It is our Independence Day. What?

At the time when Sri Lanka’s 75 years of independence is being celebrated, the Sri Lankan economy is struggling to recover from a devastating crisis. Directly hit by consequences of the crisis and forced to bear the burden of IMF-inspired policies of economic recovery, most citizens find themselves helpless, hopeless and angry. Feeling abandoned and orphaned, many, from the rural poor to Colombobased professionals and business persons, have begun to leave the country in search of economic and existential security in foreign lands. They accuse political leaders of being the primary authors of this unprecedented economic and social catastrophe in the making.

People are particularly angry at the arrogance and insensitivity repeatedly demonstrated by the government leaders to their suffering and travails. For a huge number of Sri Lankan families, sheer survival is at stake. People ask why political and bureaucratic leaders are not held accountable for this misfortune of historic proportions.

Ambivalence and scepticism

In the past too, Independence Day has provided the space for citizens to ask some searching questions about the meaning of independence. Responses to questions such as ‘are we really independent?’ have always been either ambivalent or negative. As senior citizens like me might recall, the annual Independence Day has always been a moment of celebration only for the section of the political class in power, their bureaucratic subordinates and newspaper feature writers.

Even during the 1950s and 1960s, rural children learned about independence when it was celebrated in the school with very little pomp and without burning patriotic passions being aroused. We, the children of Sinhalese-Buddhist parents, were told in the school how our ‘national leaders’ won independence from the colonial rulers without shedding a single drop of blood.

We were also told that these modern-day national leaders were the true heirs to previous generations of heroes who had fought valiant battles against the South Indian, Portuguese, Dutch and British invaders and even sacrificed their lives.

Newspaper supplements and special radio programmes on February 4 were the key medium of propagating that specific official historiography of our independence. Other than that, our villagers were generally unexcited and ambivalent about the idea of independence.

After they became managers of the new nation’s destiny, what have those national leaders and their descendants done to the country and its people? Quite revealingly, the answer to that question has been, and even continues to be, one shrouded in deep scepticism and cynicism. Until about the 1970s, many people of the older generation used to say that all their current misfortunes began to build up only after the ‘suddas’ (‘white men’) have left.

Despite the seemingly colonised worldview easily observable in this claim, it had a very subtle point of critique, too: the new class of local rulers have messed up the independence the British gave us. Hearing occasionally our elders, even school teachers, utter this sentiment, so widespread during the early years of our independence, we grew up in a culture of scepticism about what political independence had really meant to the citizens outside the ruling elites.

We may now repeat the same question, re-wording it in a politically more correct contemporary language: Isn’t the messing up of independence the key achievement of Sri Lanka’s ruling class? Why waste so much public money to celebrate something so hollow, when thousands of poor families and millions of children, are facing the threat of starvation? Are the continuing pauperisation and social misery what the seventy-five years of post-independence elite rule have given to most of our citizens?

Resentment and despair

In fact, there is a deep sense of citizen resentment being expressed these days over the independence-day celebration. It is fused with an equally deep sense of despair and anguish because of an increasing loss of hope shared by citizens across many social strata. Why is it that our political class so openly displays its inane insensitivity to the impending catastrophe about which many of the country’s citizens are deeply agonised? Is it the ruling elite’s class arrogance and lack of empathy for other people’s suffering that prevent them from seeing even the simple political facts so visible around them?

The middle-class anger and despair being aired these days at regular demonstrations against the government’s latest tax policy remind us what Sri Lanka’s citizens told the political class last year during the aragalaya: reform yourselves or resign.

Are there any signs of the ruling class’ willingness to reform itself, at least in the face of such a catastrophe in the country? What the moment of the 75th anniversary of the country’s independence reminds the citizens of Sri Lanka is a simple truth: unreformability is the defining attribute of their ruling class.

No systemic reforms

Unreformability apart, the refusal to reform the overall ‘system’ has also been a feature that has made Sri Lanka’s political class a species of its own. During the past 75 years, no sustainable alternative has been established to replace the colonial economic structure that Sri Lanka inherited at the time of independence. They severely damaged both the liberal and social foundations of Sri Lankan democracy and led the country along the path of a political and social calamity, a way out from which has not yet been found. Sri Lankan citizens are still trying to repair this emaciated version of democracy, with no tangible outcome as yet.

Meanwhile, two anti-state armed rebellions, spread over a period of four decades, have highlighted the urgency of effecting some fundamental reforms to Sri Lanka’s state and governance structures in the form of deep democratisation. Yet, our ruling elites are still refusing to change the ‘system’ so that the causes of unmanageable social discontent and unrest can be addressed. “Let us forget the root causes; focus on the immediate issues” was the haughty advice that the current head of Sri Lanka’s political class gave the country just two weeks ago when the present economic crisis was the theme of a parliamentary debate.

When Sri Lanka’s citizens reminded the ruling elites the urgent necessity of a ‘system change’ just a few months ago, the outrageously hostile way these elites reacted to it once again showed how unfitting they are to rule this country.

What is in store?

What will the rest of 2023, the year of Sri Lanka’s 75th independence, have in store for its citizens? Not very many positive things, I am afraid, are in sight, unless a major transformation of who holds political power occurs through peaceful and democratic means.

Meanwhile, there are already signs of the repetition of the same old governance and policy failures, exacerbated by ruling class arrogance and ineptness.

There is very little doubt that more miseries will pile up before most of the poor, working and middle-class citizens. There will also be a burst of accumulated social despair and anger in the form of renewed protests, agitations and social unrest. A new phase of citizens’ protests is already in the making, suggesting that 2022 might be continued through 2023 too.

The ruling class reaction to another phase of political reawakening of the citizens is most likely to be a repressive response, claiming to protect what is euphemistically called law and order and what the leaders understand as ‘democracy’. Their democracy is a singularly narrow, non-normative, and statist version of democracy which is neither liberal, nor democratic. It indeed is an emaciated variant of democracy very different from what most of Sri Lanka's citizens now appear to understand as democracy.

Thus, another confrontation between the rulers and the ruled, the political class and the citizens, is quite possible to erupt during the months to come, no sooner than the ceremonial horses with the glittery medals have returned to their stables.