“April is the cruellest month,” wrote T.S. Eliot in The Waste Land. Ian Goonetilleke recalled this line in his introduction to a bibliography of writings on the JVP insurrection of April 1971. Seasonally, unlike in Eliot’s West, April is not a bad month in the tropics. It is a temperate month between monsoons and is the month of traditional New Year festivities in Sri Lanka and India. July is intemperate in the tropics and it is the month of power cuts and water cuts in Sri Lanka. Drought stricken farmers have no help from heaven or the state. Politically, April was a cruel month in 1971. But that cruelty was certainly surpassed twelve years later in July 1983. Will it happen again? I am not making this up.”Is Sri Lanka heading towards another July ‘83″ was the ominous title of Latheef Farook’s responsibly written article that appeared a month ago in the Sunday Times of June 10. Just last week an email arrived giving the story of an attack allegedly by military personnel on political prisoners in the Vavuniya remand prison. No comparison to the prison massacre in 1983, but the Vavuniya incident is worrisome enough. According to Farook, the targets of a repeat July ‘83 will not be Tiger-supporting Tamils but al-Qaeda supporting Muslims. Already, unprovoked vandalism, even led by monks, has targeted Muslim places of worship in Anuradhapura, Dambulla, Kurunegala, Colombo and Dehiwela.Farook’s article chronicles the ant-Muslim rhetoric and chauvinistic actions orchestrated after the war and the defeat of the LTTE. He names the orchestrators as “(Sinhalese) ultranationalists who managed to get into influential positions in the government.” Internet campaigns were launched against Muslims in eight Sinhala and ten English language websites. Books and articles have been published to incite the Sinhalese against the Muslims. “Hand in hand,’’ says Farook, “there began a campaign against cattle slaughter to rouse anti-Muslim hysteria.”Bernard Soysa used to say that most Buddhists like to eat meat so long as they did not slaughter the cattle. We miss a man like Bernard whose wit and wisdom in parliament often compensated for governments lacking in both.The present government has been speaking from both sides of its mouth while sitting on its hands and letting scoundrels (the refugees of patriotism according to Samuel Johnson) take over the streets against the Muslims. The government has also got in on the act and is reportedly preparing regulations to apply sanctions on individuals and organizations associated with al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Who needs this?

Why target the Muslims?

Unlike its South Asian neighbours, Sri Lanka has been a model of religious tolerance until now. The anti-colonial edge against Christianity was pointed at the Christian-colonial establishments but never against people practising Christian religions or their places of worship. Christian schools were where children of all religions met and mingled and forged the imagination of a common Lankan identity. Through all the dark decades of politically-charged linguistic communalism there was not even a murmur of religious intolerance. Despite its official secularism, India continues to be a deeply religious and divided society. Hindu fundamentalism emerged out of the blues challenging Nehruvian secularism as cosmopolitan and non-Indian.Sri Lankans, on the other hand, have remained by and large secular in their outlook despite the constitutional status of official religion afforded to Buddhism. A majority of Sri Lankans are still religiously tolerant. Shouldn’t the government protect this general ethos instead of surrendering to the agendas of ultranationalists and religious fundamentalists?The hapless NGOs have been mercilessly criticized for their western sources of funding and their allegedly unpatriotic pro-western connections. But as Latheef Farook rightly asks of the anti-Muslim instigators: “Who are these vandals? From where did they emerge? Who is financing their websites and all other expenses involved in gathering, transporting and feeding the mob to attack mosques?”The mainstream media, sections of which will not hesitate to create a mountain out of an NGO molehill, is not persistently pursuing Farook’s pertinent questions that remain unanswered. Yet, as Farook says, “the mainstream Sinhalese people including politicians, journalists and Buddhist monks have distanced themselves from this campaign.” The real question is how distanced is the government from this campaign? The government has certainly not made any great effort to show that it is sufficiently distanced from this campaign.The politics of being associated with an anti-Muslim campaign does not make sense. Domestically, the government does not need to target the Muslims to protect its support among the Sinhalese. From a foreign policy standpoint, it is not only counter to the government’s – I dare say ostensible – anti-western stance, but is also counterproductive considering the many economic linkages that Sri Lanka has now established with Muslim Arab countries in terms of employment, export markets and as vital sources of petroleum imports.One can surmise a few explanations for the government’s seemingly irrational position and persistent inaction. The government has shown consistent unwillingness to rein in its miscreants on many fronts. Their identities are well known and need no listing here. The same misplaced tolerance is being extended to anti-Muslim rowdies. The police do not know when they can act independently and professionally and when they have to follow orders from political masters and their hacks. Even when there are no political orders, police have got used to acting as if there are orders. Good police officers have to fear political retribution while bad policemen tend to be worse than political hacks.It is also difficult to rule out the infection of ultra-nationalism and ethno-centric ideology at the highest levels in government. The security-state mindset, the Herculean foot dragging in regard postwar political changes, and intolerance of any significant dissent, are strong symptoms of ultra-nationalist infection. The government is also not above the politics of manipulation and machinations, of dividing and destabilizing, which might bring short term advantages but in the long term will only exacerbate antagonisms within communities and between communities. A recent instance of this has been the accusation in Parliament by a Muslim government Minister against the Catholic Bishop of Mannar that the Bishop is stirring up the Tamils against Muslims in the Mannar District.The Minister apparently compared the Bishop to the Buddhist Priest who led the attack on the Muslim Mosque in Dambulla. The response was swift with over 5,000 people – Muslims, Hindus and Christians –rallying in Mannar in solidarity with the Catholic Bishop. The Bishop has been in the government’s radar for quite some time and the question of his safety became a matter of papal concern with Pope Benedict reportedly raising it with President Rajapaksa when the President visited the Pontiff in Vatican while returning home after going to London to see the Queen. What political or diplomatic good comes out of such machination is my question.Finally, there is a general malaise afflicting this government all too obviously. The government has ceased to be, some might say it has never been except in fighting the war, positively strategic in any portfolio and perpetually error-prone in every department. This general malaise is all the more worrisome because unlike in 1983 when the economy was able to survive the July catastrophe and expand afterwards, even a lesser catastrophe now will simply bury the economy many parts of which are in near death throes.

July 1983 and July 2012:

Then and Now

J.R. Jayewardene called July 1983 a crisis of civilization. It indeed was, but what JRJ forgot to mention that it was he who presided over it. And it happened against everything he wanted to achieve as President. Fortunately, however, the economy survived and it went on to thrive at least relative to what has been our experience before and after JR was at the helm. His big regret would have been over how much more successful Sri Lanka’s economy could have been without the interruption of July 1983. It is not that JR deserves full marks for his economic management but his period contrasts itself far more positively from the economic situation today.

JR presided over a people and an economy that were bursting open after decades of mostly misplaced state containment. The energy was such that it would have sailed over all bureaucratic humps and there were many. If credit is due to the UNP government of the day for letting the economy run and letting the people runaway with it, there is also serious criticism that must be levelled against the UNP administrations – for not taking systematic measures at the social, educational and productive levels to ensure sustained economic development and not a flash in the pan success followed by setbacks.

JR’s timing was perfect in that he opened the economy literally –as he said –to robber barons, but perhaps without quite realizing the sea change of globalization. The UNP’s period of governance coincided with for the most part with a growing and globalized world economy and Sri Lanka benefited from it quite substantially, not only in aggregate terms but also according to trickledown measures. Inequality, waste and corruption were more than common but the appearance of opportunity to succeed overshadowed all other shortcomings. July 1983 slowed down the economic momentum but could not stop it. Not only did the economy survive the 1983 catastrophe, but its thriving prevented the society from collapsing into anarchy.

The situation today is just the opposite in every respect, internally and externally. Sri Lanka escaped the full brunt of the great global recession of the last few years, but internal mismanagement has turned the economy upside down in every way. The rupee is sliding, growth is down, inflation is up, exports are suffering and imports are being priced out. The budget and balance of payment deficits preclude conventional stimulus measures, while the government’s preoccupation with infrastructure and property developments contributes to more borrowing with little return. Continuing global economic woes will only make matters worse for the management of the Sri Lankan economy.

A catastrophe like July 1983 will simply devastate the economy. Put another way, if the government is serious about providing proper economic management it must put an end to political distractions in the form of religious fundamentalism and ultra-nationalism. These distractions, even if they do not coalesce into a major catastrophe, will have debilitating effects on the economy. The effects are already evident in the vicious cycle of political instability and economic crises.

It is not that the Sinhalese people want their government to alienate everyone who is not a Sinhalese, but some in the government have got it in their heads that alienating others is the only way to appease the Sinhalese electorate. It is not an accident that such people have got into, as Mr. Farook has noted, influential positions in the government. 1983 was also different in this respect. Facing the challenge of Tamil separatism, J. R. Jayewardene made special efforts to politically accommodate the Muslims and the plantation Tamils. Even that savvy has gone missing today.