Elections: Opportunity For A New Political Order

By Prof. Charles Ponnuthurai Sarvan

Robert Burns claimed that, despite poverty, “A man’s a man for all that.” Those who know the circumstances of his early years will understand the defiant assertion of the song, but poverty means meagre food, if not starvation; inadequate protection from the weather, and shabby, tattered, clothes. It means a shrunken life-span, exposure to illness, and a lack of education for children. The last, in turn, means that the children grow up to be, and remain, poor. Class tends to perpetuate itself, and it is particularly the poor who stagnate:

But let the wrong cry out as raw as wounds. This time forgets and never heals, far less transcends.

(Stephen Spender, 1909-1995)

“The lower your socio-economic position the greater your risk of low birth-weight, infections, cancer, coronary heart disease, respiratory disease, stroke, accident, nervous and mental illness. Class inequality is – literally – marked on the body.”  It is the poor who are at greatest risk of falling victim to violence and crime. The quotation (emphasis added) is from page 9 of the Runnymede Trust’s, Who Cares About The White Working Class? London, January, 2009. I acknowledge my debt, and express thanks to the Trust for sending me a copy of the publication.

The Trust’s statement is made within the context of contemporary England: the predicament of the poor in Sri Lanka is both far worse and more widespread. As I have written elsewhere, it is an almost-overwhelming sight to walk along certain streets of Colombo late in the evening, and see misshapen creatures, human beings, including children, settling down for the night by the road:

“Telling me plain what I escaped
And others could not, that night, as in I went.
And salted was my food, and my repose”
(Edward Thomas, The Owl).

A callus, a thickening of the skin, particularly in an area where there is discomfort, can be a protective growth, deadening pain and helping us to get on with life. It is from “callus” that we have the adjective “callous”, which the dictionary defines as having an insensitive or cruel disregard for others. But in certain circumstances, it is necessary for one’s daily survival to grow a callus, to become inured. And so it is that Hopkins, in his poem, Spring And Fall, observing a little girl crying because it is autumn and the poor tree is losing its leaves, reflects: “as (your) heart grows older / It will come to such sights colder (worse) / By and by, nor spare (even) a sigh.”

Statistics from the internet indicate that 14% of Sri Lankans live on 1.25 dollars a day, while 39. 7%, that is, over one third of the population gets by on under two dollars a day. These figures do not take into account the tens of thousands of children, women and men — thinly dressed, emaciated, wretchedly huddled under flimsy, makeshift, shelters — in government camps in the north. It is a sight that makes a mockery of humanity’s claim to humanity. Poverty, as Orwell writes in Down And Out In Paris And London, weakens not only the body, but the mind and spirit as well.

Yet, since independence, despite the prevalence of a poverty that is immediate, extreme and widespread, Sri Lanka’s preoccupation (one would say, obsession) has been with race, more specifically, with the Sinhalese / Tamil divide. It is the one issue that, if it does not cloud all others, attenuates them into insignificance. It was claimed that, during the years of British imperialism, the Tamils were favoured, implying that the Sinhalese, consequently, were disadvantaged. Tamils doing well (even those holding low-level posts in the government) were compared, resentfully, with the Sinhalese peasant and the Sinhalese poor: the Sinhalese poor, the Sinhalese peasants, were not compared with the Tamil poor and Tamil peasants.

The blame for Sinhalese poverty was shifted onto an ethnic group, and away from the failure of the state, away from exploitation and callous class indifference. In England, some political parties and groups focus attention on the white working-class, and on the white poor: the emphasis is on whiteness, and not on working-conditions, income and hardship. The lot of white workers is not compared with that of their fellow (nonwhite) workers. What is at root is an economic problem turned into an issue of “colour.” The fact is that the situation and daily experience, the problems and prospects, of the Sinhalese poor and the Tamil poor are similar. (See, among others, yke Berkouwer’s Anusha: A Homeless Life In Sri Lanka, Vishva Lekha Publishers, Ratmalana, 2005. I thank K. G. Kulasena for giving me a copy of this study.)

Expressed differently, the gap between rich Sinhalese and poor Sinhalese is far greater than that between the life-reality of poor Sinhalese, poor Tamils and poor Muslims. By focusing on ethnic distinction, and by building up that distinction into a division, exploitative class structures are left securely in place. It is to the advantage of the upper and middle classes to excite and keep alive racial consciousness; to lead the Sinhalese poor and working-class to believe that much, if not all, their problems stem from the Tamils.

Religion is another element in the deception of the masses: not religion per se but as mediated by some of those wielding religious and secular influence. Marx wrote: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, the spirit of unspiritual conditions. It is the opium of the people.” Marx’s focus was not on religion but on economic and social conditions. What, he wondered, are the root causes, the material conditions and prospects, which make people need, and turn to, various forms of “opium”?

With regard to Sri Lanka and Buddhism, Dr. K. S. Palihakkara, formerly Director of Education, Director of Pirivena Education, and Secretary to the Oriental Studies Society (which conducts examinations mainly for the Buddhist clergy), states the following in his Buddhism Sans Myths & Miracles. The Buddha was a revolutionary in advocating ‘anathma’ (no soul), when the entire world, in the past as well as the present, believes in the independent existence of a soul. If there is no soul, there can’t be rebirth. Yet the belief in past births and future lives, derived from Hinduism, persists in Buddhism. Among other things, this belief is advantageous to the ruling classes:

When the poor and the outcasts suffer in their poverty, sickness and squalor in their hovels it is said even now that their suffering is due to their own fault of inheriting bad ‘karma’ from past births. In other words, the downtrodden masses are made to believe that they themselves are responsible for their condition.
(Stamford Lake Publication, Pannipitiya, 2003, p. 120.)

However, if an opiate is associated with inducing a drowsy sense of well-being, religion can also have the opposite effect and act as an intoxicant, a drug that convinces people they are acting in the very highest, the noblest, of causes, and drive them to wild and violent acts. Brutality and cruelty are then not merely legitimised but sanctified. To murder, maim or destroy is inhumane, but we do it for Allah or the Buddha or Jesus or Ram (alphabetical order).

For things to change in Sri Lanka, there must be a new political order. The presidential election looms. “Election” implies choice, and choice, an opportunity.  One hopes the people will not choose the person who boasts of having the most racist credentials, but (at long last) the one who can unite and build a new Sri Lanka, a true paradise isle of political justice;  a country where religion is used not to divide and dominate;  where Buddhist compassion finds true expression; a land of social care and concern:  “Without a materialist politics one is unable to transcend the things that break people apart – one cannot find the shared experiences that bridge cultural, religious and racial differences” (Who Cares About The White Working Class? p. 51). Individual acts of charity within an uncaring order of things are merely palliative. New values and priorities are needed: in short, a new system, a new order of things.  Winston Churchill is perhaps Britain’s greatest war-hero, yet he lost the elections which immediately followed the end of the Second World War. I quote from ‘Elections And Emotional Gratitude’ (Sarvan, The Sunday Leader, 7 June 2009):

It’s not that the British were ingrates, but the country faced many and major problems of reconstruction and, while recognising and applauding Churchill’s gifts and contribution as a war-time leader, the people felt that Labour would be better able to deal with the tasks facing the country. In other words, they rationally kept their electoral choice for the future of the country separate from the emotions of admiration, gratitude and affection for services rendered to it in the immediate past.

Sri Lanka needs a new politics, one that emphasises commonality and community; one that, not destructively obsessed with race and religion, is caringly concerned about social problems: a new politics for the new Millennium, and a new Sri Lanka rising, Phoenix like, from the ashes of ethnic conflict and cruelty, destruction and tragedy. The following words are from Professor G.A. Cohen’s Why Not Socialism? (Princeton and Oxford), 2009, page 82:

I agree with Albert Einstein that socialism is humanity’s attempt to “overcome and advance beyond the predatory phase of human development.” Every market, even a socialist market, is a system of predation. Our attempt to get beyond predation has thus far failed. I do not think the right conclusion is to give up. (Emphasis added.)