Reference K. V. J. de Silva’s letter headlined Those Jaw-breaking names in The Sunday Times of 18.01.98, I wish to remind Mr. de Silva that names are given and are necessary to places or streets for purposes of identification. So are names required for each one of us to identify one another.
We Sri Lankans do not normally give foreign names to our children but local names in keeping with our tradition, culture and customs. We are no longer under a colonial power but an idependent nation.
When the colonial powers ruled Sri Lanka they named the places, buildings, streets etc. after their country names or their governors or great people of their country.
Even certain people during colonial rule have adopted foreign names forsaking the names used by their ancestors. This was mostly done not for convenience but to carry favour with the foreign powers.
Now when foreigners come to Sri Lanka they do not find any difficulty in locating places of interest when they want to visit. They are equipped with maps and they easily locate the places irrespective of names given - whether they are long or jaw-breaking to pronounce. We should never look at these things from a foreigner’s point of view or look for their convenience. We have a long heritage and local names is the way of perpetuating it.
I refer to the article, ‘man for all seasons’ appearing in The Sunday Times of January 25 1998, page 7, which contains factual inaccuracies that need to be corrected.
Hiding under the ‘date palm’ and under the pen-name ‘Abu Ahamad’ your columnist has brought down the standard of the highly reputed The Sunday Times by prostituting his pen to hold ‘kudos’ to his favourite politician Minister A.H.M Fowzie, leader of the Muslim division of the SLFP, while attempting at the same time to discredit Minister M. H.M. Ashraff, Leader of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress.
I wonder whether such biased write-ups could, have earned a place even in the ‘Letters to the Editor’ columns of a popular weekly such as The Sunday Times.
For the present, I wish to confine myself to the references to the Hameed Al Hussainie M.V., which contains several inaccuracies, of which I am aware as a parent. Hameed Al Hussainie has been described as a MahaVidyalaya, whereas it was a Madhya Maha Vidyalaya and was made a National School at the request of . M.M. Zuhair Member of Parliament (PA National List - SLMC) during the first year of the PA government. Soon thereafter a grateful group of old boys and parents received Mr. Zuhair MP and thanked him for honouring the college, as this was the first and only Muslim Boys College in the whole of Colombo district to be made a National School. It is noteworthy that Mr. Zuhair MP declined any big tamashas, stating that ‘I only want to do some service to our Schools and I do not want to annoy some big-wigs who claim Colombo Central as their exclusive pocket boroughs to be passed on to their children’.
However, it was much later that the Muslims of Colombo Central came to realise, the extent to which their leaders would stoop to, in sabotaging the benefits which this College could have received but for their petty politicking, and your columnist thinks he can get away by attempting to fool the people of the area, who know more!
Abu Ahamad has attempted to baulk over the fact that it was a repetition of the identical scenario when M.M. Zuhair MP again in the first year of the PA government successfully got the consent of the Minister of Education and Higher Education Richard Pathirana to visit the College. A date was fixed and the College authorities were making all arrangements, when Mr. Pathirana was prevailed upon by his cabinet colleague and Minister A.H.M.Fowzie to cancel the visit and that too after a group of old boys and parents went to invite Minister Fowzie for the function.
The net result was that the benefits that would have come to the Muslim children of the Colombo Central, nay Colombo district, was thwarted and put off by more than two more years, until Mr. Fowzie realising the damage he had caused brought Richard Pathirana after pleading with the parents and old boys.
The Tamil community, on the contrary, had arranged for big receptions to the Education Minister Richard Pathirana at Vivekananda College in the first year of the PA government itself and got substantial government funds to develop their school in Colombo Central. The invitation to the Education Minister was not routed through Minister A.H.M. Fowzie but no one objected.
It is only the Muslims, their schools and their political future which suffered due to the deliberately engineered divisions, to this small community.
It is time that the government did not fall prey to the pocket-borough schemes of designing politicians, because young capable and educated leaders of our community are being prevented from doing their part by aging leaders who want only their sons to succeed them.
I wish Abu Ahamad will put the facts straight.
Although Mr. Imtiaz complains that there are factual inaccuracies, he does not point out even one such inaccuracy. In fact by his silence on several items contained in the article, he confirms that they are true.
He claims that the columnist is biased. When unpalatable facts are stated it may look biased to him. However, he too proceeds to be biased in favour of Mr. Zuhair, but on the basis of unsubstantiated claims.
According to Mr Imtiaz, Mr Zuhair is responsible for making Hameed Al Huseeniya a National School. There is no evidence in support of this claim except Mr. Imtiaz’s statement.
Some time ago the Tamil press contained a news item that Zahira College Mawanella had been upgraded to a National School on a request by Mr. Zuhair to the Education Minister.
The news item stated that Mr. Zuhair had made a request on behalf of the SLFP MP for Kegalle Dr. Jagath Balasuriya and the SLFP Organiser for Kegalle Mr. Winston Peiris.
They claim that these two senior SLFPers had to wait for Mr. Zuhair (an SLMCer) to come along for them to make such a request to another SLFPer (Mr. Pathirana) is a story that should be told to the marines.
In another instance, when Minister Alavi Moulana intervened to settle a problem between a Muslim school and the Police in Slave Island, Mr Zuhair and the SLMC claimed credit for the settlement through the press.
If all the grandiose claims made and regularly fed to the Tamil newspapers are to be believed then the problems in Muslim schools in Colombo should have been solved by now.
Significantly, Mr. Imtiaz does not deny the incident referred to in the article where teachers were assaulted by the students following the cancellation of Mr. Pathirana’s visit to Hameed Al Husseiniya. The question is who instigated the students to do so.
The claim by Mr. Imtiaz that Minister Fowzie prevailed upon Mr. Pathirana to cancel his visit to the school is untrue.
It was Mr. Pathirana who decided to cancel his visit when he realised Mr. Fowzie was not able to attend and he had accepted another engagement being unaware of Minister Pathirana’s visit.
It appears that the visit had been initiated deliberately without reference to Minister Fowzie who is the elected MP for the area.
With regard to the last para of Mr. Imtiaz’s letter the ageing process is common to all and there is no shame in ageing while serving the people and in any case Mr. Zuhair may be only a few years younger than Minister Fowzie.
It is not whether you are a son, father or brother that matters but who is able to win the confidence of the people in order to be elected by them as opposed to coming on the National List.
The screaming headlines carried by a daily newspaper causing much of a furore at a glance was that - Tea exports were up by 22.6 percent and that the impressive earnings from tea had touched Rs. 38 billion upto November ‘97, compared to Rs. 31 billion for the same period up to 1996.
For the first nine months of 1997, Kenyan production was down 40 m kgs, which was very much a point in our favour, to keep prices up, when according to the basic principle of economics - law of supply and demand - our produce had to fetch a better price.
Though the regional plantation companies have taken a tremendous leap forward, with the old agency house style of efficient plantation management restored, in sharp contrast to the SPC and JEDB days, it can in no way be said, that the family economy of the tea small-holder owning less then a heactare of land, has also improved by leaps and bounds, when what has happened is that the 400 - 500 kgs of green leaf per acre that he had harvested earlier, now fetches an improved price. Under the caption ‘In conflict with the TRI’ I addressed the Plantations Minister on 31.01.95 for which I possess a mere acknowledgement, when I should have been called into ‘file answer’ over the all important aspect of productivity for the prosperity of the tea small-holder.
What amazes me is that a dossier that reached the Presidential Secretariat on the same subject has been doing its rounds at the Secretariat too, until a high-up there to his dismay ‘discovered’ that the document in question had gone back to the Plantations Ministry for action when the stranglehold by the bureaucracy had been most acute after August ‘94, than ever before! The material that I possess on Plantation Ministry letter-heads could be used with devastating effect right now on TNL; but I refrain from doing so, as my findings over 40 years, must be presented in the National Interest, with prosperity through productivity as my slogan, with a direct bearing upon a million of our population (in family units of 4 or 5).
The grim warning of the Central Bank Chief (headlines of Jan. 1st) that 1998 is a year of challenge, itself indicates that the resilience of the economy is a very fluid term, upon which the consolidation of the economy of the tea small-holder cannot be firmly fixed, unless he steps up production.
My document to the Plantation Minister of 31.01.95 deals with this aspect, precisely.
The dossier to the Presidential Secretariat contained more blasting material that the Plantation Ministry richly deserved. How these documents are surreptitiously, swept under the carpet, remains a mystery for all times!
It was three years ago, that I dwelt at length on the frame - building process strongly advocated by my ‘sudda’ masters, 40 years ago, quite contrary to the concept of ‘centering’ laid down by the TRI. Every government too has been dawdling over this issue, even after the TSHDA was born in late 1976 - of which I was a founder member, until a change of Govt. took place in 1977 - but I held that position on merit!
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