Gajalakshmi Paramasivam

24 September  2017

Higher Post-war Development through e-learning

[Sri Lankan authorities have admitted in a Dutch documentary that thousands of babies born there were fraudulently sold for adoption abroad in the 1980s.] BBC World News Report ‘Sri Lankan baby trade: Minister admits illegal adoption trade’

One of the accusations made against the Tamil Tiger leadership was their use of children in combat. One  cannot use the same law to relate as to which is right and which is wrong if  the structures / contexts in which the respective outcomes were born are different. Common law could be applied only where the manifested outcomes happened through Common structures. Until we know otherwise, we are entitled to taken them as common if as per our knowledge the laws are applicable to both sides. Those who claim to be Sinhala Nationalists are not  therefore entitled to use Sri Lankan Common Laws nor take remuneration through  positions based on the Common Sri Lankan structure. Recently I received Communication under the Subject matter:Take Action against the Hunt for our War Heroes Bill aka the Enforced Disappearances Bill

The BASIS / Law / Value of my response to this is explained as follows on the basis of three Sri Lankans’ express views:

1.    Shivanthi Ranasinghe wrote : REGISTER YOUR PROTEST SIGN THE PETITION  http://chn.ge/2ylQCgG

My response: Shivanthi Ranasinghe’s influence – goes towards endorsing majority and hence protecting armed forces from outside scrutiny. I looked at the message/suggestion and decided to stay away from it because I follow the structured system to the extent I can without compromising on the Truth I have experienced. Hence I could not have obliged Shivanthi

2.       Jayasinghe (To my mind an Australian Sinhalese) – ‘What is wrong with setting up The Office of Missing Persons? Don't you like the idea of Human Rights?  A decent society protected from criminal’

My response: – in terms of global communication principles and values (Mr. J) has demonstrated lack of commitment to current merit based system. Hence when I read his response to Shivanathi – I took it to be on personal relationship between Shivanthi and himself where he was the Senior.   So he merely asks the question using other people’s theory to keep his senior position

3.     'Rajeewa Jayaweera’ of Sri Lankan origin now living in London to Mr. Jayasinghe:

- If there is nothing wrong, could you enlighten us, reasons for world’s two greatest ‘defenders & offenders’ of Human Rights i.e. USA and UK besides your adopted country Australia have not ratified the Convention? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Convention_for_the_Protection_of_All_Persons_from_Enforced_Disappearance

My response: To answer Rajeewa who has demonstrated respect for my current work, through our common investment (Sri Lankan Airlines) – Sri Lankans are to be taken as Sovereign until proven otherwise. The armed officers fought their equals and had to use the principle underpinning the conclusion ‘all is fair in Love & War’. The line was drawn by the LTTE for it to be ‘free’ of common order. If under those circumstances the soldiers had followed the common order – they would have had less energy to protect themselves – leave alone kill the enemy. Unless Tamils who are free of LTTE influence seek such lawful pathway – they would be defeated in the global context. Sinhalese fear this defeat and hence this move.  Likewise USA & UK Governments to protect their soldiers.  They don’t need to so long as they do not claim ‘victory’ while in official positions. The mistake the Rajapakse regime made was to claim victory despite knowledge of breaching the common law and using the international system to list the LTTE as Terrorists. By celebrating victory – they alienated themselves while taking remuneration out of the Common Purse. Without the protection of Commonness, these moves are all threats from that wider world in which Tamils now have gained membership – through Politics as well as Public Administration. UK & USA are leaders in that group. Sri Lanka is a junior. Sri Lankans on both sides do not want to be juniors in the global common  system. They would rather be ‘free’ in their small world. That was the lesson learnt about Thunaivi – a toddy-tapper village in Vaddukoddai who are being taken over by welfare providers in the name of post-war development. They were considered a high risk group during the war and rightly so. It does not take much to lead them to emotional pathway – the one they are comfortable with and through which the more distant person – however good s/he may be become the enemy – hence the demotion to enemy status - as in sledging.

Common Laws help us to think along the same structure, to give form to a problem and therefore the solution. The discriminate mixing of expressions leads to chaotic waste by demoting knowledge to Data/information.

There is a saying in Tamil that the pain of the child complaining of lack of salt in his rice-soup and the pain of the child complaining of lack of sugar in his milk are to be taken as Equal. In other words, when cultural differences happen due to structural reasons, dfferent orders in which money is shared,    one cannot reliably relate one with the other. A big part of Higher Post-war Development is happening through e-learning.

 That pathway drew my attention recently to Groundviews article – ‘The Danger in Distorted Education: Sri Lanka’s History Curriculum’ in which the author whose article, to my mind, was born through the  milk-consumers’ pathway states:

[In June 2016, the Global Education First Initiative (GEFI) convened a debate on the ‘Prevention of Violent Extremism through Education’ at the UN in New York. At the event, Anusheh Bakht, a GEFI Youth Advocate, observed that school curricula were often used as political tools to ‘perpetuate a certain belief system to guide thinking’.]

In Sri Lanka, Those who were involved in Baby Trade / Child labour in Kandy are milk-consumers due to carrying the Royal Kandyan / Political Leadership genes, whilst those who recruited children for combat were / are rice-soup consumers. So long as these children were confined to their own areas – they were ‘saved’ from earning the curse of   groups outside their cultural boundaries. I learnt this lesson while serving the Toddy-Tapper village of Thunaivi in Vaddukoddai District in Northern Sri Lanka – which gave birth to the Political Declaration of Independence in 1976. Given the caste-based discrimination that existed in Vaddukoddai at that time,   the Senior castes who led the manifestation of this declaration were in the ‘milk-drinkers’        group and the junior castes who demonstrated brawn power took over the manifestation. The example that comes to mind is the Hindu Legend of Churning the Ocean of Milk, in which Lord Shiva – the Destroyer of Body-Consciousness consumed the Poison that came out first during the churning and in which the Asuras (those driven by brawn-power) hijacked the Nectar that came out after the poison was cleared. The Nectar came with Lord Dhanvantari – the Lord of Ayurvedic Medicine – to my mind, the parallel of Lessons Learnt in the war issue. It’s the closest to Natural cure.

If we take the two sides as LTTE and the Sri Lankan  Government – then LTTE becomes the demon. When they are judged by Law that was NOT followed by the Government, the Government becomes and abuser of Power in the Court of Natural Justice. If we accept that both sides had their demons and their gods, AND we have the parallel of Lord Shiva – the higher mind that has transcended majority power – that mind swallows the poison representing the common weaknesses – we have the  Ayurvedic Medicine – the Common Natural Solution. The alternative is to devolve twice – first to separate on ethnicity basis and then again to separate the brawn and the brain so that we live in our own separate worlds. In the above legend one of the Asurar/member of brawn community,  pretended to be Thevar / member of divine community and took his turn to have a share of the nectar distributed by Lord Vishnu in damsel form. The moment he completed the task – Lord Vishnu severed  this Asura Swarnabhanu’s head from the body and we have two de facto planets – Rahu and Kethu in Astrology – a science in which both Sinhalese and Tamils have invested. To my mind, they represent incomplete worlds which think they are sovereign. So long as they operate individually – they are harmless but not progressive. When one joins the other for Common purpose – one must take the lower position as per the nature of that purpose. Academics for example need to take the position of juniors when learning about armed combat and Armed forces need to take the position of juniors when seeking to be driven by knowledge based global participation.