Mahinda and Buddha stickers on a jeweler’s scales, Kegalle
I like traveling around Sri Lanka. I was supposed to visit Mannar on Thursday, but the Ministry Of Defence rejected my approval. This makes me think. I think I’m rejected cause I write for the Sunday Leader, and they published my photos of Vavuniya and Puvarasekulam. It could also be because I had a small incident in the Hambantota Port. Fair enough I guess. The bigger question for me, however, is how many benefits there are for toeing the line and how much it sucks when you cross it. It sucks that I can’t travel north, but people there can’t get out. If I go along with that my life would improve. There is a Faustian bargain on the table and it terrifies me.
I have and will work with the government. I like government, at least more than not having a government and I still think public service is a noble thing. In Sri Lanka I have met a lot of people in government service who are very cool and I’m consciously ignorant enough to hold my tongue (now). I think we have insane problems, but I still support the government.
Screwing People Over
Some stuff, however, I really don’t support. I don’t support keeping people involuntarily in IDP camps. I don’t support keeping Sri Lanka opposition leaders and media out, or citizens even. I don’t support the demonizing of people you don’t disagree with as somehow not Sri Lankan, and threatening their reputation and lives. I don’t support killing, nor the glorification thereof. I definitely don’t support rule of men over rule of law.
Why This Is Bad
I’m like this because of my parents, and because I’m a practicing (and forever failing) Buddhist. My parents raised me to treat other people as I want to be treated. The Buddha taught compassion and non-violence. As much as I dig politics and Machiavelli, I still think that causing other people to suffer is bad. As much as I understand the reasons, I think that incarcerating people and killing (even terrorists) is wrong. I mean, I do support thrashing the LTTE, but as my parents’ son and a Buddhist I have to recognize even their humanity. I certainly recognize the humanity of the innocent people caught in between. I understand that shit happens, but I can still see that it’s shit.
This is who I am and I cannot change it. But the temptation is great.
The Rewards
Being in the ‘opposition’ sucks. For one thing, it doesn’t pay well, and for another, you can’t even do much good. If your goal is to help people, you need to work with the status quo. To start with, you need access. As long as I sorta toed the line I had access to the north and I was able to help a few people here and there. When I crossed and showed and telled that I wanted them out (though the Leader surprised and shanked me on that) I was cut off.
All my meager military, government and even aid contacts are burnt. I’m in the wilderness now, and it sucks. For one thing I don’t feel special, and for another I can’t do anything. On a much worse level, people I know in the government are totally hooked up and they can drive faster, earn more, break more laws and generally live in more comfort and security than me. And it’s all pretty easy. They just have to toe the line.
Faustian
Then I think of Luke Skywalker and how he thought he could work with the Dark Side, and how poorly that went. Except of course, it kinda did work, and I think I could do it to. And I would, if I could. Alas, I am a fucking klutz and I tend to involuntarily trip over the line at least bimonthly and end up in some sort of trouble. I cannot stay on any particular side not out of morality as much as sheer willfulness and dumb.
To be quite frank, I think they’re all assholes. SLFP, UNP, NGOs, America, China, Sinhalese, Tamils, rich, poor. I don’t agree with any particular rationalization based on those categories because I don’t think it accurately describes the world. However, this leaves me is largely alone. I piss off my friends, my enemies and myself.
The Fear
What scares me, however, is how tempting ‘selling out’ seems. How tempted I am. You can take the ‘government side’ and get safety, security, and filthy lucre. You can take the international/NGO side and get posh parties, pats on the back, travel and possible asylum.
However, I want none of these things. At least, I don’t want them in exclusion. I would like to be safe and free in my own country and still fit into a broader moral universe, which I do find in much western thought and literature. What bothers me is that I am tempted by both, accepted by none and getting shit from all sides. I can see how people can just pick a side and fight externally, but being born and raised the way I am, I can’t. I am a Sri Lankan raised abroad with all the qualifications for the last century. This fight is all internal for me and, quite frankly, it sucks.
Bravo Indi!
Let them live their lives, not yours.
Be strong. Nothing will be lost.
I think I understand what your going through as my Christian background ‘love thy neighbour as yourself” points in the same direction.
I do appreciate what your standing up for and think it’s quite noble.
Like I said, it’s a voyage of discovery, bro….
Give in to your anger, and rise…Darth Indi. :-)
One day, you gotta become a minister :) Garu Indika Samarajiva methithuma .
Agree hands down with your points.
How come contacts burned? Was it the last couple of things you wrote?
yer, agreed the dark side always more attractive..
i understand you, i think, i am in a similar situation too. its hard when you don’t choose a side. everyone want you gone then. this side and that side :)
Think you’re brave for speaking and writing about what you believe in. It takes a lot of guts to do it, and the more people do it, the more normal it will become. Keep up the good work..
It’s lonely at the top Indi. That is where you are! Lie low, drink a lot, party hard, re-think, rewind, come back to where you are and hopefully you get to where you wanna be!
So your contacts have been burned. They gave you a macro perspective. Go micro and find/make your own.
How do they do investigative reporting in Russia? Therein lies your answers i’m guessing.
I was speaking about this feeling of not belonging to a friend of mine, and he recommend that I watch Jean Renior’s The Grand Illusion. Seems like you were raised to live in a world that has passed. You can blame you parents for this, as I do, hehe.
haha thrash the LTTE sounds like some severely reasoned un emotional compassion for sure
Oh Indi. Firstly, you have to understand, that if you support something – or someone – then you have to take responsibility for supporting them. You can’t make sweeping statements saying “I support so and so” but then pick and choose the good bits and not be responsible for supporting the rest. It doesn’t work like that. Maybe this is why you feel like you don’t belong – because you aren’t really clear on WHAT you support – personally.
You say things like “but I still support the government” – then that means you support them full stop. You support what they are doing. Then you can’t duck out when people say you are supporting murder and corruption and extortion. Because if you feel like they’re doing a good job, then support them and be a man about it!
If you support the IDEA of government, then don’t make statements like “I support the government” because that directly indicates that you support THIS government. This very particular one.
Secondly, you are responsible for what you say. When you make grand statements, I wonder sometimes whether you really mean half the things you say – or whether you are saying them merely because they make for good writing. When you say something like “I support the government”, stand by it, support it with evidence and information, back it up and be accountable for it. You can’t just say things and then say ‘but…’. Why then do you support the government? Why are you of this opinion? Tell us that too.
You can’t support the good bits and not the bad bits because it’s all orchestrated by the same people. If you are a Buddhist with moral concerns or whatever, then how can you support only one side of things and turn a blind eye to the other?
Also, working with the government to achieve your goals is not ‘supporting’ the government. You can work with them in order to get what you want, but that doesn’t mean you ‘support’ them or what they’re doing.
And finally, NOT supporting anyone or either side doesn’t mean you don’t care or can’t do anything. There are many who don’t have any political agendas or affiliations doing a lot. You don’t HAVE to support anyone Indi, not just for the sake of supporting someone. If there’s no one you think you want to support then forget it and that’s fine.
I think you can say “I support the government” and still disagree with it. Support isn’t blanket support or blind support. It should be a reasoned support. It doesn’t mean you have to support every single thing the government does, but it can mean that you support what it’s trying to do. It’s the same reason you can be patriotic and Sri Lankan and still opposed to your government. It’s also the same reason you can be a revolutionary bent on toppling the state, and still be a patriot. It cuts both ways.
David, you’re right – but I assume that if you support an entity, then you’ve taken everything it’s responsible for into account before you do so. Wouldn’t you? Of course it’s fine to support some aspects and not others – in which case one should be more specific, and careful about how one states support and disagreement. Therefore, one cannot merely say ‘I support the government’ and then in the next para say you don’t support all the things it’s doing. That’s kind of a cop out. My only beef here is making careful statements, and being responsible when you make them, and for them.
Oh please Electra, you’re being pedantic. Looking at your blog it hardly seems as if you are as careful with words as you expect others like Indi to be. By voting in a government you are supporting them – but how do you take into account “everything it’s responsible for” even before it has taken office? I guess if you’re parents voted for the UNP then they must have supported the murder of Tamils in 1983?
I think Whimsical’s more or less said it. Me supporting the government doesn’t mean I am responsible for its actions. You can’t vote for or against specific government action in an election (though these might influence you); you can only vote for or against the government or its opposition. In the end, the vote is your only tangible means of supporting the government or opposing it (unless you’re a journalist or a terrorist). So you either support or you don’t. The rest of the details you can only debate.
It’s very obvious Electra is serious, but she has no clue about what she is saying.
And she is not alone.
If you support a group, you don’t have to support everything they do.
If your group loyalty overshadows everything else, then you no longer care about the truth.
Isn’t that the root of all evil?
I support the government, but I wouldn’t vote for them.
In a democracy sometimes you lose. There’s still a respectable way to participate and work together. I consider myself loyal opposition.
OK, Indi, I actually thought I understood what you were saying until now. Electra, I take it all back. Lol.
Whimsical and David: I’m not talking about voting. Sure, when one votes for a particular party one doesn’t fully know what it’s capable of. I’m talking about NOW. In this case, it’s pretty clear to anyone who’s willing to find out who the government is, what their agenda is and how they plan on fulfilling their agenda. They have already shown us their tactics and methods and ideas. So no one is any longer in confusion and nothing is veiled in mystery, hope or doubt, right? So I’m saying if you say you ‘support’ the government NOW, in this time and in this context, then it means that you support them. You have seen what they can do, and what they DO do – and you support them. This is different from voting, right?
Perhaps. But then do you oppose them? In that case you also know what they have achieved and hope to achieve. Do you oppose all of that?
I oppose their ideology, more than anything else. I think their idea of how to do things and what is ‘right’ is the thing that I have the most trouble with. And since that permeates nearly everything, in politics, or should at any rate, maybe I do oppose them. Not to say that finishing the war wasn’t good of them – but at what cost? And what is the cost people are paying for their method of ‘maintaining’ a peaceful island? As long as they are in charge, the solutions will never be democratic or thoughtful. This is a military government – it shows in their words and deeds – and I don’t think I could ever support a military government. Now this may seem naive and whatnot, but my opposition here comes mostly from my moral sense of what is wrong and right – an inherent sense of what is ethical and what is not – which is somehow, ironically, precisely what Indi says he uses when he makes such judgments too. This is what I don’t understand.
Yes, well it’s clear you don’t oppose EVERY single thing they’ve done or hope to do, and neither does Indi support EVERY single thing either. So if you’re saying you have to oppose totally or support totally, that’s unrealistic.
Electra, I’m sorry but you’re really clutching at straws here. It’s pretty obvious you fuckin hate the current government, and that’s okay, really. But you don’t have to take out your anger on people who do, nit pick their arguments and try and make them sound stupid. Supporting a government doesn’t mean you have to support everything they do. I mean, do you support the murder of Tamils in 1983? Or the killing of thousands upon thousands of Sri Lankan youth during the JVP insurgency? Hardly any of the political parties in Sri Lanka have clean hands. As for me, I love the fact that Mahinda ass-raped the LTTE and fucked them over good; I feel that it was in Sri Lanka’s interests. I hate the fact that his government has fucked up SriLankan Airlines and spent colossal amounts of money on Mihin. And while I feel for those people in the camps, I think it is important to weed out LTTE cadres and demine the north.
Whimsical – you seem to think that just because I am anti-Mahinda, I am pro UNP – well, let me tell you, you could not be more wrong. And this is precisely my point when I say one need not support someone or the other for the sake of supporting. If there is no one worthy of support, it’s OK to not support anyone, I think. The UNP are just a bunch of power hungry assholes too, who given the opportunity would probably never do anything good for Sri Lanka either and only care about defaming the current government and getting the position for themselves. I just don’t think presidency or parliament is something that we should take compromises on – it’s not something in which we should settle for the lesser evil. The lesser evil is simply not good enough. And of course the LTTE were evil – but wasting millions on Mihin is the least of what this regime has done and you and I both know that.
If you don’t have a viable alternative to the lesser evil, then I’m afraid you are accepting one of the evils. Democracy doesn’t have an ‘opt out’ option. Do that, and you just end up grumbling in a corner while the world moves on, sort of like those buggers at the Open Mic thing. Or Groundviews. It’s OK not to support anyone, but you gotta support something practicable. Anarchy’s kinda got old. Like those Che Guevara pennents the JVP have put up today.
Electra, it really doesn’t matter whether you are pro UNP, pro SLFP, pro JVP or pro TNA or whatever. The point is, there are very few, if any, political parties in Sri Lanka that do not have blood on their hands. Both the two main ones are mired in blood and guts and we all know it. Now have you never voted for a political party in Sri Lanka? Have you never paid taxes that would fund the government in power? Do you pay airport taxes? Income tax? VAT? Yeah all that money is going to support the government of Sri Lanka – whether it be made up of the UNP or the SLFP. So whether you like it or not YOU have been supporting the government somehow. If you were to put your money where your mouth was (to use that phrase), you would have bought a one way ticket out of Sri Lanka and stayed away — forever. If you do not wish to settle for the lesser evil, then so be it. But please do not – even for a moment – assume that all other Sri Lankans will want to join you in chewing cud and waiting for the cows to come home.