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Interesting account on Sri Lanka's foreign relations

Review by Rev. Fr. Dr. S. Ignaci Muthu, S.J., Ph.D., D.Sc., Vice-Chancellor, University of Madras Chepauk, Chennai-600 005

Many studies and theories of the modern state conceive of individual states as if they existed in isolation from other states. Quite literally, they deal with 'the state', as if states existed only in the singular. They focus only on the internal relationships within the state territory. They all treat the modern state as a product of conditions internal to it.

However, the rise of each individual modern state is also crucially conditioned by factors external to it. In fact, modern states are really inconceivable outside of the world system of states.

The world system of states, together with world capitalist economy, is constitutive of all modern states. The nature of the international order, and the relationship between it and individual states, are extremely interactive today.

To understand the ethos of a modern state, we have to understand how the internal aspects of state formation have to be related to external aspects. States are shaped by the interaction of these two forces. As the German Historian Otto Hintz puts it, these forces are "first, the structure and culture of the social classes and second, the external ordering of states - their position relative to each other and their overall position in the world." Thus external influences on the state are not just another factor to be added to a list of internal factors, or even worse, to be ignored.

In the interaction, the population and the culture of a society, is shaped and reshaped. The modern state can interact to external influences in one of the following ways:

(i) Copying from other states

(ii) Agreeing to specific compulsions from other states and

(iii) Entering into a more generalized competition.

Now it depends on the historical context of the modern state as to which option it will choose in the interactional process.

Besides, in the interaction between the internal and external forces of a modern state, what will be the role of the elite and the citizen? Should be facilitate or obstruct the interaction process? Or should he tread a careful path of consolidation of what was achieved earlier and what could be achieved in the future? It is this basic question that stimulates the dignitary of today's function.

Tyronne Fernando, Member of the Sri Lankan Parliament and presently the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Sri Lanka is keen to carry the cultural discourse of Sri Lanka right into the future and to the world system of states. In the end of his book, which in my opinion, should be the beginning of the book, he states:

"The need of the hour is not the complete resurrection of the past or the total mimicry of the West, but the revival of our most humanistic traditions, whether embedded in our own cultural practices or gained from international experiences."

Fernando punctuates the shaping of Sri Lanka into as many 14 distinct phases of Sri Lanka's history. Beginning with 5000 BC, where the interaction between internal culture and external force is deftly described in the story of Ramayana, the author proceeds with the depiction of early kingdoms of Sri Lanka, and arrives at the modern period. Prince Vijay, Asoka, Pandyas, Cholas, Kalingas, Romans, and later Chinese, Arabs, Portuguese, Dutch, French and the British, and Indians, have richly provided the stimuli to the Sri Lanka warriors, heroes, kings and elites. In the interaction, as the author puts it, there is always the Sri Lankan culture of respect, love and compassion ever ready to receive the beneficial aspects of the external forces like Buddhism, trade, commerce, art, literature, sculpture, architecture, democracy and now enterprise and globalization. The author is rightly proud when he says that 'the Sri Lankan culture has been flexible enough to absorb what we thought was best in foreign cultures' He is sure that waves of winds have swept Sri Lankan paradise again and again to change the destiny of Sri Lanka.

But he is sure that Sri Lanka has 'always resisted from being blown off the feet'. The reason for the cultural stability and flexibility of Sri Lanka is that, for him, 'nationalism did not mean limiting oneself but opening new horizons... like firmly standing on the ground and continuously growing towards the sky, recognizing the harmony between the two'.

There are many admirable aspects about this book. It is short and sweet. It is precise. It tells what it wants to tell. It does not conceal anything. More than all these, it also announces to the world how Sri Lanka would behave in the world system of states in the times to come.

In writing this book, the author, in my estimate, does not merely tell the readers what he feels about his society but also how external states inhibited and facilitated them. As a foreign minister, he has carried out his duties not merely as a politician, as an administrator but as an author as well, protecting his national interest and its cultural pluralism. I deeply appreciate his sense of commitment to Sri Lanka and the values he and his society cherish. Truly, he is a remarkable son of a great father.

Nuggets of wisdom from Gandhi

Reviewed by Afreeha Jawad

For those who think of the world status quo as being something of a pre-determined nature over which humanity has no control and that individuals are far too insignificant to make a difference, Anthony J. Parel's 'Gandhi, Freedom and Self-Rule' has the answer.

World complexity - an appendage of modernity-justifies new forms of control in giving priority to productivity, efficiency and growth where the best in man is undermined, if not robbed-to say the least. Pre-modern inter-relatedness and inter-dependence has ceased to be, with people taking on the roles of individual producers and consumers - a sort of 'commoditification' if one could call it and 'codification' of the whole idea of human being - a distant wail from being human.

For those in the former colonies who joyfully celebrate their yearly independence, the book offers much food for thought. 'Swaraj' or self rule to Gandhi was not merely an attempt directed towards effacing the white man's presence on native soil. Gandhi's Swaraj - often mistaken only for the extinction of British existence - is cradled in the womb of spiritual ecstasy.

Encouraging this thought was Gandhi who with his astute perception saw its need against the backdrop of an enclaved system which was to be British legacy to the colonised - an impediment found even today long after their withdrawal - aptly termed neo-colonisation.

Be it Indians living in domination, untouchables trapped in ancient assignments, women allotted their inferior places, the unemployed deprived of taking care of themselves or the modern consumer held hostage to exploding desires - Gandhi was a situation judge and challenged when autonomy was denied. Accommodation and adjustment to any dominant order in the current institutional arrangements and concrete choices people have made for that order to exist are individual blame worthy.

It looks like Gandhi was never in favour of the modern centralised state with its structured differentiation and divisiveness that necessitated force and fear. The monopoly of decision making and force denied the people's right to self-realization and spirituality.

A loose confederation of decentralised polities was his answer to the de-humanized nature of the modern state.

Certainly Gandhi does not fall short of anthropological knowledge.

Gandhi was unique in the sense that he could sniff the future. Worrying particularly over those voracious criers of severing British links, Gandhi foresaw an English rule in India without the Englishman which he referred to as the tiger's nature without the tiger.

He even sarcastically dubbed this state as Englishtan and not Hindustan.

The author - Parel, by taking excerpts from Gandhi's speeches blames the Indian mind for leaving room not only to be colonized externally but internally as well.

The behaviour of Indians particularly the elite from the time of Britain's entry nauseates Gandhi.

He indignantly asked 'who assisted company officers? Who was tempted at the sight of silver? Who bought their goods? We assisted them.

We further strengthened their hold by quarrelling amongst ourselves."

Upholders of the parliamentary system of government would come in for a surprise over his description of this 'holy' institution as an emblem of slavery.

A member who by way of exception casts an independent vote, is called a renegade.

To those who claim to be perfectionists Gandhi warns, 'so far as my experience goes, the claim to infallibility on the part of a human being is untenable - a most dangerous claim to make".

Noteworthy is his emphasis on means and ends at a time when people are drawn into the objective regardless of how they get there. When contemporary thinking demands luxury living in big cities, states and all, Gandhi's intellectual elegance goes thus, "I'm convinced that if India is to attain true freedom and through India the world also, then sooner or later the fact must be recognized, that people will have to live in villages, not in towns, in huts and not in big houses.

He abhorred the city and the accompanying modernisation of industrial capitalism.

Gandhi here is at his best for he perhaps realized the unceasing efforts of man in building towns and big houses - a constant violation of truth - certainly they do involve the exploitation of labour, wealth amassment and environmental rape - all of which are social constructs and not that of the divine.

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