Meditate Sri Lanka

No security device can contain a crowd that is overwhelmed, and especially by hunger. The invasion of the palaces of the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister, in Sri Lanka, provides the latest example. Accusation of poor governance and suspicion of corruption around the financing of major infrastructure projects, once morest a backdrop of fuel shortages, power cuts and disappearance of food.

On June 28, the Government of Sri Lanka announced the stoppage of fuel distribution, reserving the precious fuel for essential services: buses, trains, ambulances. Schools had to close, and homework recommended. The following July 5, revealing a foreign debt of 51 billion dollars, the Prime Minister declared the country bankrupt.

Sri Lanka had seen its tourism sector, the main foreign exchange earner, be hit hard, first by the jihadist attacks committed on Easter Sunday 2019 once morest Christian churches and, in 2020, by the Covid pandemic. Since the beginning of 2021, Sri Lanka has been importing more massively than it exports to find itself today short of foreign currency.

This economic crisis, now coupled with a political crisis with the street demonstrations which forced the President and the Prime Minister to resign, brings back into the news the timeliness and transparency of projects such as the deep-water port of Hambantota: built in 2008 thanks to a Chinese loan of 1.3 billion dollars, it had to be sold in July 2017 for 99 years to China, Sri Lanka being unable to repay its debt of around 100 million dollars annually. The Port City project, a real estate and port complex envisaged on an artificial peninsula reclaimed from the sea, near the capital Colombo, is also likely to find itself similarly under fire from critics (“Was cash strapped Sri Lanka duped by China in Hambantota Port?”, Hindustan Times, June 26, 2022).

Postscript: Although the maritime policy of the former government in the 19th century was hesitant (cf. Manassé Esoavelomandroso, “The Merina oligarchy and the sea at the end of the 19th century”, Omaly sy Anio, 5-6, pp.55-59), in 1881, Prime Minister Rainilaiarivony acquired a sailboat from Procter Brothers of Tamatave, which was renamed “Antananarivo” to serve as a training ship for Malagasy sailors. “Antananarivo” made the trip from Sri Lanka, under the orders of the Norwegian Commander Ludwig Larsen who had this comment, on their arrival in Sri Lanka: “it was striking to see how much the faces of the Malagasy resembled those of the inhabitants of the island . They were like first cousins” (Fridjov Birkeli, “On the maritime projects of the former Hova Government”, Bulletin Académie Malgache, ns, t.27, 1946, page 153). This great resemblance is explained by the framework upstream of the settlement of Madagascar. The “Sabian Way”, whose southernmost points are Mozambique and Madagascar, is a sea current which, in both East-West/West-East directions, depending on the season, connects East Africa to the China, through southern Arabia, India, Sri Lanka and Indonesia. This marine current would have enabled Indonesians to settle permanently on the intermediate islands (Sri Lanka, Maldives), probably on the Swahili coast of Africa, before populating the Comoros and Madagascar. Sri-Vijaya (land of Victory), Sri Lanka (land of the Brothers of the Lion), SriJayawardhanapura (Kotte near present-day Colombo, Sri Lanka). And Sri-Buzi/Bugi/Buki (country of the Indonesians): the ancient chronicles thus evoked the people of the Comoros and Madagascar. “Male-diva/dipa”, currently Maldives, would be the Malay island. Ancient Arabic chronicles also referred to Ceylon/Sri Lanka as Sri-Javanka, the land/island of the Javanese.