A response to Kusal Perera
We want peace; but not the peace of the grave
By Gunaseela Vitanage

'It is the paramount duty and the responsibility of the State to defend itself against any threat to it, whether it comes from within or without' (A Latin saying).

In his letter under the heading 'For Peace - with the next Sinhala-Hindu New Year,' appearing in The Island's issue of 18th August, 1998, Mr. Kusal Perera says among other things:

'There is one well articulated consensus, all Tamils groupings have come to in their political statements. That is, the North and the East together is the homeland of the Tamil people and therefore, this part of the island should be allowed to be governed by a Tamil majority, to mitigate the long standing political and economic anomalies of the Tamil people'.

I chose this paragraph for comments because it appears to me to be the key-paragraph in his letter. The rest are either introductory or explanatory. I am glad that he put forward the suggestion, that is, now that the Tamil political groupings have come to a consensus, the rest of the people should agree to alienate the Northern and Eastern Provinces to the Sri Lankan Tamils so that 'they may be governed by a Tamil majority, because it gives me the opportunity to discuss this vexed question of 'the traditional homeland' which the Tamil politicians declare to be 'not negotiable.'

What is one's homeland? What is the difference between 'homeland' and 'traditional homeland'? Is Sri Lanka not the 'homeland' of the Sinhalese, the Sri Lankan Tamils, the Moors, the Malays, the Burghers and all other Sri Lankan citizens?

Does an area become the 'traditional homeland' by virtue of the fact that a community belonging to a particular race or religion had lived there for a considerable length of time? If so, how long? Does this fact make that community eligible to claim the area exclusively for themselves as their 'traditional homeland' and also the right to self-determination and self-government?

Granting that the Sri Lankan Tamils have the 'inalienable right' as they claim, to the right of self determination and of self-government, will not the Indian Tamils who have become citizens of Sri Lanka by registration, also have the same right to self-determination and self-government? They have been living in contiguous areas upcountry for nearly two centuries, a longer period than Sri Lankan Tamils in the Eastern Province. There is already said to be a whispering campaign in the plantation areas for a Malainadu covering the areas in which Tamils of Indian origin are in a majority.

Muslims are more a religious group than an ethnic one. They comprise 7.4 per cent of the total population; 7.1 per cent Moors and 0.3 per cent Malays. Unlike the converts to Christianity who maintain their ethnic identity, converts from either Buddhism or Hinduism or Christianity to Islam, lose their ethnic identity. They are Muslims. From about the end of the Anuradhapura period, that is, from about the 10th century, the Muslims have been living in Sri Lanka.

During the second term of office of Constantine de Sa (1623-1630) as the Governor of the Portuguese territories in Sri Lanka, he was ordered by the King of Portugal to expel all the Muslims from the territory under the control of the Portuguese because 'they were a great hindrance to the propagation of Christianity and a danger to the power of the Portuguese. The expelled Muslims approached King Senerat of Kandy and pleaded for land within his Kingdom for them to settle down without fear of the Portuguese. The King felt compassion for the Muslims and gave them permission to settle down in Digamadulla area (presently Batticaloa and Ampara districts). Four thousand Muslim families are said to have settled down in the area at the time. Muslims are living in large numbers in contiguous areas in those two districts from the seventeenth century. Are they also not entitled to claim those areas as their traditional homeland and the right to self-determination and self-government? As a matter of fact, the Muslim Congress is demanding a separate Region Council for themselves under the proposed devolution of power at the grass roots.

Christians who constitute 7.6 per cent of the title population of Sri Lanka live in large numbers in a contiguous area in the sea-board from Colombo North to Mannar. They are also an educated and important community. If the Muslims, who, as pointed out earlier, are a religious group rather than an eithnic one, are entitled to claim those areas which they predominate, as their traditional homeland and demand the right to self-determination and self-government are not the Christians entitled to the same rights? As a distinct community, they also would like to govern themselves by a Regional Council in which the majority are Christians, rather than by one dominated either by Buddhists or by Hindus? Are only those babes who cry their loudest given milk? Are others who have the same hunger to be ignored? Christians have been living in these areas from the time of the Portuguese in the 16th century.

Let us examine the claim of Jaffna Tamil politicians for the Northern and Eastern Provinces as 'The traditional homeland of the Tamils'.

(Continued Tomorrow )

Between the Lines by Kuldip Nayar
India's stakes in Afghanistan

In his book, Discovery of India, Jawaharlal Nehru wrote: 'More correctly, the Afghans should be called the Indo-Afghans. They behaved, to begin with as conquerors over a rebellious people and were cruel and harsh. But soon they toned down. India became their home and Delhi their capital. The process of Indianisation was rapid and many of them married women of the country.'

The Afghans and the Indians were too close to one another for centuries. Even after the formation of Islamic Pakistan, Kabul had far better relations with New Delhi than Islamabad. As late as the 18-20 September, 1978, when Atal Behari Vajpayee, then foreign minister, visited Kabul the then President Amin told him: 'Let us have a secret pact; you take one part of Pakistan and we take the other part.' He was referring to the NWFP. Pushtoonism had been an emotional problem for them.

Relations between Afghanistan and India nose-dived in 1980 when we sided with the then Soviet Union at the time of invasion of Afghanistan. I recall when I visited Kabul that year, I saw even close friends turning their back on me. They felt betrayed. One remark I heard again and again was: 'How could you do so, you have been our friends.' I feel India has not been able to win back the Afghans since.

Islambad made good use of the space we vacated. General Zia-ul-Haq, then the Pakistan chief martial law administrator, opened camps in Pakistan for the Afghan refugees and allowed the Jamaat-I-Islamia, financed by contributions from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, to preach among them and through them in Afghanistan that Muslims belonged to one ummat (brotherhood) and what hurt the Afghans hurt the Pakistans.

General Zia got his lifetime chance when Washington chose Islambad as a conduit to send arms and money to mujahideens so as to bleed the then Soviet Union. Pakistan reached them weapons and planned their strategy and warfare. The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) coordinated all the activities. New Delhi was nowhere in the picture. Nor did it care to keep contact with any rebel leader even later. One of them, Gulbuddin Hikmatyar, then living in Peshawar, complained to me that no Indian, not even an academic, ever tried to meet him.

When Moscow accepted the defeat and withdraw its forces from Afghanistan, Islamabad considered it its own victory, recognising the role of the mujahideen only cursorily. Washington was interested only in humiliating Moscow. The US quitted the moment the Russian soldiers left. Tearing aleaf from the late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's book, General Zia, or more so the ISI tried to force Kabul to look towards Islambad for guidance. This came both as a surprise and a shock to the Afghans, who were looking for friends, not masters. They had defeated the Soviet Union to be free. They could not accept Pakistan's tutelage.

New Delhi should have taken the initiative at that time to win over the estranged Kabul. But India sat pretty, feeling confident that Afghanistan would ultimately approach it for reconstruction. For that it was too soon. At that time there was no Afghanistan as such. There were only chieftains and commanders. So much so, Kabul's writ did not run beyond a few kilometres. India could have helped individual commanders economically and militarily. But it did not want to get involved.

Pakistan was in position to play the role of an honest broker and bring around the same table the different tribal chiefs and commanders. But its interest was confined to making Afghanistan part of the territory under its influence. It wanted to convent the defiant Afghanistan into a satellite.

For years, Islamabad had nurtured Hikmatyar, a Pushtoo, and a fundamentalist. But when Pakistan wanted to induct him in Afghanistan, it found him a staunch Afghan. He could not be trusted all the way. The plan was deferred till the ISI produced a dependable alternative, the Taliban, the students who had been intensively indoctrined in fundamentalism in madaras (schools). They were willing to accept beliefs and ideas, which knew no moderation, no tolerance. Some of them were in Pakistan as refugees, and some were in Afghanistan, studying at the feet of mullah. The ISI helped them group, train and arm. It is an open secret that the Pakistan army backed them and at times fought by their side. Benazir Bhutto's Interior Minister Naseerullah Babar and ISI chief Hamid Gul are the creators of the Taliban force.

India woke up to the presence of Taliban too late. It sensed the danger when a few of them went to Kashmir to fight by the side of militants. It did little to help the opponents on the plea it had no land route to Afghanistan. Inder Kumar Gujral, as foreign minister, did visit Teheran to have closer ties with Iran and some Central Asian countries. But things did not go far. Iran was interested only in the Shia population. And Moscow was too weak after the cold war to be a serious threat.

America's bombing, however violation of the principles of sovereignty is understandable because the parts of Afghanistan under the Taliban have become a sanctury for terrorists. The presence of training camps in Afghanistan is old news. They were established in 1982-83, near the border of Pakistan in the province of Khost, Afghanistan, as President Clinton's National Security Advisor Sandy Berger has confirmed. CIA and British intelligence built them as training grounds for anti-Soviet war machine. America was then promoting Islamic Jihad against Communist kafirs (infidels). Osama Ben Laden, now No. 1 on Washington's wanted list, is a mujahid trained by American taxpayers.

Afghanistan in particular and the Afghans in general have been part of terrorist activities outside their borders. During the 11 years of war against the Soviet Union, there was not even one incident of terrorism against the Soviet nationals outside Afghanistan. Over 1.5 million Afghans and approximately 50,000 Soviet nationals were killed; it all happened inside Afghanistan.

The future scenario does not look bright. Afghanistan may become a centre of terrorists, who will go to any place in the world to destroy or kill. Islamabad will encourage them, as it has done in the past, to infiltrate into India, particularly Jammu and Kashmir. An unending proxy war can assume serious proportions. New Delhi may have then very few options left, although it rules out hot pursuit.

In due course, Pakistan will also face the Frankenstein of Talibans it has created. Their society, particularly women will face the onslaught of fundamentalism. There may be more violence in the country. The Pukhtoonistan movement may get another lease of life since the Talibans are themselves Pushtoons. The 1893 Durand line, which separated the NWFP from Afghanistan, has got erased over the years.

However, to imagine that the Talibans are the future rulers of Afghanistan is unreal. They have a limited base and that too among the Pushtoons. Other tribes like the Tajick, the Uzbek and the Hazars are hostile to the talibans. They will not sit still. They will carry on war.

From whichever way one may look, there is no go from a composite government at Kabul. All tribes have to be participants in the governance. Islamabad is well placed to bring about such a situation. But it does not want to lose its control. This is a shortsighted policy. Whatever it involves and how much time it takes, the Afghans will free themselves from outside control. Few people have been more distinctively shaped by their land and tradition than have the Afghans.

Serialisation of E.C.T. Candappa's book
'The Palm of His Hand'
Chapter 5

About the author
E.C.T. Candappa was one of Sri Lanka's been feature writers in the mid-fifties till the seventies. He was an outstanding journalist at Lake House and distinguished himself as a reporter and feature writer. He is now domiciled in Australia but still very much interested in his country of origin. He visited Sri Lanka last year and interviewed many of the personalities featured in this book.

Continued from yesterday

‘Did you sleep well?’

That cheeky grin covered a night of unforgivable callousness and disregard for a guest’s comfort.

Raj noted with a sudden flush of shame the measles-spotted arms of the young Australian.

‘What’s all this?’ Raj asked, although the answer was burning in his guts. His hair bristled. He felt sick with embarrassment even before Bill made any response.

This time Bill’s smile hid behind a cloud or two of awkwardness.

‘No, I could not sleep too well.’ He still baulked at the cause.

‘Looks like bed bugs to me,’ said Raj.

‘Aw, it’s nothing really. Anyway I’m going to do something about it.’

‘Let’s go up and see what your room is like.’

They climbed a spiral stairway into the balcony. There were two small cubicles made of hardboard at either end. Bill’s was at the farther end. Raj went in first. The air reeked with a rotting damp. There was a four-poster bed at one end and a rough unpolished table beside it. The floor was wooden with neither carpet nor rug.

The bed had a jute-covered mattress on it covered with a sheet of checked gingham. There was a pillow over which Bill had evidently thrown a towel.

Raj lifted one end of the mattress perfunctorily. He guessed what he would see, but was unprepared for the clout of the shock.

Swarms of bed bugs plump with the blood of the nocturnal outrage marched in busy rows. They tramped the length and breadth and height of the bed.

‘Oh, look; I’m sorry,’ said Raj. He felt someone ought to apologise immediately.

Bill was a beam of generosity.

‘Raj,’ Bill said, ‘I can, if I so wish, stay in a flash hotel. I could have specified what I wanted. I did actually. I said I wanted to live like the poor.’

Raj interrupted him. ‘I can assure you,’ he said, ‘all our poor do not live like this. I will take you round to see some poor people. You can visit me. I am not rich by any means. I live in an overcrowded suburb. I am no stranger to rats and bugs and vermin. But we take the trouble to get rid of pests. We clean up regularly. This bloody sheet is not fresh.’

Involuntarily Bill grinned. Not only Australians swore.

‘I have come here with a purpose. You know the YCW axiom: See, judge, act. I’ve seen. I’ve judged. Just watch me swing into action.’

Raj was not there to see it.

Within a few hours Bill walked down to the bazaar nearby and purchased a large bottle of Dettol disinfectant and a large brush. He took the wooden slats supporting the mattress and dusted them out thoroughly in a backyard. The sight of a white man thus labouring had caused a few passers-by to stand and watch bemused. One of them asked the customarily irrelevant question:

‘Bugs?’

Bill painted the slats with the disinfectant thoroughly on both sides and let them dry under the blazing sun.

While he was on the ground floor he asked Fr Grutzner whether he could take some corrective action. The priest took a long, ruminative pull on his cigarette and said nothing for a while.

‘I had given detailed instructions to...er...well...to billet you.’

He narrowed his eyes for a moment, then said tersely, ‘Yes, do whatever you want.’

Bill borrowed a saw and cut off the four bed-posts. He took the mattress and the bed-posts and set them ablaze outside. The decayed wood and the brittle mattress were soon a crackling fire. The bugs burst with tiny pops emitting a dying, astringent stench.

A few idlers came out to stare, but no one made an enquiry. Anyway, he had covered himself.

He purchased a new mattress, bed sheets and pillow cases.

In converting Australian dollars into rupees, he now had a modest fortune to spend. His purchases had cost a ridiculously low amount in terms of Australian currency.

He then borrowed a broom made of combed coconut fibre and swept the room vigorously. Sweeping under the bed he found a long, filmy coil, extremely light and brittle. It aroused his curiosity. He carried it down and this time ran into Pat.

‘What’s this, mate?’ he asked.

‘Snake skin,’ Pat said simply, a smile starting on his face.

‘Snake skin? How do you mean?’

‘Some snakes shed their skins and go away. After some time they grow another skin.’

‘You mean there was a snake under my bed?’ Pat grinned exposing almost all of his teeth. His eyes were brimming over with mirth.

Bill decided he had yet a lot to see. A great deal indeed.

(Continued tomorrow)

Remembering Dudley Dissanayake

Almost three months have passed since that day in early June when, downloading my e-mail I saw a message from our mutual friend Mahendra in Australia, with the words 'Dudley Dissanayake' ominously in the subject line. With the same feeling of dread that a previous generation opened telegrams, I opened Mahendra's e-mail and so learnt of Dudley's departure.

The death of a friend is always a matter for sadness. But when that friend is the quintessential 'good guy' and is someone who has not even reached a half century in this life, it is doubly sad and disturbing.

In all the years I have known Dudley he has been the most polite, self-effacing, gentle and decent human being one could imagine. His reluctance to tread on other peoples' toes; to push others aside so he could get ahead himself; to jump the queue, to throw his weight around; may not have served him well in this world, but these decent traits will remain etched upon the memories of those who knew him, for all time. For Dudley, decency in human affairs came above all else. The good indeed die young.

When I joined Trinity in 1959, Dudley was in my class. And thus for nigh ten years we grew up together in the vastly interesting environs of then uncrowded and pleasant Kandy. Often of a weekend we would go climb a mountain, picnic by the Mahaweli, or go to some rural area to spend the weekend at the home of a classmate. We were both day scholars and in the same house - Garret. So we had our initial rag together on joining this house - having to stand up and sing a song in front of the whole house. Later he was always there on our house trips to far flung corners of then Ceylon - Habarana, Trincomalee, Ampara, Bible, Polonnaruwa: areas to which Dudley would return in later life to help improve the lives of rural people. On those fondly-remembered trips, Kandyan Sinhalese, low-country Sinhalese, Jaffna Tamils, upcountry Tamils, Colombo Tamils, Muslims, Malays, Dutch Burghers, Portuguese Burghers, Eurasians, whatever, we all sang the same songs and ate the same food and told the same jokes as the college bus bumped along those offbeat roads in the heartland of our country. It was an era where differences of language and race had not entered our lives; and they never ever were to enter Dudley's.

Dudley was very much involved in every aspect of school life. In senior class we were involved together in producing a play called 'The Wall' which won that year's first prize at the Inter-house Drama Festival. Dudley had one of the leading acting roles in that drama which fell upon me to produce. He later became president of Garrett House as well as a College prefect.

Dudley was a sportsman too, in a time when the word 'sportsmanship' had real meaning. He captained the Trinity Cricket Team in 1968 and also the 2nd XV Rugger Team. Later, he went on to play rugby for the Kandy Sports Club and the CR Bs in Colombo.

In December of 1982 he was to marry Visaka, the sister of another classmate of ours - Ajith Abeyaratne. I was best man. We set off from the 5th Lane house of Dudley's brother Gamini, then the Minister of Mahaweli Development and Lands. I was driving my car with Dudley beside me. As we tried to turn into the road leading to the entrance of the venerable Galle Face Hotel - the venue - the police stopped us as the President's motorcade was just approaching the hotel, for the late J. R. Jayewardene was one of the witnesses. Dudley was quite willing to pull aside and wait. He was not willing to throw his weight around. So in a way, I was forced to throw his weight around and tell the officer that there was no point in 'JR' coming if the groom was going to be a no-show, stuck in the traffic outside! Eventually we were let through after being told by the officer that Dudley should have arrived 'with an escort'.

From 1983 to 1986 Dudley was the Private Secretary to his brother Gamini. It was a time when there was a great sense of dynamism in the country. Vast areas of the rural hinterland were pulsating with a vibrancy and a vision for the future, as one after another, in rapid succession, the huge inter-linked Mahaweli schemes were begun and brought to successful completion. Kotmale, Victoria, Randenigala, Ulhitiya-Ratkinda, Maduru-Oya-along with hundreds of miles of canals, numerous hydroelectric power stations, new road networks and new settlements. All these had to be built from scratch and it was a herculean task. For three years Dudley was part of the team that changed the land for ever and gave irrigated fields and homesteads to tens of thousands of rural poor, and cheap hydroelectric power to homes and industry. And at Victoria one sunny morning, Dudley was proudly present when, with the great reservoir full and a plume of water high than the Niagara Falls cascading over the lip, Gamini stood up and spoke the prophetic words, 'And when we are all gone, this alone will endure.'

Whenever I had time, I used to go and visit these projects as they arose from the bare earth. I still remember on one occasion Dudley arranged for me to join him on an official visit to the Rantambe camp. This time too, I was in my car but Dudley had an 'official' car from the Ministry. No shiny Pajero then - it was a somewhat battered Peugeot station wagon. It had mechanical problems all the way to Rantambe. But Dudley would not dream of requisitioning one of the numerous vehicles rushing about the worksite as he did not want to disrupt anyone else's work or schedule. That was typical Dudley.

In 1987 with Visaka leaving for the UK to do her PhD, Dudley left Sri Lanka to join her in Cambridge and follow a Diploma course at the London School of Photography. This had been one of his passions even in school where he had been a keen member of the Photosoc. After obtaining his diploma in England he went on to publish his own picture postcards, many of them evocative scenes of Cambridge and its environs.

And so Dudley and Visaka settled into a happy life in Cambridge, caring for each other and helping each other. They loved their house and garden and both took great pride in keeping a good home with books and music, and camaraderie for friends who dropped in to be regaled with Dudley's droll sense of humour and his loud, unmistakable laugh. Though sometimes I lost touch with them as I too moved around, in the recent past I would try and make it a point to see them whenever I was in England. One year they came up to London and the next I went and enjoyed a weekend with them in Cambridge and came away sorry that work prevented me from spending more time in their lovely house. I was looking forward to my next visit to England this year and an entertaining evening with Dudley and Visaka when the sad news arrived of the passing away of this truly gentle man.

Many attended Dudley's cremation in Cambridge, and many more the laying to rest of his ashes in the misty hills of Kotmale, besides the resting place of his brother Gamini. Yet, many are his friends now scattered across the wide world who would, if they could, have been there to bid him good bye. How we all wish he could have tarried with us longer but 'twas not to be, for as that line goes in Sir Edwin Arnold's 'Light of Asia' 'Twere all as well to bid a cloud to stand, or hold a running river with the hand. Good bye, gentle man.

Ranil Bibile,
Victoria, Seychelles.