Even as Western-backed Israeli aggression is wreaking havoc in West Asia, a new political regime in Sri Lanka with distinctive characteristics has emerged and must now deal with the world’s ugly realities and the extreme tensions generated by the violence and destruction in our adjoining region. In fact, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in its first international comment after the new President took office, has publicly expressed concern about the safety of Sri Lankan migrant workers recently enticed to labour in war torn Israel-Palestine.
As the regime of new President Anura Kumara Dissanayaka took hold of the Governmental reins last week, it is important for its citizens to appreciate the ramifications of the new regime for both the nation and its surrounding world community. This column, therefore, focuses on the possible geopolitical ramifications of the current new regime’s political outlook and the sociopolitical interests that have brought it to power.
The usual congratulatory messages have poured into Colombo from Delhi, London, Washington and around the world welcoming new President Dissanayake. An indirect remark by the Chinese Ambassador to Colombo on Friday, however, slightly bucked the trend in reactions.
All the foreign Government messages were the usual bland diplomatic warmth, although the World Bank and IMF duo were quite specific in the readiness to continue with their ongoing emergency ‘rescue’ program in engagement with the NPP regime. No one seemed to have noted the distinctly new ideological leaning of the National People’s Power political movement, ‘new’ as compared with all previous national Governmental regimes that have, so far, punctuated Sri Lanka’s post-colonial emergence in the world community.
Distinctive
On Friday, at a politically and ideologically significant event in Colombo – at the Shangri-La Hotel, no less – the distinctive nature of the new political regime in Sri Lanka was hinted at by the Ambassador for the world’s largest and most powerful Communist state. The occasion was the diplomatic reception hosted by the Chinese Embassy to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
In his speech, Ambassador Qi Zhenhong, as would be expected, related the long, heroic, struggle of his nation to emerge from feudalism and poverty (he didn’t mention the Western colonial grip). He necessarily pointed out the key role played by his nation’s principal political movement, the Communist Party of China, a role already recognised and appreciated by the community of nations, and the world’s intelligentsia.
The Ambassador would certainly have been keenly aware that the new regime in Colombo is largely inspired by the ideological outlook of the main political Movement that leads it: the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna. The JVP is best known as an example of South Asian Communist rebellion.
Indeed, South Asia is distinctive for hosting a string of Communist rebellious Movements, all of them which are specifically Maoist in political-strategic outlook. Parallel to Maoist Movements in India, Nepal and, at a much smaller level, in Pakistan and Bangladesh, the JVP began as one of several Sri Lankan Maoist Movements and grew to be the biggest and most impactful.
The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre) made South Asian history by being the first Left ‘revolutionary’ Movement to be popularly elected to the Government in Kathmandu. Its legendary Guerilla Commander, party General Secretary Pushpa Kama Dahal, more famously known by his war name ‘Prachanda’ (‘fierce’ in Nepali), has been elected thrice as his country’s Prime Minister.
Unlike his Sri Lankan counterparts, Comrade Dahal was actually successful in his Movement’s insurgency, defeating the decadent Nepali monarchy and civilian Government (interestingly, also partly led by other, older, Leftist parties) before compelling the Kathmandu regime to hold elections under a new Constitution. It was that mix of guerilla struggle and civilian mobilisation that then saw the Nepali Maoists democratically elected to Government, ending monarchic and related feudal rule.
The JVP, despite two successive armed rebellions firmly rooted in the country’s impoverished, disempowered, rural society that comprises a majority of the population, could not exert adequate political momentum to militarily enforce political change, as did the Nepali Maoists. Nevertheless, the Peramuna’s militancy has been, very obviously, for genuinely altruistic social reasons.
That social commitment and, the fact that its entire human force emerged from the rural community (the classic Maoist model), makes the Peramuna a most distinctive and historically significant sociopolitical phenomenon in Sri Lanka’s political evolution. That both the mainstream liberal-centrist political parties, the UNP as well as the SLFP, essentially political forces of the ruling capitalist-feudal elite, have had to crush two successive JVP rebellions, helped to demarcate the competitive electoral profile of the Peramuna when it finally abandoned the bullet for the ballot.
The most important part of this shifting of political gears has been the careful re-definition of the Peramuna itself. Since the late 1990s, the JVP adopted the classic Marxist-Leninist (and Maoist) strategy of creating a larger, ideologically far less doctrinaire, coalition of ‘mass organisations’ that represented the various sectors of the poorer classes – the ‘Nirdhana Panthi’ as founder Rohana Wijeweera himself named them.
Thus, was born the National People’s Power, which comprises this broad collective of 37 mass organisations embedded in a kind of rainbow coalition of impoverished, disempowered and marginalised (including caste marginalised) social groupings. In another first, the NPP has a political force specifically calling itself as a Movement of the ‘Malaiyagal’ people (i.e. the Hillcountry Thamils).
The NPP leadership may comprise many Marxists, but the overall coalition does not formally espouse any Marxism as such. The JVP, the key binding organisation in the coalition, has clearly not imposed any direct Marxist philosophy or communist policies on the NPP. The NPP, however, does affirm ‘Socialism’ as a kind of long-term framing of its vision of the future for this country, but even that political philosophy does not at all impact on the NPP’s election manifesto.
The essence of the NPP’s program of governance is a little more than a firm defence of the social welfare dimensions of Sri Lankan society and state. Already that is becoming apparent in the low-income friendly measure enacted this past week.
Subalterns
At the level of international relations, the NPP manifesto specifies a set of approaches that was previously embodied in Non-Alignment and what is now called the politics of the Global South. Interestingly, the NPP manifesto itself does not use the term ‘Global South’.
The NPP, therefore, looks and sounds largely non-radical (“harmless”?) from the point of view of the established domestic and global power structures. But the radical past of its core political entity (JVP) as well as the distinctively non-elite nature of the entire movement helps keep the ruling classes and powers suspicious of its political intentions.
Sri Lankan society has no choice but to now adjust to the distinctively new political dispensation of the sudden empowerment of fully subaltern classes – the ‘Nirdhana Panthi’.
Was this what the Ambassador for China (no doubt well-schooled in his nation’s ideology) was hinting at in his speech on Friday at the Shangri-La when he said: “The people of Sri Lanka have now entered a new era and are writing a new chapter of their history”?
It would take a trained (Chinese) Maoist to recognise and be diplomatically comfortable with the suave acknowledgment of politico-ideological affinity. The Ambassador does not need to define what this “new era” Sri Lanka has entered. Maoist or not, parallel movements that champion the subalterns have no difficulty in recognising their ideological affinities.
More importantly, though, the NPP does not specify any such Marxian or hard Left doctrine. The NPP manifesto is firmly general and neutral in its geopolitical outlook, insisting on multilateralism, adherence to international law, the upholding of global mechanisms. In South Asia, the NPP clearly – but indirectly – acknowledges the regional pre-eminence of India while insisting on Colombo’s right to parallelly deal with all other powers.
But given the NPP’s rootedness in social layers that are not directly linked up with the pre-existing global power elites of the West, that the West must now learn not to expect automatic subservience or geopolitical loyalties derived from business or cultural linkages originating in our colonial past. There are no ‘Brown Sahibs’ ruling over Colombo at present.
Hence the arrival of the NPP in Colombo – so poignantly from distant Thambuttegama – brings a slight touch of uncertainly at least in South Asia, West Asia, South East Asia and in the Indian Ocean region as a whole. Geopolitical hegemons – regional or global – do not like such strategic uncertainties.
At least in terms of clearly stated formal diplomacy and foreign policy, the new actors in Colombo are going by the book – continuities in non-alignment, and the usual balancing acts between North and South and East and West. National livelihood requires it. Beggars (currently) cannot be choosers, as they say.
The key question is: how resilient will be the new dispensation of the subalterns? Can the Presidency be soon bolstered by more arrivals of subalterns of various kinds – ideally speaking their own languages? Will the Man from Thambuttegama be allowed to serve his peoples and reassure larger communities in order to bring stability to an economically unstable society?
All interesting questions for the Colombo watchers near and far.
