RELIGION, CULTURE, CIVILISATION AND DOMINATION - IV
Mr. R. M. B. Senanayake in his article on the 3rd of April has said that in Part III of Religion, Culture, Civilisation and Domination (referred to as Part III) I had not kept to the title of the article and I had only criticised him and digressed to Philosophy. My main intention of writing that article was to reply to Mr.S. who had previously written two articles where he had defended the domination of the world by the western Judaic Christian civilisation. By replying to him I was exposing the western cultural domination and the title correctly expressed the theme of the article which forms part of the series of articles I am writing when space (of the paper) and time (in between writing on Tamil racism promoted by western Christian civilisation in the form of NGO's and sival (so-called civil) societies funded by the Christian countries, some leading Bishops and the Norwegians and the other westerners) permit me to do so. It was Mr. S. himself who digressed into "Philosophy" and naturally I had to reply to his comments on reality, reference points etc. However, I am thankful to Mr. S. for this digression as it gave and gives me an opportunity to expose the western metaphysics that is used to dominate us (I use metaphysics in the sense it is used in non mainstream western Philosophy. As far as I am concerned not only metaphysics but even physics is due to "avidya" of "anicca, dukka, anathma"). The present article, which is a reply to the article of Mr.S. on 3rd April (referred to as the April article) was further delayed as a result of waiting for the other part that Mr. S.(or the editor) had promised at the end of the article, but that never appeared. The present article also has the same title, it becomes Part IV of the series, and it is both a reply to Mr. S. (I am not criticising him for the sake of criticising but any criticism should be considered as a part of the reply.) and an exposition of the western cultural domination in the world today, occasionally referring to the letter to the editor on the 2nd April by Mr. C. Rudra (Mr. R.) as well. This reply will be continued as Part V of the series. The west dominates us mostly through their knowledge and I take this opportunity to discuss briefly the evolution of the Chinthanaya that gave rise to the western knowledge systems.
It is unfortunate that Mr. S. has not read "Mage Lokaya" and my other works in Sinhala. I do not claim that, as Mr. R. has said in his letter to the editor, "Mage Lokaya" is a magnum opus, but I have to refer the readers to these books and articles as otherwise the present articles would take much more space. Mr. S. also says sarcastically that though my ideas are similar to those of Kuhn and Feyeraband he hopes that the eastern world would accept my work as original. Mr. R. wants an English version of "Mage Lokaya" in the internet "so that the post modernists and intellectuals whom he (NdeS) will have access to the Book of the Books". It is true that the books of Kuhn and Feyeraband, I mentioned in Part III, have influenced me and I would be recommending that particular book by Feyeraband to Mr. S. later in Part V. However, I must say that my books and articles contain at least one or two ideas that are not found in the works of the above mentioned authors or any other western works that I have come across. May be those ideas are found in the books and articles I have not read but, in any event, at present, I have no intention of translating "Mage Lokaya" into English for a western audience. It is not out of fear that the westerners would criticise and tear it into pieces or that it would be found to be old hat, that I am not translating it into English. I do not have to worry about any such outcome as the Judaic Christian Chinthanaya that gave rise to the knowledge that was created in the west during the last five to six hundred years has been found to be inadequate. The so-called post modernist Philosophy is only a component of a process that commenced about two hundred years ago in Europe looking for a new Chinthanaya.
Post modernism to my mind has two branches not entirely disconnected or disjoint. One is the Post Modernist Philosophy that has evolved through the so-called mystic Philosophers may be beginning with Schopenhaur and Nietzsche. (Mr. S. has accused me of name dropping, but I must say that I do not mention the names of the others unless it is necessary. Name dropping is a habit of those who have read for degrees and not thought for their degrees. More on reading for degrees later.) The other is the result of the electronic revolution. The west is about to step into what has already been referred to as the spintronic revolution and with that the two valued logic would have to be replaced by catuskoti or some other logic, that incorporates two valued logic, from a different Chinthanaya. If mechanics and electromagnetism, absolutism, objectivism, reductionism, abstract theories, abstract art, reality, realistic novel that deals with abstract or generalised characters etc., are associated with modernism, then electronics and spintronics, relativism, non realist narratives, Quantum Physics are associated with post modernism. However, there are problems faced by these revolutions and so called post modernist philosophy, which we discuss in Sinhala (no English translation is provided and I do not have to apologise for that) at the monthly meetings of the Chinthana Parshadaya. Mr.S. and his philosopher friend and Mr. Neville Jayaweera mentioned in the April article are welcome to attend these discussions. Then we could have a discussion on so-called revelations of the absolute as well. Just as much Judaic Christian Chinthanaya did not take root in Europe overnight, it took about three hundred years culminating with Calvin and Descartes, the new Chinthanaya, influenced by the Buddhist, Hindu and Chinese Chinthanayas in Asia, may take more than three hundred years to be accepted in the west or it may even be aborted. At present the new Chinthanaya is competing with Judaic Christian Chinthanaya in the west and if the new Chinthanaya is not found victorious the western Judaic Christian civilisation is bound to collapse and the west would become a non entity in a future world. If the new Chinthanaya comes out as the winner, then the western Judaic Christian civilisation would be replaced by a different civilisation ending the western domination of a number of centuries. Chinthanayas and civilisations like every thing else are impermanent and only a person who has blind faith in the western civilisation and absolutes would think that this particular civilisation would last for ever. I am not aware of the above ideas being published in any western book or journal and to that extent I think they are original. I have not come across the concept of Chinthanaya which is more general than the concept of a paradigm as formulated by Kuhn. However, I know that I may be wrong. I would like to see people more mature than Mr.S. (I am not thinking of age) entering into a discussion on these topics.
I am of the view that if I translate these works for a western audience then I would not be practicing what I "preach". It is part of cultural domination that in our part of the world (meaning Asia and Africa) one's works are recognised as original only after they appear in a foreign western dominating language (for some Sri Lankans English may not be a foreign language, but for me it is not only a foreign language but a language that is used to dominate us. The thinking undergraduates of my generation, it is during our time the switch over from English to Sinhala and Tamil first in the Faculty of Arts and then in the Faculty of Science took place, dubbed it Kaduwa, over which those who read for their degrees before us have been thinking ever since) and recognised in the west. Until then even the locals would not recognise them as original works, except in the case of literature in the local languages. I am not trying to say that my works are very original (I am not the judge of what I have published) but I would like to see my countrymen (and of course, women ) criticising and accepting (or rejecting) them before they are introduced to the westerners. If a work published in a local language is not discussed then it could be either due to cultural colonialism that prevents it being recognised as an original work or due to the fact there is nothing significant in it, not to mention any originality in the work. May be that I have not published anything significant in "Mage Lokaya" or the other works, except for the "Sinhala Avurudda" published last year, and that explains why I have failed to attract the attention of any serious critique in Sri Lanka. (Two short reviews of "Sinhala Avurudda" have appeared in newspapers). Not even my good friends and seniors Drs. Gunadasa Amarasekera and Carlo Fonseka, who would have thought for their degrees, have written anything on them. I do not have to say that I do not consider "Mage Lokaya", to be the "Book of Books", but I have been compelled to refer to these works to save space in my articles to the Midweek Review.
Mr. S., it appears, is assuming that since the western knowledge is created in the Christian civilisation the credit for such creation should go to Christianity as a religion. This is not correct at all. Christianity had existed in the form of Catholicism, at least from the third century to the fourteenth century but no western science had been created during that time. Western science did not grow out of or was not created in a Catholic culture. In fact Catholic religion and Catholic culture based on what I call the Catholic Chinthanaya were against the incipient western science. We all know of Bruno, Galileo, and others who were punished and who very often had to give their lives simply because their ideas were in conflict with those of the Catholic Church. Calvin and the Protestants may take the credit for the knowledge that the west has created during the last few centuries but not the Catholic Church and the Popes. Mr. S. being a Catholic, should not try to make a claim on behalf Catholicism for the western knowledge that was created after a struggle with the Catholic Church. It is true that the present Pope has apologised for some of the past mistakes by his predecessors in this area, but unfortunately for Mr. S. that would not correct the mistake. Thousand apologies and confessions by infallible Popes would not bring back to life those who died for holding views that were not acceptable to the Catholic Church. When I repeatedly said that the western science and other modern western knowledges were created in a western Judaic Christian civilisation Mr. S. would have thought what a marvelous civilisation that the Christian religion has given birth to. Mr. S. in his keenness to belittle the Sinhala culture calls it feudal and mentions of "thovil", "bali" etc. Mr. S. probably does not know that even Marx had to refer to an Asiatic mode of production to distinguish it from the medieval feudal mode of production that was found in Europe. Mr. S. does not know that "bali" and "thovil" have their own significance when viewed through the South Asian cultures and what surprises me is the ignorance of Mr. S. the ex civil servant, the graduate of the old school that boast of the reading of its members when compared to those of my generation. (My generation is supposed to have started the rut.) Hasn't Mr. S. come across Levi Strauss who talks of meanings that have to be found within cultures. Mr. S. forgets that as far as the west is concerned feudalism and exorcism were found not in a Buddhist civilisation but in a Catholic civilisation. It was by reacting against the Catholic civilisation that Europe ended up with modernity. Mr. S. has taken Judaic Christian civilisation to mean Catholic civilisation and in his eagerness to criticise the Sinhala Buddhist culture has forgotten even the basic facts of European history.
To understand the mistake of Mr. S. and not that of the infallible popes, one has to go into the history of the evolution of the Judaic Christian Chinthanaya. Joseph Needham once asked the famous question as to why the Chinese were not able to produce the science created in the western civilisation. Mr. S. of course doesn't ask such questions. He like a small boy wants me to show the science created by the Sinhalas in the past. The Chinese, the Sinhalas, the Tamils, the Bengalis, the Arabs all have created their sciences. Those sciences are different from the western science. Unlike Mr. S., Needham who had a great respect for non western civilisations, who published volumes on Chinese Science (needless to say that I haven't read these works), wanted to find out why the Chinese were not able to create the science of the westerners. Unlike Mr. S. who does not know that there are sciences, Needham knew that there was and is a Chinese science. The answer Needham gave was that the westerners were able to create the western science because of capitalism. According to him it was capitalism that gave rise to western science. But I think he was begging the question. Why did not capitalism arise in China? To me it has something to do with the Chinthanaya.
The civilisation of the European medieval period was Catholic. It was and is holistic and not very abstract. In Catholicism three valued logic was preferred to the Aristotelian two valued logic. In the fifteenth century the knowledge that had been created in the East and that had penetrated into the European civilisation began to create problems for the Catholic church and the Catholic Chinthanaya. Let us consider one example to illustrate my point. It is said that the Indians had known that the earth went round the sun long before Copernicus. As far as the Asians were concerned they could handle this type of situation without much of a fuss, as they were not much interested in absolutes. When it came to Astrology they would assume that the sun and the other planets went round the earth but in Astronomy they were prepared to accept that the earth went round the sun. They were only relative motions and cultures (and chinthanayas) that were not interested in absolutes or did not take the absolute (param) to be abstract did not find any contradiction in the relative motions. They were not interested in absolute motions as such. However, when this knowledge reached Europe they came across difficulties in handling the new information. On one hand the Anthropocentric Catholic Chinthanaya could not allow the earth, with man who was created in the image of the God, to move round the sun. As far as the Catholic Chinthanaya was concerned the motion of sun round the earth was absolute and it could not be changed. On the other hand, the Catholic Chinthanaya which is more concrete than the Judaic Hebrew Chinthanaya which is very abstract, could not imagine the earth going round the sun. In Judaic Hebrew Chinthanaya idol worshipping is forbidden and the God, Yehowah is very abstract. In the Catholic Chinthanaya, Jesus the God himself is the son of the God and statues of Jesus are allowed. The Catholic Chinthanaya tries to imagine even the abstract concepts it has assimilated from other cultures. The earth going round the sun was too much for the Catholic Chinthanaya and Europe was in the process of creating a new Chinthanaya. This new Chinthanaya took about three hundred years to evolve borrowing mainly from Judaic Hebrew Chinthanaya, the Greek Chinthanaya, the Roman and the Catholic Chinthanya s. The new Chinthanaya could be called the Judaic Christian Chinthanaya (or Judaic Chinthanaya in short hand) and Calvin and Descartes gave the final touches to it. The western science, realistic novel, capitalism are all products of this Chinthanaya, they in turn contributing even in a small way towards its evolution. The Catholic Chinthanaya is not the same as western Judaic Christian Chinthanaya and Mr. S. has no right to claim credit for Catholic Chinthanaya for something produced as a result of a struggle against it. Today as it happened five to six hundred years ago the west has found that the Judaic Christian Chinthanaya is not adequate and they are in search of a new Chinthanaya.
In the very first paragraph of the April article Mr. S. says: "Does he (NdeS) or doesn't he accept the ordinary rules of logic and the ordinary meanings of the words. For example he accuses me of saying that he (Dr. N.) was denounced by the Bhikkus.". Nowhere in Part III, I accused Mr. S. of saying that I was denounced by the Bhikkus. This is his reading of Part III as the post modernists would say or his creation of Part III, the way I put it. The author of "Loveda Sangarawa" would have said that Mr. S. understands according to his body of knowledge or his capability. (thama thama nena pamanin dena gatha yuthu). In a previous article that appeared on 27th of February Mr. S. had said that "No religion can be entirely free of cultural accretions and modifications but those who believe in the original teachings generally resist changes, which distort the original teachings, and such distortions are considered heresy. Ven Pelpola Vipassi tried to introduce practices, which were considered as Mahayana heresy, and the prelates roundadly denounced him." I quoted the last sentence in my Part III and then explained at length that I had not been denounced by any Bhikku. What was I trying to tell the readers that includes Mr. S? It appears that the infantile mind of Mr.S. is unable to grasp 2+3+4=9. He has to be spoon fed. He has to be told "when you add 2 and 3 you get 5. Now you add 4 to 5 and the result is 9." The present generation of graduates and undergraduates is always looked down by the previous generations as those who do not read anything other than the notes and that the former is spoon fed. (In the final analysis this is only a criticism of teaching in Sinhala medium and part of cultural domination) Having associated with a number of generations senior to me as well as junior to me I have a different opinion altogether. The older generations have read, without thinking, for a degree while the younger generations think, may be even without reading, for a degree. (They are general statements and as always there are exceptions) Mr. S., the former civil servant (they say that the CCS attracted the best, though in my generation the best did not even consider of sitting the CCS or the CAS as it was later called) only confirms my opinion. Though I did not state explicitly, (newspaper articles have to be condensed as much as possible) I thought that the former civil servant and the other readers would grasp my argument. It now appears that the "nena" of the other readers are at a higher level than that of Mr.S. For the benefit of Mr. S. I will go through my argument step by step in Part V.
Professor Nalin de Silva
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