FROM THE SECOND DECADE
A selection from LMD’s Cover Stories

JANUARY 2006

SRI LANKAN OF THE YEAR 2005

Sri Lankabhimanya Lakshman Kadirgamar was a true hero of our times – a unique colossus who bestrode the world stage on Sri Lanka’s behalf, writes PATA President Emeritus Lakshman Ratnapala

In one of the most celebrated funeral orations of all time, the famous Greek statesman Pericles articulated the blessings of freedom – usually taken for granted. He sought to communicate to the people of Athens the necessity of making sacrifices – including the ultimate sacrifice of one’s life – in the name of freedom.

He said that while others are brave out of ignorance, “the man who can most truly be accounted brave is he who best knows the meaning of what is sweet in life and of what is terrible… and then goes out undeterred to meet what is to come.” That was in 430 BC, shortly after the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War.

Those values, those qualities, those blessings that Pericles enunciated outlast the limitations of time and place. They are eternal. They are as true today as they were then. In our time, in our midst, was one such truly brave individual – one who went undeterred to meet what was to come: the late Lakshman Kadirgamar.

Two and a half millennia ago, Pericles asked the citizens that “you should fix your eyes every day on the greatness of Athens as she really is and should fall in love with her.” Kadirgamar understood that what Pericles said was that one should fight for one’s country – not in the name of myths but for the kind of society that makes possible the kind of life we live. And just as Pericles had asked the people to fall in love with Athens, Kadirgamar had fallen in love with Sri Lanka “as she really is.”

A man of accomplishment and sophistication, he was as much at ease with the graces of the East as he was with the refinements of the West. Culturally, he straddled the world and could have easily fallen in love with any place, anywhere. Rara avis.

But he chose to fall in love with Sri Lanka – not in abstract theory, as politicians are wont to do; not with the romance of a poet; but with the full understanding of what is sweet in life and of what is terrible. He knew what Sri Lanka “really is.”

To know Kadirgamar, one must know where he came from: his background, education and philosophy. Scion of a Tamil family with deep roots in Jaffna, youngest of four sons of a Queen’s Counsel, he was also the younger brother of another Queen’s Counsel, an army officer and a navy officer. Although born in Manipay, his Protestant Christian parents, living in Colombo, chose to educate him in Kandy (the heartland of Sinhalese culture).

At Trinity College, he combined athletic excellence with scholastic superiority, which heralded a blazing career in the making. His list of achievements glitters like a brilliant display of fireworks on a clear night sky: prizes for Ceylon History and English, editor of the college magazine, captain of cricket, colours in rugby and a ‘Lion’ in athletics, senior prefect and Ryde Gold Medal for best all-round student among many other accomplishments.

While still at school when the nation won its independence from the British Raj, he was accorded the honour of carrying the ‘Torch of Freedom’ to Independence Hall – one of four outstanding youths representing the four major ethnic groups of the land.

Enrolling at the University of Ceylon, Kadirgamar strolled to a bachelor of law degree with honours; and the same year, was placed first in the ‘first class’ at the Advocates Intermediate. The next year – again, first in the first class at the Advocates Final of the Ceylon Law College – he was admitted to the Ceylon Bar. Meanwhile, his prowess in sports continued: not only did he break athletics records in the country of his birth but also in India, where he broke the all India hurdles record in Ahmedabad; and again, in Allahabad.

Offered the captaincy of the Sri Lankan team to the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne – which offer arrived in the midst of his law examinations – he was forced to decline. And so Sri Lanka lost what might have been ecstasy… on the heels of the euphoria of fellow Trinitian Duncan White’s shattering of the Olympic and world records at the London Olympics in 1948.

Kadirgamar went on to read for a degree in letters at Balliol College, Oxford, was admitted a barrister-at-law of the Inner Temple, won a cricket blue and was elected President – Oxford Union at that august seat of learning, joining a galaxy of world luminaries from lords of the realm to presidents and prime ministers (including S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike).

He was made an Honorary Fellow of Balliol College and in a rare honour reserved for the eminent few, his portrait was unveiled at the world’s most prestigious university, only months before his assassination. The crowning glory of his legal career came with his election as an honorary bencher of the Inner Temple, one of four ancient courts of law in Great Britain, being the first Sri Lankan – and the second Asian – to be so honoured in its
500 year history.

The young lawyer practised law before the Queen’s Privy Council in London among eminent barristers of his time and at the Ceylon Bar. In 1963, Amnesty International appointed him to investigate the Buddhist-Catholic conflict in Vietnam. In 1974, he was sought as a consultant by the International Labour Organization in Geneva, from where he joined the World Intellectual Property Organisation as a director, advising Asian and Pacific countries on intellectual property.

Then, this rara avis once again heard the call of his native land and returned to “see what is sweet and what is terrible” with the love of his life. As the old saying goes: “You can take a man out of a country but you can’t take that country out of a man.”

Back in Sri Lanka, he practised commercial, industrial and labour law; constitutional and international law; and his forte: intellectual property law. Appointed a president’s counsel, he was on the law reforms panel, the committee for upgrading consultancy services in the construction industry, the advisory committee on intellectual property and the foreign affairs study group.

A prolific writer, he contributed numerous theses to the Modern Law Review, the South African Law Journal, the Conveyancer and a host of other publications.

He could have lived a life of luxury purely on his local and foreign earnings from the practice of law but chose to forsake riches for the rigours of politics. Persuaded by his friend Dr. Neelan Tiruchelvam, the peacemaker murdered by Tamil Tiger terrorists, Kadirgamar took to politics – but never contested an election for a seat in parliament.

He was not tailored for the hustle and bustle of the dirty game of populist pandering. Instead, he was appointed a member of parliament on the national list by then President Chandrika Kumaratunga and was made foreign minister. The two became trusted friends, with him becoming one of her closest confidantes, peacemaker in the intra-party conflicts of coalition government and most notably, articulator of the president’s vision of propelling the peace process with the LTTE into the power centres of the world.

Besides his scholarship, intellect and communication skills, Kadirgamar’s ethnicity – or the perception thereof – played a crucial role in his prominence in the peace process with the LTTE and his brutal murder… allegedly by the LTTE.

But how can anyone – Tamil, Sinhalese or any other – claim ethnicity by the accident of birth? To belong, one must truly have that ethnic ethos. From his background, it is apparent Kadirgamar stood apart from the Tamil ethos. He transcended the constricting bonds of tribalism and race. Rara avis.

He was a liberated man – a nationalist perhaps – and certainly a cosmopolitan like his compatriots of the calibre of the savant Ananda Coomaraswamy and more recently, Baku Mahadeva. He absorbed the best of the Christian faith, which he was born into; was brought up and educated in the Hindu faith of his Jaffna ancestry; and absorbed the Buddhist faith of those whom he lived, worked and played with.

He assimilated what was best in his Asian heritage – not just Sri Lankan culture but the sumptuousness of the all Asian cultural banquet. He digested all that was best in the West – from the liberality of mind and policy to the concepts of democracy, meritocracy and the rule of law. Whence all before him had failed, it was he, the Christian, who succeeded in persuading the United Nations to proclaim the birthday of the Buddha as a world holiday.

But others sought to make him ‘a Tamil.’ Those who stuck the label on him were on both sides of the ethnic divide. On the Sinhalese side, they sought to capitalise on his birth to derive advantage for their own chauvinist politics, yet worked to deny him higher political positions. On the Tamil terrorists’ side, they sought to paint him as a traitor to the Tamil cause – and ultimately, allegedly assassinated him.

He himself remained unfazed, for he knew, as Robert Ingersoll said, that “men are not superior by reason of the accidents of race or colour. They are superior who have the best heart, the best brain.”

The Sorbonne educated, Left Bank socialist, Kumaratunga recognised his heart and brain more than that of any other in her army of ministers – with the possible exception of the former finance minister Dr. Sarath Amunugama.

She who called Kadirgamar “a hero of our times” had attempted to appoint him prime minister – but was thwarted by the party power brokers who saw not his stellar qualities but only his ethnicity.

It is a sign of the political chicanery of our times that these same people who worked to deny him his reward, heaped praise on him – even as a distraught president, disregarding her own security, rushed to the hospital in the dead of night and wept outside the surgical theatre as doctors gave up hope of saving the mortally wounded hero. “It is true that heaven’s infinite wisdom grants a different genius to each people but it is equally true that heaven’s law changes by time and place,” wrote Pierre Corneille in Cinna about 1640.

Kadirgamar’s legal training committed him to ‘the dignity of the individual,’ for promoting which he lauded the UN. Equally, he upheld the rule of law in relations between sovereign states and condemned the Iraq war for violating it.

He said: “Simultaneously with the concentration of fearsome power in the hands of one nation state, new concepts of war have emerged, which seek to justify armed intervention in the affairs of another sovereign state – the concept of the humanitarian war to prevent or punish genocide, ethnic cleansing and other heinous crimes, and the war to effect a regime change in order to liberate an oppressed people from dictatorship and install a democratic form of government. If such a war were waged with the approval of the [UN] Security Council, there would be no problem as to its legality. If however, it were to be launched by a state that possesses the capacity to do so unilaterally or in alliance with other like-minded states, grave questions arise as to its legality, moral validity and practicality.”

He will be remembered best for his bold and relentless campaign to strip the Tamil Tigers of their mask of respectability as freedom fighters, which they had successfully deceived the gullible liberals of the Western world into believing they were.

He exposed them for what they really were: monstrous terrorists seeking to impose their fascist regime on a hapless Tamil population, which is intimidated and cowed into silent submission. The West has not yet fully awakened to this reality, lulled by self-serving Norwegian appeasement.

India too – despite platitudes about respecting Sri Lanka’s unity – suffers from moral impotence, lacking the integrity to curb the Tiger, which the pseudo-Gandhians trained and unleashed in the first place, brazenly exporting cross-border terrorism – and which ironically backlashed to slay their own leaders.

A line of anaemic Sri Lankan foreign ministers looked askance as the terrorists raised money abroad and waged campaigns to invest themselves with the cloak of respectability. It was only when Kadirgamar became foreign minister that the battle was joined to outlaw the terrorists. He marshalled the facts, dissected the nuances with clarity and delivered them with impeccable eloquence in the councils of the world.

It is vital to recognise that Kadirgamar’s campaign against terrorism was not born of hatred or vengeance. He was too much of an intellectual to be guided by baser passions. His campaign was grounded in philosophy.

At the service of thanksgiving for the slain patriot, the Bishop of Colombo Rt. Reverend Duleep de Chickera best articulated Kadirgamar’s ideological stance in dealing with historical grievance, based on society’s experience of alleged exploitation, violation of human rights and the perception of oppression.

Rather than use the memory of the past to incite revenge and violence – or in the alternative, suppress the memory of something that happened long ago by just forgetting about it – Kadirgamar offered a third option of looking at historical grievance in a manner that liberated.

His philosophy, the bishop said, was: “We do not remember death and destruction to continue killing. We do not remember oppression and violence to continue violence and oppression. We do not remember humiliation to perpetuate humiliation. Instead, we remember with sorrow and regret – and where necessary, with apology – so that our children may rise up, forgive each other, call each other blessed – and live…”

Suave as he was in conduct, elegant as he was in speech, clear as he was in perception, Kadirgamar was passionate – but never bombastic – in his support of democracy; and sharp but never vitriolic in his condemnation of terrorism.

If he exposed the LTTE for the ruthless terrorist organisation that it was, he did not spare his eloquence in stripping the facades of sanctimony off the faces of the Western world – to expose their deceit, duplicity and double standards in dealing with terrorism in the West as against terrorism in the East. Towards Sri Lanka and other countries of the Third World – battered by terrorism for decades before 9/11 – the West, he said, turned “a Nelsonian eye”… professing a lack of evidence to prosecute while the terrorists collected millions of dollars to buy arms, ran media campaigns out of offices in the heart of London and other European cities, and conscripted child soldiers.

But after New York and Washington were attacked in September 2001, Kadirgamar said that the West awoke to a policy of “enlightened self-interest” to launch an international war on terror. And the Europeans saw the light after Madrid and London were attacked more recently.

Suddenly, they found for those attacks the kind of evidence which for Sri Lanka, they could not see under their noses for years. The global war on terror, it appears, is still good only for the Western half of the globe.

Yet, Kadirgamar was a friend of the West and valued its ideals of democracy. Reminding the world that America is a “deeply wounded society after September 11,” he asserted that “the community of democratic states must always remain in dialogue… so that America will never be allowed to feel abandoned, isolated and lonely. When we differ from American policy, our criticism should be tempered with understanding. A giant should not be left friendless, bereft of honest counsel, lest it be tempted to use its enormous strength in irrational and harmful ways.”

In the struggle against terrorism, Kadirgamar observed: “A democracy standing alone cannot possibly survive a sustained terrorist onslaught – because democracy is vulnerable; it is fundamentally constrained, limited by the demands of democratic practice and tradition. A democracy – even at a time of war – has to remember the rule of law, the freedom of the press and all those requisites of a practising democracy. How then do we fight; how then do we survive?” he asked, reflecting Sri Lanka’s dilemma.

Kadirgamar pleaded: “Unless [the] democracies of the world stand together and fight together and always come to the aid of a member in peril, democracy will not survive. A challenge to democracy anywhere in the world is a challenge to democracy everywhere. The great liberal democracies must wake up to the fact that it is their duty to come to the aid of a democracy in peril in practical ways – with moral support, yes – words and declarations – but also by a demonstration of political will that sends a message to the terrorists of the world that their days are numbered, that there will be no succour, no solace, no safe haven, no place to hide, nowhere to run for the terrorists of the world – when all of us, the democratic states, stand together and fight together.”

F.Scott Fitzgerald wrote: “Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.” Our hero knew he was a marked man. Former Ontario Prime Minister Bob Rae remembered that Kadirgamar told him prophetically: “I could be shot dead in my swimming pool.” He also told the premier that he felt the goals and objectives of the Tamil Tiger terrorists were to establish a “fascist, racist state in the heart of our country.”

Rae recalled that Kadirgamar was relentless in battling them because he “wanted peace but not at any cost.”

He was the sort of man that I portrayed at the beginning, a Periclean hero “who can most truly be accounted brave, he who best knows the meaning of what is sweet in life and of what is terrible… and then goes out undeterred to meet what is to come.” As Pericles had asked his citizens, Kadirgamar fixed his eyes every day on the greatness of Sri Lanka as she really is – and fell in love with her.

He fought for the country – not in the name of myths but for the kind of society that makes possible the kind of life we live. Rara avis.

A GOLDEN VOICE, NOW SILENCED Lakshman Kadirgamar joined a galaxy of the planet’s most distinguished luminaries, from lords of the realm to presidents and prime ministers, when he was elected President – The Oxford Union. Outspoken on the world stage – especially against terrorism – his most eloquent testimony to diplomacy may be in his tragic death, which the international community that so respected him took seriously enough to do something meaningful about – a response still being played out on the EU and Sri Lankan stages…

LEGAL EAGLE Kadirgamar went on to read for a degree in letters at Balliol College, Oxford, was admitted a barrister at law of the Inner Temple, won a cricket blue and was elected President – Oxford Union at that august seat of learning.

The young lawyer practised law before the Queen’s Privy Council in London, among eminent barristers of his time and at the Ceylon Bar. In Sri Lanka, he practised commercial, industrial and labour law; constitutional and international law; and his forte: intellectual property law. Appointed a president’s counsel, he was on the law reforms panel, the committee for upgrading consultancy services in the construction industry, the advisory committee on intellectual property and the foreign affairs study group.

A WAY WITH WORDS: NOT A FREE DINNER!

Excerpts of what the late Lakshman Kadirgamar had to say in an after-dinner speech in the UK…

Some historians say, I think uncharitably, that cricket is really a diabolical political strategy disguised as a game – a substitute for war – invented by the British to confuse the natives by encouraging them to fight each other instead of their imperial rulers.

The world is divided into two camps – those who revel in the intricacies of cricket and those who are totally baffled by it – who cannot figure out why a group of energetic young men should spend days, often in the hot sun or bitter cold, chasing a round object across an open field, hitting it from time to time with a stick… all to the rapturous applause of thousands, now millions, of ecstatic spectators across the world…

In the course of my travels, I have a hard time explaining to the non-cricketing world – in America, China, Europe and Russia – that a googly is not an Indian sweetmeat; that a square cut is not a choice selection of prime beef; that a cover drive is not a secluded part of the garden; that a bouncer is not a muscular janitor at a nightclub; that a yorker is not some exotic cocktail mixed in Yorkshire; that a legbreak is not a sinister manoeuvre designed to cripple your opponent’s limbs below the waist.

Ladies and gentlemen, let me see whether politics and cricket have anything in common. Both are games. Politicians and cricketers are superficially similar and yet very different. Both groups are wooed by the cruel public, who embrace them today and reject them tomorrow. Cricketers work hard; politicians only pretend to do so. Cricketers are disciplined; discipline is a word unknown to most politicians in any language. Cricketers risk their own limbs in the heat of honourable play; politicians encourage others to risk their limbs in pursuit of fruitless causes while they remain secure in the safety of their pavilions. Cricketers deserve the rewards they get; the people get the politicians they deserve. Cricketers retire young; politicians go on forever. Cricketers unite the country; politicians divide it. Cricketers accept the umpire’s verdict even if they disagree with it; politicians who disagree with an umpire usually get him transferred. Cricketers stick to their team through victory and defeat; politicians in a losing team cross over and join the winning team. Clearly, cricketers are the better breed.

It is said that the task of a foreign minister is to lie effusively for his country abroad. That may be true but it is certainly true that he has to fight for his country and defend it at all times. Our cricketers may recall that in the run-up to the 1996 World Cup, Australia refused to play a match in Colombo, citing security reasons. Shane Warne said he wouldn’t come to Colombo because he couldn’t do any shopping there. The press asked me for a comment. I said: “Shopping is for sissies.”

There was a storm of protest in Australia. A TV interviewer asked me whether I had ever played cricket. I said I had played before he was born…

I remember vividly the incident that occurred in Australia when Murali was called for throwing and Arjuna led his team to the boundary in protest but cleverly refrained from crossing it. I was watching TV in Colombo. As a past captain, I asked myself what I would have done in Arjuna’s place. In my mind, I had no hesitation in supporting his decision. A few minutes later, the phone rang. The president of the board called to ask for advice. I said Arjuna was right because a captain must, on the field, stand up for his men and protect them… but the consequences must not be allowed to go too far; good lawyers must be engaged and a reasonable compromise must be reached. That was done…

For me, it has been a great pleasure and an honour to be here with you tonight. When I was invited to be the chief guest at this occasion on my way to New York for the General Assembly of the United Nations, I accepted with eager anticipation of meeting our cricketers and relaxing for a moment. Nobody told me that I had to make a speech until last night. It came home to me then that there is no such thing as a free dinner!