Did the historic people’s mobilisation in Sri Lanka actually depose the Rajapksas?

On April 10, 2022, Sri Lankan citizens established Gota Go Gama at the Galle Face Green. Standing next to the Presidential Secretariat, this protest site became the frontier of anti-government agitations in the next weeks and months. Disparate individuals and collectives camped at the venue, bound by the common aim of dethroning President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. This goal came to fruition three months after the founding of the seaside protest site. The all-powerful executive president, former military man, and modern day Dutugemunu fled the country for safety. The protesters occupied the Presidential Secretariat, the president’s official residence and the prime minister’s office until Rajapaksa tendered his official resignation. In Rajapaksa’s place now sits Ranil Wickremasinghe, a six-time prime minister and long-time friend of the Rajapaksa family. Wickremasinghe’s supporters describe him as ‘the last of the country’s aristocracy’. Rajapaksa’s cabinet of ministers, for the most part, continue in power. Another family loyalist, Dinesh Gunawardena, is the new prime minister. The country is under a state of emergency and the government has initiated a violent crackdown on the protesters. In Sri Lanka, everything has changed. Also, somehow, nothing has changed.

Two weeks after protesters set up Gota Go Gama, I wrote down these lines:

“Candle lighting, national anthem singing, history teaching and milk rice boiling aside, most mass mobilisations fail. A few lucky ones achieve partial success of varying degrees. Many fizzle out without achieving anything at all, while others pave the way for a future that is more hellish than the present. Look no further than Egypt and Syria after the Arab Spring. For these countries, what followed the spring was not summer but a brutal winter that is yet to wither, a decade on.”

In other words, I have been an Aragalaya sceptic from the start. Such a sceptical — or, some might say, cynical — outlook is my default view on most narratives of revolutionary human progress. This is a perspective shaped, foremost, by an appreciation for my own failings. At the most basic level, knowing how much I fail to do the right thing despite my best intentions, I find it difficult to imagine a group of similar, equally fallible human beings getting it right. I also have a Christian conception of the human condition. While both the liberal and the Marxist have a fundamental faith in societal progress, I do not. I hope for and work towards societal progress but better outcomes are not a given. Further, what prevents the proletariat from plunder, for me, is a lack of power not purity of heart. So, I do not view “people’s power” as an inherent good. To the contrary, I believe that people’s power, left unchecked, is capable of the same kind of excesses as any other form of power.

Moreover, the nobility of the cause does not guarantee the virtuousness of its means. In a mass mobilisation, with every new day, every new participant, and every new opposing manoeuvre, there is every chance that the cause morphs into something unrecognisable from its primordial form. The nearest example, in time and place, is the Tamil struggle. In 1956, at the Galle Face Green, the Tamils organised their first major agitation against the Sri Lankan state. The Federal Party led a satyagraha against Sinhala imposition. What began as a fight for language rights and equality, faced with an unaccommodating state and a hostile Sinhalese polity, soon transformed into a struggle for Tamil national self-determination. Through the 1970s, Tamil militant groups began interpreting self-determination to mean a separate state. Non-violent means gave way to guerrilla combat. In 1989, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) killed the Federal Party leader Appapillai Amirthalingam. His crime, the LTTE claimed, was back-pedalling on the promise to support a separate state. Thirty-three years earlier, Sinhalese hooligans had clobbered the same Amirthalingam at the Galle Face Green satyagraha. There is no arc to Sri Lanka’s history or moral universe: they are parallel highways to hell.

This is why assuming that Aragalaya marks the country’s shift towards a better, more progressive politics is dangerous. Those who take a long-term view of history will see equal potential for positive and negative transformation. I have firsthand experience of well-intentioned collective action producing sour outcomes from my time leading a few-hundred strong, multi-ethnic students’ union. Acknowledging the Aragalaya’s inherent contradictions, interrogating its limitations, and keeping its key actors accountable is an indispensable part of harnessing the Aragalaya for positive social transformation. Instead, influential progressives wish to limit scrutiny on the protests and protesters. As a Tamil, I am reminded of how we were told to keep hush about the LTTE’s atrocities for the sake of attaining Eelam.

A disclaimer is in order, before we begin. What follows is not in any way a defence of Wickremasinghe’s repression of the Aragalaya nor is it a call to give Wickremasinghe time to fix the economy. I condemn, in the strongest terms, Wickremasinghe’s crackdown on democratic rights and stand in solidarity with every protestor, including those with whom my political views do not align. It is nothing short of a total perversion of the law that ordinary citizens are arrested for legitimate acts of civil disobedience while the political and business elite keep getting away with murder and looting. I also write with an awareness of, and immense gratitude towards, the extraordinary sacrifices the protesters made. My disagreements, as will become clear, are with those theorising about the Aragalaya, not with its participants.

In this spirit of hoping the Aragalaya will move us toward positive social transformation, I invite the reader to grapple with three dominant Aragalaya myths.

Myth #1: The Aragalaya is an exceptional event

There is a widespread view that the Aragalaya is utterly exceptional, not just in terms of its outcomes but also in how it was constituted. For instance, speaking at a Teach Out session — a series of independently organised short lectures that took place on the sidelines of the main protest — the historian Shamara Wettimuny framed the uniqueness of the Aragalaya in terms of the breadth of solidarities it assembled.

Before I unpack Wettimuny’s specific claims, it is worth recognising, first, that one can always find a combination of axes for every event such that it is novel along those axes. For instance, the fact that the Aragalaya is the first and only protest to have established the Gota Go Gama village at the Galle Face Green, on April 10, 2022, makes it utterly unique on that count alone. Given that every event is exceptional with respect to some combination of features, no event really is. Second, novel events are not always nice: indeed, the very novelty of many historic moments is entirely rooted in their evil. Third, there is a tendency amongst Sri Lankans to superficially count themselves as an exceptional people and I view the exceptionalist claims about the Aragalaya as a symptom of the same mallady. Allow me to digress to a relevant anecdote. I was recently at a gathering where a senior Sri Lankan career diplomat lectured for half-a-dozen minutes on the theme of Sri Lankan exceptionalism. I could not reconcile the claims of how smart, great, and wonderful we are against the distressing reality of our elderly dropping dead in fuel queues. At the end, I remarked that it is precisely such exceptional Sri Lankan thinking that left us with Dhammikka Paniya as the Covid-19 cure.

More to the point on Wettimuny’s analysis. She says what sets the latest protest moment apart from the past is that all four key drivers of protests — identity, ideology, interest groups and issues — coalesced to drive change. In past protests, by contrast, only a subset of these were present. According to Wettimuny, past instances of civil resistance, particularly in the colonial period, only brought the immediately affected parties to the street. They ‘remained confined to ethnic, religious, class, caste, or gender-based lines’. The Aragalaya, on the other hand, appeared to have ‘overcome those divisions and have a stab at unity’. While I do not doubt her grasp of history, the underlying cause of such exceptional solidarity appears rather trivial to me. Is it possible that since everyone in Sri Lanka is an immediate victim of the economic crisis, everyone is in solidarity with everyone else? What is exceptional, then, is the situation, not the solidarity. In any case, Wettimuny’s portrayal of the Aragalaya, like many other accounts, misses a critical fact. Much of the north-east, with concentrated minority Tamil and Muslim populations, remained largely ambivalent towards it. In fact, there was even resistance to organising solidarity protests in some parts of the north-east. Moreover, a not-so-insignificant number of Tamils found not-so-insignificant joy from gallery-watching the ‘Sinhalese on Sinhalese’ violence that unfolded after Rajapaksa-sponsored thugs attacked Gota Go Gama on May 9. To be fair to Wettimuny, she offered her analysis in the early weeks of April without the advantage of hindsight. She was also teaching a new generation of protesters the history of civil resistance and may have been intentionally idealistic in her framings.

Now, the foregoing does not seek to invalidate the many positive solidarities that did develop around Aragalaya. Remembering Tamil war victims on May 18 in any part of Sri Lanka is hard and comes with its costs. The protesters at Gota Go Gama held a commemoration at the same location where the military holds its annual victory parade. This was, no doubt, an extraordinary moment. Similarly, there was also the pride march emphasising equality of gender and sexual orientation. Gota Go Gama hosted speeches, discussions, performing arts, and handcrafts addressing a diverse set of social and political issues. Beyond the intrinsic value of the discourses these spawned, citizens claiming public spaces such as the Independence Square and the Galle Face Green for civic conversations, at their own initiative, is a powerful democratic exercise.

All this should not detract from the fact that there was the Aragalaya and there were the aragalayas. The Aragalaya was the mass protests at the Galle Face Green on April 9, the subsequent build up to May 9, and what transpired on July 9. The Aragalaya was the tens of thousands of people from around the island, united in their singular aim of driving the Rajapaksas out of power. The aragalayas, smaller in size yet broader in goals, comprised the May 18 commemoration, the pride march, the Teach Outs, the iftars as well as the Frontline Socialist Party’s (FSP) call for anarchy and extra-constitutional governance. In the same way we would not equate the Aragalaya with the FSP aragalaya’s call for anarchy, we should not equate the Aragalaya with the other aragalayas’ goals, no matter their nobility. While all aragalayas are certainly connected to the Aragalaya, they are not the same. The distinguishing feature is popular support. While there was near universal support for the Aragalaya objective of dethroning the Rajapaksas, other exogenous aragalaya agendas do not enjoy the same appeal. The disparity in the number of participants at the pride march and the July 9 siege of the Presidential Secretariat should establish the point. Perhaps, the one demand that had broad agreement outside collapsing the Rajapaksa rule was abolishing the executive presidency. Even on this, I am not entirely sold.

Myth #2: The Aragalaya represents a constitutional moment

This brings me to the second myth that I wish to interrogate. Many believe that we are living in revolutionary times. Such are the times that in their view the Office of the Executive President, the Parliament, and indeed the Constitution of Sri Lanka — all stand null and void. The country’s citizens, the argument goes, through their participation in the Aragalaya, have undergone a tectonic shift in their understanding of social order and state-people relations, rendering our present structures of democracy at best inadequate or, at worst, invalid. Ergo, we are living through a constitutional moment, requiring a new constitution. There are essentially two denominations amongst the faithful: liberals living in the constitutional moment wish to enact a new constitution within the framework of the existing constitution while others, most of them Marxists, living in the same moment appear willing to do as they please. See, for instance, what the legal scholar Ayesha Wijayalath has to say:

“The people’s sovereign power overrides any existing constitutional framework now! Constitutional scholars of Sri Lanka must acknowledge the constituent moment of SL! We need to look beyond short-term fixes and capitalise [on] the moment!”

Wijayalath, and others like her, are a step away from justifying revolutionary terror as divine violence. Suspending the pertinent question of who forms the people, is it fair game if the people’s sovereign power wills that all Rajapaksas be summarily executed? After all, in the words of the French revolutionary Maximilien Robespierre, ‘If the mainspring of popular government in peacetime is virtue, amid revolution it is at the same time [both] virtue and terror: virtue, without which terror is fatal; terror, without which virtue is impotent.’

Now, to the question of whether the present is a constitutional moment. There is no question that we have a disaster for a constitution. That the document has been amended 20 times in 44 years is ample proof that it is not fit for purpose. It has only served to entrench a majoritarian ethno-nationalist ethos into our social fabric and perpetrate relentless violence against the country’s minorities. As we saw in the past three months, it effectively leaves the citizens at the mercy of whichever criminal is capable of grabbing executive power. The net effect is a dysfunctional country.

We certainly need a new social contract. And there are, no doubt, wild attitude changes in chunks of the Sinhalese polity because of the economic crisis and the protests. More and more people are willing to stand up against state intimidation. I have witnessed, amongst my Sinhalese colleagues, a new willingness to question, even ridicule the Sri Lankan military. Following the Wickremasinghe-ordered early morning military attack on Gota Go Gama on July 22, a formerly staunch Rajapaksa supporter equated the armed forces to animals. Even though only a few dozen people participated in Gota Go Gama’s May 18 commemoration, in a reflection of the prevailing accommodating atmosphere, no Sinhalese hardline group dared disturb the event. Journalists attest to a sense of suspicion about the Buddhist clergy in the Sinhala Buddhist heartland. I also think there is a widespread, if latent, awareness that successive leaders instrumentalised Sinhala Buddhist nationalism for their own benefit. Do these attitude shifts represent a new national democratic consciousness undergirding a national constitutional or constituent moment?

Only those whose conception of the nation excludes Tamils, Muslims and Malayaha Tamils would assert the emergence of a new national consciousness. As I observed earlier, the critical mass of minorities has remained ambivalent to the Aragalaya. In any case, in the Sinhala social media content I survey monthly, I do not yet see evidence of the foundations of Sinhala Buddhist nationalism being shaken. In contrast, there is consolidation against a perceived threat. A recent video, on the hardline Buddhist YouTube channel “Unstoppable”, features a young monk labelling the Aragalaya as a plot to eradicate Sinhala Buddhist ideology and way of life. In the past month, the channel’s subscriber base grew by 600 percent. Similarly, while I see plenty of chatter about corruption and cronyism, I do not see advocacy against executive arbitrariness or the repeal of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA).

Photo credits: Roel Raymond via Twitter. Are the Sinhalese willing to reconsider the primacy our constitution accords to Buddhism? Do they now see the Tamils as a people entitled to collective rights? Likewise, have the Tamils stopped viewing the Muslims who reside in their midst as aliens? We need to bear in mind that the May 18 commemorations took place within a few hundred metres of Gota Go Gama’s ‘war heroes’ tent. The iftar sharing Muslim clergymen, captured in colourful photographs at the protests as poster children of an emerging unity, are the same Jamiyyathul Ulama clerics blocking reforms to the Muslim Marriage and Divorce Act (MMDA). Such are the potent contradictions afflicting claims of a new national democratic consciousness.

People got on the streets not because they attained liberal or Marxist nirvana. Piyadasa from Mirihana is no more enlightened about how the executive presidency corrupts governance today than he was on November 15, 2019. When he crossed opposite the budding lotus on the ballot sheet, Piyadasa wanted more, not less, executive arbitrariness. The common denominator between the protesting Piyadasa, Priyadharshan and Pasha is their enlightenment on power cuts and fuel shortages. They are also penniless and understand that the Rajapaksas caused their misery. Hence, the clarion call for the entire Rajapaksa clan to vacate their seats of power.¹ A range of other demands occasionally rose above the kaputu kak kak cacophony. These ranged from accountability for war crimes to justice for Easter Sunday bombing victims to calls for answers concerning journalists disappeared under the Rajapaksa rule. It is quite a stretch, though, to claim that all — or, even a substantial number of — the protesters on the street had signed up to all — or, even a substantial number of — these demands.

The agenda for a new constitution is only an aragalaya and not the Aragalaya. This is not a constitutional moment but a moment of intense contestation. This is also why we will not see large-scale people’s mobilisations against the Wickremasinghe government on account of it failing to introduce constitutional reforms. Rather, Wickremasinghe’s fate rests on his ability to ease the economic misery and the extent to which people are willing to tolerate the ongoing state repression he has unleashed.

Myth #3: The Aragalaya got rid of the Rajapaksas

Yes. Basil Rajapaksa quit as Finance Minister. Mahinda Rajapaksa resigned as Prime Minister. Gotabaya Rajapaksa is no longer the Executive President. Most would agree with my earlier remark that what we now have is Rajapksa rule by proxy. But this is not why I contend that the Aragalaya deposing the Rajapaksas is a myth. I say so because we, too, are Rajapaksas.

A deceased Tamil leftist intellectual from Jaffna, Veerakathy Senthan, held Tamil society in the same moral contempt with which he held the LTTE. He correctly saw that it is the vile contents of Tamil society that enabled Prabhakaran’s terror. The same is true for the Sinhalese polity which voted in Gotabaya Rajapaksa and further strengthened his hand with a 2/3rds majority in Parliament.

What the Rajapaksas enacted at the apex of government is reproduced at every level of society. What Gotabaya Rajapaksa was to the country, Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan (alias Pillaiyan) is to the Eastern Province: a war criminal wielding excessive power while evading justice. What Namal Rajapaksa was to the nation, Angajan Ramanathan is to Jaffna: the minister of everything. Mahinda Rajapaksa appoints his incompetent loyalists to foreign missions. State university vice chancellors recruit incompetent loyalists to lecturer posts. The Rajapaksas stole our money. But how many of the private tutors who smile down from every canine-urinated wall in Nugegoda pay their taxes? We are outraged by Basil Rajapaksa’s ten percent cut. But how many Road Development Authority engineers can claim to have never overestimated their asphalt laying costs? Our progressive academics, so-called, can churn out a dozen academic papers in a year on military violence. Yet, in decades, they have not managed to fix ragging, a sinister form of violence thriving directly under their purview. The Rajapaksas ran the country like it was their private fiefdom. Every school principal treats the teachers, students, and resources at their disposal in the same way. Violating fuel quotas, members of our professional class casually bribe pump operators for full-tank fillings. After receiving state-funded tertiary education, university students elect to Parliament those who promise to further bloat our already obese public service.

We are the Rajapaksas. To paraphrase the comedian George Carlin:

“Well, where do Sri Lankans think these Rajapaksas came from? They did not fall out of the sky. They did not pass through a membrane from another reality. They came from Sri Lankan parents, Sri Lankan families, and Sri Lankan homes. They studied at the same famed Sri Lankan schools. They worshipped at the same Buddhist temples. Sri Lankan businesses funded them. Sri Lankan state universities awarded them fake doctorates. Sri Lankan citizens elected the Rajapaksas. The Sinhalese elected them. Not once but thrice over. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It is what our system produces: garbage in, garbage out. They are us. We are them. If you have selfish, ignorant, ethno-nationalist citizens, you are going to get selfish, ignorant, ethno-nationalist leaders. Aragalayas are not going to do any good. You’re going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant, ethno-nationalist Rajapaksas. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it’s not the Rajapaksas who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here . . . like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There’s a nice campaign slogan for somebody: The Public Sucks. Fuck Hope.”

This, for me, is the central failure of the Aragalaya (and the aragalayas). Its partakers have not introspected enough on their own culpability. Most Sinhalese still feign innocence. They maintain that they voted for the Rajapaksas not out of racist national security persuasions but for prosperity and splendour. Jaffna Tamils pretend it was not Angajan Ramananthan who won the highest number of preferential votes in their town. Countless Tamils in Batticaloa voted for the Sri Lanka Podujana Permuna’s Sathasivam Viyalenthrian because they saw him as the best answer to perceived Muslim aggression. A local candidate’s proximity to executive power appears to be the primary metric on which many Muslims decide their vote at the General Election.

This is us and our decadence runs deep. If we do not centre this truth and instead promote an ‘innocent people against evil politicians’ narrative, we cannot transform our society. The capacity for evil resides in all of us, including the working people. Yet, alongside the political elite, it is the business class and the salaried professional class that ought to engage in a terrible amount of soul searching. The working people of this island have remained a disenfranchised polity, decimated by poverty. We have crushed them in creative ways and continue to pick on them while airbrushing our far graver crimes. The proletariat has been incidental to the gory beach party on borrowed money that is our post-independence history. The poor have only been taxiing us back-and-forth from the party in our drunken state. We are the Rajapaksas. We need to be rid of ourselves. Aragalayata Jayawewa!²