SARATH

- Rohini Hensman

[This is taken from the collection of short stories by the author that is to be published in January 2004 by Earthworm Press, India, htttp://earthwormbooks.com]

Sarath slipped into his new job like a duckling into water. Having spent so much time first observing and then assisting his father, there was not much he could learn from anyone else. He was based at the main union office in Colombo, but soon started being sent out to set up a new office in the fledgling industrial area north of the capital. This was a different type of industry, with a large proportion of women workers and fierce opposition to trade unions from employers. He had only one colleague to help him, a young woman called Ranmali who was even newer than he was. Together they struggled to make inroads in this tough and unfamiliar territory.

All Sarath’s skills were called into play soon after he started work, when the union was rocked by an earthquake that split it down the middle. Sarath merely saw this as a challenge, but his father, who had nursed the union from its infancy, was shattered. ‘It’s not the end of the world, Thaththa,’ Sarath tried to comfort him. ‘Nearly half the workers have come with us, and maybe we’re better off without those rotten Sinhala chauvinist elements. I don’t agree that there shouldn’t have been a split over this issue. After all, the whole rationale of a union is to build workers’ unity; how can we compromise with people who want to divide workers along ethnic and linguistic lines?’

‘If that was the reason why the union split, I would agree with you,’ his father replied. ‘But you know as well as I do that the workers who went along with them are not necessarily all anti-Tamil, nor did all those who came with us do so for the right reasons. Most of them just followed the leader they had always followed. For them it was a matter of loyalty, not ideology.’

‘Well, then, that suggests a failure of education in the old union, doesn’t it? We must make sure that our members are aware of all these issues now, so that they can’t be so easily misled in future. And in some cases, the workers' own prejudices are to blame. We need to tackle those, and it won’t be easy.’

‘That’s very true.’

‘But on one point I do agree with you, Thaththa,’ continued Sarath. ‘I think it’s neither necessary nor healthy for unions to be linked to political parties. Parties have a different agenda from the rights and welfare of workers, and I feel that workers often get used for a cause which is not their own. But I don’t need to tell you this - you know it already. Look at the plantations!’

His father nodded gloomily. Despite his years of devoted work, the majority of plantation workers belonged to the CWC, which was based on a communal rather than working-class identity. Seeing their former left-wing champions join a coalition that so shamelessly betrayed them could only have confirmed their suspicion that the Sinhalese could not be trusted. What was the point of telling them to unite with Sinhalese workers, when the hard fact remained that Sinhalese workers had citizenship and votes while most of them had not? Who could blame them for not wanting a unity based on inequality? Not Sarath’s father, who had pledged himself to fight for their rights as citizens as well as workers, and found himself stranded when his party abandoned that basic principle. He clung to the principle, along with the rest of the breakaway group, only at the cost of a disastrous split in the union.

If Sarath stayed on in the union despite its links with the party - and, moreover, persuaded his father to do likewise - it was for one reason and one reason only: to retain contact with the trade union movement nationally. He could see no other way to do this. It was different in the public sector. Bank unions, for example, had an Annual General Meeting where you could meet delegates from the North, the East, the far South, the hill-country, and find out what was happening to fellow-workers in other parts of the island. But he would have no such opportunity if he resigned from the party-affiliated union.

Agnes, Paul and Shameem were unable to understand his dilemma. But some years later, Leelawathie, a young garment worker whom Shameem had brought home when she was sacked, could sympathise with it. ‘I know what you’re saying, Sarath Aiya,’ she said. ‘I was working in the same industrial area where you have an office, but we couldn’t take your help because the union people at our factory were connected to another party. We didn’t even know you had organised so many factories! If we had been together instead of being divided by the parties, we might have been able to unionise much more quickly and easily. On the other hand, if we had a union only in that industrial area, we wouldn’t know what was happening in the rest of the country. That doesn’t matter to me, but I can see why it would bother you.’

Most of the time, however, Sarath was too preoccupied with other matters to give much thought to such problems. At the head office in Colombo, he had to do things in a more or less traditional way, although he did manage to introduce a few changes. But in the new office he was free to innovate - and, indeed, forced to do so, since the workers’ fear of victimisation made it imperative to work in a semi-clandestine manner in the early stages of organising. Ranmali’s role was crucial here. Keeping a low profile at the office, she did her main work in the field, contacting girls in their crowded boarding houses, finding out their grievances, assessing which workers and which factories were ripe for unionisation.

Although in theory Ranmali was working under Sarath, in reality it was an equal partnership, with all significant decisions being taken jointly. This required frequent discussions over strategy and tactics, in the course of which a more personal relationship developed between them. Sarath learned that Ranmali was the sixth child in a family which barely had the means to support two. ‘All my life, as long as I can remember, I felt unwanted,’ she told him. ‘I didn’t mind the poverty - everyone around us was poor, and we children still managed to have fun. But the way my mother and father looked at me with resentment - as if I had come into the world purposely to torment them - I couldn’t stand that! I ran away as soon as I could, and got a job in a factory here by lying about my age.’ It was not long before she was dismissed, being too fiery to accept the oppressive treatment without talking back. ‘At first I thought it was a disaster,’ she said, ‘but actually it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me in my life, because now I’ve got this job, and I love it!’ Sarath was full of sympathy as well as admiration, and soon found himself missing her on days when they didn’t meet.

Sometimes their discussions took place in the new office, sometimes - if Sarath was not going there - Ranmali came to the old office after work. But the latter was inconvenient, because she would then have to travel back late at night. Sarath thought a better arrangement would be for her to come home with him, and leave for work from there in the morning. The first time he tried this out, however, he knew it was a mistake. Without being rude to Ranmali, Agnes was so formal in her politeness that it was clear to Sarath there would be trouble the next day. Sure enough, they had an argument, Agnes was angry and upset, and Sarath decided it was not worth all this emotional upheaval to persist with his plan. Instead, he got clearance from the old office to spend three afternoons and evenings a week at the new one instead of just one day, pleading an expanding workload there as his reason. On those evenings he could be with Ranmali as late as he liked, constrained only by the need to catch the last bus back.

Sarath’s desire to spend time with Ranmali by no means indicated a reluctance to go home. He and Agnes were renting a tiny place close to Shameem’s and Paul’s bungalow, and usually they had their evening meals together, talking about everything in the world from the war in Vietnam to the poor little girl in the neighbourhood who had died of leukemia. Then there were new concerns when Shameem became pregnant, Leelawathie appeared out of nowhere, also pregnant, and before you knew what was happening, there were two new additions to their family, Ranjith and Sohel. He was not surprised when Agnes raised the issue with him not long afterwards. ‘You think we should have a baby too?’ he smiled. ‘Well, why not? The more the merrier! I love the little creatures!’

The pregnancy, when it occurred, was dreadful. Agnes was so ill that Sarath more than once thought that it should be terminated. But she would not hear of it, and persisted to the end. The delivery was an even worse nightmare. After hours of agony, the doctor announced that she would have to go through a Caesarian because she lacked the strength to push the baby out. At that moment, Sarath’s predominant feeling was anger: at the doctor and nurses, for mismanaging the delivery, and at Agnes, for putting them through this. But later, sitting in the corridor waiting for the operation to be completed, he admitted to himself and to Paul, who had stayed with him throughout, that anger was only a cover for his fear of losing Agnes. He might have arguments with her, she might accuse him of not caring about her, he might feel she was making unreasonable demands on him, but the assumption underlying everything, even their fights, was that they would always be there for each other. Life without her was unthinkable. ‘I know’, said Paul, squeezing his hand affectionately, ‘I know. I would feel exactly the same. But from what the doctor said, I don’t think there’s much danger. I’m sure she’ll come through all right.’

Not much danger, he said. But even that one-in-a-hundred chance that things might go wrong was too much for Sarath.The sight of his perfectly-formed baby daughter brought him no joy until Agnes had safely regained consciousness. And then his first words to her were, ‘No more babies, O.K.? One’s enough! We’re not going through this again!’

‘But look at her, Sarath,’ beamed Agnes. ‘She’s so beautiful! Don’t you think she was worth it?’

Sarath looked at the sleeping baby, and at last his face relaxed into a smile. ‘All right,’ he conceded, ‘now that you’re safe, I’m willing to agree. But we don’t need any more! After all, we’ve got Ranjith and Sohel already, haven’t we?’

‘That’s true,’ agreed Agnes, much to Sarath’s relief. Taking her home posed the next problem. Two days before she was due to be discharged, it was clear to Sarath that she would be in no condition to look after herself and the baby. What should he do? Ask Shameem and Leelawathie to help? But they already had their hands full. They might drop in once or twice a day, but it would not be fair to ask them to do more. Could Agnes stay with Paul and Shameem until her strength returned? No, that would be too much of an imposition on them, and she would never agree to it. The problem kept him awake all night, and in the morning he went straight to the leader of his union branch and said, ‘I need to take paternity leave, Comrade Upali.’

‘What paternity leave?’ asked Upali sharply. ‘We don’t have any such thing, either for our members or our activists.’

‘Well, we should,’ persisted Sarath. ‘In any case, I need it. My wife has had a Caesarian, and there’s no one at home to look after her and the baby when the hospital discharges her tomorrow.’

‘Oh, I see,’ said Upali, more sympathetically. ‘But we can’t do without you, Sarath. What about her mother? Or yours?’

‘They’re both working, and I’ve never heard of grand-maternity leave! I’ll tell you what: I’ll work half time for three months. You can pay me half my salary if you like, though that would make life difficult, since Agnes doesn’t get maternity benefit either.’

Upali nodded. ‘I’ll talk to the others this evening and see what I can do,’ he said. Before closing down the office at night, he told Sarath that his request had been granted: he could work part-time for three months, and would still be paid his full salary.

It was at around this time that Paul’s nephew Jeeva, a little boy of five or six, started coming down from Jaffna to spend his holidays with them. Suddenly the old bungalow was filled with a whole new generation, and Sarath wanted to share in the fun. He loved all the children, but developed a specially strong bond with Jeeva and Ranjith: Jeeva, because his courage and intelligence marked him out (‘That boy’s going to become a leader one day,’ predicted Sarath) and Ranjith, because for some indefinable reason he reminded Sarath of himself as a small boy.

Absorbed in his family, his work and his relationship with Ranmali, Sarath was taken by surprise when the island was plunged into a crisis due to an attempted insurrection by a group which called itself the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna. Failed, of course: how could anyone expect an armed insurrection to succeed in democratic Lanka? While disapproving of the government’s crack-down on them, and supporting attempts by Paul and Agnes to defend their human rights journalistically and legally, Sarath made no secret of his scorn for these would-be revolutionaries, supposedly modelling themselves on Che Guevara. ‘Did they really think a revolution is just a matter of hiding in the jungles and jumping out with swords or guns?’ he asked. ‘Did they seriously think that workers would support them? Why on earth should workers support people whom they have never heard of, who have never done anything for them?’

‘Don’t be so hard on them, Sarath Aiya,’ said Leelawathie, looking surprised at his vehemence. ‘They’re probably simple fellows like the boys in my village, without the kind of political knowledge and experience that you have.’

‘That’s right,’ agreed Paul. ‘How can you blame them? They were promised that “Sinhala Only” would solve all their problems, and instead they find themselves plagued by poverty and unemployment, just as they were before. Naturally they feel cheated!’

‘Hang on a minute!’ laughed Sarath, putting his hands up in front of his face as if to ward off an attack. ‘Don’t all shoot at once! I didn’t mean to insult your village boys, Leela, nor do I disagree with your analysis, Paul. But I still maintain there’s something very...’ he groped to find the right word, ‘...something dirty about the leaders of this movement.They don’t understand the importance of mass work: all right, I can understand that, put it down to their lack of experience. But treating the plantation workers as enemies - that I cannot forgive!’

‘He’s right,’ said Agnes sombrely, looking around at the others. ‘I noticed that too, and it made me feel slightly sick. It’s a typically fascist way of operating - scapegoating some helpless, oppressed community. I’m willing to fight for their right to a fair trial and so forth, but I hate to think what would happen if they ever came to power.’

Agnes had put her finger on it. There was something deeply disturbing about the way in which practically all political parties, whether in power or aspiring to power, colluded in targeting these already victimised people. And it was even more disturbing that the parties were supported by ordinary people whose class instincts surely should have taught them better. If this anomaly upset Sarath, it drove his father to despair. He sank deeper and deeper into a depression that became almost suicidal when nationalisation of the estates was carried out. How much brutality can be hidden behind such a fine-sounding word! Sarath was appalled and baffled. Where did all that violence and evil come from? If he had not witnessed it with his own eyes, he would never have believed that anyone but maniacs could attack and terrorise innocent people like that, making them pay for losing their citizenship and franchise by robbing them of their miserable livelihoods and wretched homes!

It made Sarath sad to see his father deserted by his normal high spirits and optimism. It was Uncle Bala who restored him to something like his old self, by raising funds to set up his project on a more permanent basis, and extended its aims to providing food, shelter and some income-generating activity to the evicted plantation workers and their families. With his union membership so badly depleted, Sarath’s father could work with him part-time, giving classes very similar to those that Sarath had been giving earlier as a volunteer, even while Sarath himself - he smiled to himself at the irony - got more deeply immersed in the union.

When the UNP came back to power with a huge majority in 1977, Sarath was not unduly worried. The electorate had a habit of punishing existing rulers for their failures by voting them out of power, and he felt sure the new rulers would likewise be dismissed at the end of their term. Paul was the first to ring the alarm bells. Returning home shaken and bruised, he said that the newspaper office where he worked had been ransacked and the employees terrorised by thugs insisting that now the new government’s line would reign supreme. Paul saw this as an attack on the freedom of the press, and decided to resign. Still Sarath was not sure the situation was really so drastic. After all, Paul had made it clear he was opposed to the UNP, and post-election violence against political opponents had, unfortunately, become all too common. The next to panic were his father and Uncle Bala. In response to a telegram from his father, Sarath travelled up to Nawalapitiya and found them, too, shaken and almost in tears. Plantation workers had been attacked with unprecedented violence, and one of the rehabilitation schemes had been completely destroyed. ‘I can see a bloodbath coming,’ said Uncle Bala fearfully.

‘This is taking place with consent from the highest quarters,’ added Sarath’s father. ‘There’s nothing we can do.’

‘But Thaththa, Uncle, didn’t the same thing happen in ‘72 and ‘75, when the plantations were nationalised? What’s the difference?’ asked Sarath.

‘It is different,’ insisted Uncle Bala. ‘This is more organised, more systematic.’

‘And it’s not just in the plantation areas,’ Sarath’s father pointed out. ‘I’ve heard reliable reports of attacks on Tamils in other parts of the country. This is like ‘58, ‘72 and ‘75 all rolled into one - but worse. At least then there was some semblance of the government trying to restore order. I don’t see that now.’

Was it the same? Was it different? Sarath debated the question all the way back on the train. At the union annual meeting, which took place soon after, he discovered that Tamils were being attacked in several parts of the country. They passed a resolution to ‘intensify the campaign of solidarity between Sinhala and Tamil brothers and sisters,’ not just ideologically, but with practical instructions about what to do if there were attempts to attack Tamil workers. ‘Next time we won’t be caught off guard,’ observed a senior unionist from the Eastern Province, and Sarath nodded approvingly.

Yet that is precisely what happened: they were caught off guard. Because nothing like this had ever hit them before. The JSS was called the ‘union’ of the ruling party, but it behaved like a lumpen army with a mission to destroy the trade union movement. Not just Tamil workers but all workers and union organisers - including Sarath himself - were targeted. Strikers and pickets were brutally assaulted, workers and employees beaten up and compelled to join the new ‘union’. Iron rods, chains and bottles were used; many of the victims had to be hospitalised. There were even occasions when he found himself on the same side as management, who found themselves at the receiving end of the same violence when they tried to insist on order in the workplace.

The most ominous feature of all this was the role of the police. Completely ignoring his pleas that the workers were merely engaged in peaceful, legal trade union activity, at best they looked the other way while arms and legs and heads were broken, at worst they joined in the attacks, or - the ultimate irony - arrested the victims while allowing the assailants to go free. It was as if all the laws had been turned upside down: whatever had been legal before was now viciously crushed, while activities which would have been criminal before were now encouraged by the police, and the perpetrators had complete impunity. Sarath had to admit that his father and Uncle Bala and Paul were right: this was something new, nothing quite like it had happened before. Who were these people who had power even over employers, who couldn’t be dismissed, and who could, on the contrary, insist on the dismissal of employees who refused to join them? How could the union cope with them? Sarath found himself telling workers desperate to keep their jobs, ‘Join them, register with them, pay subs to them if you have to. But please keep in touch with us. We mustn’t let our union die, even if we can’t function openly.’

So they kept their union alive, but each day was a struggle for survival. Other unions confronted the same problem, and in the face of the threat of annihilation, all of them came together to fight this powerful enemy, which, they discovered, was nothing less than an arm of the government. But even together, they failed to evolve an effective strategy against the JSS. What could they do? Train workers in physical combat so that they could fight off the attacks? Go on strike? That would mean risking dismissal and arrest, since the gangsters had the state on their side. A few bravely defied the thugs, saying, ‘No one’s going to tell us which union we should belong to!’ and paid a heavy price for their courage. Others, like Sarath, used a combination of non-violent resistance and clandestinity to keep their organisations in existence. ‘But how long can we carry on like this?’ asked Sarath in desperation, sitting with Shameem, Paul, Leelawathie and Agnes one evening. ‘Five years? Till the next election? That’s impossible! The situation has to improve before then!’

The despondent faces around the table gave him no comfort. And Paul’s soft, almost inaudible response fell on his eardrums like the sound of doom: ‘I have a terrible feeling things are going to get worse, not better.’

Rohini Hensman is a writer and researcher active in the trade union, women's liberation and human rights movements.