Continued from yesterday

The ascetic monk in the wilderness sending forth vibrations of goodwill served humanity even as much as the earnest and sincere politician in the parry and thrust of politics.

None, he thought, was more or less of a Buddhist than the other. Even the great Indian Emperor Asoka remained an emperor after his conversion to Buddhism. He would certainly have accomplished far less in the service of humanity had he retired into a monastic solitude.

He recalled the euphoria that had filled the family mansion on his return from Oxford. He was, after all, the only son, and Sir Solomon had nurtured quite valid hopes that the young man would fulfil all his aspirations. But he had gravely disappointed the old man not once but twice by relinquishing his Christian faith and by shedding the western garb. If the young man had political ambitions, he did not see why it was necessary to do either in order to achieve his ambitions.

But there were so many complex reasons why this very complex young man had done so.

The first Prime Minister D.S. Senanayake had seen no problem in wearing top hat and tails on formal occasions, the western garb to Parliament, a bush shirt and trousers in the jungle or in speaking in English in the legislature even though it had been a rough and ready English that his limited education allowed. That, however, had not prevented him from "parleying on equal terms," as a cynic had spoken of Gandhi, with other representatives of the British monarch when together they founded the Colombo Plan.

Bandaranaike had always felt aggrieved that his conversion to Buddhism had been interpreted as political opportunism. He had accepted that as part of the price he paid for taking part in politics.

But his thinking had been liberal from the days of his youth and one of the benefits of his Oxford education was a reinforcement of his liberal ways.

The Middle Way of Buddhism had always appealed to him with its emphasis on compromise rather than on unbending dogma.

He found in Buddhism the philosophy that precisely matched his political thinking. He always strove to avoid confrontation but when that was unavoidable he sought compromise.

That, too, had been criticised as vacillation, expediency, and opportunism. He had always felt, and felt sincerely, that in the aftermath of independence, the people who had really suffered under foreign rule because of their lack of access to power, because of their inability to use the language of the rulers: the rural peasants, the Buddhist monks and the local physicians, and the village school masters who together formed the backbone and vast mass of the people, ought to be liberated.

To do this he had felt, and felt sincerely, that the language of administration should be the native language, the Sinhala language. To that end he had founded an organisation, the Sinhala Maha Sabha.

But there were people in the North and East who were as handicapped as the Sinhalese peasantry because they knew only Tamil, and so he extended his goal to include Tamil as well as a language of administration. He could have accomplished all this without blood-letting if he had remained in the first government after Independence of which he had been a prominent member. He had been Minister of Health and Local Administration and Leader of the House. He knew very well what an asset he had been to that administration.

But he had known that it would be a long wait before he became Prime Minister, if ever, because there were strong forces working against him. He was given so much room and no more by D.S. Senanayake. Bandaranaike knew that although his views were more enlightened and far-seeing than those of the senior members of the ruling United National Party, although he had plans to make freedom more meaningful to the common man, more meaningful in the context of international relations by cutting loose from the stranglehold of Britain and of the Western economies, he knew that the dynastic struggle was on. He knew that after D.S., his Cambridge-educated son, Dudley, would be next in line of almost royal succession. And the country’s most powerful newspaper group which had acted as midwife to the birth of Independence favoured, supported and promoted the Senanayake dynasty.

Bandaranaike had known, astute politician that he was, that the only way up was out. He formed his own party – the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and chose the hand as the electoral symbol.

Once again he smiled at the recollection of his crossover to the Opposition benches. The same newspaper group had chosen to treat it as comic relief.

Well, they had had to eat their words, always a bitter meal, when fifteen years later he had come into power with an overwhelming mandate.

There was no doubt at all that it was his own genius, his own charisma, his own strategy that produced such a victory.

He had achieved it in the teeth of opposition mounted by the money bags of the UNP, the ruling party, the rich capitalists who feared they would lose all their wealth and privilege with the accession of Bandaranaike who entered on a socialist ticket.

He also had to contend with the huge machinery of the right-wing press largely represented by the group which supported the UNP with a religious fanaticism. Every mean trick in journalism had been employed to distort his speeches and policies. But he had won.

And the people were rousingly behind him.

And yet, once again, success eluded him.

Once more he was thwarted in his attempt to put Ceylon on the right track. This was because there were many in the driver's seat. Realistically he had surmised that he could not have fought the UNP and the capitalist press alone. So he had joined forces with a motley array of contenders. He had aligned himself with a few Marxist and Trotskyite groups and with some highly volatile elements that were using the lever of racial tensions to propel themselves into power. He had raised the hopes of disenchanted groups like the village teachers, the indigenous physicians and the Buddhist monks.

The moment he came into power, they wanted to be rewarded. He had also reckoned without human nature.

Greed and ambition had not been only on the other side of the political barriers. So-called socialists could also be greedy. He had hoped to usher in an era of socialism and economic freedom to all segments of the people.

But the agenda was no longer his alone. The Marxists who had come to share power after two decades of futile tub-thumping and breathing fire in the wings were now in a hurry to implement their own manifestos. From partners in a coalition they were riding on Bandaranaike's back.

After three years in power, he was compelled to concede even in the privacy and solitude of his study, that his regime was in a shambles. The Tamil question far from being settled had been so exacerbated that he feared it would only get worse with time.

He had conceded that even as much as the Sinhalese rural peasantry and others who had not had the advantage of an English education had been disadvantaged, the Tamils too needed to be able to deal with the administration in their own tongue,

That was reasonable but politics was not an exercise in reason. The first rule was survival. Whatever good one could achieve could not be done unless one survived.

And so one had to compromise, conciliate, prevaricate.

He turned away from the window, returned the Mark Twain to its proper place. He sat at a long table and glanced at the evening papers. There was no comfort in them. There never was. Even in the papers, where the treatment and comment were at least fair, the news was bad. Cabinet leaks revealed wide splits within his own party. The most vociferous and volatile of the coalition partners, Philip Gunawardena, was stirring up one of his several storms in the Port of Colombo.

The Prime Minister knew he was reaping the whirlwind. People were saying that he could not control the forces that he had let loose. In the privacy of his thoughts he admitted that it was true.

His reasonable language policy had been blasted by the extremists and their representatives. He was aware that there was much blood on his hands.

When the racial riots were at the zenith and even anarchy seemed imminent there had been advice and even appeals from several quarters to declare a State of Emergency and call out the troops. But he had not been able to take that simple decision because…did the people know that? would the newspapers even consider that as a possibility?…because he feared that would cause more bloodshed. He had most devoutly hoped that the troubles all over the country would burn out. He winced at the imagery. There had been many acts of arson and torching of live human beings.

Six years ago when the earlier Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake had declared a State of Emergency to quell the rice riots, an uprising of the people instigated by Marxists against the increase in the price of heavily subsidised rice, many persons had been killed by the armed forces. The gentle Dudley had been so upset that he had resigned. Did the people know, Bandaranaike wondered, that he had been in a quandary as a politician who had come in on a wave of popular support, as a liberal democrat, as a believer in the parliamentary system of government, and as a Buddhist with respect for life?

The press had berated him for his cynical disregard for life. But life had been taken in vain, innocents had been killed. He had heard harrowing stories of Tamils and Sinhalese victims of raw, insane, mob violence. Buddhism also taught that every action had to have a reaction.

As Prime Minister he would have eventually to take responsibility for all the sufferings that had been inflicted.

It would not matter in the end that he had been the victim of tremendous pressures. History would record that he had been a weak man. He had heard people say that many had died cursing him, that bereaved families continued to curse him.

He felt what every ruler must feel sometimes: the chill of loneliness. He had a dark foreboding that things were drawing to a close for him. He was aware that the very forces that he had caused to liberate were now closing in on him.

The Sinhalese teacher had overwhelmingly supported him in his rallying cry of making Sinhala the official language in twenty-four hours. Of course, he had meant that theoretically. No one could possibly have managed that enormous administrative transformation in twenty-four hours. Twenty four months would have been a more reasonable goal. The English-educated elite in the capital and main towns were the ones who still enjoyed the privileges in education. They had better training facilities, better access to scientific education, better laboratories, better pay in the private sector.

None of them could dream of sending their children abroad for education. The youth who had been quite disenchanted and alienated by the lifestyles of the rulers since Independence, by their continuing westernised ways, by their repugnant barbecues, sometimes held on their Buddhist holy days, such youth had hoped for change.

But the change had been only superficial, in garb, in a switch of language in Parliament -- from English to Sinhala.

They even taunted Bandaranaike for wearing western dress at home and abroad except when seen in public at home, for using cutlery at meals even when he ate distinctly local food which was always better eaten with the fingers.

What could he do? That was his upbringing. He, too, was a creature of his times. He resented privately their invasion of his privacy.

The local physicians had hoped there would be a greater promotion of the ancient art, Ayurveda, which had been supplanted by western allopathy. They wanted a more rapid expansion of the College of Indigenous Medicine. But dash it all, he had been Prime Minister for only three years. Did they expect him to rectify the effects of four hundred and fifty years of foreign domination in just three years? It would take even longer than his term as Prime Minister to do that.

The Marxists and the trade unionists were in a hurry to have him implement their own programs for progress. He had sincerely believed that nationalisation of the commanding heights of the economy was the way to go if the country were to benefit from its own natural resources.

But he also believed that it was best to "hasten slowly," a pace ingrained in the Asian ethic. The system would need an adjustment in the infrastructure to shift from unbridled capitalism to a measure of socialism.

He had been pressured into nationalising the transport services. There had been gross abuses in the private transport system. There had literally been murder and mayhem among the rivals in the industry.

But nationalisation had created a monolith, or worse: a rapacious monster that became a heavy drain on public funds. It had also made powerful enemies among the former private bus owners.

Bandaranaike nationalised several services in the Port of Colombo, and the battling unions brought the famed harbour into international disrepute.

After a series of wildcat strikes had paralysed the port, with dozens of ships queuing up outside the port awaiting clearance and the port paying a million rupees a day for demurrage, the International Shipping Conference had finally blacklisted Colombo. It was a shocking blow to a newly independent country struggling to build up its foreign reserves, its vulnerable economy.

What could he have done? He was again helpless.

The trade unions had been waging relentless campaigns to seek higher wages.

The last remnants of the British and American presence, the huge commodity and oil companies, fought their last ditch battle.

The Prime Minister knew he had few options left. If he had sided with sanity and the foreign companies, who after all were still bringing in much needed foreign exchange, he would have been crucified by his coalition partners.

So he had played the politics of expediency.

He had encouraged the companies to resist the demands of the unions, and then ordered them to give in or risk being nationalised.

It was politics, but it stuck in his throat.

And there were the Buddhist monks.

Throughout history they had played a significant part in statecraft. Kings had accorded them the highest respect. The king had been the protector of the Sangha, the Buddhist priesthood.

They were also his valued advisers.

This custom prevailed after Independence.

But until Bandaranaike came into power, only superficial regard was paid to the Buddhist clergy. They were ornamental and, in politics, exploited to obtain popular support.

Bandaranaike sincerely wished to elevate them to their pristine positions of privilege. He had a sense of history.

Besides, there was a powerful organisation of Buddhist monks styled the Eksath Bhikku Peramuna, or United Monks Front. Whenever the term Front was used it denoted a Marxist connotation.

The political bhikku did not find favour with a large percentage of the populace. They supported the monks by daily alms, by bequests in wills, by donations of lands so that monks may not be contaminated by the corruption of the world. Monks were not expected, according to the rule, to be tarnished with money and mundane affairs. There were lay leaders, dayakayas, to attend to such matters.

That, he also knew, was the theory.

There were extremely worldly monks who sought worldly wealth and esteem, who lived worldly and even corrupt lives, who broke all the canons of their rule, the Vinaya, who engaged in big business, drank intoxicants, womanised, sodomised, counterfeited money, even murdered when the occasion demanded it.

As a final affront they had humiliated him, brought him to his knees when they had squatted outside his residence and intimidated him into abrogating a pact that he had made with the Tamils to afford them a measure of justice in the use of the Tamil language, even though it had been less than he had originally promised. It was politics, but, by gad sir, one did not welch on one’s word.

There again he had been stalled by the Opposition, which had distorted the claim by the Tamils for a federal form of government as a threat to divide the country. His own party members, the bhikku’s front, and other rabble-rousing pressure groups had heightened the pressure not to yield an inch to the Tamils.

He could have risen to the heights of statesmanship, risked his political future and probably lost it and earned the accolades of posterity.

But he was only sixty years old and had just come into power.

There was so much to be done, so much to be done to uplift the nation economically.

The people had hailed him as a diyasena, a mythical demi-god, and, indeed, he believed himself to be a figure of destiny.

He glanced at his watch. Almost time for dinner. He rose from the table and he felt the weight on his shoulders quite literally.

He felt his enemies pressing in on all sides.

Would they defeat him or try to eliminate him?

He thought not. The people were surely still behind him in spite of the aftermath of the racial riots. Many had been disillusioned in him when the guns were turned against the Sinhalese. But they were not killed because they were Sinhalese, but because they were rioters and they were lawless elements and they had themselves killed innocent people and committed untold atrocities.

He had taken the country forward in three years. He had made the country more independent. He had shaken off the last shackles of British control by sending the British away from the air base of Kataunayake and the sea base of Trincomalee. He had nationalised the Port and Transport.

Continued tomorrow