Carlo’s logic on National Anthem is out-dated
Carlo’s cockeyed logic
By Gunadasa Amarasekera
My friend Carlo either lacks the common sense to understand simple statements or distorts them to his advantage, resorting to cunning, obfuscating it with illogical quibbling in the name of logic. His reply is a good example.
This is what I said on the National Anthem issue. ‘In what language the NA should be sung depends on how one defines the nature of the State. If it is a unitary State with a unitary civilization, then it should be sung in the language of that civilization. If it is a multi-civilizational federal state then it could be sung in any of the languages belonging to those civilizations”.
Carlo distorts it in this manner-“Dr. Gunadasa Amarasekera argues that because Unitary States have one National Anthem then states that have one National Anthem must be Unitary States’. He conveniently omits the ‘civilizational factor’, which is fundamental to my argument and goes on to obfuscate it with his cock-eyed logic. This is the creed of the imposter and not that of the intellectual.
Belgium is a Unitary state where the National A is sung in both French and Flemish, which means though it is a Unitary State, constitutionally, it is a multi-civilization State. US is a Federal State, but according to Martin Jacques, who has made an in-depth study of Civilization States, it is a unitary civilization State, though its civilization is only four hundred years old. Hence its National Anthem is sung in English-in the language of its civilization.
India, a creation of the British Raj, is presently a Federal State, but had been a civilization State for long periods based on the Hindu Civilization dating back to centuries. The BJP appears to revive this lost Civilization State using the Hinduthwa Ideology. It is because of the civilizational consciousness generated by that long civilization that Indians have no difficulty in accepting one National Anthem. (However, I understand that there is a move by some elements in the BJP to have a Hindi version or to have a new National Anthem in Hindi). China is a civilization state with a civilization going back to three thousand years. China’s destiny has been guided by this civilization state right along and continues to do so, according to Martin Jacques who has promoted the concept of civilization state with his book, “When China Rules the World”.
Sri Lanka was a civilization State for over 2500 years, but has ceased to be so with the foreign domination. This is not because the Sinhala Buddhist civilization has become fossilized with the lapse of two centuries, as maintained by Samuel Huntington, but because we had no enlightened leadership with the necessary vision: Anagarika Dharmapala was the only exception.
A Thai intellectual has made a study of South Asian states with a similar fate. According to him, there were three such – Burma, Cambodia, Ceylon that had the potential to go back to that civilization state and evolve a new model of governance based on that civilizational foundation. According to him this is what the Sinhala Buddhists of Ceylon expected of Bandaranaike, when they put him in power in 1956.According to him, Bandaranaike whose head was full of Western liberalism was not capable of such a vision.
I think it is time that Carlo leaves behind Russell and Rationalism, and the new fangled socio-biology with which he seems to be highly enamoured, and stop coming out with hilarious concoctions as ‘scientific civilization’
As for the statement regarding the nationalist children enjoying the munificence of scientific civilizations abroad, away from Sinhala tribalism, I find Carlo out of date and out of depth. These children come back when they realize that Sinhala tribalism is preferable to the so called humane merciful benevolence of Skin Heads and of Ku Klux Klans spawned by that scientific civilization.
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