It has been 20 years to-date that a person known as Rohana Wijeweera, a remarkable person who belongs to all times departed from the nation. Showing equanimity reflected in his face as seen in the telecasted footage on the 13th of November 1989, he revealed no fear yet his sorrowful and well poised eyes do not leave our memory. From more than his one hour long final address to the nation only footage of mere 2 minutes, which part they thought would be beneficial to them was selected and telecasted on that day by the ruling regime, then.
Just before a few minutes he faced inhumane assassination, he appealed to his comrades and the entire nation saying “Begin everything afresh”. Did anyone so ever, read correctly the depth of meaning of those words? The most pathetic answer to this question would be “No”. Had the society that day understood the far-sighted meaning of these words the need of a commemoration on the 13th of December with unspecified massive violence would have never arisen.
No day ever, in the annals of history has justice been meted out to this remarkable man who had created a culture making a new breed of men ready to sacrifice their lives voluntarily to bring out justice to the motherland and to create a civilized society for their fellow country men to have the freedom of the liberty. It is un-debatable point that of all calamities and disasters that befell Sri Lankan Civilization in the past, the foremost disaster was the inability of the nation to put to appropriate use of the unlimited potential and unlimited commitment and scarifies of this singular man.
He received only a minimum opportunity within the mainstream democratic process to contribute to his Party the best of his excellent leadership personality. During most of his life-time he played his political role within a gloomy, turbid and proscribed political cascade. It is no secret that in the period of 1988-1989, he having transgressed beyond proscribed politics had perfected and selected highly creative, advanced political strategies and tactics to bring justice to his party and the nation. Giving meaning to abstract thinking, though not in conformity to existing laws, yet under prevailing circumstances when his own party was proscribed, he was able to harness the use of strong arms tactics creatively to gain democratic freedom for his party. History had not spared any other alternative for him to propel the politicians who had turned a deaf ear to the voice of democracy but make them listen to the sound of gunfire.
Undisputedly, his name can lead any list among the greatest strategists ever born in the world, for reasons of his well-defined and specific role he played in the theater of Sri Lankan politics. He succeeded developing a political formula in the use of strong arm tactics which was developed under proscribed politics, paving a way for democratic revolution or formation of a broader spectrum of nationalist forces in order to overthrow an oppressive, corrupt regime of that period. It is in this manner that in 1988, he conducts his party in the direction of establishing a “Democratic People’s Alliance” unifying all patriotic forces in to one fold. The main weaponry he used to win national freedom, democracy and social justice was “Patriotism”. This choice conceives within the party, with overall strategy pursued under the process of “Through the Struggle against Imperialists, towards Socialism” rather than a mere political tactic. The persuasion at that time was to urge all nationalist forces in the country to rally round under a single patriotic flag, and, this was due to the fact that the demand for patriotism among the masses was high as he had succeeded in enhancing the patriotic consciousness in the society.
“Patriotism” was not just a mere painted slogan for him. Instead he was a patriot to the core or from the bottom of his heart. It is no exaggeration to say that before he becomes a Marxist, he was a Patriot, and, that is why he becomes a “Creative Marxist”. He was able to surpass all other bandwagon Marxists as he was a patriot before studying Marxism. Otherwise, he would also have got debased and ended-up and as an un-patriotic element, who is in favor of separatism like other old stereotyped Marxists we see today, and he would have definitely lived a quite a long life. He had never been a blind follower of Marxism. Therefore he was successful in making Marxism a philosophical tool creatively to change the society in the course of social development.
But some of stalwarts who belonged to the inner circle of his Party in 1988 and who were unable to acquire this deep strategic knowledge in the same form, it was a sad day for the nation to have lost the golden opportunity of making the “Democratic People’s Alliance” a reality. Subsequently, the nation saw a resort to and entry to the vicious circle of violence and loss of all hopes becomes the order of the day for the entire nation and this was due to that deviant scenario. Unable to understand the message of the Comrade Wijeweera in his final address to the nation on that 13th of November, some of his own party members unleashing of a great hatred was seen on the 13th of December, because they themselves had not correctly read Wijeweera. To say that, before Wijeweera was physically arrested by the then security forces, he was under political arrest by a few bureaucratic leaders, who had strategically deviated from the correct political line with their ultra-radical student mentality, is no exaggeration. There is no doubt, what Comrade Wijeweera failed on that day, was the way of putting forward the strategic foresight to the society, whereas it was realized successfully by “Prachanda” alias Pushpakamal Dayal of Nepal, since he would have studied well where Wijeweera went wrong (or where his comrades made it go wrong)
Now, not only Comrade Wijeweera but also those who had been opposed to his strategies and the whole nation had already paid dearly for the damage. Comrade Wijeweera had to offer his own head and thousands of his comrades and this was not due to a failure of choosing the strategy or choosing the wrong tactics according to the strategy. This was due to the failure to function practically as a leader, who was unable to lead his organization under the strategies and tactics he had chosen by himself. It can be described as a situation where he failed to gain the vote of the majority from his own organization. In other words it can be said that he accepted the false majority of his Party’s highest body (Polit-bureau) consisting of a few high ranking officials. This could be the only choice available to him under the circumstances of proscribed politics. But this majority is not indeed the vast majority of masses who loved, believed and made many sacrifices at grass root level for the sake of Comrade Wijeweera. They (majority of the PB) were a band of ultra-radicals having a mentality of a few "student climbers" and no more than a handful of sprinters who had won a few short distance races and rapidly climbed up the ladder of hierarchy of the Party leadership.
However, history has not only unkindly treated Comrade Wijeweera, but also the Sri Lankan Society as a whole during the past 20 years has failed to mete out justice to him. His own comrades, the best of artists of different breeds, literary giants or other informed social activists have not made even a small attempt to mete out justice even to a small extent either to him or to history created by him. It is true that various weekly print media commercializing the illustrious life and character of Comrade Wijeweera wrote colorful articles with a mixture of both true and false information in their compilations. But as a nation we have failed to open an “educational window” for the society to have a glimpse of the works of strategies as well as the weaknesses of this colossus. It is crystal clear that this failure is the root cause of many pathetic blunders that have wrapped-up the whole land of Sri Lanka. The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (People’s Liberation Front) which had grown in to a gigantic force in the country, having missed the strategic approaches formulated and introduced by Comrade Wijeweera has digressed and deviated itself off – track too, because of a few in the high ranks of the Party who had failed to understand the sprit of the Wijeweera’s works in depth. Those few at leader level who had acquired the heritage of officialdom, today unable to discover the “wheel” while laboring hard are inviting misfortune to both the entire membership who toiled with commitment and zeal to the Party as well as to the whole nation. In other words, in order to guarantee the heritage of Sri Lankan civilization, a force that is born to achieve those objectives is forcibly made to go against it because of this failure. When analyzing that failure in the context of behavior of all forces that got aligned against the war effort, at the most decisive moment during the course of military victory, it clearly shows how fatal this failure could have been to the nation.
Comrade Wijeweera since about the period in 1979 when the dogmatic (pedantic) theoretical tendency of “Right for Self Determination” emerged in the fold of the Party, he had conducted an intellectual dialog to defeat it on different levels spanning over 5 years. The jewel of this crown was the great thesis or research paper titled as “Our Solution for the National Question” that he wrote and introduced as an internal document to the Party. He clearly showed that the separatist struggle for an independent state is nothing but an un-patriotic armed struggle waged by the mercenaries of the imperialists. Had he not offered a long-term study, affirmed and proved that on a theoretical basis, it is manifestly clear the type of course of action of J.V.P would also have followed be the same strategic stances similar to those old Marxist parties that digressed and gladly followed the schemes designed to nourish separatism formulated by the NGOs.
If that historical mistake had recurred, no doubt that by this time as in the case of Sudan, this country too would have been separated, and become a country of unfortunate people engaged in fighting border wars killing each other? Even though Comrade Wijeweera was not given an opportunity to achieve the noble and final aspiration by history, yet, opportunity emerged for him to save this hallowed land from becoming a prey to separatism. The entire nation is obliged forever to Wijeweera for averting the massive irreversible disaster and saving our motherland. It was the J.V.P that was established under the auspices of Wijeweera’s own ideals was instrumental to draw up the road map and ground plan for complete extirpation of the separatist armed outfit orchestrated by Western powers while paving the way for a Presidential Mandate in 2005. In this land with no Wijeweera living, the rectification of errors done by him and thereby the elimination of recurring alias a retrogression of serendipity of this hollowed land would have been attempted by all the wicked reactionary forces. Unheeding the ideals of Comrade Wijeweera the modern Judas, had attempted giving indirect support to these wicked forces and they are like the reincarnation of those close associates who had been there with him at that time in 1989, and stabbed in the back of the political body of Wijeweera. It is true that it was not a success this time. Yet, undoubtedly every person who bemoaned of the unfortunate fate and had a clear conscience would have heard the sobbing and heaving of sighs of Comrade Wijeweera. Even today the circumstances have not changed. Just as there was no justice meted out to Wijeweera’s spirit, justice has not been meted out to the family and children of Comrade Wijeweera who are living physical symbols of tens of thousands of those youths, mothers, fathers who sacrificed their lives and committed for the noble aspiration and cause of the Party. What this expression means is not that they did not render any service to them or did not look in to the interest of their families. What everybody who has a clear conscience should accept is that no justice has been truly meted out to them. Can anyone debate about the mentality of those young children who are political prisoners in a camp of the Armed Forces of the Government? Every time, and when ever he sees a picture of a child in a book, magazine or a periodical he would have a prelude to the topic about children since he was indeed a loving father with a deep heart. Can any one who once loved him, can escape from guilty conscience regarding that great man, who had truly had a belief that parents should not be unwilling to sacrifice their lives to build a better society for their children that would guarantee all the best things be offered to the children, yet, is indifferent to the fate of children of this great man? For those children, justice has to be meted out. By not doing such justice, does it not signify that our society is indifferent not only to the history but also to the conscience of the Nation? Anyway, it is only that family and the children who physically recompense themselves in such a situation.
Comrade Wijeweera is a hero who represented a particular era and is among the heroes in the past 500 years who waged war in different ways fighting the imperialists and their mercenaries. What he did was a furtherance of the same struggle of what “Kepettipola”, “Kohukumbure Rate Rala” and others did against the imperialists, with a specific intellectual contribution. Later and more recently what Gotabhaya Rajapakse and Sarath Fonseka had continued was really an extension of the same struggle. Under such circumstances by not meting out justice to that great political figure of Comrade Wijeweera, not only the whole society but also the Sri Lankan civilization will have to pay for the lapses. Hence, like Comrade Wijeweera, all those comrades who have willingly followed the same path with him, this 20th anniversary of commemoration should be considered as a new decisive cut-off point. If they continue the journey they follow now disregarding this understanding, the present day leaders as inheritors of the party, the 21st anniversary would bring them an unavoidable beginning of a new tragedy. Therefore, going in search of Wijeweera’s ideology is essential than any other time, both on strategic grounds and the requirement of the current era. The leadership that was given the responsibility to lead the party in 2008 had to face the same situation just as what Comrade Wijeweera had faced during 1988. Just as Comrade Wijeweera had to bow down and was over-powered by this false majority, the present day leadership too had to bow down before the majority and was obliged to summon misfortune. The time has now just arrived to test whether they possess the requisite grit and determination to rectify it even at this last hour.
Comrade Wijeweera is such a remarkable personality who had the essence and energy of ten people. Can a single man possess all of his potentials, abilities and qualities? He creatively managed the concept of power and authority and used it with optimum dosage accordingly to the circumstances in his leadership personality. He was a graceful dictator, a knowledgeable orator who could knock-out and blast off any opponent to fall on all fours with his exceptional rhetorical skills. He is also an aggressive sharp debater. At no time in his life he attempted to abuse such potential or tried to enhance the personality of his leadership utilizing such remarkable talents. He rejected bureaucratic culture to employ his official powers vested on him in the mechanism of the party organization to dictate over the membership. Perhaps, this “weakness” would have offered an opportunity for a handful of ultra-radical lesser folks to oppose him and over-power him in 1989.
His leadership authority does not emerge by virtue of his officialdom in the party. It is also unlike as in the context of Sri Lankan political parties where the power derives from either the family tree or power of wealth. There is no doubt the fountain of that power of him springs from his encyclopedic vast knowledge and organization skills. Undoubtedly, his humane qualities also illuminated those potentials. His strategic excellence was clearly derived from his deep research knowledge on the history of world politics. His knowledge of the geographical location of Sri Lanka and road maps was simply amazing. He could recall to memory a short cut to reach a very remote village in Monaragala or Ampara. He is an expert of descriptive speech in his own narrative free style with appropriate word painting about the bio-diversity or the scenic beauty of Sinharaja Jungle or Yala sanctuary alike. He gets enchanted with the hallowed land of Sri Lanka, because his knowledge about it is at his finger tips rather than due to a political exigency and he always likes further studying about it. It is because of these reasons and knowledge he bravely and confidently places the idea to the nation regarding the removal of tea cultivation on steep slopes or high elevations of the country and replacing it with a re-foresting scheme.
Though in political history of our land he had played a gigantic role, in his day-to-day living he was an innocent and graceful peasant. He is an expert when he waxes lyrical about “Kirala Kiri Drink” (Soneratia acida in Botany) or a preparation of “Ambula” (a typical peasant’s curry - meal made from edible leafy vegetable found in villages with pinch of salt, spices and lime juice) describing its nutrient value and taste. In a real situation when tasting such a meal he would find time to give an illustrative running commentary about cookery like a connoisseur without hurting anyone present. He would not forget to comment on the Russian folks on their fine and foolish work illustratively and also their food he had tasted during his stay in the Soviet Union. This is he in whom the genuine peasant character lives.
Any one who has associated with Comrade Wijeweera will never forget his daily routine of life. He is a father, mother and a brother to his comrades. It is not his style to start discussing official work without inquiring whether they have had meals or inquiring how they are getting on. He never forgets the fact that however much he is busy that he is dealing with human beings. When a colleague is at sleep he would not forget to switch off the lights and adjust the blanket. While reading through out the night he would not be lazy to get-up and look to the needs of his colleagues who are tired and need sleep. When going around looking to their needs he would tip-toe and would stride spacing his feet wide apart lest he would disturb their sleep and if this scene was noticed by anyone making them to have a good laugh. In such instances he would take care to open a tap slowly and carefully in a bath room, without disturbing those sleeping.
He is such a leader who would not be reluctant to clean the toilet he uses even when there are many others around him. He conducts himself always in such an exemplary manner so that others would emulate him. He would not sanction wasting resources. He is a person who took strides slowly without being a weight to the earth when he walked. He did not owe to oxygen gas for his breath, in the environment where he lived, either. Any one could get gratuitous advice from him on how to get maximum use of tooth brush, sarong, cake of soap or a pair of shoes anytime. He taught his cadres of the Party to get used to eat even from a "Pideni Tatuwa” (an offering of food to the demon by village folks, a kind of witch craft offertory) on the road side. He also advised his comrades to utilize the left over rice in the pot at night by adding water and making “Diya Bath” for the next breakfast, making a psychological impact of leading a thrifty and frugal life and prepare them to endure the hardships and serve the motherland using the least resources at best. It is clear that those prisoners of 1971 rebellion, who crafted fantastic handicrafts using the discarded waste products in the prisons, were able to do so as a result of the developed culture nourished by Comrade Wijeweera. But today his successive generations sadly have any semblance of such qualities.
Undoubtedly, as soon as the controversial figure of Rohana Wijeweera is mentioned any one who has not associated him even for a short period, the picture he would get in his mind’s eyes would be that of a harsh, burly and stubborn man. But in his ordinary life this man was an affable man who loved his comrades, family and children. He was not a clever person who could flatter or show love with words. Therefore he always had an innocent doubt whether others actually felt the love he had in his heart for them. Such a graceful person was he. As stated above, that great political personality as he; had got over-powered because of this hidden innocence in him, by a handful of ultra-radical student leaders who were impulsive and bureaucratic in mentality. Even though this little thing about him which would be acceptable or not has to be mentioned. He was afraid to play with the lives of human beings ineffectually though he dabbled in justifiable politics.
It is such an innocent person who was subjected to a long elaborate process of questioning, statements taken, inhuman torture inflicted and finally assassinated by the state terrorists, having taken him to their custody. There is no question that he would have gladly endured such punishment. He was a person who was prepared to accept death at any time. He grieved much over the failure of meting out justice to his motherland and to the nation as well as over the responsibility he should not have personally shouldered but under common responsibility it was obligatory as his part to do so and was worried over very much about the gravity of such responsibility heaped on him. For these reasons death would have been a blessing in disguise for him. He offers his own head as inability to prevent the grave mistake of strategic derailment launched by a handful of his comrades of the creative political movement he himself had created and nourished. In the long statement he recorded on that tape, had there been a single word which would be useful to discredit and tarnish his image, his assassinators would not have hesitated to telecast the whole recording that day. It is clear that what they expected from that part released for telecasting was only for the explicit purpose of appeasing his followers and not to mete out justice to him. He did not leave any trace to indicate as proof that he had surrendered, frightened or broke down mentally, for even to any wicked person who could visualize his face at the last moment that day on the television screen.
One of the main weaknesses in Comrade Rohana Wijeweera that caused a failure is that he was a person who looked at the world above the horizon. This does not mean that he had forgotten where his foot-hold was. He was fully aware always about the micro-environment on which he had his foot-hold while responding to the macro-environment around. But he could not make a correct assessment of the void between his own dreams and the various stage dance performances of the ordinary laymen as they live on earth, sometimes crying, speaking, laughing and engaging in vile acts. Undoubtedly he must have been aware of such a vacuum had existed, but it poses the question whether he had the realistic knowledge of its length, width and depth of such a void. Thus to say that this is a scenario that any leader of a political party who has gone in to hiding with his party proscribed would face, rather than a perceived characteristic outwardly and that considered as more an appropriate form to mete out justice to him.
But as a mark of respect to him, to reduce the same void, it suffices to say that he engaged himself in a conscious and mighty effort. As a matter of fact the qualitative research methodology gets published and gained currency in the later part of the 1990’s. But in the late decade of 80’s he had knowledge about qualitative research methodology. It is a difficult to investigate whether that is due to his wide reading or his innate understanding. But whenever he uses questioning accessories as per this qualitative methodology to reach the inner minds and dig out the accurate data and information from the handful of people who are interacting with him. There is no doubt about the fact that he formed the habit of asking a series of questions one after the other, based on the response to the previous question without giving a breathing time to the host he meets, may have been based on this research methodology. Since he lived in concealment as a leader of a proscribed party he had lived an extremely stressful life due to the practical difficulty of receiving accurate information on real ground situation and also the difficulty in verifying the truth of those data, yet he possessed the understanding and managing to palliate such stress and strain.
Among his latent potentials and traits the foremost one is his strong adaptive ability to any environment or circumstances on the spur of the moment. The reason that could be attributed for such a trait found in him was his ability to adjust spontaneously and observe keenly at the same time. He could be alert and cautious like a leopard when he is living in a thick jungle and when he is living in a comfortable house he could become a relaxed and carefree youth and we have witnessed such complex behavior in him at the same time. Until the time he was taken to the wall politically, it is that vibrant and vivid skills that enabled him to protect himself for a long time as a person. It is this acquired attribute that served him to accept death at his last moment with composure, serene awareness of mind and poise facing the complex situations that had arisen. Not only that but also for the same reason he derived that ability to make a statement to the public accepting the responsibility he had for the entire society.
It is a great misfortune for the whole nation that the personal qualities, charismatic leadership, strategic specialties and enormous organizational skills of this great illustrious person have not yet become topics for open and intense discussion in the society. Not only that but also the colossal knowledge belongs to the whole world community whose aspirations are social justice and liberty while representing them on their behalf. The experience generated and formulated at the expense of his self-sacrifice as well as the sacrifices of over sixty thousand comrades has to be put to use for the benefit of the whole human civilization. In the event of non-use of such a costly experience it will result in a second round (in fact a third round) of compensation because it is not limited to the Party that holds exclusive official ownership of him but also to the whole Sri Lankan nation. Out of the whole world political arena, only the role played by Pushpakamal Dayal, a person dearly known as “Prachanda”, a former guerilla leader of Nepal who is the leader of the Maoist movement of Nepal and who later becomes the Prime Minister of Nepal has meted out the minimum justice to him. (By now Prachanda had relinquished the post of Prime Minister and had chosen to return to the street, and, definitely this is to reach the logical next milestone of the political highway he has created Recently when Bolivian President Evo Morales met the Former Cuban President Fidel Castro, he advised Morales to learn from Chavez (President of Venezuela) in this era.
Though the leftist political activists of our country are keen to learn from Fidel and Che Guevara, they seem to be not ready to learn from Wijeweera. For that reason, at last it has to be mentioned with grief that they may even forego the opportunity to learn from Chavez.