead the country to war, if he has to take the decision eventually. It is the LTTE and the west that would push the country to war. The objective of the anti war lobby is to demoralise and weaken the army, to see that the LTTE wins, in such an eventuality, when the country is pushed to a war by the intransigent racist demands of the LTTE made under the patronage of the west.
Professor Nalin de Silva
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