The Mark Antony Of Nugegoda
By Sarath De Alwis -March 9, 2015
Sarath De Alwis
“To him who looks upon the world rationally, the world in its turn presents a rational aspect. The relation is mutual.” – Hegel in Lectures on the Philosophy of History
The role of identity in the political order of our Island has been redefined by Dr.Dayan Jayatilleka in his newest exposition captioned Identity & the Islands Political Order and gives it an urgency of an Existential Question.
I begin my counter with a Hegelian approach to the ‘rational’ in the hope, perhaps forlorn that we still share some of those of rudimentary Marxist notions of morality that recognizes antagonisms that are class based and not race based.
His latest treatise seems to place Dr. Dayan unequivocally in the racist variety. The Jewish theologian Rabbi Joshua Herschel points out that “Racism is man’s gravest threat to man–the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason.”
I would even go further and invoke Trotsky who spurned “those base means and ways which set one part of the working class against other parts…or lowers the faith of the masses in themselves and their organization.”
Why does Dr. Jayatilleka contrive so hard and so passionately to ‘lower the faith of the masses in themselves’?
His contemptuous dismissal of those who opt to abide by reason as rootless cosmopolitans and intellectual dilettanti is incomprehensible. His knowledge of men, matters and minds is far more judicious and incisive than his present comrades Weerawansa and Gammanpila who share the very legitimate objective of restoration of their political master Mahinda Rajapaksa in office.
His characterization of Tamil nation hood displays the usual bias of a Gunadasa Amarasekera or a Nalin de Silva. The common prerogative of the pamphleteer. “No surrender. No defeat. A spectre’s haunting Main Street. [With apologies to the rock band Weakerthans]
Dr. Jayatilleka is on record insisting that both ‘Sinhala and Tamil nationalism’ must be contained as a prerequisite to build a Sri Lankan national identity and consciousness. How did he propose to do that? Again he is on record. “They can be contained only by being accommodated to some degree. Tamil nationalism can be contained only by a sufficiency of devolved power and resources. We must share power with one another so as to build a nation with and for us all.”