On Growth Two

45. Tissa Wijeyeratne

Foreign Secretary Tissa Wijeyeratne of Sri Lanka was born February 17, 1923, in Ceylon, as his nation was then called. He studied at the Royal College in Colombo and at Cambridge. While a young man, he lived ten years in Europe, where he was active in the student movement. He returned to Ceylon and began a law practice, then joined the Communist youth movement. In 1964 he joined the Freedom Party, a socialist front formed by Madame Sirimavo Bandaranaike, the present Prime Minister of Sri Lanka. Later he became a member of the Central Committee of this party. After the United Leftist Front obtained an election victory in 1970, he was sent as ambassador to France and Switzerland. In 1974 he returned home to become Foreign Secretary.

On your background: Is it correct that you were born into an affluent family and that your father, Sir Edwin Wijeyeratne, was one of your country's distinguished convervative politicians?

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My father was a lawyer turned politician. He was a member of what was then called the Ceylon National Congress. Subsequently he became its president. He entered Parliament. As a Senator, he was Minister of House and Home Affairs and Rural Development. Later on, he became acting leader in the Senate and still later, High Commissioner for Ceylon in London. Finally, he was High Commissioner for Ceylon in New Delhi. So, from early childhood, I had a fairly easy life, financially speaking. This had a slightly deleterious effect on me, for I was not as interested in educational matters as I should have been. When I got to London, however, I met with a large group of Indian students, who were all very conscious of the antiimperialist struggle. Through them I came in contact with Marxist literature. After some time and considerable reflection I joined the student section of the Communisty Party of Britain alongside my Indian colleagues. I had occasion to travel in most of the Eastern European countries and I also went to the Soviet Union. I visited China on two occasions, the first of which had a profound impact on my views and my life.

Essentially, you went to London to study?

Yes. Curiously, it was the custom of the affluent families in my country - who were, of course, colon-oriented - to send their children to be educated in Britain. It was one of the accepted norms that one became a gentleman if one spoke English with a proper accent, acquired the social graces and values of an Englishman, and went back into the tropics to try to pattern ourselves as closely as possible on the values of the ruling class. By a curious paradox, I was taught to ride horses while there were very few in Sri Lanka. I learned to speak almost impeccable English - a language ninety percent of my people do not even understand. I was introduced to a level of English society which tried to make of me a worthy member of the ruling class in my country, as they did to their own children in theirs. We were supposed to turn out as brown Little Lord Fauntleroys. That all these efforts failed despite my twelve years as a student in Europe is to some measure a tribute to the success of the antiimperialist struggle in Asia, to whose ideals and perspectives we learned to subscribe.

How did this period in Europe affect you psychologically?

A continuous conflict now curiously exists within me. Sometimes I find life easy. I even at times succumb. I can well appreciate the exquisite beauty of a horse in movement when I occasionally watch a polo match. But then, suddenly, the horror of all this dawns upon me, and my mind turns to the shocking dilemma of the impoverished peasantry in Asia, who far from

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appreciating the sight of a horse in motion, do not have enough food to survive on for the week, and have to feed three or four children as well. This guilt complex, as it almost were, continues as a permanent struggle within me. I know the same goes for most of my colleagues who were for long periods in Europe and who have gone back to politics in Asian and African countries. Often when we meet we have discussions on this very personal aspect of our lives and the extent to which we have to remind ourselves continuously that our primary loyalties and obligations are to the ninety-five percent of the peasantry we have left behind in our respective countries. As opposed to that is the soft life one encounters in Europe in the context of the jobs we fill now.

Like being ambassador of Sri Lanka to the Quai d'Orsay?

I divide my life here into two parts. First there is the political part of the work as an ambassador and secondly there is a considerable amount of economic activity as well. This I find a stimulating intellectual challenge. Curiously enough, Paris is a window, not only to Europe, but almost to the whole world. Here, from Paris, you study all of Europe. From here you understand the Atlantic Community. It is Paris which on behalf of Europe speaks for all the Mediterranean. It is through Paris that you have a window into the Soviet Union. It is from Paris that you Europeans have an insight into the Far East and Mao. Paris is in a sense still the principal nerve center of political activity.

What of your social life here?

From the vantage point of my job it has been a fascinating experience to be here a couple of years: being able for instance to discuss with Huang Cheng, the Chinese ambassador, now in Washington, with Madame Binh, porcelain-like in the delicacy of her beauty yet like granite in the content of her political utterances, or with a political exile like the most intelligent Madame Dewi Sukarno. Separate from such fascinating encounters one has to go through the dull, tedious aspects of social life in the diplomatic service, where one is expected to talk ceaselessly, chatter senselessly on a large number of quite irrelevant topics to a constant stream of people. Perhaps I enjoyed doing even this for the first three months, because everyone was new and I sometimes felt as if the pages of Time magazine, or Soviet News, or Peking Review were coming to life next to me. Quite unexpectedly one found oneself talking to Richard Nixon at Charles de Gaulle's funeral, or later, on occasions to Haile Selassie, Madame Gandhi, the Queen of the Netherlands, King Feisal, or the Emperor of Japan. Except as an am-

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bassador, I would not have had these opportunities. But amidst all this I have always hungered for the life of a full-time political activist in the rural areas of my island home. This has made me very restless here.

To return to Asia: Maoist thought stresses social contradictions as a deep force in a continuing revolution.

Man is perpetually purifying himself either of his mistakes or of his social connections. A person who claims to be a socialist must continuously cleanse himself of his middle-class, non-working-class and non-peasantclass ideals and associations. He must constantly test his ideological attitudes in the crucible of a remorseless discipline. In the Soviet Union this perhaps happened during the early stages of the upheaval, but then, in the USSR, there was a swift insurrection rather than a revolution. In Russia power was captured quickly. As a result, the true, real Communist Party of the USSR, in my opinion was born after the revolution.

And China?

In China, the Red Army, which was Communist, created the revolution and is now building a Communist society. Therefore, I would say that in the Soviet Union there has been an ossification of the bureaucracy followed by corruption at the top. In Peking you do not find for instance a situation where Mao would have been presented with a super Cadillac de luxe by Richard Nixon.¹ For us, as Asians, these are symbols reflecting the social values of the ruling elite of a particular country. If you are a Communist, then you establish your roots in a proletarian and peasant society. If you are not a Communist, then you represent certain other interests. I will not say explicitly that the revolution has been totally betrayed in the Soviet Union but it is obvious that there is now some putrifying of a bureaucracy enjoying power without the checks of criticism and self-criticism.

Would this development apply to China?

No. I believe that Mao, on the other hand, is carrying on this continuous revolution to cleanse the cadres of the Communist Party. But perhaps even the Chinese party will eventually run into difficulties, because the same individuals continue to be members of the Communist Party Central Committee indefinitely. The same persons continue to be members of the Political Bureau. Thus an aristocracy comes into being. The moment this happens, people outside this charmed circle will be a little frightened to launch criticism.

Perhaps you recall the story of Nikita Khrushchev, when he read his

1 Typical of the atmosphere at UN headquarters, in the opinion of the interviewer, was that as soon as the People's Republic of China was allowed in at the UN, the Chinese chief delegate got himself an air-conditioned Cadillac: the classic status-symbol of all permanent representatives in New York, even those who represent the least affluent nations. They all see to it that their governments finance the largest limousines available in the United States, comparable to those used at the White House.

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de-Stalinization report to the Soviet Party Congress. A voice in the audience said, ‘If that is what Stalin did, what were all of you doing during this period?’ There was a hushed silence. Khrushchev got up and asked, ‘Who asked that question?’ There was no reply. Then Khrushchev said, ‘Well, we did what you are doing now....’

What is your solution?

Unless there is a situation where members of a Communist Party Central Committee will not be allowed to hold office for a specific period of time, say five or seven years, whatever the period may be, after which fresh blood must be introduced, you will find in all these countries the slow corrupting influence of power permeating into the minds and habits of men in the Central Committees. We see on the one side the dedication to and the carrying out of an ideology; on the other hand, we are faced with the reality of the unchecked use of power. Somewhere between these two a socialist solution must be found, since in my opinion, Marxism has now become pantheistic.

What do you mean by that?

Originally, when we were students, there was only one Stalin interpreting Marx and Lenin and one ‘Mother’ Communist Party. Then, as in the Roman Catholic Church, the schism came. Mao's interpretation of Marxism is absolutely correct, but only for China. Tito's interpretation is absolutely correct, for Yugoslavia alone. The same goes for Cuba. Castro's interpretation of Marxism is correct, yet confined to Cuba. And in the same way, Brezhnev's interpretation of Marxism is correct, but for the Soviet Union. We know now the Togliatti thesis of polycentralism. It is as though there were many angels, each claiming infallibility in interpreting your Christian Bible.

As we see around the world many varieties of ‘democracy.’ Would you say that a system in which the people choose - in principle, that is - a new set of politicans every four years is a healthier state of affairs than one in which a Central Committee of a political party consists of a clique that has been there for years?

You and I, who were nurtured in the cradle of a European intellectual environment, tend to think that democracy means parliamentary democracy and an individual's right to exercise his vote. This is a luxury, of course, that underdeveloped economies cannot afford. It is definitely not the manner in which democracy should express itself in Asia, because the ruling elites would simply use their money to manipulate electoral campaigns. And in the

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end there would be no real mass participation, which after all is the essence of democracy. Demos and kratos, the power of the masses, the power of the majority. You do not get that in Asia.

And India?

The ruling elite merely corrupts the ballot box. The vast masses do not participate. This after all is a totally different concept of democracy as conceived in small social-democratic units like Sweden, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, or Switzerland. In some underdeveloped economies, take Egypt for instance, surely there is a higher level of political democracy now under a one-party system than there ever was with a so-called multiple-party system loaded with corruption in the days of King Farouk. Therefore, if you accept my line of argument, also in my own country, Sri Lanka, there could be much greater mass-participation under a new system of government than there is now with a series of endless, useless mutterings of speeches that passes for parliamentary democracy.

And Sukarno's concept lying between liberal democracy and one-party rule, when he coined the phrase ‘guided democracy’? He believed in ‘nasakom,’ welding the three mainstreams in his land - nationalism, religion, and Communism - together.

Sukarno is the only true hero of modern Indonesian history. He welded a vast nation of thousands of islands together and created one solid nation, one people. That is his greatest contribution, not only to Indonesia but to all of Asia as well. Sukarno was not an Indonesian leader alone. Like Banderanaike or Allende, Nasser, Nehru, or Ho Chi Minh, he was a proud and powerful symbol of the Third World. ‘Guided democracy’ might well have been a solution for Indonesia. But I disagree on some other fundamental points, as I have disagreed in the many discussions I had here in Paris with Madame Dewi Sukarno on this subject. She is of the opinion, it seems to me, that Sukarno could have gone a little slower. I disagree. I put it another way.

Such as what?

Once Sukamo had decided on certain perspectives and goals, I believe that he failed because he did not take his people totally and completely into his confidence by arming them to enable them to defend the perspectives he had set for them.

Sukarno abhorred bloodshed. He was desperately trying to achieve the goals of the Indonesian revolution by peaceful means.

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Yes. But look at what eventually happened. He met with almost the same fate that Allende did in Chile. Once Allende had decided what his goals were, and once he was moving toward the achievement of those perspectives, then he should have firmly decided as to who were his friends and who were his enemies. If Sukarno had certain objectives in view for the future development of Indonesia, why at a given moment did he not transfer power completely to the people so that they would keep him and his ideals in power? Events convince me now that there is an enormous amount of truth in Mao's statement that political power talks through the barrel of a gun. That, Sukarno ought to have known. The fact that his thoughts are being crushed is precisely because he did not use weapons to safeguard himself. Instead, these weapons were employed by Indonesian fascism to liquidate him. What I am saying is that Allende is dead because he, too, did not use weapons to defend himself. He was massacred by the very weapons which he himself should have used.

You can play bourgeois democracy all the way and lay total emphasis on the ballot box. One of the two. It depends on the political leadership itself. You have to choose between bourgeois democracy on the one side and people's democracy on the other. Or to put it another way, choose between the ‘weapons of argument and the argument of weapons.’ The first technique keeps the bourgeoisie in power; the second hands over power to the people.

How do you view the race going on between the systems in China and India right now?

Frankly, I do not believe there is a race at all. In my view, the political and economic situation in India is stagnant. China is in the race. India is still at the starting point. It is still using this experiment we call ‘ballot-box democracy,’ but no one seems to analyze whether the expression that we use is applicable to India or not. People speak of India as the world's largest democracy, but few of you realize that so many of those humble, poor voters in Asia can be bought. One can purchase, after all, for a few rupees, the vote of an impoverished, hungry, and broken voter. The amounts of money spent on electioneering in Asia are enormous and the results quite chaotic. I have been told that a million rupees once passed to rally certain votes in one electorate in India. What is democracy, parliamentary democracy, under those circumstances? It is actually the buying of a commodity on behalf of the ruling classes, who play politics at their level. The elite have purchased votes from the masses in order to keep those very groups from participating in the political process for yet another five years.

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Therefore, this question of comparing China and India is a false premise. Not irrelevant, simply false.

So you consider the Chinese experiment impressive?

China is inspirational. Incidentally, I believe that Western imperialism - and the Japanese, without intending to do so - accelerated the Chinese revolution by decimating the national bourgeoisie of China. Initially, this class - most of them tutored in American and European universities - played a heroic role in the antiimperial struggle; as a result of this, tragically for them as individuals, they were discovered by the West and by the Japanese and destroyed. This left the Communist Party of China with a predominantly working class and peasant base.

What about the leaders of the Asian nationalist movements today?

Remember that ninety percent of the upper class that emerged as political leaders in Asia during this century were those who returned from universities in Europe. The majority of student leaders from Asia who were contemporaries of mine went back with socialist oriented ideas and joined their respective Communist or Socialist parties. To some extent, we inspired the workers and peasants to fearlessness, as they were looking for a party and a confident and literate leadership to represent their interests. But so many of our class overstayed our presence in the Communist and Socialist parties of Southeast Asia.

Surely there are many Marxists from the elitist groups you refer to still occupying positions of leadership in the revolutionary parties of Asia.

It is in the interests of reaction that the leadership of these progressive movements be retained by affluent professionals and political adventurers playing and talking revolutions over evening cocktails. So many of these Asian Communist and Socialist leaders still live, eat, dress - and when they go to sleep, talk in their dreams - in English, French, or Dutch! It is this staggering cultural and economic gap between them and the mass of our people that prevents the development of a true national liberation and socialist movement. The progressive movements of Asia must eventually liberate themselves from this accretion. What I am trying to say is that however deeply read and learned we were in our textbook knowledge of Marxism and Marxist writers, we were not really revolutionaries. We were merely radicals. Shouting revolutionary slogans on May Day did not make us revolutionaries. For that we would have needed the experience of the Red Army in the long march in China. Therefore, in an ultimate sense, we were

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only intellectuals belonging to the intelligentsia. Asian revolutionaries will be born of those who want a revolution in order to better their economic conditions. To them the revolution has a deep personal meaning and reality. We, the intellectuals from outside these class groups, will not be the custodians of the revolutionary struggle. That inheritance must devolve on those who benefit most by the revolution. My own class will surely be liberated spiritually and intellectually by the revolution. But the leadership must be taken by and belong to those who will be liberated economically and totally by the struggle. Experience will help their own personalities to flower and the peasants themselves will produce the intellectuals of what, after all, is their own movement.

What role do you predict for elitist groups in Asian politics?

I can answer that question by taking the example of my own country. In Sri Lanka we have the highest level of literacy in all of Asia. By 1977, sixty percent of our population will be under thirty years of age. Most of them are the children of the peasantry who are now schooling themselves through universities by the flickering light of coconut-oil lamps in village huts under conditions of incredible poverty. It is from groups such as these that the true leadership of the Third World of tomorrow will be born. Our group, the Western returned Socialists, are a curious, eccentric, and passing phenomenon in an Asia during the immediate aftermath of colonialism. Our task now is to strive to erase ourselves as a class from Asian society and acquire in the process the experience and wisdom of a peasantry in the process of liberating itself and us as well. This, I think, is a noble goal, a really nobel perspective, if we can fulfill it. The task is stupendous. That is why so few of us have really succeeded and so many of us, myself included in this second category, fail.