Give me liberty – or the right seat

STAND: noted 

I am celebrating Sri Lanka’s Independence Day – today. Not because I want to be perverse or contrary. But because well-meaning liberals have told me I can if I want to. And that in a democracy the individual has a choice. There are others who have taken the same route. Or so it would appear. Just as long as you don’t class me with that monk who’s drawing flak on social media for not being upstanding for the national anthem. 

Draw the lines somewhere and let’s grow up from our puerile juvenile sociopolitical infancy. Either we must remain atavistic and primitive as a society without civility, and allow religion to rule our secular state. Or we must let go of the grubby pseudo-philosophical mud we’re throwing at each other, and look up to reach for the stars now well within our grasp. 

You can’t have it both ways. Usually, I’d add, “As the actress said to the bishop”… but today, I’m not monkeying around. Speaking truth to power is nowhere near as serious enough a business that it could or should be to the average Sri Lankan citizen. We’re in disengaged mode since the coup. In a discouraging milieu since the farce that follows hard on the heels of the restoration.  

On the anniversary of our hardly hard-won freedom from colonial rule and chauvinistic regimes, let’s at least ditch the clichés and talk quietly and honestly among ourselves. Let’s also gird our loins against the ethno-chauvinist backlash any critique of the saffron brigade and its cynical political sponsors might bring.   

On the one hand, there are those who point to the premier position of Buddhism in all our constitutions. Be the social contract what it may in any other respect, this prized worldview has been given pride of place – along a spectrum ranging from state religion to revered philosophy. In successive supreme laws, the gamut has spanned from protecting it to propagating it. This does not necessarily mean that a venerable monk is exempt from demonstrating his respect for the uniting strains of the national anthem, now being rendered in both vernacular languages.  

On the other hand, it does not mean that the cleric in question has shown his contempt for that which – ostensibly – unites us. As the liberals at the leading edge of the left wing have lightly contended on Twitter and Facebook, a citizen may observe the singing of the national anthem in a veritable panoply of respectful dispositions. It just seems odd – especially when captured for posterity in a telling photo-still – that of all this country’s diversity of faiths, one philosophy seems exempt from the customary observances. A plethora of trenchant critiques has ensued.

It’s not at all a sign of solidarity for the rank and file of clergy to stand while one of its fellows sits. In fact, taken to a right-wing extreme, it’s a hostile signalling of their expectant exceptionalism. It goes from bus seats to bailing out bhikkus in contempt of court. It seems to be suggesting that while all others stand in homage to that which binds us, some of us are exempt. Is it because we’re special, exclusive, above common courtesies as much as compelling supreme laws of custom and civility, if not mere constitutionality? Taken in the context of the Sangha agitating with the highest in the land for the liberty-day timed release of that offending monk, semiotics seem to suggest a resurgence of all kinds of unsavoury isms. Three will suffice to illustrate the ‘coming colours’. 

#Nationalism: The village rooster who climbs the dunghill to crow about his own party’s or people’s achievements – while the ethnic, political, social ‘other’ is left to fend for themselves and their respective freedoms.

#Patriotism. The last – or first – refuge of the political scoundrel; whereby what is sweet and fitting for a majority in the land must be force-fed to the minorities, rightly and justifiably asking for more.

#Populism. That truly unpopular mechanism whereby by machinations pleasing to the loudest or most vociferous or influential people, politicians and their puppet masters in the corridors of power seek to remain in office – to benefit from the folly and naivety of the very people whom they claim to serve.

So I’m celebrating my own personal independence day today. But not to cock a snook at that exceptional monk or his most venerable peers (probably more right honourable than our scurrilous politicos). For who knows what motivates him to remain seated? Except that as far as I can see from reading any of the sutras, there is nothing in the Vinaya Pitakaya that drives this monk’s non-Abhidarma or non-Sutra Pitaka desire to stand out by singling himself out. And as long as the exception at the public commemoration is not accompanied by a private or public exhortation to release his egregious fellow cleric – who was found guilty by a court of law of a secular offence – I take no issue with the recumbent monk. Let him sit, or stand, or bow to whatever dictates his conscience – or the teaching (if at all) of the Tathāgata impels him. Just as long as the exception is not a symbol of the exceptionalism that others of his ilk seem to espouse.

So excuse me while I bow out of a perfectly serviceable working day to cavalierly celebrate my Freedom Friday. If you think that’s uncivil or undemocratic, use your independence to protest. Feel free while you’re about it to ask why, while we go to Dubai to collar drug kingpins, the trafficker mandarins sit like lords in the House of perfect liberty? And the senior serviceman who stands accused of alleged murder of 11 youths in a time of war stands at attention at our liberty parade?

How about a president who parades nationalism by demanding the death penalty for drug traffickers but clasps errant monks to his populist bosom? And a prime minister who’s trying to smuggle a baker’s dozen or more ministries in through the back door, in the guise of a national government again? Last but by no means least, the ultra-patriotic éminence grise of the previous regime, never done trying to undermine the globalism our island needs – in favour of restoring his patriarchy? 

It’s the kind of thing that makes you want to sit down and cry. Or demand liberty – or death – or at least the democratic right to determine what to do with the liberties being taken in the name of freedom. Today. Yesterday. But not necessarily tomorrow.

Thanks for the day off to vent. Helps heaps.

(Journalist | Editor-at-large of LMD | Writer #SpeakingTruthToPower)