Arbudaya, Aragalaya, Punarudaya

Words that acquire new meaning in the public psyche are the loudest witnesses of unfolding history 

“The future has many names: for the weak it means the unattainable; for the fearful, it means the unknown; for the courageous, it means opportunity.”

Victor Hugo the French writer provided this advice to France in the turbulent days of the end of the “ancien régime’ and the birth of the new republic. 

Meaningful change occurs when a vision is combined with realism and pragmatism to turn it into something tangible, concrete. Clarity of ideas shape reality.

The NPP presented its party manifesto yesterday (26 August). I watched the finely choreographed presentation on YouTube. I listened to the candidate AKD. This is my take.

Words that acquire new meaning in the public psyche are the loudest witnesses of unfolding history. They offer the rationale for profound change that suddenly convulses society. ‘Arbudaya’,’ Aragalaya’ and ‘Punaradaya’ are three such Sinhala words. Crisis, Struggle and Renaissance’  

As historian Eric Hobsbawm explains, such words at pivotal points of a nation’s history help us measure the profundity of the change that inevitably follows when the critical mass of the literate segment of society redefine those words, make sense out of them and convert them to reality on ground.  We live in times that are the virtual replicate of the times that Hobsbawm writes about. The times of Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Karl Marx are different from the times we live in today. 

“We live in a world captured, rooted and upturned by the titanic economic and techno-scientific process of the development of capitalism, which has dominated for the past two or three centuries. We know that it cannot go on ad infinitum. The future cannot be a continuation of the past, and there are signs that we have reached a point of historic crisis. The forces generated by the techno-scientific economy are enough to destroy the environment, that is to say, the material foundations of human life... Our world risks both explosion and implosion. It must change... If humanity is to have a recognisable future, it cannot be by prolonging the past or present... The price of failure, the alternative to a changed society, is darkness.” We are living through an epochal transformation of our social, cultural and political values. 

No matter what, this Presidential election will irrevocably breach the neo liberal capitalist order of prioritising profit over people, economy over equity, GDP over social discontent. 

It is time for a new order, a new model of freedom. This breach of the existing order will be steered by a largely monolingual, politically alert aspirational middle class that wish to educate their offspring to meet the demands of the digital or techno scientific age. 

The Policy Manifesto has a simple tagline. ‘Pohosath Ratak Lassana Jeevitayak’ – A rich land, A delightful life. 

AKD insisted his movement – the NPP was in determined pursuit of a ‘Renesasance’. He promised the end of elite politics. He promised to end the free rides of the oligarchic class. He promised the end of crony capitalism.