Detour Made At Nugegoda: A Mongrel Nationalism
Sarath De Alwis
A terminal response
“As long as I breathe I hope. As long as I breathe I shall fight for the future that radiant future, in which man, strong and beautiful, will become master of the drifting stream of history and will direct it towards the boundless horizons of beauty, joy and happiness.” – Leon Trotsky
‘Inaccuracy and irrelevance’ should not be dismissed as minor irritants in any public discussion. Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka couples this erudite disdain to an assertion that my rejoinder to his redefinition of national identity was a ‘misplaced personalized critique.’ Dr. Jayatilleka is a politician and a political scientist. His indignation at my labeling him as ‘Mark Antony of Nugegoda’ is understandable. It was a grievous error on my part. Mark Antony eulogized the Conqueror of Gaul and dictator of Rome. He declared that he had come to bury him and not to praise him.
At Nugegoda Dr. Jayatilleka exhumed the fallen dictator, breathed life in to him, praised him and then urged that he be restored to the Senate. A reasonably impressive coalition of patricians and plebeians cheered and urged him on. It was in fact a great turning point. His rebuttal and explanation is explicit. The Nationalist Turn: A necessary detour? (Colombo Telegraph 9th March)
Necessary for whom?
Dr.DJ contends that in this case ‘the larger matter is the political dynamics of this island’.
How do we explain the political dynamics of this island? In order to avoid adversarial positioning on this complex and delicate subject it is best that we rely on Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka the political scientist and diplomat. “It is usually the case that the period after a war is one of profound ferment and productivity in the intellectual, artistic and policy realms. From WWII Europe to post Vietnam America, this has been so. Sri Lanka seems a sad exception. We have almost ceased to analyse and think. [Preface -Long War, Cold Peace 2013]
The nation has awoken at Nugegoda. It has begun to think! It has discovered new analytical skills! Dr. DJ himself has summoned his extraordinary powers of recall. He has discovered the expansionist Tamil aspirations of Tamilakam, the Tamil Land expressed by Ponnambalam Arunachalam in 1922 – the year that the League of Nations granted Britain the Palestine mandate.Read More
