Columns

Somewhere in a kammala in the wilds of Anuradhapura, where previous settlers had been digging for more than simple treasures, those who had fast grabbed fertile land were now hearing the sound of iron on steel.

Even Pradeshiya Sabha members some distance away were hearing sounds they were not accustomed to, except perhaps sharp and strong saws scraping away on teak trees.

Others closer to ancient tombs and places of worship thought they heard the noises they heard months ago when Prime Minister Modi landed there by helicopter, with commandos and other pieces of military hardware.

Amid much discussion and dismissals of MOUs swirling in the air, it was being whispered in some circles that were playing their cards closer to the chest many moons ago that India first exposed something called the National Modiya Policy.

Now, suddenly Sri Lanka is talking of a National Media Policy as though Health and Mass Media Minister Jayatissa is turning to Modi Land for purchasing power, like his locked-up predecessor—a similar tilt to the North to buy chunks of Modiya media if medicines cost more than what the Prime Minister of Bharat keeps handing over to us each time we go there. Various political and anxious figures keep counting when somebody on our side of the Palk Strait utters it by name as a piece of sacred territory, just as the Kachchativu island that we have had for decades since the mid-1970s.

That, of course, does not include Mr. Modi when he is on a political junket determined to needle the Congress Party and irritants or when he decides to do what his one-time chuck golaya, ‘world emancipator,’ Donald Trump, tries to do all the time.

So where are we now but trying to emulate Bharatha from behind the international drawing room suits and foreign policy-maker Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, who has made a name for himself with a few stones thrown at critical chappies on the other side of borders of which India has a lot, which it can always evoke when a few firecrackers are necessary? But how many, I wonder, read the comment in a recent newspaper that elevated a person called Ali Sabry to the pantheon of Sri Lankan foreign policymaking?

I was not really in search of Sri Lanka’s great intellectuals, thinkers, academics, world travellers, book launchers and other accumulators of merits having gone around the kadju poolan tree except that I was trying to locate as quickly as possible the contributions the Indian combo made to their National Media Policy.

Having quite by chance run into these local articles that set Sri Lanka’s Ali Sabry as one of the best of five foreign ministers that we were ever likely to see on the face of our land—save, I suppose, for that bartered off to hovering neighbours—not to mention worthy fishermen who are washed away to our side—one thought it better to stay from conflicting individuals.

Apparently, the plaudits were showered on Mr. Ali Sabry at a book launch. If I am wrong, I apologise, though in my many years at Lake House, my brother and I faced sackings to satisfy, as several of my friends and others would remember.

I returned to Lake House when the new management withdrew the case it had filed against me. Some years later my brother and I were privately told—at various times as I recall—why it was needed and why it was done.

I was told much later by one of those involved in the manipulation that I was not just a comic interlude but existing law or forthcoming interests could be manipulated to suit what is being planned for the future.

One need to say how new laws or laws intended by others to clear the judicial layers as claimed by those to step forth in that name, end up playing much more than the twisted game we discover later or even a more vicious political ‘sport’ where journalists end up in death and destruction.

Those of us who over the years watched and listened to defences raised in the name of governments over time are not ignorant of what prevarications and perfidies were practised in the name of law and order though evidence might have been hidden or those who violated the rights of individuals were not only paid back court penalties but also promoted in their positions in office.

Those perverse actions betrayed the laws of the country and the integrity of the basic laws of the constitution, but the citizenry with ears, eyes, and mouths closed—mostly for fear not of the law but those who drew up the law and then practised as though the practitioners of democracy might well be in power.

One of those practitioners of democracy called Donald Trump is now practising that credo. One can only hope that the NPP will not learn the lessons of democracy from such wastefulness and that Minister Jayatissa will not try to instil such justice on the people of the country in the name of Clean Sri Lanka unless he wishes to be cleaned up later when all those intellectuals, thinkers, and others are shown their seats—perhaps closer to the seats of justice.

(Neville de Silva is a veteran Sri Lankan journalist who was Assistant Editor of the Hong Kong Standard and worked for Gemini News Service in London. Later, he was Deputy Chief of Mission in Bangkok and Deputy High Commissioner in London.)