A ‘peep’ that gives us perspective
“Who wants political public servants in this type of position? They are the people who lead us up the garden path!”- Former Prime Minister Sirima Bandaranaike (circa 1976), recalled by Eric J. de Silva in A Peep Into The Past (2021).
This comment was made by a Sri Lankan politician during an office conversation in the mid-1970s. What sort of comment can we expect today, from a politician in similar position? Thereby hangs the sad tale of our nation, which has suffered a precipitous fall from high grace to abysmal ignominy during the period from the 1960s to the 2020s.
Eric J. de Silva, the eminent civil servant from the Ceylon Civil Service (CCS) era, has produced reminiscences from his official career that spanned from 1959 to 2004. But the book offers more than just a collection of nice memories of one person among many. It gives us a view of a bygone era – the heights that we once were – enabling us to size-up the real enormity of our fall as a nation.
That fall is characterised by a change in the mix of people who have led this country. The old days saw politicians like Mrs. Bandaranaike working closely with ‘apolitical’ civil servants like de Silva who brought intelligence, education, discipline, efficiency and integrity to the job at hand. This book serves as a reliable repository of that past.
De Silva’s book carries 15 essays that record some of the memorable events of those 45 years, written in an extremely readable style. They are showcased by several photographs, and brought together by a very pleasant and inviting design, careful copyediting and good-quality printing. It nicely complements his earlier book, Politics of Education Reform and Other Essays (2013, Sarasavi Publishers), in which he published in detail his extensive experience in the field of policy-making in education. What could now complete the record of his enormous contribution to our public life would be a compilation of his newspaper articles over the years on topics as varying as university education and generic prescribing of medicines.
His trademark writing style – familiar to newspaper readers around five or ten years ago – is evident on every page: a combination of veracity, gentleness, humility and readability. There isn’t a word too many, nor a single name called wantonly, nor any name mentioned undeservedly. Indeed, many a politician whom we would gladly vilify today is written about with sensitivity, understanding and generosity. He doesn’t take swipes at people. Instead, he provides a close-up view of the roles that they played, the challenges they faced, and the palpable level of sincerity of purpose and genuineness of intent that they carried – even while they were making what we would now call the enormous blunders that brought our nation to its knees, gradually and systematically. Therein lies the difference between then and now: those were honest mistakes.
De Silva manages to strip them of their dark coatings and show them in neutral light in their own surroundings. By doing that, he unwittingly draws a picture of the quality of the people and politicians that we miss so sorely today. Or perhaps not so unwittingly – if that is the way in which his consummate pen was meant to do its work – because what speaks loudest is what is left unsaid. His is a pen with that discipline and finesse.
Every essay carries lessons for us, some more acute or painful than others. The recollections of how he, as a bureaucrat himself, overcame bureaucratic red tape to bring Mahaweli waters to Kantalai one year ahead of schedule, saved Martin Wickremesinghe’s novel Bavatharanaya from being banned, prevented the escalation of racial disharmony in Trincomalee into a national calamity, or negotiated with film importers to rejuvenate the National Film Corporation are some that stand out.
He carefully leaves praise of politicians to the dead ones – among them both SLFPers such as Mrs. Bandaranaike and UNPers such as M.D. Banda – perhaps because he wishes to avoid attracting controversy, misinterpretation or misunderstanding (or perhaps because the only good politician is a dead politician).
Today, neither of these types of people, politician or civil servant, are visible – the few who are still around are sidelined, ignored and walked over. In their place, we have an abundance of politicians, bureaucrats, academics, businessmen, clergy, artists, sports persons and media persons who combine cleverness with expediency, falsity with power, and collective disaster with personal emancipation. Efficiency and integrity are out – impunity and cynicism are in.
But if this book may not be very uplifting to the reader with a love for the country – which is no fault of the author’s – it has its own, worthwhile purpose; not to indulge in a cheap ego trip of its author but rather to record the past and show it to those in the present and the future.
Recalling this past may be depressing to us, immersed as we are in our troubled present. But it is also a guiding standard for those in the Sri Lanka Administrative Service today – and even the rest of us. It shows the calibre of the people who were their predecessors or lived before us. It gives us a hard point on an amorphous, featureless map that we can relate to. Eric J. de Silva’s world and our world are different alright, but they are nevertheless separated only by time – just a few decades at that – and not by place or people. If they could create and inhabit such a world, so can we. The world is, after all, as we make it – the fault is not in the stars but in us.
We may not be able to rewind time, but we can find a path forward. If we look around for an example and end up frustrated, this book quietly whispers to us that such examples are indeed real and possible. After all, as Seneca said: “Nothing is certain, except the past”.
So read this book, and re-read a chapter or two every week. It gives us that inspiration, that little spark, and those real-life, lived examples. It will start the flame of optimism and the engine of commitment. It will also reveal the ingredients of success: intelligence, commitment, efficiency and integrity. The rest is then up to us.