Serendipity

Still carrying the White Man’s burden

The failure of the efforts of Western leaders and diplomats in their humanitarian efforts to free thousands of Sri Lankan Tamils and perhaps also save Velupillai Pirapaharan and his cohorts in the process from the Sri Lankan government should be  pitied. Last week British and French Foreign Ministers David Milliband and Bernard Kouchner confessed to their failure to bring about a ceasefire after strenuous efforts and departed.

Sweden, another Johnny Come Lately to the peace game, also tried to jump into the Milliband-Kouchner bandwagon but was firmly asked to await his turn. Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister has also been trying hard to make the Rajapakse government listen to his appeals  together with the plaintive cries of Hillary Clinton, while in Colombo American Ambassador Robert Blake has been beating the peace drums vigorously without much success.

All these efforts of  former colonial masters brought to our mind the lines of White Man’s Burden by Rudyard Kipling which most of the younger generation of Sri Lankans may not be familiar with.

We reproduce a few lines  which may explain the deep concern of the descendants of former colonialists to help the hapless Tamil victims of the 21st Century.

  Take up the White Man’s burden, Send forth the best ye breed, Go bind your sons to exile, To serve your captives’ need, To wait in heavy harness, On fluttered fold and wild, Your new caught sullen peoples’ Half devil and half child……..

Take up the White Man’s Burden  And reap his old reward,  The blame of those ye better, The hate of those ye guard…..

Literati have differed in their opinion of Kipling. George Orwell called him the ‘Prophet of British Imperialism’ but Kipling was also awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1907.

British creation

The ‘White Man’s Burden’ is one which no one thrust upon the British at any time. It was a creation of the British on every continent they colonised — Asia, Africa, Australia, North and South America. As we all know the motives were not altruistic. The might, wealth and power of the colonialists were those that were drained from the colonies. True, they did some good such as building railways, roads, hospitals, schools etc., but not entirely for altruistic motives.

Even 60 years after they left their former colonies the colonial hangover of the White Man’s Burden remain. They want to rediscover, resurrect and carry it on, just to show the natives how to behave in a civilised way even after more than a half century.

Much has been said of double standards of the West on humanitarian issues such as in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, USA action in Afghanistan, Iraq and now Pakistan which we need not elaborate on.

Paradox

However, a comic paradox comes into play in the Sri Lankan crisis. It is not fully realised that statements made by those like Ambassador Blake, British Prime Minister Brown and his ministers, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Norwegian leaders and other Western leaders in their attempts to whip up world opinion against Sri Lanka have generated an enormous amount of political support for President Rajapakse.

Winning the military conflict per se was sufficient to ensure electoral victories in the provincial council elections but it also resulted even in dyed-in-the-green UNP supporters voting for Rajapakse because of the tremendous national revulsion these comments generated.

No people in any country will like to be dictated to on a vital issue that can decide the fate of a nation and that is what happened with almost the entire West lining up and  demanding a ceasefire that would have  been a virtual reprieve for Velupillai Pirapaharan who now appears to be  on his last legs.

Once before in 1985, President J.R. Jayewardene had the LTTE on the run in the Vadamarachchi Operation. Direct Indian military intervention saved the terrorists. Chandrika Kumaratunga defied Sinhala opinion and negotiated only to miss being assassinated by a hair’s breadth. President Premadasa negotiated and even supplied armaments to fight the Indians and ended up being blown to bits at Armour Street.

Ranil Wickremesinghe had six rounds of negotiations backed by Western powers only to have the agreement reached rejected and soon after being betrayed by Pirapaharan  who ensured Wickremesinghe’s defeat by announcing a fatwa on Tamils not to cast their votes at the presidential election.

The success of Rajapakse, the grassroots level politician, has been due to not  being swayed or pressurised by the ‘international community’ and going directly for the jugular of the Tigers.

Perfidy

He is now sitting pretty on the political firmament for telling powerful world leaders: ‘Go fly a kite’ (as we Sri Lankans say) instead of succumbing to their pressures.

An intriguing issue that needs to be probed is: Why the British, even at this late moment are attempting to salvage the LTTE and save Pirapaharan? True, David Milliband at a press conference in Colombo last week had declared that the ‘international community  has been calling for a ceasefire not to save Pirapaharan but to allow civilians to leave, for a long term peace in Sri Lanka.’

There are some direct queries that need answers to this statement: (1) Since Western countries want negotiations after the ceasefire with whom is the government to negotiate? Velupillai Pirapaharan? Wouldn’t that be tantamount to saving the terrorist leader for negotiations?

(2) In a recent court case in Britain, it was reported that a former British Minister Clair Short had said that while the ceasefire was on (during Ranil Wickremesinghe’s premiership) Britain had given thousands of dollars to the LTTE and that Britain’s spy agency the MI5 has been in direct contact with the LTTE leader in Britain.

Thus, was the British  proscription of the LTTE a mere fig leaf to project its anti-terrorist stance? (3) Is the British Labour Party’s support for terrorists a desperate move to garner Tamil votes which have proliferated in many British constituencies?

It does seem that the once revered and respected British democracy has now descended to the level of Tamil Nadu politics where a few political extremists can threaten to sway foreign policy for racist interests.

A quotation attributed to the late Dr. Colvin R. de Silva is apt in this instance. ‘The sun never set on the British Empire because God did not trust them in the dark.’