By
Tisaranee Gunasekara
“The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.”
Auden (September 1, 1939)
“We must love one another or die,” wrote Auden in September 1, 1939 as the world slid into calamity.
Gotagogama and the nationwide anti-Rajapaksa struggle it pioneered and symbolized seemed to be animated by this spirit of compassionate solidarity Auden was pleading for on the advent of the Second World War.
Gotagogama resistors prided themselves on being not just anti-Rajapaksa but the antithesis of the Rajapaksas. They made a conscious attempt to turn that nodal point of struggle into a microcosm of a different Sri Lanka, a place where racial and religious animosities were absent, the youth were heard and women could be both active and safe, a space of sanity, decency, compassion, and reason. A symbol of the best in us both as individuals and a nation, a microcosm of what Sri Lanka could be when her people embrace their best impulses rather than the worst.
As the days passed and the struggle spread, that spirit seemed to be spilling over and permeating other loci of resistance. Even when a young father of two was brutally gunned down in Rambukkana by the police, the protestors resisted the siren song of violent retaliation. Despite innumerable provocations by the Rajapaksas, sanity and peace prevailed.
Then Mahinda Rajapaksa, the political paterfamilias of this most egregious of political families, went to the ancient city of Anuradhapura. He visited a couple of sacred places, experienced the public’s ire in loud calls for his resignation, and had a powwow with his abiding supporters, solidifying plans which would have been laid days before were solidified.
Next morning, busloads of Mahinda devotees and hired thugs (reportedly at Rs. 2,000 a day, a reflection of the economic crisis and the resultant mass desperation) were brought to Temple Trees. Mahinda Rajapaksa gave them a speech. They poured out of the Temple Trees armed with poles and laid waste to Mainagogama, the protest encampment outside the premises. Then, with no hindrance from the police, who would have been told to stay out of it by their political masters, they made their way to Gotagogama and laid waste to it. Even the makeshift library did not escape the devastating onslaught.
Meantime, the government declared a curfew effective immediately.
From that point, events departed drastically from the Rajapaksa script. The protesters resisted and overcame the attackers. Across the country, people, ignoring the curfew, poured on to streets in solidarity.
Continue reading ‘The Rajapaksas created a moral wasteland and called it patriotism, and damned anyone not succumbing to it as traitors to the nation. The anti-Rajapaksa struggle is in the process of creating a similar moral wasteland, calling it Aragalaya where anything goes, so long as it is done to the Rajapaksas and their supporters.’ »