Lakshman Kadirgamar: Quite A Different Doubt Arises In My Mind
Charles
Sarvan
A friend sent me a copy
of a recent panegyric and lament on the late Foreign
Minister, as carried by you, together with his comment, extracts of
which I reproduce below. (The LTTE, “the usual suspects” for all things
dastardly, are thought to have killed Mr. Kadirgamar though, to my knowledge,
there wasn’t a thorough investigation or an official report.) I quote:
“And
this is perhaps the most dangerous kind of writing for the cause of justice for
the minorities: suave, liberal humanism, typical of the English speaking middle
class, self-righteously “reasonable” and “balanced” and “idealistically
concerned” with what matters, though flaunting also its self-professed
“realism”. But the slips show. Sri Lanka
as victim of the Channel 4 videos episode,
with indignities heaped on it, subjected to moral opprobrium, damaged, never
mind the innocents who paid the actual price of the victory that ended the war.
And the terror and extremism are all on the side of the defeated (though it is
conceded that some of the majority show extremism). It’s exactly the message
that it is [name omitted] role to express, though with none of this obfuscating
“elegance”. And the discomfort (we have encountered this so many times before,
even from so -called decent, honourable and thoughtful people) with even the
possibility of investigating honestly what actually happened is too, too
evident. If at all, it has to be done through ” effective, timely, sensible
diplomacy” – presumably this would give more chance that it would be as useless
as the kind of investigation that the committees of inquiry which are habitually
appointed every time the innumerable criminal activities that are taking place
become too difficult to ignore are supposed to carry out, but never actually do
(except in the case of the former Chief Justice). The only consequence is that
attitudes will be firmed up that will ensure that the real causes of the
conflict will never either be recognised or addressed, particularly because none
of these people who are putting themselves as spokespersons for the cause of
justice and equality will accept responsibility not just for what happened, but
for their own attitudes, which allowed it to happen, even ensured that it would.
[It is] dangerous because the “innocent” veneer could well help it claim and
assume high moral ground and authority, guaranteeing the permanent
institutionalisation of the Jathika Chintanaya ideology across the board, and
the permanent transfer of the minority problem to the back burner.
[Lines
omitted] Apart from helping conceal one’s own culpability, one can while
pointing fingers set oneself up as the new elitist moral and intellectual
leaders of the place, preaching justice and celebrating for public consumption
friends and others in the minorities whose positions are so vulnerable precisely
because of the stances one has adopted on the issues involved along with all of
the many whose responsibility for the tragedy of our land is clearly evident.
There seems to be a great deal of this kind of sanctimonious writing going on
in the country at the moment by people whose records throughout the worst of the
conflict have been patently dismal, and too many decent people seem to be buying
into the whole deplorable hoax..” End of quote.
Quite
a different doubt arises in my mind (though I’m conscious that a question in
Logic is whether it’s possible to prove or disprove negatives, for example, that
unicorns don’t exist). I doubt that, for all the encomiums heaped on the now
safely dead Foreign Minister, Mr. Kadirgamar would
have won an election had he stood against a Sinhalese Buddhist candidate. One
recalls that Ponnambalam Arunachchalam, the driving force behind the formation
of the Ceylon National Congress, left the organization feeling betrayed and
disillusioned. (Of his brother, President J. R.
Jayewardene, in his Address delivered on the life and work of Sir
Ponnambalam Ramanathan at the Vivekananda Society, Colombo, November 30, 1991,
reminded the audience that Sir Ponnambalam was even called the Tamil who was the
foster parent of the Sinhalese. In the aftermath of the riots of 1915, the
President said, one voice and one alone was heard within and outside the
Legislature: that of Ponnambalam Ramanathan. He saved the Sinhala race from
destruction, taking on single-handed “the worst exhibition of British
imperialism as displayed by the 1915 Martial Law atrocities directed solely
against the Sinhalese.”) According to a survey published in the Washington
Post, 8 November 2012, as many whites voted for Obama as had for Bill
Clinton when the latter was elected. But, given the entrenched majoritarian, as
distinct from ‘democratic’, nature of the Island’s politics, and mindful of what
I suggested about ‘the silent majority’ (Colombo
Telegraph, 6th April 2013), would Sinhalese voters have
chosen Kadirgamar as against a fellow Sinhalese Buddhist? Is that why he didn’t
try to get his post a more authentic, electoral-based, foundation? We are back
with the unicorn, unable either to prove or disprove.
I
leave with extracts from an ‘open letter’ (Sunday Leader, Colombo,
Oct.26, 1997) written to the Foreign Minister by yet another victim whose
murder remains unsolved, namely, Kumar Ponnambalam (Unfortunately, Mr Kadirgamar
didn’t deign to reply, at least, not publicly.)
“Minister
Sir,
Congratulations
[…] for having been voted ‘The Sri Lankan of the Year’ by the Lanka Monthly
Digest!
[…]
But first, can you recall the day I invited you to attend a meeting of Tamils at
the BMICH on March 26, 1994 before the general elections? Your immediate
reaction, which still rings in my ears, was “What politics for me, Kumar?”
Tell
me, minister Sir, did you go into the Cabinet because, within four months you
understood what politics was all about, or was it that this government sought to
make use of your name, which happens to be a Tamil name, only to show the world
that they also have a Tamil in the Cabinet? Having only lent your Tamil name to
the machinations of this government, you described yourself as a representative
of the Tamil at the General Assembly of the United Nations in September 1994.
Were you being honest in so describing yourself, having gone into parliament
through the back door?
Do
you remember July 1995, minister Sir, when your dishonesty was shown when you
took the ICRCto task for having made public, the bombing of the Navaly church
which killed so many innocent Tamil civilians after your government asked the
Tamils to go there for refuge? Do you also remember the September of that year
when you tried dishonestly to hide the cruel bombing of a school in Nagar Kovil,
when so many children were killed during the lunch break?
It
is one of the greater tragedies that the countries that have branded the LTTE as
terrorists have done so knowing full well that the free media of the world have
been prevented by your government from going to the war zone to see for
themselves […] What is terrorism? Cannot political parties and, indeed,
governments be terrorists? Is it not the fact that it is common knowledge in Sri
Lanka that various Sri Lankan governments have been guilty of terrorism? Is it
not a fact that political parties in Sri Lanka are and have been guilty of
terrorism?”
