When people voted the centre-left JVP-NPP to power last year, they had thought that they were voting for ‘change’, not only as far as governmental policies and programmes went. They did not expect much change in either of the two, given the inherent institutional limitations. What they instead expected was a new ‘political culture’, top-down, bottom-up.

Come the nation-wide local government elections, and you now have the JVP-NPP leadership starting from President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, every tested trick in the trade that had been in vogue for generations of political parties since before Independence. Translated, the centre-left leadership is following in the footsteps of Comrade Karl Marx, who said, ‘Religion’ is the opium of the people.’ If their non-left, anti-left right reactionaries, while in power, could feed the people more of it, can Dissanayake & Col be seen as doing injustice to Marx?

It is thus that the government reportedly caused the display of Lord Buddha’s Tooth Relic at Sri Dallada Malligawa in Kandy, for the nation’s Sinhala-Buddhist majority to clear their minds and brains before queuing up before the polling stations on 6 May. According to reports, an expected 20 million Buddhists are expected to have darshan, standing in long queues that on days stretch 10 km and more. At least four persons have lost their lives standing in the queue and many more have been hospitalised, possibly owing to the summer-heat.

Mastermind of ‘em all

It does not stop with the Sinhala-Buddhist majority, when it comes to the government parties wooing the voters. There is no majoritarianism of the kind displayed by their predecessors when it comes to matters of religion when mixed with matters of elections, you should say of their secular approach.

Yes, it’s about the Easter blasts six years back – rather the fresh police probe ordered by the present government. The way President Dissanayake and Media Minister Nalinda Jayatissa were going about it through their public statements every day at every venue, the government should not be upset if someone thought that they personally and not the Police-CID wing was in charge of the fresh probe into the 2019 ‘Easter blasts’.

If however there is some breathing space now to the discourse, at least directly from ruling JVP-NPP leaders, it does not seem to flow from a sudden adherence to discretion. Instead, the passing on of Pope may have meant that it was improper for them to campaign in the name of religion – which it after all was – when the Catholic community in the country was in mourning, like their brethren across the world.

In the campaign prior to Pope’s passing-on, minister Jayatissa in particular used to hint at his knowing much more about the daily probe outcomes than he was telling the media and through them the nation. This raises a further question if the investigation team was getting fresh directions from the political leadership every other day, going beyond the ‘need-to-know’ clause that is generally attached to such high-profile, sensitive investigations.

In between, you have had the Catholic Bishops Conference telling the government that the CID investigations should also identify the ‘mastermind’ behind the blasts other than those already identified on-the-spot, and are all dead. Such a construct prima facie implies that there was a larger conspiracy and the Catholic Church would not be satisfied if the police did not come up with (new) names for the mastermind(s).

It is immaterial how high and mighty those ‘great conspirators’ may be, but then even the very idea of a larger conspiracy can be established only when the CID investigations moved further. In effect, if some of those later charged with a role in a greater conspiracy approaches the court that they were ‘fixed’ to please someone somewhere, then the judges may be constrained to consider that possibility more than at present.

It is in this context, you need to recall at every turn, the American FBI’s findings that Zahran Hashim, a sucide-bomber among the perpetrators of the heinous crime, was the master-mind. This is what then Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said on the night of the serial blasts that shook the nation and the region after a decade after the dreaded LTTE’s exit.

It would be a feather on the Sri Lankan CID’s cap if they could prove that there was a real mastermind behind the FBI-identified master-mind. The general perception here and elsewhere is that the FBI does a thorough job, because it has abundant resources at its disposal for its agents to undertake world-wide travel to follow any lead that might have come their way.

That American lives too were lost in the Easter blasts was reason and justification for the FBI to get involved goes without saying. But the question is if the Sri Lankan police and government should accept the FBI’s findings as gospel truth that should not be revisited, reviewed and reinvestigated.

Thankfully, minister Jayatissa has since conceded, in public, that it was the ‘responsibility’ of the police and courts to ‘reveal’ the mastermind(s)behind the blasts. What he possibly left unsaid was that he and his President were only helping the police CID up to the ‘mastermind’ that their investigations otherwise may, or may, not expose.

Divine opportunity

Guess what is still the height of the ‘Religion…opium’ mix? Or, is it only a mix-up, still? The other day, newspapers reported that JVP-NPP’s candidate for the prestigious Colombo mayoralty, Vraie Cally Balthazaar, her running mates and party colleagues campaigning for her, participated in the memorial bhajans and pujas on the 14th death anniversary of Sri Sathya Sai Baba, in the national capital.

Sai Baba was a Hindu god man based in south India, with permanent abodes in native Puttaparthi in Andhra Pradesh and White Field, in what used to be suburban Bangalore, now Bengaluru, capital of neighbouring state of Karnataka. Maybe (or, maybe not), the candidate and her supporters are all followers of Sai Baba, but they have considered their presence at the Baba bhajan session as a divine occasion and opportunity to mix religion and politics, to attain the desired results in both, at one-go.

The good thing about Sri Lankan left theology is that unlike the founders and followers of communism elsewhere, they are not atheists. Instead, they are as much believers as any other. The way communism propped up in the country may have something to do with it.

Missing symbolism

Sri Lanka, earlier Ceylon, has been an avowedly religious country with even more religious people. As is known, the rural poor, their women especially, save all that they can through a long life of hardship only to go on a pilgrimage to centres of Buddhist religious importance in India. Once done, they are mentally and spiritually ready to depart.

Recall how S W R D Bandaranaike mixed symbols of religion, (Sinhala) nationalism and politics to win the historic 1956 elections, and that is the path that even the (breakaway?) JVP walked despite taking extremist positions in everything else, starting with their violent methods to oppose / challenge the State, and at the same time, reach out to the people.

Today, there is hardly any centre-left leader in the country, including those from the JVP, who are not seen without the sacred pirit thread around their wrists. They clearly indicate that their differences with the traditional political opposition is only about socio-economic ideology, and not every day practices. It begins with religion, as with every good thing and its good beginning. In the case of others before them, it however did not end there.

But then government leaders are not known to have extended such religious symbolism to the nation’s Muslim community, at least not yet – did you say?

(The writer is a Chennai-based Policy Analyst & Political Commentator. Email: sathiyam54@nsathiyamoorthy.com)