On being and becoming Deshapremi

“I believe these lessons need to be learnt before anyone even dreams of embarking on the deshapremi path. "The Deshapremi" is not a ship that can carry us to our splendid utopian destinations. It is a path that is resolutely taken where there is an active engagement between the eye and the object it falls on. The vast territories that have to be travelled will not just help map the contours of the nation, but will inevitably infuse into the traveller the creativity and critical faculties necessary to navigate the nation forward, breaking through all the obstacles placed in its path.”
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by Malinda Seneviratne

(April 11, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) When the theoretical enemies of nationalism are rounded up, among the more prominent of those opposed to notions of culture, nation and patriotism would be the Marxists. They were ideologically blinded by an internationalism that sought to cut loose people from their identities and to poison the deep wells whose waters gave meaning to their lives. These revolutionary innocents (some of them at least) will be marked in history as the staunch allies of mindless capitalism and judeo-christian evangelical drive, both of which were and are processes that dispossess and divest the indigene of everything of value in his universe, physical and spiritual.

It was not just the muddle-headed Marxists of what is wrongly called the Old Left (they should, as Prof. Nalin de Silva says, be called the Boru Left) that gave patriotism a bad name. The Catholic Church too has a historical need (almost libidinal one might say) to dissolve the state or at least subjugate it to papal edict. As such, nation and nationalism automatically presented themselves as the "other" that needed to be obliterated.

I make a sharp distinction between the church and the flock, and this I apply to all religions. When faith is organised, it tends towards political control and in the name of propagating the messiah’s message, all the sacred tenets of the faith are invariably violated. Death, destruction and cultural violence are the inevitable by-products of religious zealotry. The high priests of all religious denominations can survey their histories and assess their contribution to that violence. We, the "others" marked for obliteration in the name of spiritual redemption, already know.

Apart from the Boru Left and the Catholic Church, the other great opponent of the nation, the nation state and nationalism, is of course capital. The nation state has been reduced to a shell whose only functions are to subsidise capital and discipline labour, not out of accident. Capital has no truck with history. It doesn’t give a damn about sustaining anything other than profit extraction and resource plunder. When capital encounters people of cultures where community is valued in ways that it never was in the traditional homelands of capitalism, the dollar sign does a dance with the cross. This is why the colonial project is best symbolised by a white man carrying a gun in one hand and a bible in the other. Those who may oppose need to be done away with or else neutralised. Uproot the objector from his culture and the battle is half won.

The treachery of capital, the church and its latter day saints, the Marxists, when it comes to the deshapremi project are perhaps easier to identify, since they wear thin clothing and are for the most part naked in their agenda. The more difficult thing is to recognise and deal with the enemy within. Just as Mara in his final effort to break the resolve of the bodhisatva appeared before Siddhartha Gauthama as his mirror image, the greatest challenge is to encounter and defeat the enemy within.

This is a condition that is true both of the emancipatory project of the individual as well as the collective. This is why for example sociology has to rescue itself from itself, Tamil nationalism from the Tamil Maraya (in its current avatar, the LTTE), Jesus Christ from the Catholic Church etc. Ideology, as Althusser says somewhere, does not exist outside of us, but is most evident, and dangerously so, within us. Hence the difficulty. And hence the need to examine patriots, patriotism and the parameters of the emancipatory project of the nation.

"Deshapremi" was a word that rolled easily off the tongues of student activists in the late eighties. It carried such a flavour that it was soon lapped up by the masses, who rolled it around their tongues, salivating with patriotic fervour. Actually, it would be more correct to say that it was thrust rudely down their throats. The Indo-Lanka Accord served as the colourful wrapping paper. The ribbons were red. Naturally.

There was also a label and it contained these strong words of resolve and love, maubima nethnam maranaya (motherland or death). Inside of all this we were told there was committed patriotism. But that particular box of chocolates was a hoax. There was nothing sweet. Just the bitter fruit of political machination which the politically innocent was forced to consume. Naturally, the nation belched like it hadn’t done in a long time. The blood vomit that scarred the nation contained chewed pieces of flesh. The nation’s heart was cut into little pieces on a chopping block, which also had a name. Deshapremi.

I do believe that among those sacrificed unnecessarily in those non-redeeming fires there were more than a few people whose names would not taint the word deshapremi. Nevertheless, by and large it was a project which had nakedly populist motives in using the term. The nation lost.

Today, once again, we hear these words. We have a mushrooming of deshapremi organisations whose growth will only be second to the proliferation of peace NGOs, those shady, name-board organisations whose "representatives" are well fed and used to swell the ranks of signatories to all kinds of Tiger placating petitions and statements.

Those familiar organisations behind which were hidden the JVP’s designs on political power, are now doing the rounds again. There are a couple of maubima surekeeme organisations. A couple of deshapremi ones too. Some of these are based in the university. Some not. We can only hope that deshapremi is not just a garb for the JVP which they can take off once its utility value has expired.

The generous reading would be that some people somewhere are finally taking things seriously enough to realise that not all things are reducible to the class factor. In 1985, university students were shy to admit they were members of the JVP. By the end of 1987, they were shy to say they were not deshapremi. This I believe indicates that patriotism lies only a heartbeat away from avowed ideological predilection. And that ought to send a message to culture-abhorring Marxists who like to posit themselves as the messiahs of the "Alternate".

The more prudent approach would be to recognise historical precedent, and not least of all because none of these organisations have demonstrated any commitment, philosophical or otherwise, to examine the manifold elements that make up nation and nationalism.

Two questions arise naturally. One, who is a real deshapremi? Two, who gets to pass judgement on the patriotism or otherwise of a given individual? I will leave out the "how" and the "why" here. Just as it is true that one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist, it may be logically derived that one man’s deshapremi is another’s traitor. I cannot, then, judge in any conclusive manner. What I can do is to offer my views, naturally open to critique and alternate postulation.

The word is deceivingly simple. It refers to the love one has for a land, a nation. Beyond this simple definition is a universe of perplexing issues. The word deshaya itself can mean many things to different people. "Premaya", or "love", has its own definitional complexities and there can never be a comprehensive handbook that tells us how love should be expressed. The deshapremi condition, to my mind, has the same elusive quality contained in the term jathika chinthanaya.

Like most things that are obtained from the great subterranean reservoirs of cultural heritage, these things have a way of tripping the word. They resist theoretical explication and often force the theorist, in his frustration, to spin out mindless drivel, a classic example being the Lords of the Ethnic Studies Industry who, unable to figure out the "nation", end up denying its existence. This mercurial quality does not, however forbid its exploration, however. If a caricature is all that the word can produce, then by all means, let us have some sketches. Music, dance and other art forms have and will look after the wider casting of that necessary net.

One does not see Jesus upon baptism. Self description as Buddhist does not imply enlightenment. Similarly, proclamations of patriotic sentiment does not make one a deshapremi in the full and rich sense of the word. To love the nation, one has to understand it. To understand the nation, one has to understand the people.

These things require a keen sensitivity to cultural heritage. To be deshapremi, one has to love and nurture the springs from which we as a people obtained cultural life. Our gaze needs to fall on every stone, every tree, every road and byroad, every artefact that speaks of our ancestors the travails they faced in building civilisations, their victories, defeats, their glaring mistakes and the tragedies they knowingly and unknowingly precipitated. That gaze cannot be uncritical, and yet it has to fall softly.

All our literatures, all our histories, in particular those embedded in the folk songs and other transcripts and commentaries of event, history and metaphor, contain the alphabet and grammar of patriotism. The life styles of our people carry a trace of the poetry that stems from these linguistic foundations. To stand firm on our cultural soil means that our bodies and our minds have to absorb and engage with these foundational narratives.

Patriotism, when it is a fad or when it is "discovered" for reasons of political expedience, always tends towards a violence which invites not just a backlash against the faddists, but against the real foundations of the nation. The faddist fiddles around with the symbols of the nation. His detractor attacks the foundational principles and guardians of the cultural heritage of which these symbols are but signs and poorly disguised caricatures employed for narrow political gain. And often, he himself is the enemy.

The JVP deshapremis prompted a general onslaught on all things Sinhala and Buddhist. Even the symbolism was robbed by those who have no jathiya, janmaya, sadacharaya, sanskruthiya or shishtacharaya. Immediately after the UNP faction won the bheeshanaya contest, Premadasa started using Nanda Malini’s songs from Pawana to whip up anti-Indian sentiment. And "academics" who were slaves to western ideologies and theoretical frames quietly resumed the "unmaking" the nation.

The deshapremi faddist is not only found among political parties. Consider the Sri Lanka First deshapremis. Their first love is profit. Once the conditions for profit making are restored, they will forget the nation. Our SOLO-U deshapremis are of the same order. Where were they, and how did they love during the bheeshanaya?? Were not the thousands of young people who were killed by goons at that time citizens of this country? Did they not also love? Were they not loved? Were they lesser citizens, somehow?
Considering that "Dignity" is what the Chilean dictatorship called one of its concentration camps, considering that "Liberty" was the largest jail of the Uruguayan dictatorship and that "Peace and Justice" is the name of the Mexican paramilitary group that in 1997 shot 45 peasants in their back (nearly all of them women and children) as they prayed in the torn church in Acteal, it is nothing for the most vile people to appropriate the label deshapremi. Vigilance will reveal. And vigilance is not possible without educating ourselves. Organising the people alone will stop these kinds of plunder.

I believe these lessons need to be learnt before anyone even dreams of embarking on the deshapremi path. "The Deshapremi" is not a ship that can carry us to our splendid utopian destinations. It is a path that is resolutely taken where there is an active engagement between the eye and the object it falls on. The vast territories that have to be travelled will not just help map the contours of the nation, but will inevitably infuse into the traveller the creativity and critical faculties necessary to navigate the nation forward, breaking through all the obstacles placed in its path. It is good to be optimistic. It is necessary that we learn. And it is noble that we act.
- Sri Lanka Guardian