Sri Lanka’s legend begins with the Vijayawatharanaya, the arrival of King Vijaya from Northern India, with a ragtag band of bandits and rascals that had been ousted from the Kingdom. This island on the other hand was then inhabited by the Yakshas and Nagas, which were supposed to be fierce tribes of hunter-gatherers living nomadic lives.
From this admixture of two cohorts of the raw and untamed, it is said, the Sinhala race was born. It is mythic of course, and the stuff of legend. But it is also part of the lore that is chronicled in the Mahawamsa, which is said to be the oldest recorded history of any country in the world. Many years later as per this historical record, there transpired the taming of this wild race with the advent of Buddhism, with King Devanampiyatissa being converted to Buddhism by the itinerant monk the Arahat Mihindu.
Historical lore though it may be, this legend has shaped the subsequent retelling of the fate of the Sinhala race to such an extent that it is not an exaggeration to say, perhaps, that the character of the inhabitants of this island has been forged, true to this legend. Often the Mahawamsa itself portrays us as a temperamental race of fierce people, that fought amongst each other and survived despite the swell and ebb of violent and self-destructive tendencies.
immolated
Kings were deposed, and some had their fathers immolated within edifices they built (the story of Kassapa and King Dhatusena) and it was a riveting litany of violence, deceit and glimpses of nobility, that was captured through the lens of the chroniclers of this country’s hoary past. Small wonder then that commentators latch onto this past, to state that the Sinhala race was temperamental and showed signs of truancy. That is when they were being kind. Otherwise they labelled the nation as being inhabited by brigands, and irrepressible louts.
This, of course, was only half of the retelling. The other half has it that we were a very industrious people that built large irrigation tanks, and converted the country into a granary that supplied food not only to this country but to an entire region. Besides that the people were deeply religious it was said, and revered and propagated the word of the Buddha.
But despite this professed adherence to religious conduct, the rest of the history as recorded in the Mahawamsa was still rather notably of betrayal and deeds of that disreputable order, and therefore, the legend that this race was never quite tamed from the days of Vijaya’s brigands and then the Yakshas and Nagas, has endured. It is why commentators have always tended to identify a streak of selfish abandon among at least a certain mainstream cohort of the Sri Lankan race, perhaps, the Sinhala race in particular.
Perhaps post-independence, these tendencies of chaotic self-destruction as a race through infighting, duplicity and corruption. all came to a head during the ensuing decades. It is true that some opinion-makers abhor the characterisation of this country as one that failed in its entire 76 years of post-independence endeavour. The narrative of those is that the post-independence years gave rise to noble policy that saw positive tendencies such as the opportunity afforded to the underprivileged under-classes through free education, and so on.
The part about free education and accessible healthcare may be true, and the fact that we endured as an agricultural economy despite sporadic industrialisation may also be true, but it did not detract from the flip side of things which saw wars, political instability, attempts at impeachment and deposing of Presidents among other things in checkered post-independence existence.
Particular in the last decade, we were increasingly witness to impunity among the ruling classes, a state of chaos animated by corruption and the politics of extreme cynicism, nepotism and oligarchic impulses.
It was a tawdry spectacle. A lot of the time parliament couldn’t convene without fisticuffs and buffoonery on display, and politics was typified by an attitude of utter contempt for the masses. Unnervingly, those commentators that had observed we couldn’t quite shed that streak of gangsterism inherited from Vijaya and his brigands, the Yakshas, Nagas and the lot, came to be considered as being correct.
It seems that prone to religious piety as we were, and sometimes to great deeds such as irrigating the nation, we never could quite shed our streak of selfish and wretched excess at the expense of the weaker. Maybe it was a historical aberration that things had come to this pass, especially after we had finally discarded the colonial yoke and pledged to do great things that would do justice to our heritage.
It is in this spirit of erasing this aberrational phase that the people administered corrective surgery to the body politic at this year’s elections. They took a risk with the untested, because they wanted to completely overhaul the terrible, unwieldy and unmitigated disaster of the tested.
reassurance
This is why the people need reassurance that they are not going down the same route as in the past, when there are controversies such as those that recently involved the (former) newly appointed Speaker of parliament.
People do not want the Mahawamsa trope correctly or inaccurately depicted by the commentariat, to be on replay. They want this aberration of Sri Lankans being seen as truants despite even some undoubted achievements, to end. The people don’t want pretenders or showmen, and those who think they could profit from being slick or uneconomical with the truth. Cleaning the Augean stables has in any event always been a Herculean task.
Why there seems to have been an apparent rash of indiscretion or carelessness among some of those who recently vied for high office may be perplexing.
There is nothing definitive no doubt regarding some of the more talked about aspects of this recent somewhat trumped up “qualification-gate” contretemps. But there has been a little something there for those concerned to prick up their ears, and the approach should be that there ought to be a steady and un-distracted perusal into exactly what happened.
This has not been the practice in the past. Impunity meant to regard possibly errant parliamentarians and other officialdom as lovable rascals, even though there was nothing lovable about their shenanigans. But this was how the narrative was framed. Even when people had got caught red-handed cheating in the past, they were considered royal, and it was inferred that being royal they do that, “please read the Mahawamsa if you will”.
People wanted the buffoons out of politics soon and they meant business. For too long, the pantomime had been going on, with applause from the long-suffering.
But the masochism on the part of the ruled came to an end when it became apparent that there is no beneficial politics in the game of court-jester and village idiot. For a while, the people were content playing the willing foil to the ruling court-jesters, who joked and clowned their way, as they plundered and made the country’s resources their own. People don’t want any type of return to this era of the wicked-jest where the joke is on them. The President was right when he said that the people reposed faith in the new Government to change the political culture of impunity and shamelessness.
Basically, it was shamelessness that prompted the banal court-jester bahaviour in past parliaments and by those in past governments. The offenders didn’t care whether they were being laughed with or laughed at, their court-jester act of impunity got them all they wanted, especially filthy lucre.
It may take a long time to get back to the era of respectability, but get back we should. The new mantra should be that there would be no excuses, and that the people would not have to put up with even a modicum of indignity.
At least, there is that expectation, because the people know that the court-jester act is good entertainment for a while, but becomes gross over time, and stinks to the heavens. Of course, the court-jesters from the past cannot set themselves upto be paragons of virtue today, keeping watch over parliamentarians. That would be the biggest joke.
