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By Dr. Sarath Amunugama
I feel honoured to be invited to write an introduction to a collection of Parliamentary speeches of Philip Gunawardena, one of the most distinguished of Parliamentarians to grace our Legislature, from the days of the pre-independence State Council to the Parliament of the late 1960s.
He belonged to an age of giants that included the likes of S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike, N. M. Perera, Dudley Senanayake, G. G. Ponnambalam, Colvin R de Silva, Pieter Keuneman, J. R. Jayawardene and latterly Felix Dias Bandaranaike. Each of them left their distinct mark in the annals of our Legislature. Philip’s was among the brightest of the lot.
Collections of Philip’s speeches have been published before, in an orderly sequence. The present collection belongs to that phase in his political career when he had ceased to be a Minister in the 1956 M. E. P. Government of S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike, and was then serving as a member of the Opposition having been returned to Parliament in two subsequent General Elections.
Multi-faceted personality
I would like to begin this introduction with some excerpts from one of Philip’s speeches included in this volume, for the very cogent reason that I feel it to be a good introduction to this multi-faceted personality.
Speaking in the course of the Budget debate on 11 October 1960, he said: “…. In our country with its accent on political illiteracy, there is the danger of a class struggle between the ignorant and the educated. The modern world is a complex world; its technological problems need a cultivated understanding. The fact that new ideas and learning mostly come to our country through a foreign language creates new barriers between the educated elite and the unsophisticated people. The new ideas and learning do not naturally seep down, fail to become a part of the heritage and the consciousness of the people and they remain a monopoly of the new Nationalisation of modern knowledge is the ‘sine qua non’ of effective democracy and socialism in our country.”
Here, Philip the thinker, the modernist and the percipient observer of the social scene clearly comes out. Going beyond the classic Marxian perception of classes based on the ownership of economic assets he sees the growing emergence of a different class struggle. A class struggle between different sets of haves and have-nots that is to say, the haves and have-nots of modern knowledge. Was it not this lack of understanding of the modern technological world and its dynamics that the tragedy of such a knowledge not becoming “part of the heritage and the consciousness of the people” that was at least partly responsible for the youth rebellions of a later date taking the form they did? Philip seems to have been prescient. He was far from being a slave to moth-eaten texts – a favourite phrase of his, a dig aimed at his erstwhile Marxist colleagues.
The above quotation also shows that Philip was, as I stated before, a modernist, and was acutely conscious of the fact that the path to progress in Sri Lanka lay through modern technology and not through a mere change of property relations through violent revolution or otherwise. The pity is that this lesson does not seem to have adequately penetrated Sri Lankan society yet.
While Philip stressed the importance of modern knowledge and technology he did not belittle the value of culture. During the course of the same speech above, he said: “Spanish proverb says that there is a constant quarrel between beauty and chastity. Let there not be a similar quarrel between socialism and culture. The socialist is an heir to the varied cultures of the past; to abandon the heritage is to make socialism as unreal as the shell grit sea”. Incidentally, we may take note that he was speaking of varied cultures and not a mono culture. The much travelled and well-read Philip Gunawardene was not a man with a limited horizon.
Let me give two final quotations from the above speech – this time more for the beauty of the language and style than even for the substance (which latter is of course as sound as always).
1. “A world to the middle classes – the educated and enlightened sections of our population. Your developing hostility to the working people is not only short sighted but self-destructive…. May I respectfully appeal Mr. Speaker, to the middle classes to stop turning the single beads of irritation into a rosary of despair. The future belongs to the trained and the technocrats, not to the foreman.”
2. “…The growing divorce between words and their meaning is a major tragedy of our times. Socialism, Democracy, Peace, Freedom are used in a manner that makes them not only meaningless but topsy-turvy. The fluidity in the meaning of words creates crisis in communication. Words instead of clarifying and crystallising thoughts confuse it. Today counterfeiters have seized the temple of Saraswathi. As false coins bring about the breakdown of an economy and society so counterfeiters in language destroy popular confidence. Dull indifference is the only response when not the goblet alone but the grapes are without wine.”
Master of the spoken word
As these and other contents of this book show, Philip was certainly the master of the spoken word, the telling phrase and the almost poetic style. I have no doubt he would have been, even better, the master of the written word as well.
Before I move further away from the earlier quotation where Philip appeals to the educated and enlightened sections of the population, I wish to mention that this is a recurring theme in his speeches. He had a high respect for the competent and hardworking professional, as he had only the most virulent scorn for the charlatan and the time saver. He never minced his words – for praise or abuse. A spade was a spade.
In the cut and thrust of debate Philip was equally effective and witty in Sinhala as well, as when once said in reference to the Finance Minister, Felix Dias Bandaranaike, who represented Dompe and whose budget he was analysing: Dompe is only famous for nurse-maids, a perhaps subtle and somewhat convoluted dig at the then lady Prime Minister whose protégé the Finance Minister was supposed to be (Hansard of 23 August 1960).
Though Philip was a trenchant and often an abrasive critic when he did not agree with something or someone, he could also be quite generous and fulsome in his praise when praise was due – even to those whom he opposed politically.
Speaking in Sinhala, the commencement of the speech in the Budget debate, from which I have been quoting above, he said that he read several times the speech of Dr. N. M. Perera, the estranged erstwhile Marxist colleague, and was of the view that it was full of more valuable substance, than all the other speeches made before. He said that he agreed with most of what Dr. Perera has said. On a later occasion he also said when referring to someone else whom he considered a very hard working man. “…The only other hard working man I know of is the Hon. Member for Yatiyantota. One feels sad for the country that such people of ability missed the opportunity of working together for the common good.”
While such references might come as a pleasant surprise to readers who can recollect the acrimonious political exchanges between the two at that time, they exemplify the excellent old Parliamentary tradition of giving unprejudiced attention to the views of even one’s political foes and accepting them without reserve when they are reasonable. Quite surprisingly even more fulsome was the praise of the then Finance Minister Felix Dias Bandaranaike of whom Philip said: “…I do not know the politics of the Hon. Minister of Finance, but I have already had a sneaking regard for his talents. He is the only talented Minister in this outfit. I have not the slightest doubt that he will make a correct choice in the appointment of a director to run the bank (viz. the People’s Bank that was just being set up). He is a talented young man and he is very hardworking young man and I have always had a sneaking regard for both those qualities in a politician” (Hansard 1961.05.09 Col. 5209-5232).
Philip did not hesitate to record his appreciation of even the services of competent and hardworking public officers, as for instance when he placed on record the good work done by several officers in formulating the implementing the Paddy Lands Act (Hansard 1961.06.06 Col. 7197-7244).
Firm and close grasp of goings on
I have suggested earlier that Philip, the percipient observer of what was going on, may have had almost a premonition of the youth uprising of the ’70s when he referred to the emerging conflict between those deprived of access to modern knowledge (which in turn meant many other things) and the educated and therefore privileged class.
One wonders whether through his rational analysis of social forces at work (which it may not be unreasonable to attribute to his early Marxist discipline) he may have similarly foreseen the possibility of the 1962 attempted coup d’état by a certain group of military and police officers. I make this comment because of his urgent plea to the government of the day, in the course of the 1960-61 budget debate (Hansard of 11 October 1960) to reorganise the armed forces, which has in retrospect, that pathetic ring.
This is what he said: “…I would therefore ask the Hon. Minister Finance to look into these matters and not allow things to drift. That was what happened to the late Prime Minister: he allowed things to drift. And the poor man had to pay for it with his life. I repeat, therefore that in the interests of the country immediate steps be taken to reorganise the Army, the Navy and the Air Force with a view to eliminating all these outdated… Officers with alien loyalties… if you are interested in safeguarding the interests of the people and the proceeding with the work that you have undertaken to do even in a limited way you must not hesitate to take drastic steps to reorganise the Army and the Navy the Navy particularly… The Police force top needs reorganisation.”
Many of the speeches reproduced in this book bear testimony to the fact that Philip Gunawardena whenever he was a minister of the government has had a very firm and close grasp of what was going on not only in his own ministry but in the government as a whole. In a speech he made on 28 September 1960, more than a year after he had left office, he related what went wrong with, even at present ill-fated Kantalai sugar factory and at the Gal Oya factory.
He knew that the Agriculture Department had failed to plant up the entire acreage set apart for sugar cane, he knew all about the Czechoslovakian aircraft bought to spray fertiliser for the sugar cane crop, and he knew that sugar cane harvested after the crucial 14 month deadline yielded very little sugar. He had been a ‘hands-on’ in a speech delivered on 16 November 1960 he gave a very useful account of the planning mechanism and the planning experience of the 1956 Government.
The amount of detailed information that he possessed outside his ministerial portfolio was exhibited when during the aforesaid speech he referred to the Nicholas Kaldor tax proposal partially implemented during the period of the previous government and defended the introduction of an Expenditure Tax as an incentive to savings, countering the criticism of a former Minister of Finance, J. R. Jayawardene. He knew the detail that the Debit Tax, which too JR objected to, was not a Kaldor proposal but only an emergency revenue measure, which he conceded, should be removed at the earliest opportunity, in the interests of promoting the banking habit.
To a social scientist, an endearing feature of many of Philip’s speeches is the copious use of statistics to establish a point. Witness for example his speeches on the Insurance Corporation Bill (9 December 1960), the Petroleum Corporation Bill – where the statistics extend to the global oil industry (21 April 1961), the Agricultural Products (Guaranteed Prices) and Control of Hulling and Milling Bill (9 May 1961) and the Tea Research (Amendment) Bill (7 June 1961). Of course in the resort to statistics to objectively analyse phenomena, he was in the great Marxian tradition of Karl Marx, Engels and Lenin whose work is replete with historical and contemporary statistics. (The only other Sri Lankan public figure to note who comes to mind in regard to this practice is Anagarika Dharmapala. He quoted copiously from government Sessional Papers).
Philip took his Parliamentary business seriously
Going through his speeches, it is obvious that Philip took his Parliamentary business seriously. To him, it is quite apparent that Parliament was quite a different forum from the public political platform. His Parliamentary role was not that a slogan peddling rabble rouser. It was serious business. It required research and preparation. Opposite points of view had to be countered with solid facts and logical argument and not just by trying to shout down your opponent. Therefore, reading his speeches an educational experience whether you finally agree with his point of view or not. In either case your horizon of knowledge would have expanded. I believe it was Harold Laski who identified one of Parliament’s functions as building informed public opinion. Laski would have appreciated Philip’s role.
Some passages in Philip’s speeches are in fact what might be described as pedagogic. He was interested in teaching – of course his pet project was Socialism. Once he quoted extensively on this subject from a book by his revered old Guru and personal friend Prof. Scott Nearing of the Wisconsin University (a rather ill-informed and mischievous MP who dared to inquire who he (i.e. Prof. Nearing) was, was floored by the repartee “you will still not understand even if I told you all about him”).
During the course of a debate in 1964, reminiscing on the early days of his political career he actually referred to a teaching role he performed. Said he: “He (Sir Baron Jayatilleke) readily granted me a passport to return to this country in November 1932. Since then I have been in the struggle for socialism in this country. There was not a single socialist when I returned – not even the leaders of the LSSP were socialists. Then I had to teach most of them even the elements of Socialism and Marxism.”
One also learns with some surprise, from another statement made by Philip in one of his speeches, that while being in prison in the 1940s along with other LSSP detainees he had translated into Sinhala (and had got published) the celebrated work of Lenin, State and Revolution. As for the pedagogue’s role he played with so much enthusiasm, it is well to recall that Marx himself has often been called a teacher. The reputed Australian American Economist Joseph A. Schumpeter, a friendly and almost reverent critic of Marxism, has titled one section of his well-known book ‘Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy’, as Marx the Teacher.
Philip’s perspective on socialism
On socialism itself Philip had a different perspective from the red-shirted comrade shouting himself hoarse on May Day: “You talk of Socialism. You cannot socialise poverty. You can only socialise plenty. And if people cannot work, if they cannot produce you cannot have Socialism.” This was probably an admonition to the government of the day which was claiming to be Socialist.
To the serious student of the politics of this country, of the latter of the last Century (actually beginning with the 1930s because Philip and the Lanka Sama Samaja Party made their debut in Parliamentary politics in 1935), the speeches of Philip in the Legislature – both in the State Council and Parliament – are indispensable reading. (Occasionally he gets even interesting ‘small talk’ – like J. R. Jayewardene having being invited to join the LSSP at its inception in 1935 and he declining because he “had become a Buddhist” – as if there had not been even Buddhist monks who were card carrying members!).
The student of politics gleans from these speeches not only what agitated the Left and the Nationalists at different times but also the stance taken on those issues at those times by the other side – the lackeys of imperialism. The capitalist exploiters and the de-nationalised decadent ‘thuppahis’ in Philip’s own colourful choice of vocabulary. And what he will get will not be just a rambling of petty slogans and cheap invective – although the language and the style will be never dull – but well-crafted. Political, economic and social analysis supported by a wealth of facts, coming from a highly intelligent, well-read and acutely observant master of trade.
