LOSING BALL AND CHAIN

BY Priyan Rajapaksa

My heart has been singing since 2 April 2022, which is Sri Lanka’s real ‘Independence Day.’ It’s the day when our youth showed the way and shoved 75 years of rubbish into the garbage heap of history. My thoughts are with them and wish that I too could be at Galle Face.

I didn’t believe that I would live to see Sri Lankans free themselves of mental serfdom and fight for independence – as happened on 2 April – 56 days after the ‘mock Independence Day’ parade on 4 February. It’s my fervent hope that the struggle continues and doesn’t peter out.

Are we united only by hunger, power cuts and a lack of fuel, as well as other items that have been in short supply in the day-to-day lives of the village poor for 75 years? The well-worn phrase goes: ‘Colombata kiri, apita kaekiri.’

Is this only a ‘Colombo protest’? I hope not! Or are we united as one people? The next few months will tell. Will the stale smell of a 2500-year-old culture and religion continue to pervade? This is the ball and chain that imprisons us whilst giving the majority a false sense of piety.

Creating a belief that Sri Lanka is the ‘first nation of Theravada’ prevented the majority from accepting the minorities as equals. And the minorities in turn have their own suspicions and prejudices.

Our collectively prejudiced mindset has enabled politicians to divide us for the past 75 years, and enrich themselves and their families. Looking at it from white eyes, it seems childish – since we are all people of colour.

The monks and military in concert have enslaved the Burmese. Let us not follow their example and become like Burma. The clergy in the hills are cunning enough to stay in the background and let their ‘yellow pets’ do the talking.

There is more than a strong rumour that our country’s fortunes are determined by a soothsayer. Soldiers and policemen who carry rifles also wear red threads on their wrists, which are said to have been given by that soothsayer. Whither the white thread of the clergy?

How do we as a nation begin to set a standard that only a fair day’s work will receive an honest reward? No more ‘ice gahanawa.’ Not that all the blame goes to S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike and his yellow pets. But soon after 1956, the term ‘apé aanduwa’ came into vogue.

It meant that public servants (especially political appointees) didn’t work. Successive governments including the present one recruited thousands to various state and local government organisations.

Since 1948, we have been bought for one measure of rice – then two measures, subsidised power and kerosene oil… using our money!

 

අපිට ගමයි පන්සලයි, වැවයි, දාගැබයි.

උන්ට ෂැංග්රිලාවයි, උගන්ඩාවායි!

 

The politicians gave us basics and themselves pensions after five years, duty-free vehicles and employment for family members. Now, we realise nothing was free, and that those basics and luxuries were financed through borrowings.

A religion’s supposed supremacy, which was written into the constitution by a band of politicians in connivance with their yellow and other coloured pets, has ensured that politicians elected to govern have instead ruled with increasing haughtiness.

The supremacy of one religion at the expense of others, stupidly inserted into the constitution, reads like the proclamation by the pigs in Animal Farm: ‘All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.’ I am not calling our revered leaders ‘pigs’… but you have the freedom to do so!

We have a ‘cradle to grave’ welfare state that’s more suitable for a rich country; but since it is funded with borrowings, we have been driven to bankruptcy. Worse than that, we have a cradle to grave emphasis on obedience and obeisance – to all and sundry.

I have argued at least since 1972 against bowing my head and bending the knee to anyone – parents, teachers or religious dignitaries. Luckily, my parents did not ask for it… so why grovel before the clergy?

On Anzac Day, which is commemorated on 25 April each year, New Zealanders attend a dawn ceremony at local war memorials to remember those who died in past wars… and we hear the words ‘Lest we forget.’

Mark Antony said: “The evil that men do lives after them.”

This lot is particularly evil and should remain in our memory for a long time. So let’s pull down the statues of all the kaputas, mynahs and gé kurullas (house sparrows) that built mansions with our money and ran this country into the ground over the past 75 years.

Let’s use the salvaged building materials to construct a simple memorial to the country’s young protestors of 2 April with the saying: ‘Lest we forget.’

Then let us begin anew. The king is dead – long live the people!

Let’s go forward without bowing our heads. Sri Lankans, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains…