Who killed Susantha Anura Bandara?

" The fights among students take different forms and very often it occurs between the group sponsored by the JVP and what may be called the anti-JVP group. They attack one another with clubs, bicycle chains, stones and sometimes students are armed with lethal weapons."
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by Prof. Nalin de Silva

(July 28, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) It is sad that yet another University student has died as a result of a clash between the pro JVP group and an anti JVP group. Susantha Anura Bandara had been admitted to the hospital apparently after a clash between the two groups and when he died a few days ago the so-called Inter University Student Federation (IUSF) that has no legal status and is only an arm of the JVP accused the police for killing Bandara. Bandara had not been a member of the JVP student group and it was clear from the very beginning the so-called IUSF was attempting to sell the dead body to gain political mileage. However the mother of the deceased student made a statement to the effect that her son before he died had claimed that one Bassa or Basnayake had assaulted him and that the latter had struck on his head twice with a stick. It was later revealed that this Basnayake belongs to the JVP group.The IGP Dr. Mahinda Balasuriya at a press conference stated this and now Anura Kumara Dissanayake has held another press conference to deny that a JVP student was involved. According to Dissanayake the Badulla Judicial Medical Officer Dr. M. N. Rahuk Haq’s post-mortem report has said that there was no evidence of violence and the body had no injuries.

I hold no brief for the IGP or the government. I only state that Bandara died as a result of the clash between the two groups. The IGP appears to be depending on information furnished to him and drawing conclusions based on such information. I do not know anything of the post-mortem report and MP Anura Kumara Dissanayake may be correct on that score. However, I have found it difficult to understand how these honourable MPs behave. Dissanayake knew that Anura Bandara had no body injuries and that there was no evidence of violence. However, in spite of having this information he kept quiet when the IUSF accused the police of murder. Even today they are carrying out their vociferous campaigns against the police and Dissanayake does not tell his disciples that Bandara did not have physical injuries.

It is up to the courts of law in Sri Lanka to decide whether somebody killed Susantha Anura Bandara and if so who did it. Let the police produce the suspect, if any, before a court of law and proceed in the usual manner. My intention is not to get involved in the legal process but to examine the politics behind the death of the student of the University of Ruhuna. Most of the problems in the universities are due to the JVP students who are in a minority. However, none of the other political parties are involved in university politics to the same extent as the JVP and therefore the non JVP majority either have to form their own student societies without a political support or keep quiet. Very often the students opt for the latter and the JVP students get elected to the student bodies by default.

The fights among students take different forms and very often it occurs between the group sponsored by the JVP and what may be called the anti-JVP group. They attack one another with clubs, bicycle chains, stones and sometimes students are armed with lethal weapons. However, this is not a recent phenomenon as it was observed in Peradeniya in the late sixties. This was the time the JVP became active in the universities for the first time and they were determined to capture power through sheer violence. The bomb that exploded in the Marrs Hall in the early part of 1970s should have been an eye opener. The JVP attracted young university students those days and some university student unions were controlled by leaders who had JVP inclinations.

Before the latter part of the sixties the LSSP, the CP and the MEP dominated student politics in the universities but they were interested in the class struggle and the civil war only theoretically in the Marxian sense. In practise, they were engaged in the struggle to obtain a class at the final examinations and in a war to succeed at the civil service examination. The Trotskyites and the Stalinists would argue in the common room or debate with one another in the dining hall on the class struggle and the civil war but afterwards get back to their comparatively luxurious rooms to prepare for the ‘class struggle’ and the civil war that mattered most to them personally.

However, in their debates they believed in the dictum that according to historical materialism the working class would capture power and more importantly that it was an objective necessity, though they did not prepare for it even in their dreams. Occasionally they would march to Kandy shouting slogans have an argument with the police officers who themselves had been undergraduates in the yesteryears and hence knew that the slogan shouting would end at the Lyons Café and it was good fun to all including the general public who watched the revolutionary march from Peradeniya to Kandy. However, for the young undergraduates who began to enter the universities in the late sixties the revolution was serious business though they were more romantic about it. They had their peasant parents and younger brothers and sisters waiting for them to come back as graduates and the family depended on them much more than in the case of the previous generation.

Recently the 1960 batch celebrated their fiftieth anniversary of admission to the university and in our first year we were with the fourth year students who had stayed to follow or, shall I say, read for a special degree from this batch. In turn in our fourth year we were with the "pioneers" of violent politics and we were able to observe for ourselves at first hand the nascent revolution in the universities. We definitely belonged to the transitional period and the 1960 batch never would have imagined that it was possible for a student to kill a fellow student. After all, to get "booted" by a girl and to see that another batch mate had moved on to fill the vacancy was not a cause for committing murder. However, by 1967 the ominous signs were all there for anybody to see between Mahaweli and Hantane. It was only a matter of time and the LSSP, the CP and the MEP had to give in to the violent politics of the JVP. The members of the former parties were engaged in theoretical and theatrical violence but the latter having taken the objective reality, the necessity of the class struggle, the inevitable victory of the working class from historical materialism were determined to make sure that the violent revolution took place and ended with victory of the so-called working class. If the latter could not find the theoretical working class described by Marx and Trotsky they substituted themselves for the working class. The former would call the latter petite bourgeoisie but for the latter the former were "pakis booruwas". The former may not have been violent in practice but they were the honourable seniors or the jeshta uththamayas who introduced violence to the raw fresher translated as kunu freshas. I myself will be retiring from the university service in about two months without offering a solution to the problem. The theoretical "panthi vairaya" has taken the form of a practical "vipaksha vairaya" and we cannot absolve ourselves of the blame claiming that in our time there were no murders of students in the universities either by the police or by the fellow students.