-- Malinda Seneviratne
It is hard to think of any Sri Lankan academic who has been vilified the way Nalin Kumar De Silva was. Nalin was no averse to calling out his ideological opponents and not in very polite terms either, but all those epithets essentially boiled down to ‘Pawns of the West,’ nothing more. He was, on the other hand, called racist, chauvinist and warmonger. Some, who obviously were clueless about 'nation' would call him ‘nationalist’ as though that was some kind of four-letter word.
There were others who referred to Nalin and his ideological comrade Gunadasa Amarasekera as ‘native intellectuals.’ They probably didn’t understand the word ‘intellect’ and its derivatives. I believe it was Nalin or maybe it was Gunadasa who observed that the term implied ‘international intellectuals.’ Perhaps those who called them ‘native intellectuals’ did so to confer upon themselves the tag ‘international intellectual’ but the very use of the term disqualified them, obviously. Pawns they were and are, Nalin believed.
The more informed, less threatened and less malicious referred to him as one of the two top ideologues of what was known as the ‘Jathika Chinthanaya School' (the other being Gunadasa). No one has really succeeded in translating ‘Jathika Chinthanaya’ into English. ‘National Ideology’ somehow seems crude and erroneous. Those who subscribed to this school of thought, however, knew. They had a sense.
Nalin passed away in California, USA just a few hours before I started writing this. The final rites will be held from 1 to 5 pm (PST) on Sunday the 5th of May at Fremont Blvd, Fremont. It is probably too soon to offer a comprehensive review of his work, as a teacher, political activist and thinker. It has to be mostly anecdotal but maybe that’s all I can do, not having associated him closely.
Like most people who ‘knew’ Nalin, knowledge came mostly from reading what he had written. ‘Mage Lokaya’ (My world), probably the essay that best captures his theoretical explorations, is probably one of the most influential political treatises of the late 20th century. There were other books which addressed what was dubbed ‘The ethnic conflict’ where Nalin cogently tore apart the creative historiography of Eelamists and their apologies who had many axes to grind with the Sinhalese and/or Buddhists. In addition there were innumerable articles published weekly in the Divaina, Vidusara and later in the Midweek Review of ‘The Island.’ I’ll come to those later.
The first time I met him was when I went to see my friend and teacher Arjuna Parakrama. This was in the early 1990s. We were walking towards the ‘Open Canteen’ of the Colombo University when we ran into Nalin. Apparently the two had agreed to a debate. Arjuna said something about the logistics and added, ‘we must make sure we don’t become pawns of other people.’ Nalin muttered something with a laugh and walked away. Arjuna had heard: ‘he said I am a pawn.’ Arjuna didn’t take it as an insult. I don’t know if the debate did take place, but Arjuna told me years later that Nalin had acknowledged that he, Arjuna, was a good trade unionist. This was when Nalin had been suspended by the university.
My first one-on-one encounter happened in the late nineties. I was a student in the USA at the time and had written to Nalin. I was politically associated with the ‘Janatha Mithuro’ then and felt that Nalin’s ongoing clashes with Champika Ranawaka were unnecessary. I mentioned this. Nalin replied. He was ‘soft’ in the criticism. He merely stated, ‘No one disputes that Champika is very bright, but he should acknowledge the source of his ideas.’ Champika, after he disassociated himself from the JVP-led student movement, was one of the prominent acolytes of Nalin’s ‘Chinthana Parshadaya.’ Convinced that a political movement and not a forum to discuss ideological/philosophical matters was what was needed, he, along with other young people who had become skeptical about Marxism, launched first the Ratawesi Peramuna and later the Janatha Mithuro. Nalin was one of their strongest critics.
I met him next at the Divaina editorial office. It must have been in 2001. I was working at the 'Sunday Island,' but enjoyed spending an hour or two at the Divaina. One day I saw Nalin and after saying hello, asked him if he had come to hand over an article. What follows is the rough English translation of what he told me in Sinhala.
‘No Malinda. You know, it’s a small amount that they pay me, but it is not small for me; even so it is irregular.’
It was the only income he had at the time.
In 2006 in Celigny, Switzerland, at a media opportunity just prior to the commencement of talks between the Government and the LTTE, I casually asked Jehan Perera of the National Peace Council who happened to be there, ‘how many people could you get to Lipton Circus for a protest if you didn’t have funding?’ Jehan, ideologically at odds with me though he was, offered an honest response: ‘probably none.’
That was the difference. The NGOs had bucks. They had, in 2002, a government committed to federalism and a president who was not in disagreement. They had both the private and state media at their disposal. The nationalists had Nalin and a few others.
The 1990s were all about federalism. Those opposed to federalism were called warmongers, racists and chauvinists. Nalin got a lot of that. And yet, after it had led to the ridiculous Ceasefire Agreement signed on February 22, 2002 and the consequent pantomime of ‘peace’ talks, federalism became a joke. The UPFA routed the UNP in April 2004 and Mahinda Rajapaksa pipped Ranil Wickremesinghe at the presidential election the following year, admittedly with a little help from the LTTE which called for a boycott, probably costing the latter the election.
That turn around in the fortunes of the nationalists may have surprised the Anglicised sections of the population, but what they probably never understood is the role played by Nalin, Gunadasa and others for well over two decades countering every lie of the Eelsmists, their apologists and other colonial remnants who can’t get enough of the English and English.
Several years later, in a new political avatar where he spoke of the bodisatva ‘Natha Deyyo,’ inviting much ridicule and invective, paradoxically from those who fervently believe in a creator god, immaculate conception, rising from the dead and so on, Nalin wrote ‘Batahira vidyava saha deviyo (Western science and god).’ I was invited to speak at the launch, as was Prof Carlo Fonseka.
Carlo, as irrepressible as Nalin, opted to focus on a chapter that the author had suggested he avoid. Nalin, responding, completely refuted Carlo. He had said, in Sinhala, ‘I didn’t want to do that to him; I knew I would have to if he chose to focus on that chapter; he did and I had no choice but to take him apart.’
In retrospect one could argue that Nalin should have avoided supporting politicians and political parties, but those moments hardly make a dent in the enormous contributions he has made to the political and ideological discourse in and on post Independence Sri Lanka. At worst, his texts need to be engaged with. Indeed, his detractors cannot but have a conversation with his works. And they were considerable, for Nalin was indefatigable. He was all over the newspapers and when social media became fashionable he adapted quickly, writing daily posts using language appropriate to this new media culture. His last post was just a few days ago; in fact he mentioned that he was unwell and will not be writing for a few days. He won't write again but he's written so much that it would take years for anyone to go through the full corpus of his writings. He was, in his writing and his engagements, relentless.
Nalin, for all his lectures on the chathuskotikaya (in opposition to the dvikotiyaka or the dialectic) was eminently dialectic in his political engagements, possibly a habit acquired during his Trotskyite days which he failed to shed after he felt Marxism was an inadequate and even erroneous doctrine. This is probably why he was often ‘in your fact’ with political and ideological opponents and found it hard to work with and develop a group of like-minded thinkers/activists. Again, this is hardly a serious crime. To me, anyway, he was an exceptional thinker and an influencer unlike any other over the past 40 years.
May his sojourn through Sansara be brief.
