Another Poppy Day will be held on November 11 with a ceremony at the War Memorial in Colombo. As usual, many motorists are already displaying small wreaths of artificial poppy flowers in front of their vehicles. The revenue from these sales, as we know, go to serve Sri Lankan soldiers disabled during the conflict in the Northeast.
Unlike prior to 1980, Poppy Week is today a reflection of the deep divisions and complexity of the Sri Lanka’s national crisis. But todate no government has been willing to admit this fact publicly, though the Parliament has been divided over both war and peace right through the past 20 years.
In many other states, whether it is India fighting the Kashmiri, Sikh or Nagaland rebels, Russia fighting the Chechen rebels or the United States fighting Al Queda - both the government and the Opposition are largely united in fighting against separatists or other forms of terrorism. But it is not so in Sri Lanka.
For decades, the Sri Lankan Armed Forces have been accused of being the Tamil people’s enemy and therefore any Tamil who buys a poppy flower risks being called a traitor to the cause of the LTTE-sponsored "Tamil Liberation struggle." The fact that a few Tamils today serve in the military establishment (which ironically had a Tamil - the late Major General Anton Mutukumaru - as Army Commander) has greatly boosted this Tiger propaganda campaign. They, however, conveniently ignore that the "anti-Tamil" Sri Lankan military has been frequently providing transport and armed escorts to LTTE leaders, during the ceasefire period.
Therefore, the majority of Tamils are obviously reluctant to have any part in honouring our troops, despite the fact that a number of Tamil undercover operatives have helped the Sri Lanka military and that the LTTE has killed many Tamils who refused to toe its line. This truth is best illustrated in the words uttered by a young Tamil female colleague when I was on the editorial staff of a now-defunct newspaper, during Poppy Week about five years ago. She said, "I like to buy a poppy flower but I am scared." That explained a lot.
Moreover, to a section of the Sinhala ultra-Left, the Sri Lankan military has been waging an unjust war to suppress the Tamils’ "Right to Self-Determination." According these "socialist" panjandrums, the only way to ensure democracy and peace in the North and East is to give the LTTE what it demands.
In 1930s, the firebrands of the Left treated Poppy Week as pure and simple poppycock - a means of colonizing the minds of natives, who gained nothing from the "Imperialist War" (First World War). The Left launched a counter-offensive in the form of the Suriyamal (Sun Flower) Campaign that gained immense popularity. Suriyamala became a symbol of defiance against British Imperialism.
Then came World War II with the Nazi German invasion of Poland in 1939. To the Left, this global conflict too was just another "imperialist war" - that is until Germany attacked the Soviet Union, the world’s first socialist state. Suddenly, the local Left found itself in a dilemma. Doctrinaire Socialists split hairs over the Nazi offensive. What was until then an "imperialist war" became a "people’s war" to the Stalinists. The Trotskyites refused to fall in line and expelled Dr. S. A. Wickremasinghe and M. G. Mendis from the LSSP. Promptly, the Stalinists parroting their mentors in Moscow accused the LSSP of being "Fascist Agents" and "Fifth Columnists."
However, with the end of the World War, Suriyamal was slowly forgotten and Poppy Week gradually regained its former status, especially after the JVP insurgency of April 1971 when soldiers of post-independence Sri Lanka had their first combat experience. That was also the first and the last time both the government and the Opposition stood solidly behind the military in defending the state.
Since the 1980s, patriotism and peace in our country has come to mean different things to different people.
