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Aragalaya (struggle) to create a classless Sri Lanka

27 Jun 2022

BY Rashmi Madusanka Fernando   Today, 21 million Sri Lankans are facing daily power cuts that are two hours long or more, steep price hikes of goods and services, and a scarcity of fuel, food, essential items, and medical facilities. The worst affected by the prevailing situation are the poor and daily wage earners of the country who make up most of the population as against the privileged few who are the elite.  It is at a historical moment like today that the youth of the country – the future of the nation – have got themselves organised for an incessant struggle, known as the aragalaya (struggle), against its corrupt politicians, political allies, and system of government, and it continues for the third successive month.   While the aragalaya continues to happen in various parts of the country, its epicentre is commonly agreed to be in front of the Presidential Secretariat at the Galle Face Green, Colombo, not far away from the so called supreme assembly of Sri Lanka – the Parliament at Diyawanna, Colombo. While the Parliament is expected to acknowledge the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which in its preamble says, “whereas it is essential if a man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law” (United Nations, 2015), the people of the aragalaya believe that all three main pillars of any democratic system of government, namely the Executive, the Legislature, and the Judiciary, are either dysfunctional, malfunctional, corrupt, or non-sovereign, in the context of the island nation today.   Therefore, Sri Lanka is faced with the worst-ever economic and political crisis since its Independence from colonial rule in 1948, of course for reasons which are either obvious and/or made obvious to the citizens by the authorities of various governments that existed for the past seven decades. If the people’s struggle has become so intensified and incessant today, it is mainly because of the family politics of the Rajapaksa (a reference to the family of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa) regime which is believed to have ruined the country owing to their pride, non-patriotic decisions, corruption, and the use of thuggery, especially since 2019.  The Catholic Bishops Conference of Sri Lanka (CBCSL) explains the current economic and political situation thus created in the country in their recent statement as follows: “People are stranded on the roads without basic needs such as food, fuel, and domestic and industrial gas. Patients are left in the lurch without the medicine needed to sustain their life. Parents are yearning to find milk food for infants and children.  “The tragedy that has struck our nation is in no uncertain terms the worst of our times. The political and economic crisis has made people suffer unjustly. Those responsible for this horrendous economic crisis are yet to be exposed. The country has been brought to a standstill and a hand to mouth existence.”   What has come to the fore, therefore, is a tug of war between two camps – the camp at Diyawanna consisting of the 225 Parliamentarians and their allies, and the camp at Galle Face Green consisting of the classless, colourless, creedless struggle of the common people who are battered both directly and indirectly by the whims and fancies of those in the first camp.  In other words, what we have here in Sri Lanka at the moment is indeed yet another tale of two cities of our time – the city of the Parliament, and that of the aragalaya also known as the “Gota Go Gama” (Gama meaning “village”), not vastly different from British novelist Charles Dickens’s (1859) A Tale of Two Cities, which was set against the conditions that led to the Reign of Terror and the French Revolution.   It is here that I am tempted to believe that the values exemplified and the battles fought for the future at each of these two cities, while they are very different from each other, are, nevertheless, similar to the “two standards”: the “standard of Christ” and the “standard of the world” spoken by Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus (commonly known as the Jesuits), whose conversion experience following the battle in Pamplona, Spain, celebrates 500 years this year (1522-2022), and that of the church’s age old treasure of the spiritual exercises.  Taken in this light, it could be said that the aragalaya launched in front of the Presidential Secretariat is indeed a common struggle of the ordinary masses to create a classless society in Sri Lanka. It is because the aragalaya aims at creating a just and equitable society marked by modesty, simplicity, and humility, by annihilating the privileges enjoyed by the class of powerful Sri Lankans by way of their unquenchable indulgence in benign secularisms, search for pleasure, and remorseless succumbing to the vices of the world.  Therefore, if anyone wants to see a classless country in the future, the making is already here and now at the aragalaya and, therefore, it is my belief that despite all the hurdles that come its way, the struggle should continue if it is to create a classless, better tomorrow. In so doing, let us not be demoralised when we lose a battle or two at one barricade or another because of tear gassing or water attacks or charges or unwarranted arrests made by the duty-bound, Government-deployed, uniform bearers of the Sri Lanka Police and the Triple Forces or, as ordinary people, by the lengths of the lines we stand in or by the hunger we feel for ourselves and our children. Instead, let us get together and push the limits of our tolerance, both individually and collectively, to fight, not some isolated battles, but a common war, the aragalaya, until we create that desired classless tomorrow for Sri Lanka.   (The writer is a Jesuit priest who is currently reading for his Doctorate in Education at the Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska, USA) …………………………………………………….. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication.    


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