Back to the gates of other Bastilles

Between the events of 14 July 1789, and 9-13 July 2022, lie many commonalities that can and must unite the spirits of any downtrodden people who sought to end – and succeeded in ending, for a significant time at least – their sore oppression by tyrannical regimes

 At the presidential, parliamentary and local-government elections of September and November 2024 and May 2025 respectively, the impetus of the people’s struggle carried through the champions of the cause into the high chair, caucus and council alike. It was when “Reason seemed the most to assert her rights”. But it is at precisely such junctures as this that an ever-watchful citizenry (as we need to be) – and appropriating the most apposite forms of doing our civic-minded duty – that we Sri Lankans must persevere in preserving the people’s mandate that stormed the gates of our republic’s Bastille

I sense the long weekend – we Sri Lankans being past-masters at combining a Thursday poya with the traditional brace of days six and seven – somewhat dampened any marked commemoration of the apex of our erstwhile Aragalaya. 

There was no noise from even those who manned the barricades way back then. Social media, bowing the knee to our panopticon state’s Online Safety Act perhaps, was as dark as the other side of the moon.

Three years ago, between 9 and 13 of July 2022, we Sri Lankans were demonstrably united as arguably never before when an estimated two million islanders – a tenth of Serendip’s total population – took to the streets to protest a regime that had to go. 

From scarecrow farmers leaning together, their headpieces filled with straw, to otherwise hollow-minded teenagers united by a passion for transparency and accountability, the streets were thronged with irate citizens united as never before outside the sporting arena. 

And while it was not cricket or war, it was magnificent.  

We few, we happy few

Surely it was of our happy band – we Sri Lankans voting with our feet, rather than those in ‘The French Revolution as it appeared to its enthusiasts at its commencement’ – that the poet wrote: “Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven!”

Speaking of which: Today, the 14th of July, is Bastille Day: the national day of France, and the anniversary of the storming of that medieval armoury, fortress and political prison – one that was symbolic of the oppression of the people by their entrenched rulers.

It would be beyond tedious – it would be a tiring and thankless task for this editorialist – to redraw the many parallels that present themselves as being in common between the two emblematic events.

But with your kind indulgence, gentle reader, suffice it to say that between the events of 14 July 1789, and 9-13 July 2022, lie many commonalities that can and must unite the spirits of any downtrodden people who sought to end – and succeeded in ending, for a significant time at least – their sore oppression by tyrannical regimes. “For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood upon our side...” – as the poet again would have it!

Pity, however, that in this “pleasant exercise of hope and joy” (and one may add for good measure, as well as introducing the theme of grimmer realities: an exercise of fear and terror), Sri Lanka did not come to mirror its people-sovereign sister France in the manner that eventuated a year later for the latter republic.

That was when, with the fruits of revolution riper and readier for picking, the newly liberated French people celebrated the Fête de la Fédération – a massive holiday festival held throughout the republic, to signify and celebrate the unity of the free citizenry.

A ‘fête’ worse than death?

We Sri Lankans were denied any such fetes or fiestas. Because despite the unprecedented people’s movement that showcased popular sovereignty to the world in a classic 21st century instance, a majority of the ousted executive’s party in parliament served as a substantial rump to elect a proxy president. 

This not only stymied the people’s struggle but also undermined the right of a free caucus to withdraw their mandate for a man, a machine and a movement that had ground the nation to a halt and brought its citizenry to their knees.

And for all his later sterling efforts in righting the sinking ship of state with some deft socio-political sleight of hand, as well as admittedly adroit fiscal and financial management, there was a gnawing, nagging sense in the two years that followed the rise and fall of the Aragalaya that a defeat of the people’s victory had been snatched from the jaws of their famous victory.

If William Wordsworth may once again be pressed into service, these were to be “times, in which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways of custom, law, and statute, took at once the attraction of a country in romance!”

Best of and worst of times

Those times – at least in theory, the practice of which may seem to the cynics, sceptics and harsher critics to lack a certain je ne sais quoi – came to an end in three subsequent waves of what many analysts and academics could choose to interpret and showcase as the Aragalaya’s ongoing momentum. 

At the presidential, parliamentary and local-government elections of September and November 2024 and May 2025 respectively, the impetus of the people’s struggle carried through the champions of the cause into the high chair, caucus and council alike. It was when “Reason seemed the most to assert her rights”.

But it is at precisely such junctures as this that an ever-watchful citizenry (as we need to be) – and appropriating the most apposite forms of doing our civic-minded duty – that we Sri Lankans must persevere in preserving the people’s mandate that stormed the gates of our republic’s Bastille.

And even as the favoured elected representatives of a new dispensation struggle to ensure that justice is done and be seen to be done, we Sri Lankans would do well in coming alongside the government of the day to ensure that mistakes made in another initially successful but ultimately undermined revolution don’t eventuate “in Utopia, subterranean fields or some secreted island” such as ours, today.

Et in Utopia ego

From the original storming of the Bastille to the odious moment when Bonaparte uttered the infamous words, “None but Napoleon may crown Napoleon”, and snatched the state, the people’s treasured sovereignty and the sceptred coronet away from the surprised hands of the crowning pope, Pius VII, was but an all too brief 15 years (1789-1804) for the flame of freedom to falter, flicker and fade out.

We Sri Lankans can learn from the lessons of the French revolution, which took the newly liberated republic down the road to imperial oppressiveness again, and make adjustments to the program of political, social and economic reforms.

These mistakes are legion, and lessons-in-waiting:

• A lack of clarity as to how to convert good intentions into practical applications 
• The Reign of Terror, in which oppressors under the ‘Ancien Regime’ were meant to be brought to justice, rapidly degenerated into the execution of personal vendettas
• Bloodbaths such as the September Massacre of 1792 undermined the reputation of even the ministers of state such as Lafayette who were meant to be a bridge between the old and new social contracts
• Failure to draft, craft and obtain general and extensive buy-in for constitutional amendments and a plethora of interim decrees that were perceived as being inadequate to ensure social justice against the ongoing grievance of the long-suffering masses
• Preference of a growing number of people dissatisfied with the Commune for even ‘the uncertainties of authoritarianism’ rather than the painstaking processes of parliamentary politics
• Perception and reality that the Directory, that sea-green incorruptible establishment, was itself riddled by bribery, graft and power-politicking contra the national interest
• Political divisions, a series of mini-coups and Napoleon’s ambitions  

A more excellent way

Our heroes, after all, have feet of clay. We Sri Lankans must not let “they who had fed their childhood upon dreams” fondly imagine that the lords of hot air and darkness are but a fiery, incendiary parliamentary speech’s breath away. But bound together in a coalition of the unprincipled in ongoing efforts to undermine the enterprise of returning sovereignty to the people and sceptre to a righteous state.

May it be said of us and them – we Sri Lankans and our rightly elected republican representatives – that “the inert were roused, and lively natures rapt away” in a joint concerted effort to steady the ship of state through socioeconomic reforms and bringing the humbled emperors of the past to the laws’ book and the land’s lawfully allotted guillotines.

In this “we find our happiness, or not at all”.               

(Editor-at-large of LMD | Bring back the tumbril)