{"id":179059,"date":"2017-06-24T10:58:21","date_gmt":"2017-06-24T05:28:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=179059"},"modified":"2017-06-26T12:19:54","modified_gmt":"2017-06-26T06:49:54","slug":"sinhala-nationalism-support-for-gotabaya-response-to-uditha-devapriya","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/sinhala-nationalism-support-for-gotabaya-response-to-uditha-devapriya\/","title":{"rendered":"Sinhala Nationalism &#038; Support For Gotabaya: Response To Uditha Devapriya"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><b><strong>By <a href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?s=Dayan+Jayatilleka\">Dayan Jayatilleka<\/a> \u2013\u00a0<\/strong><\/b><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_144849\" style=\"width: 160px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Dayan-Jayatilleka.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-144849\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-144849\" src=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Dayan-Jayatilleka-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Dayan-Jayatilleka-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Dayan-Jayatilleka-50x50.jpg 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-144849\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka<\/p><\/div>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s2\">While I thank <a href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/the-legacy-of-dayan-jayatilleka\/\">Uditha for his searching critique<\/a>, and must express my hope and expectation that he may yet develop into a successor of Ajith Samaranayake, I must correct him on three factual issues: <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s2\">1. He writes that \u201cLike Dayan\u2019s father, Malinda rejected the right-wing, elitist ethos of those institutions, and became a nationalist.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s2\">That is incorrect. Mervyn was an internationalist and a Third Worldist who was sympathetic to nationalism but never a nationalist. In that sense he was much closer to Godfrey Gunatilleke, Regi Siriwardena, Gamini Corea, Charles Abeysekara, Neville Jayaweera, Izzeth Hussein and AJ Gunawardena than to Malinda\u2019s father Gamini Seneviratne who was of course a contemporary and friend of his, and whose writings he enthusiastically published in the Lanka Guardian. Appropriately enough, it is Godfrey Gunatilleke, a \u201cgolden lad\u201d of that most intellectual of generations, who has analyzed Mervyn\u2019s ideology and consciousness most definitively, and rightly defines him as committed to humanism and universalism; to a \u201cuniversalist humanism\u201d. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s2\">2. Uditha also writes: \u201d But there\u2019s never just one kind of nationalism: there are nationalisms, so soon enough we saw Dayan and Malinda fighting via newspaper columns despite the fact that both were opposed to the government over its handling of the war\u2026the \u201cintellectuals\u201d were opposed to both since they were \u201cnationalists\u201d\u2026\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s2\">Here too, the facts are the same as in or analogous to, the case of Mervyn de Silva and Gamini Seneviratne. Malinda was a militant Sinhala Buddhist nationalist, a member and electoral candidate of Champika\u2019s JHU and a member of NMAT. Unlike Malinda, I have never been a nationalist nor am I one today, despite my alignment with, support for and sympathy with nationalists and nationalism. I am not ontologically a nationalist. My support for nationalism is neither unconditional nor unqualified. I am however, a patriot who is also an internationalist and a universalist. To put it provocatively, I admire Puran Appu and Jose Marti, but not Anagaraika Dharmapala\u2013 because no sectarian ethnoreligious particularism ever resonates with me. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s2\">3. The third error that Uditha makes is to say that \u201cHe [DJ] is also a moderate federalist\u201d. It is because I come from the Marxist tradition that I have never been a federalist, moderate or otherwise. While I did support self-determination in my early twenties as a bookish Leninist, for 40 years since I have consistently been for equal rights as well as for devolution\/regional autonomy. As the Chinese Constitution makes clear, it is perfectly possible and is often the case that those (especially those from a Leftist political culture) who are for regional autonomy are also staunch supporters of a unitary state\u2026with regional autonomy\/devolution.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s2\">Obviously I must clarify and set to rest my stand on Gotabaya. He is to be sure a Sinhala Buddhist nationalist, which I am not, but that is not all Gotabhaya is, just as it is not all that Mahinda Rajapaksa or Dinesh Gunawardena is. Furthermore there are times in history when Sinhala Buddhist nationalism is more reactionary than progressive, more negative than positive, but this is not one of those times. This is much more like 1956, 1970 and 2005. Finally, there are times in history when there is an option other than a Sinhala Buddhist nationalist leadership and ideology under which to fight a pro-imperialist puppet regime like the UNP but that time came and went in 1947-1953 and again in 1984-1988 (Vijaya Kumaratunga). They were historical exceptions. One hopes such a time comes again and with greater sustainability and success.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s2\">Finally, to move from Uditha\u2019s few factual inaccuracies to a single one of several partial misinterpretations. Vladimir Putin is an Orthodox Christian Russian nationalist, which is also what drives him and makes him take the stands he does. Like many throughout the world\u2014states, social groups and individuals&#8211; from China to Cuba, from Syria to Vietnam, I applaud and admire him neither <b>because<\/b> of his Orthodox Christian Russian nationalism nor <b>despite<\/b> it. We support him because he revived his country having rescued it from capitulation and disintegration under a Yahapalana type Yelstin regime, won a war and crushed a ghastly separatist terrorist militia in Chechnya (years before we won our war), and takes an active stand for national sovereignty and a multipolar world. In short people like me throughout the world support him <b>not<\/b> because of his <b>subjective ideology<\/b> but because of the <b>objective role<\/b> that Putin plays in a given historical context. So also it is with my support for Gotabaya. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":144849,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,46,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-179059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colombotelegraph","category-constitutional-reforms","category-editorial"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Sinhala Nationalism &amp; Support For Gotabaya: Response To Uditha Devapriya - Colombo Telegraph<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/sinhala-nationalism-support-for-gotabaya-response-to-uditha-devapriya\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Sinhala Nationalism &amp; 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