Vilification of protests and protesters

Uditha Devapriya-2017-03-14

Victor Ivan once related a story about a man.

He had been involved with the 1971 insurrection and had
naturally been a wanted man. He was arrested, interrogated, and
jailed, having masterminded several attacks on police stations
and other places of authority. The story is not, however, about
Victor. It is about another person, who had launched an assault on
the Kadugannawa police station. His name (real or otherwise, we
can't be sure) was Senerath.
What Senerath had done, Victor had been intrigued by. For he had
acted out the part of a Police Inspector who had been in charge of
the station he had attacked. He had acted the part so well,
moreover, that he had given orders and run the show, sitting by
the table reserved for that Inspector, until the real Police came.
Victor had naturally wanted to meet the man and ask him why, so
he was naturally thrilled when he was given a lunch packet by
visitors from his house. Owing to his background in sociology
perhaps, he knew how to wring the truth from reluctant people.
Having given him the lunch packet, he hence asked Senerath as
to why he had done what he had done. The answer, Victor wrote
later, had brought tears to his eyes.
Senerath came from the village. From an early age, he had
wanted to go to school and join the Police Force. However, he
came from the Dhobi community. Strange as it may seem, caste
structures back then were sharply enforced in Sinhala society. For
that reason, Senerath had to suffer. He was not allowed to go to a
proper school. He had no one to support his application to Join the
Police. Worse, he was shirked by other more privileged boys in his
village. Having grown up shouldering the humiliation and seeing
his dreams trampled on, he had done what most other boys, his
age and from his background, would do. He had joined the JVP.
When the insurrection came and he was asked to lead the assault
on the Police Station, Senerath had been thrilled. He led the
assault, took over the station, and then, just like that, realized his
life's ambition by wearing the Inspector's uniform.
"That was enough for me," he told Victor, "I didn't mind even
getting killed in it." A few days later, he was arrested. Victor
doesn't tell us what happened to Senerath after he was released.
In any case, it does not matter.
Anti-SAITM marches
There are reasons for protests and protesters. They indicate that
society is on the brink of collapse, owing to one issue or the other,
and that unless the issues are sorted out, they will continue to
draw up a dichotomy between the State and its citizens.Because
of that, I am not opposed to protesters. They help us keep track of
what ails us. They help us realize that we should care and help us
understand why. More importantly, they help us comprehend the
general direction our polity is taking.
Whether or not we agree with their broader aims, there's no
denying that if it wasn't for them, we'd probably have been a lot
worse than we already are.
The 9th March protest against SAITM was the second such
organized by the student movement. Like the previous campaign
(unveiled on 17 February), there were four marches (from
Dehiwela, Wattala, Sri Jayewardenepura Kotte and Kelaniya). Like
the previous campaign, these ended up converging at the Fort
Railway Station. The Inter University Students' Federation's (IUSF)
involvement with it was obvious. Given that just three days before
17 February march, more than 10 teachers' trade unions had
pledged their allegiance to the IUSF, both it and its sequel last
Thursday saw packed crowds and eloquent speeches. From what I
know of the IUSF and the Medical Students' Union, I would
conjecture that they will follow this up with even bigger rallies.
I have tried to explore the social character of the movement
behind the protests in earlier columns. To reiterate: it's housed on
the one hand by the nationalist resurgence (consisting of the Joint
Opposition and, among other outfits, the Yuthukam Sanvada
Kawaya) and on the other by the Radical Left. Not even in the late
eighties did these two camps get together. I am, however,
interested not in this, but rather in how the movement as a whole
has been perceived, assessed, and vilified by the general public.
Attitudes to protesters
There are two broad attitudes to the protest campaigns. They
came to me the other day as I perused two articles, by two
writers: one posted in a blog, the other in an online magazine.
Both have valid points, but for me personally, they are significant
because they reveal the prejudices which colour the divide over
the SAITM crisis.
The first, written by a poet and in many ways thinker Vihanga
Perera, is titled "Proud to be from a Non-Government University':
Whose pride? Why "pride" and was posted on November 2015.
The title says it all: subtly and carefully, Vihanga sketches out the
main fallacy at the heart of the movement for SAITM: that there is
no qualitative difference between private and State education.
Wrong, Vihanga asserts, since the one is manifestly run on profit,
the other on merit.
I think Vihanga made his point quite well: "... how can the 3,600th
in a list that only permits 500, bypassing the 501st on the back of
a healthier purchasing power be ethically rationalized?" The
counterargument to this, of course, is that the list was compiled
for and by the State university system: in other words, the
3,600th gets into other institutions because the list has been
sketched out elsewhere. The counterargument to the
counterargument, however, is that Vihanga is not writing about
those other lists: he is writing a reply to those who not only
support private education, but also idealize a 'healthy' and direct
competition if not congruence between the two education sectors.
Merit vs opportunity
The second article is as direct, and goes a longer way than
Vihanga's in pointing out the prejudices that colour our dislike of
the anti-SAITM protests. Titled "Dear State University Students"
and written by Sachitha Kalingamudali (for Pulse.lk), it contends
that the only option for those whose entry to private universities
is discounted by the student movement is to go abroad, an
infeasible problem. In other words, equity is assessed not only
with merit, but also with opportunity. Whether or not you agree
with the argument, you have to concede ground to the premise.
It is that same premise, however, which has empowered those
against the protests and the protesters. It has empowered them
to brand those leading the rallies as the real elitists, who have
made merit the only definer in our country's education discourse.
The reply to that line of reasoning, which the other side has
spouted only too well, is that what is being protested isn't the
opportunity granted to the 3,600th student over the 501st, but
rather the perks and privileges which form the bedrock of the
private education sector, which are tweaked, abused, and
mishandled for the sake of the student (and family) with bucks. A
pertinent point, I believe.
"We invested heavily in our studies, it's time you got off the
streets and followed us!" is the most common retort against those
who sit and stand in the sun, on the road, howling against SAITM.
While I neither subscribe to nor oppose the idea of private
education (which is qualitatively different to privatization), I am
against the conventional wisdom which states that protesters
have better things to do than causing traffic snarls and shouting
slogans. Not because I am or have been where they are, but
because in a context where the private sphere disproportionately
defines the public perception of the anti-SAITM campaign, they
are needed to unearth, unveil, and if possible undress the
chicanery that's going on in the name of freedom of opportunity.
The attitude to these campaigners, the way I see it, is pretty
much the same as the attitude towards other Constitutional
provisions which the private sphere (sadly) does not take note of.
Constitutionally speaking, there is a right to protest.
Constitutionally speaking, there is a right to assembly. These
rights, however, have been discounted by a society that is fast
becoming middle-class, consumerist, and hybridly elite. Of these,
the latter interests me immensely, not only because it indicates
the dynamics our country has conceded ground to, but also
because it forms up a veritable reserve which the same private
sphere that disdains the Radical Left thrives on.
Hybrid elite
In my column last week, I pointed out that the only reason for the
nationalist movement joining the student movement was the
controversy over the Judiciary and the Sri Lanka Medical Council
(SLMC), or how the latter (the "National Body") is perceived to
have been questioned and de-legitimized by the former. I am not
a subscriber to conspiracy theories, so I don't agree with what the
protesters are saying about how the Judiciary has privileged
money over merit, but I will say this: I notice a dichotomy within a
social class that, from my own experience, is both for and against
the IUSF, the Government Medical Officers' Association (GMOA),
and the Medical Students' Union. I call this the hybrid elite, hybrid
not because they are part of a nouveau riche, but because they
agree or disagree with the student movement on account of, or
despite, their social conditioning.
I will write more on the hybrid elite and the many avatars of itself
it has spawned in both mainstream parties later, but for the
purposes of my article I will say this much: they come from a
largely urban and bilingual background. I don't know whether
those who write for and against private education (in blogs,
newspapers, or elsewhere) fall under this category, but in
sociological terms they interest me because they are to be found
in both sides of the political divide, sometimes within the same
(immediate) family.
Those from this group who support the fight against private
education belong to the professional nationalist class (lawyers,
engineers, doctors and accountants), who came together a few
weeks ago at a function organized in Boralesgamuwa (Viyath
Maga). Those who oppose it come from more rightwing
backgrounds. The former see it as having to do with a nationalist
cause, while the latter are more often than not yuppies on the
street, who enjoy an inherited existence, travel in Prados,...... can
always return to a life of leisure and luxury, and allege that the
protesters want to remove opportunity as a benchmark in our
education sector.
In this hodgepodge, the Radical Left, which absorbs students from
all backgrounds, is the only political group that sees the issue for
what it is: a turning point in our country's education discourse. It
is that Radical Left, after all, which bred Senerath and nurtured
Victor Ivan.
On traffic blocks
When I think of people like Senerath, I am reminded of Ranbanda
Seneviratne's immortal lines:

Paluwa dewanath karala

Naadan ula leno
Katathnapuru da thanikama athiwenawa...
I was not surprised when I got to know that Ranbanda who moved
with the oppressed all his life, was writing about the 1971
insurrectionists. Like the ulalena, they too resorted to a lonely
existence after their hopes, their dreams, and their aspirations
were broken. The lyricist, in other words, spoke for all the failed
insurrectionists and revolutionists, who had their representatives
chopped down, murdered in broad daylight, and mutilated beyond
recognition, by a State that was increasingly being defined by the
private sphere. To date, that sorry trend in that State has not
stopped.
So 40 years on, the attitude of belittling the protesters and their
larger objectives, of condemning the marches and rallies they
organize as 'hell' (in comparison to the 'heaven' which we who are
of a more privileged though hybrid class are heir to) has
continued. It will take more than one Senerath to show us how
wrong we are. Until then, my fear is that the writing will be on the
wall, and we will continue in our campaign of unjust, irrational,
and disproportionate anger towards them.
I will end my piece with a question: if all it took for these students
to get out their message was one traffic block, what if one traffic
block was all it took to convince us of their vision (flawed as it is)
for a better, more equitable tomorrow?
UDAKDEV1@GMAIL.COM
Posted by Thavam