Political transitions and the national character
It is difficult to put one's finger on it – but it is commonly held wisdom that there is something unique about the Sri Lankan national character. Being laid-back is a national trait. Being indifferent to impending peril is a national pastime. When people meet they ask each other "so what's happening?'' in that typically Sri Lankan parenthetical manner of greeting; most generally respond "life goes on.''

The most competent authority perhaps to give some insight into the Sri Lankan national character however is probably the foreigner who can observe us with a certain clinical detachment. I was in India on work for almost half the year around 2001, and met an Indian army officer who had been assigned to Sri Lanka on the Indian Peace Keeping Forces tour of duty in the Jaffna peninsula.

When he learnt I am from Sri Lanka, the man broke into a cheery smile that could leave no doubt about his feelings for this country. "You people are like the Goans in India,'' he said, "always ready for a party -- and always ready to have a good time.''

Maybe people in Colombo are like the Goans, being pathetically indifferent, indulging in their make-believe urban fantasies. Furthermore, the Portuguese were here as they were in Goa, and perhaps the Goan parallel is not surprising at all, given that the Portuguese left behind baila and some such sanguine legacies.

But the same cannot be said of the rural expanses, where the people also seem to mimic the Colombo existence of being indifferent, stoic and resilient all at the same time.

Right at this point of time in the national saga however, the way the national character responds to the current events in the unfolding Sri Lankan story is perhaps more than interesting. Perhaps the present will more than any other time define how we evolve as a nation-state in the future.

My good friend and the political commentator Jayadeva Uyangoda who is never bereft of ideas usually says these things in his own unmistakable language -- one that is a cross between the arcane argot of rigorous academia and the frippery jargon of the NGO enthusiast. His favourite mode of representing Sri Lankan indifference is by saying that we cannot "move out of the old categories of thinking''!

The nation state is an old category of thinking, and so is a constitution that does not move out of the unitary framework. By and large there seem to be different ways of saying that Sri Lankans are monumentally indifferent.

Sri Lankans are a copiously cantankerous almost eccentric breed - - and this seems to be in character with the general South Asian experience. Maybe we care about things even less than the average South Asian which gives our national character a distinct irresponsible irrepressible side. We are the epitome of "nava gilunath baan choon'', the racy use of idiom never fully translatable -- but roughly you could say it means "the ship sinks but the band keeps on chiming.''

The most annoying facet of this national character however is not exactly the Sri Lankan indifference towards avoiding war and mayhem -- but more importantly, our indifference towards improving our economic conditions. Jayadeva Uyangoda may allude to this but his central thesis is that Sri Lankan leaders are incapable of knocking together an innovative agenda for ensuring a lasting peace. But even more shocking to me is the fact that our national character seems to be masochistic, talking at least in terms of economic well being and betterment of the general quality of life. Not making peace with each other is part of that tendency.

A recent interview that I did with the Prime Minister may say something of this side of our national proclivity. When asked about the plans for economic development infrastructure and highway development, the Prime Minister gave the distinct impression that he has not thought about such things or is still in the process of thinking about them. His answers were improvised and came right off the top of his head. He said things like "I think there is a plan for a Skytrain in Colombo.'' (!) He also said "you mean do we have a plan for the economy?'' when prodded about his government's plans for revving up the country's growth engine.

The JVP is cannily thinking of the rural economy - - and the Tank reconstruction effort if it succeeds will be a watershed event in planned economic activity, no pun intended. But the JVP's main plank is definitely not economics.

The JVP's determination is to expand its political juggernaut by championing causes that can be whipped up by mob oratory and populist appeal. Here of course the JVP is playing its old time-worn card. But in the process the JVP is cutting the ground from under its own feet -- and it seems in this sense its leaders are incapable of accurately ratiocinating the political equation of the day.

The fact of the matter is that the JVP is incumbent now - - and even with a people who have a nationally characteristic attention span of ten minutes, there is something in terms of delivery that is expected of the incumbent . The incumbent is expected to deliver not just a tractor here and a tank there, and maybe an Ambulance for the outback -- the incumbent will be penalised if he does not create jobs and create if not hedonistic levels of development, at least tolerable conditions of living for a notoriously lotus-eating people like us. How can the JVP do this while de-stabilising the country with its own inflammatory rhetoric?

The JVP is not used to getting a kick in their pants, and a lot of people in power have been shocked by how peremptory and cruel that kick can be when it comes. Colvin R de Silva, N. M. Perera and such national darlings of yesteryear learned these things the hard way.

My thinking is that even the national character will turn. The nation is on a distinct almost palpably upward learning gradient. We may be getting about it haphazardly like lunatics teetering on the brink, with operatic theatrics as accompaniment, that are more comic than tragic - - such as the manhandling of the monk's gonads in the well of parliament.

But in this we are like the delirious that are being slapped and punched into accepting the reality of the world. The SPUR, a Sri Lankans-abroad Website had recently excerpted a paragraph from an article by this writer written when the peace talks and ceasefire were just beggining. With the comment "the writer predicted pointedly and with assurance'' SPUR excerpts a paragraph from my article which says that peace efforts are not going to break down anytime soon.

They haven't broken down, in spite of Dayan Jayatilleke saying almost every month on the lecture circuit that there will be open hostilities within weeks!

This is roughly what can be understood by saying that the national character is maturing albeit haphazardly even comically. You have to be more than a political scientist of course to understand that -- you have to be a bit of a humanist or even a sensitive dreamer maybe even an impossible romantic (!) or a utopian to be attuned to these signals. No doubt Jayatilleke and maybe even Uyangoda (they would surely be mutually grossed out being mentioned in the same sentence and same context) will probably protest and scoff with every political-scientist's sinew in their being.

But the fact is that the old order is weeding itself out with its own mistakes and by that I mean the JVP, the stubborn Sri Lankan obscurantist nationalist fringe as well as the radical fringe of the violent Tamil nationalist movement. There is a psychology that's discernible in these things more than a political science - and maybe we can talk about it more in a Part 2 that's to follow which is now in the tradition of political commentary.

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