The Emperor Dharmashoka was among the first potentates to exhort his subjects on the necessity of guarded speech for the purpose of a stable and secure society. In this, the emperor was passing on the wisdom of the Buddha whose Dhamma he learnt in the course of his monarchy.
In our own country, one that we call the Dharma Dveepa, modern nationhood has had to grapple with many transgressors of both Right Speech and the right to express one’s self.
In recent weeks we have heard public exhortations to emulate that symbol of utter evil, Adolf Hitler, the mid-Twentieth century dictator of Germany who unleashed an unprecedented reign of destruction and mass murder across the world. More recently, there was expressed a seeming nostalgia for another persona, Velupillai Prabhakaran, who was, for many, a symbol of aggressive, ruthless, nationalism. But for even a greater number of people, Prabhakaran was the great divider of communities and a potential destroyer of an emerging, fragile, nationhood and civilisation.
All this is in the public discourse of a country that has successfully weathered both, the Second World War – sparked by Hitler – as well as the Eelam War, quintessentially triggered by Prabhakaran and his fellow secessionists. The struggle for secession became so violent and destructive that the nation’s rulers had no option but to prohibit even the political articulation of secessionism – a limiting of the citizen’s right to freedom of expression and thought. Such was the need of the times for national security.
Today, after thirty years of internal war and successful victory over the secessionist endeavour, the nation may now breathe easier and focus more on building new foundations for nationhood. In our newfound freedom from terror and despotism, such a new national foundation can be inclusive of all communities and interest groups as well as of many ideas and a plurality of conceptions of that new nationhood.
But our society has many new generations of citizenry hungry for progress and easily disillusioned by failure or delay. In peace time there is the space to languish and also the space for ferment and the passionate expression of aspirations and hopes.
If religious elders can overstep in offering political choices – Nazism is hardly a choice – youthful new politicians can overstep in expressing dissatisfaction with the pace of national reconciliation and reunification: with unguarded and misguided recollection of past fragments of experience of life in the midst of a secessionist war.
Certainly, former State Minister Vijayakala Maheswaran must rue her unguarded pronouncements made in the heat of a public political moment. She has already moved quickly to express her regret by resigning her ministerial office. If she has violated the law and the court finds it a serious violation, then Ms Maheswaran, a youthful veteran of politics amidst war, may have to undergo further amends.
The nation must acknowledge the seriousness of Ms Maheswaran’s emotions and its causes – the situation of extreme sexual violence in what was her one-time war ravaged home town. Much of this nation, both North and South, has experienced similar trauma – as a result of multiple violent insurgencies in both parts of our island home.
Foreign news reports and local journalists
That famed champion of modern democracy, the New York Times newspaper of New York, USA, recently published a report on Sri Lanka that, whatever its accuracy, seems to have greatly angered some political circles in this country. Unfortunately, rather than criticising the news report itself and, perhaps questioning the motives of the newspaper publishers, these politicians pointed fingers and questioned the motives of the professional journalists who did the reporting for the NYT as that venerable newspaper is fondly known.
The newspaper is a news product and the quality of the product may be raised with the entity that produces it. The employee journalists were fulfilling their professional duty by providing the news report to the publisher of the NYT who decides on publication and form of publication.
Legally and morally it is the publisher who has to be contended with if anyone feels unfairly treated by the publication - unless there is some very serious and outright harm done to people as a result of that news report. Then, the legal authorities would step in and all those complicit – publishers and media professionals – would be investigated and prosecuted. It is up to those politicians now complaining to draw the attention of the legal authorities to this matter.
It is, of course, much worse when those politicians pointing fingers and targeting the employee journalists are, themselves, senior leaders of a political group whose past tenure in government saw large scale harassment of journalists and media houses and even violence against, and assassinations of, media workers.