‘Political monk: Disciple or destroyer’: A response

• Following is a response to Tisaranee Gunasekara’s article, ‘Political monk: Disciple or destroyer’, which was published in the Daily FT on 7 June

The third paragraph of Tisaranee Gunasekara’s piece contains the heart of her argument – it’s the content and not the packaging that matters – and her quote wraps it up very nicely indeed. 

The absolute untruths trotted out to defend the indefensible is epitomised by the statement that US foreign policy is being determined at the current time by what some deranged Sri Lankan politician utters, as if some “political establishment” in the developed world is waiting with bated breath for the denouement being trotted out as some sort of “fact” by some Sri Lankan “pundit” before they issue a response of any substance!

The unfortunate reality, though, is that “big lies” have a habit of receiving credibility in some quarters and staying “current.” This appears to be one of those occasions. There are constant reminders of this fact on, virtually, a daily basis. The practical implications of this state of affairs are only too evident with what has emerged in the matter of the controversy swirling around the utterances of that robed master of purple-prose, Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara, back in the business of issuing headline-grabbing threats/promises in the public domain, in this instance alleging a “Western conspiracy” afoot to destroy that bastion of Buddhist civilisation, Sri Lanka.

Is it going to take nothing less than a complete re-set of the broader political discussion to facilitate a return to sanity in political discourse? And, if this is the reality facing us, is such a re-set achievable?

It would be easy enough to claim that Sri Lanka has too long a history of democratic governance to descend into the swamp that is at our feet and into which we are being pushed, but we have seen too many instances of this very fate befalling seemingly established democracies to believe that we would be the singular exception!