Taking one typical example as a sample, we may try to grasp what this problem about political imagination is. Let us take the example of former President Junius Richard Jayewardene.

Some measures in gauging “political imagination” are to ask what ideals that a leader may have tried to represent. This does not imply that the leader had achieved that ideal, for ideals, by their very nature, are not achievable in their completeness. The test is what ideals did such a leader represent as part of his/her fundamental beliefs, which can be judged by many different ways through the manifestations of such beliefs or convictions.  

Let us take a few examples from India, and by way of comparison, try to grasp this problem. 

In India, attorney and anti-colonial nationalist Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, without a doubt, represented one singular idea. That was that the British should leave India and that the ruling of India must be handed over to, or taken over by, the Indians themselves. Many critics today question many other aspects of his beliefs, philosophies, and expressions. However, there can be no doubt that he stood for the complete independence of India and the severance of any subservience to the British Raj. 

In the case of attorney and anti-colonial nationalist Jawaharlal Nehru, there is also no doubt that he stood for the independence of India, and also that he believed that the future of industrialisation is an essential component for the development of the future prosperity of India. But, obviously for Gandhi, this latter aspect was not important enough of an ideal that he stood for. In fact, he was more for “village-based development” rather than industrialisation and modernisation.

As for jurist and social reformer Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, he stood for the emancipation of everyone, among whom the lowest group of people in the social ladder mattered the most to him.

He also stood for industrialisation as essential for the future development of India. And he, above all others, stood for democracy as the sole method of governance in the country.

In this, Gandhi’s commitments to democracy were limited for political independence from Britain, but in his social ideals, critics have clearly pointed out – quoting from his own writings – that he clearly did not stand for equality for everybody. The belief in the hereditary rule about employment was most fundamental to him. While Nehru was more committed to democracy, his own thoughts were also embedded in the “social order” where hierarchies were still entrenched. However, Ambedkar, who from his very birth was born outside that “culture”, saw the possibility of the equality-of-all as the sole ground on which the future of India could rest. For him, this was not just a question of equality before the law as an abstract concept, but it stood for economic and social equality.

There is another person who is worth being mentioned in this regard, from a completely different spectrum.  That is nationalist and philosopher Sri Aurobindo Ghose. Though Sri Aurobindo is not as popularly known now in political discourse, he was perhaps a vital leader who first espoused categorically the need for the complete independence of India at a time when other leaders were talking only about some form of self governance within the framework of the British overall administration. Not only did he espouse complete independence, he gave it life and dynamism, so much that he was more feared as a leader – behind many youth upsurges – by the British, who even tried to fabricate a case against him for a crime that he was not directly involved in.

By the 1920s, Aurobindo was even invited to be the Leader of the Congress Party because of his fierce espousal of independence, and the confidence he had won among the people. He refused, saying that there were others for that role, and that for him, there were greater ideals to fight for. He saw by then that Indian independence was ripe, like a fruit on a tree, and that at any time, it would fall. He was worried about what would happen thereafter. He identified the major problem in India, in the future, as being that of the deadening of the Indian mind and spirit. He wanted to devote his life in order to engage in an effort to revive this once-great mind of India which he thought had been put into a deep slumber. He devoted the rest of his life for this task of the intellectual and spiritual awakening of the life of India.  

These four characters illustrate that each of them, in their own way, stood for something beyond their personal interest, and in fact, sacrificed their personal interests for the benefit of a larger cause –  for a greater achievement for India as a whole. 

What do we see in the Sri Lankan scene? If we go by the typical example that we are examining, regarding Jayewardene, and what he stood for prominently, clearly he did not stand for the complete independence of Sri Lanka. He was happy with the “dominion status” as the best that could be achieved. He had no vision, certainly, about Sri Lanka being a vibrant democracy, for the simple reason that he belonged to a class of people who did not even want an “adapted franchise” for everybody. The culture that he was embedded in did not regard, or pay respect to, the principle that all people matter. They were rooted in the belief that only a few people matter, and that the rest did not deserve, nor were they capable, of political democracy, let alone democracy from the point of view of social equality or economic justice. These are completely alien to the mind of Jayewardene.

The ideas that Jayewardene stood for were, first of all, his own self promotion to the top, at whatever costs, including the suppression of the labour movement, particularly the trade union movement, and the leftist movements; and the making of divisions, purely with the view of electoral gains such as the deprivation of the rights of the estate Tamil population by denying many of them citizenship.  Later, once in power, his main aims were to keep the absolute majority that he got in Parliament, as long as he lives, irrespective of the fact that it would damage every aspect of the system of political democracy, the suppression of the multi-party system that had emerged in the country – particularly after 1956, and the use of national security laws for the purpose of suppression of every move towards greater freedom and democracy. The manipulation of every dispute in order to acquire greater and greater power to himself, to limit the operation of the law, suppression in as many ways as possible, the independence of the judiciary; these were among his major interests, and these resulted in creating a kind of chaos in every area in life. It is said in Greek myth that a King called Midas, “could turn everything to gold, if he touches them”. Jayewardene had the capacity of transforming everything to violence, whenever he touched anything.

This comparison may be quite a wide one. However, the idea was to illustrate one major issue: where politics is devoid of a greater ideal, then the result could, in the end, only be the development of political nihilism. And wherever political nihilism develops, it is bound to generate more and more violence, and the violence in turn is bound to destroy all possible positive developments of a society. Thus, this is one factor that is necessary for the understanding of the present chaos that is prevailing in the country.

(The writer is the Asian Human Rights Commission’s Policy and Programmes Director)

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The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication.