Mervyn De Silva and the Lankan Condition

The Island Features Monday 22nd June, 2009 11 by Dayan Jayatilleka guishable Westernized Right and orthodox Left, Perhaps the most striking evidence of his of derision, and dispassionately recorded the to the stirrings of the Sinhala rural masses unique voice was that he sounded the alarm dramatic fall and destruction of Prabhakaran ather’s Day this year falls on the eve of couched as they were in cultural and linguistic and implicitly took a stand on the Tamil ques- with his tragic flaws of hubris and cruelty the tenth anniversary of the death of my terms. My support for President Rajapakse tion long before others, and after the Old Left, which consumed Mervyn’s friends and Ffather, Mervyn de Silva, journalist and flowed directly from the influence of my father. strident in its cautionary notes of the 1950s, acquaintances A. Amirthalingam, Lakshman editor, literary critic and satirist, broadcaster As I told him in the days he became the Leader had ironically been in the very vanguard of Kadirgamar, Neelan Tiruchelvam, and Shri and commentator on world affairs, or as of the Opposition, at a party at Galle Face generating Tamil secessionism and youth mili- Rajiv Gandhi, he would be posing today the Godfrey Gunatilleke put it in a sixth anniver- Courts hosted by a young journalist Farah tancy through its fashioning of the 1972 question of the Tamil condition as key to the sary revaluation, “literary critic, intellectual, Mihlar (now a London based, occasional Constitution which it regarded as crowning Sri Lankan condition and prospect. political analyst and media communicator all Guardian blogger) at which Gen Sanath achievement and acme of progressivism. In 1984 Mervyn committed his Lanka in one”. The founder editor of the Editor’s Karunaratne was also present, I would support Mervyn’s explicit early warning (and it wasn’t Guardian to a venture in partnership with the Guild of Sri Lanka, the award instituted in his name by the industry is the pinnacle prize of him fully, not least because I had no emotional his first) came in a Ceylon Daily News editorial South Asia Perspectives Project of the United the annual Journalism Awards ceremony. option but to do so since I knew that was what of July 1st 1972, titled “What’s up in the Nations University, which brought together some my father would have wanted. When Mervyn North?”, several weeks after the new of Sri Lanka’s finest minds in a search for a My first memory of anything was the per- died many politicians had paid their respects, Constitution was promulgated ignoring the six solution. The document that resulted, if imple- spective from the playpen, of my father alone at beginning with Mr. Thondaman Sr, but three point letter sent to the framers and fathers by mented, would have pre-empted the externally the dining table, in trousers and vest, typing, had actually committed their appreciation to Mr. Chelvanayagam and the Tamil parliamen- propelled Indo-Lanka Accord of 1987. Exactly a while my maternal grandmother watches us print that year: Sarath Amunugama, MHM tary leadership, and Prabhakaran had picked quarter century later, its platform of broad with a smile. My last memory of him was see- Ashraff and Mahinda Rajapakse. The up the gun, commencing a cycle of carnage provincial autonomy remains valid and yet dor- mant and only partially fulfilled. To what extent do the causes and condition of "Tenth death anniversary collective Tamil angst and alienation illumined in his 1972 editorial remain, after over three and a half decades of armed conflict? How will these be addressed, who by, and when? Mervyn had the knowledge and lucidity not to confuse war with Mervyn de Silva the issue of ethnic identity.Unlike many affluent Tamil friends who sympathized with the Tigers, Mervyn’s knowledge of history would tell him that war, whatever its character and content, if fought relentlessly to its conclusion, has winners and the Lankan and losers; that the “rejectionist” type of terrorist or insurgent movement – such as one which could blow up Rajiv Gandhi and Neelan Tiruchelvam—make negotiated settlement impossible; and that if such a movement wagers condition all or nothing and loses, it ends up with nothing. Mervyn de Silva He would know that history does not repeat itself ing him die, through a glass door, clearly, at the Rajapakse article appeared in the Daily News Mervyn de Silva would however in simple cyclical terms and that the threat of a intensive care unit of a Colombo hospital. and recalled his presence as youthful observer renewal of insurgent or terrorist violence would Hours or days later I walked back into his at political discussions between Mervyn and had little patience for Colombo’s hold no fears for a first rate, formidable and fero- study and saw his typewriter, stubbed out his uncles George and Lakshman Rajapakse, critics of the Rajapakse administra- ciously successful Sri Lankan military which cigars, well thumbed volumes of Walter Mervyn’s friends and class mates. He also tion. It was Prof Michael Roberts has destroyed a world class irregular armed Lippmann and I.F. Stone, the empty chair. recounted Mervyn’s and his convergence in sol- force on the latter’s own terrain, just as he knew “Aren’t you going to write anything on your idarity with Palestine and the PLO. who resurrected his three part that no guerrilla or conventional war by any father for the anniversary? Why not say how he As his support for SWRD Bandaranaike, defense in the Ceylon Observer in combination of actors could militarily defeat the might have viewed this time, after the war?” which extended to Sirima Bandaranaike, and 1967 of the SWRD surge of 1956 Israeli Defense Forces within its ’67 borders (as suggested Sanja, my wife, gently. So here I am his open uncritical sympathy for Premadasa distinct from Lebanon, another country). ten years after and ten thousand miles away, (long before my own association with the latter, and its successor project of a broad At the same time Mervyn would stress that typing. whom I first met in our Ward Place flat when I united front of the centre–left the issue of the alienation of the Tamil people He died just before he turned seventy and was a school-kid) demonstrated, Mervyn (which crystallized the next year at and the complex challenge of accommodating the world moved into the new century, millenni- endorsed and supported political leaders of Bogambara with the inclusion of the Tamil ethnic identity within the Sri Lankan um and (perhaps) paradigm. Had he been alive both mainstream democratic parties who were state and society, reconciling it with historic he would have welcomed Barack Obama at least left of centre or progressive, in twin terms of Communist party). That essay con- Sinhala fears and ancient memories, emphatical- as enthusiastically as he did JFK. What would sensitivity to mass aspirations and the cause of tained a relentless critique of the ly do not lend themselves to a military solution. he have said about the moment that Sri Lanka the Third World. In this he was hardly alone, effete “aesthetic” aversion of the In his travels through the Middle East, Mervyn has arrived at today? Is it possible for us to though there were only a clutch of Westernized saw (and I was there with him) how the scintil- extrapolate what his insights might have been Colombo based Sri Lankans with an elite liber- attitudinally almost indistinguish- lating Israeli military victories of 1967 and to a from a recollection of what he wrote and said? al education, to do so. Most either supported able Westernized Right and ortho- lesser extent 1973 (Sharon’s counter attack) Mervyn would have written about the war, the UNP or the Trotskyist LSSP. Supportive of dox Left, to the stirrings of the turned into an endless quagmire because of the its aftermath and future prospects; the the SLFP and broad center-left coalitions, he policies of permanent displacement, settler-colo- Rajapakse presidency; Tamil politics; the seri- nonetheless mourned the absence of a policy Sinhala rural masses couched as nization of the lands of the displaced and the ous challenge to Sri Lanka’s external relations; elite and coherent moderate ideology for the they were in cultural and linguistic refugees, increasingly fundamentalist religiosity, the erosion or squandering of her “soft power” SLFP. The UNP and Left had their ideology and terms. annexation masquerading as antiquarian arche- resources; and the structure of the internation- intellectuals, but he observed that the centrist ological exploration, and harsh military occupa- al information order as revealed by the cover- SLFP did not – a failure which made it perma- tion with its myriad daily humiliations and lac- age of the closing stages of the conflict. nent prey to pressure groups of one or other that lasted close to four decades. Here are some erating lived experience. He described himself as a liberal and a illiberal persuasion. salient extracts: The widely traveled and enormously literate humanist. He was both these things but not of What made Mervyn rare within the liberal “…The emergence, however hesitant or Mervyn was an admirer of both the American a sort that shied away from the subject of war- or progressive intelligentsia, was that he was faint, of a militant youth group in the peninsu- social experiment of melting pot, meritocracy fare. He would have been a shrewd observer of highly sensitive to both radical Sinhala youth la is a phenomenon about which we have writ- and individual opportunity as well as of Russian the epic endgame of the Eelam wars.

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