Tribal Nationalism At Nugegoda: A Reaction From A Critic

By Sarath De Alwis -February 23, 2015

Sarath De Alwis

Ambrose Bierce’s Devils Dictionary is out of date. Dr. Dayan Jyayatilleka’s Patriots’ dictionary is more  contemporary and far craftier.

The thing about being 72 years old and having studied in the Indian subcontinent and Europe and later lived and worked in the Fareast, Europe and Africa and experiencing the agony of seeing three off spring through College in North America I am bemused at the attempts of Dr. Jayatilleka’s to evangelize evil .

His masterly reconstruction of the persona of Mahinda Rajapaksa parallels Milton’s efforts in Paradise lost, to portray Satan who thinks, despite the loss to God in the battlefield “all is not lost” because his “unconquerable will” will never submit or yield!

Hurrah! Cone one come all to Nugegoda.

La Marseilles invokes ‘Blood’ as a marker of nationhood.

I am not pontificating. I am only crying out my anguish at realizing that I cannot as a 72 year old Sinhalese who has a first name Mahendra in addition to the middle name Sarath and a last and definitive Portuguese moniker De Alwis cannot claim to be as good a Sinhalese as Percy Mahendra Rajapaksa. At this discovery I don’t smile wryly. I weep out loud to be heard by the four guardian deities who protect our Motherland that is reclaiming land in the Port of Colombo with loans from China at some indefinite percentage above LIBOR.

I make bold to criticize the vain Wimal Weerawana and Ghoulish Gunadasa Amaresekera without once mentioning Prabhakaran or the Tigers. As far as I am concerned one is dead and others are extinct.

I criticize Mahinda Rajapaksa, Sinhala nationalism and the mass hysteria at Nugegoda without once mentioning the Resolution of Wigneswaran and the Northern Provincial Council. I understand its contents and its pathos.Read More