An open letter to Vikrama Bahu Karunaratne...

An open letter to Vikrama Bahu Karunaratne,

in response to the article: http://transcurrents.com/tamiliana/archives/371

Vickramabahu, you eloquently analyse the situation. But I don’t understand your objective. Are you trying to say that the JVP as a political entity doesn’t matter anymore? Are you saying that it doesn’t represent a considerable portion of the populace?

We both know that this is not the case. The JVP still represent a lot more people than all the other Leftist parties combined! The election results over the past 30 years confirm this fact.

Then, why are you making such false claims? Why?

I have a few more questions.

Where on earth did you get the idea that the JVP consist of ‘Sinhala petty bourgeoisie youth’? Isn’t that phrase more appropriate to describe most of the other Leftist parties like yours?

Pardon me; I honestly don’t know which political party that you represent at present! I presume you are still more to the ‘Left’ that the ‘Centre’!

I think the JVP is the only leftist party that represent the least percentage of bourgeoisies. Having studied at University of Moratuwa, I can assure you that most of us had nothing in common with the JVP ideologies. May be this varied slightly with in other faculties. But, considering the small number who enters a university at all annually, it is obvious that your argument doesn’t stand.

May be most of the current office bearers of the JVP are university educated. But, the majority of the supporters and voters are not. Also, if you look at the numbers; tens of thousands that were killed in ’71 and 88-89 uprisings, if those youth were part of the ‘petty middle-class’ that you talk about, then the composition of the middle-aged ‘middle-class’ of the country would be a totally different to what it is right now. Why are you making these types of weird observations?

Remember, those who stood up against the JVP uprisings are the bourgeois’s of the society not the other way around. It was the members of the middle class who were in politics, commissioned officers in the forces and the police department that went after the JVP. There were more tyre pyres in the rural enclaves compared to that of the main cities where most of the Middle class live. May be there were some intellectual sympathisers within the urban middle class who supported the JVP in various ways, but you should know better that it was only a handful. What is your motive behind this type of analysis?

I grew up watching you (and a few others like you -Vasu, Carlo, Colvin) making deep intellectual analysis of the problems facing the country. I was too young to understand any of those 10-20 years ago. But we both know those problems are still around, if not worse that what they used to be. So what’s the point of all that effort? Has it done any good to the country as a whole?

I’m sure it’s more exciting to go against the grain. I think that’s what most of you have been doing all this time. Correct me if I am wrong. No. I am not saying that ‘giving a voice’ to the ‘voiceless’, say for example the minorities, under privileged is a bad thing. In fact I think that’s a very good thing. But, what have you achieved? What have those people gained by your endeavours?