THE UNENLIGHTENED SINHALAS
Last week Mr. Sivakumaran (I always refer to him and others as Mr./Ms.but the editors seem to believe that it is trendy to refer to most people by their names only) has responded to the views expressed by me on the 22nd September 2004. I have more to say on distortion of history, and I will make my comments on the responses by Mr. Sivakumaran, after I finish with some of my observations on that topic. However, I am compelled to deal with his statements on enlightened Sinhalas and others. He says he does not hate those Sinhalas who are not enlightened but only feels sorry for them. The man who loves the humankind in general has left out only those "unenlightened" Sinhalas and claims that he does not hate them but only feels sorry for them. While he loves all the members of the other communities whether they are enlightened or not, he does not love the "unenlightened" Sinhalas. Whether he hates them, feels sorry for them is immaterial here. What is significant is that he loves all the others but not the "unenlightened" Sinhalas. The "unenlightened" Sinhalas happen to be the ONLY category of people in the whole world whom Mr. Sivakumaran does not love. Incidentally let me thank Mr. Sivakumaran for respecting me, though I am not concerned whether somebody respects me personally or not.
I said in my column on the 22nd September 2004, that as far as I am concerned, that is relative to me, an enlightened person is "one who is a product of Western Christian modernity that commenced with the 'renaissance' in the fifteenth century and gained grounds with the 'enlightenment' in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries". I also said that I do not subscribe to the logic and the chinthanaya of the western Christian modernity. It is not clear to me whether Mr. Sivakumaran has understood this statement the way I mean it as many people do not seem to understand what I mean by Chinthanaya (and logic) of a civilisation or a culture. The Chinthanaya is the thread that runs through all the aspects of a culture, from creation of knowledge to creation of feelings including "love", and in a country or among a group of people, whether a tribe, a race, a nation or any other, there is a significant culture while there may or may not be other cultures. In certain cases such as the western civilisation, the western Christian culture is not only the significant but the dominant as well. It is this western culture that has been imposed on us, the Sinhalas, Tamils, Indians, Thais and the rest of Asians and Africans without these people realising that they are being subjected to a cultural colonialism. The western modernity that began in the fifteenth century has capitalism as its economic arm and western culture as the dominant culture.
In the western world they do not have to distinguish between the dominant culture and their "traditional" culture. The culture is found everywhere; in the football field, in the schools, in the universities, in the churches, in the supermarket, in the media etc., and at home. They do not talk of preserving their culture as the culture is being "preserved" and developed all the time. However, in Sri Lanka and the other parts of Asia and Africa we have to be conscious of preserving our "traditional" cultures whether they are Sinhala Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Jaina, Confucian or even Japanese. When we talk of culture we think of temple, music, ancient monuments, dress, kavun, kiributh, festivals such as Vesak and Deepavali, and an array of such other "symbols". They are increasingly becoming symbols that have very much less to do with our routine life styles. In the western world the life styles of the people reflect their culture, and I suppose that they do not have to have separate ministries for culture. Even if they have ministries for culture they must be different from our ministry, and having different functions. We are conscious of our cultures simply because they do not have much to do with our normal day to day lives. I will come back to this point over and over again in these columns whether discussing Mr. Sivakumaran's views or views "reported" by him or even otherwise. In passing I would like to mention that in my culture as well as in Mr. Sivakumaran's culture we do not refer to elders by their names alone. However it need not be so in the dominant western culture and the poor editors who are also subject to this all pervading culture have to edit our articles according to the "norms" dictated by that culture.
Now we get back to the "unenlightened" Sinhalas, the unfortunate group of people not loved by Mr. Sivakumaran. How does Mr. Sivakumaran identifies an unenlightened person? Since there seem to be no "unenlightened" persons other than the "unenlightened" Sinhalas, it is easy for us to identify the yardstick of unenlightened used by Mr. Sivakumaran. He says "they (unenlightened Sinhalas) without knowing further believe strongly what they have stored in their memories the images they have on the Thamilians as a whole. They equate the political, economic and social life of the Lankan Thamilians as the problem created by the Tigers." It is clear that the unenlightened Sinhalas, whom Mr. Sivakumaran feels sorry for, become unenlightened through their beliefs on Tamil Sri Lankans. (I thought it is better to call ourselves Sinhala Sri Lankans, Tamil Sri Lankans, Muslim Sri Lankans rather than Sri Lankan Tamils etc.) All definitions, including the definitions in western Mathematics, such as that of a straight line, are subjective or relative to a particular culture and it does not come as a surprise for me when Mr. Sivakumaran identifies an unenlightened Sinhalas with respect to the Tamil Sri Lankans. I do not know whether I am an unenlightened Sinhala according to Mr. Sivakumaran but I have my own views of the present problem which I consider as one arising from Tamil racism in this country. In a nutshell, I consider that Tamil racism is not prepared to recognise the significance of the Sinhala Buddhist culture in Sri Lanka. Instead of uniting with the Sinhalas to struggle against the dominating western Christian culture, the Tamil racism, in order not to recognise the significance of the Sinhala Buddhist culture, is busy in distorting history.
I know that there are third rate postmodernists who consider history as a fantasy, but then postmodernism is the biggest fantasy created by the western intellectuals and I do not have to talk of the intellectual pygmies in Sri Lanka who imitate postmodernism. Incidentally I would appreciate it very much if Mr. Sivakumaran writes about postmodernists among the Tamil Sri Lankans writing in Tamil, if there are any, as so far I have not come across them. I know one or two postmodernists among Tamils who write in English but not in Tamil. Perhaps they would not call themselves Sri Lankans or Tamil Sri Lankans or Tamils, but I must say that the postmodernists among the Sinhalas who write in Sinhala are supporters of Tamil racism to the core. They consider history as a fantasy, mainly to deprive the Sinhala Buddhist culture its due place in this country.
If Mathematics is relative, there is no way that history can be objective. History like anything else is created by the people and all creations are relative to the culture in which they are created. History is very often written by the victors and not by the losers and if Sri Lankan history has been written by the Sinhalas in the past then it proves that they had been the victors over all the others invaders or not (if there were any) and we could begin with that when we consider the history of the country. If the Sinhalas had been the victors then whether that victory was correct or not (moral or immoral - it should be emphasised that morality is also relative to the culture and what is moral in one culture may be immoral in another) it could be assumed that they were instrumental in building a civilisation (culture) in this country. It is the victors who build cultures and not the losers. Those who shout from roof tops that either history is a fantasy or that history is written by the victors cannot ignore the "fact" that the culture in a country is built by the victors. The English culture in England was built and developed after the so called Norman invasion, and even if there had been Celtics and others who had lived in what is known as England today one has to recognise the significance of the English culture in England.
The French only recently debarred Muslim girls from wearing their "traditional" dress to schools claiming that cultural, religious dresses are not allowed in schools. Ms. Bridget Bardot of all people had recently said that the Muslims are becoming a threat to the French or words to that effect, and it cannot be said that France is not concerned with the growing influence of the Muslim culture in that country. The point I want to make here is that when the French banned the "traditional" Muslim dress in schools they did not mention that the frock worn by the French girls, as well as the Sinhala and Tamil girls in Sri Lanka, is also a cultural dress. It is not something acultural, but as mentioned before the French culture is in the day to day lives of not only the French but the others living in France that they do not consider the frock or the dress worn by the ladies as a cultural outfit. So when the French ban all the cultural dresses they should have banned the western frock as well, compelling the girls to come to school without a dress, but then that also could be part of the modern French culture, showing that it is difficult to cover the nakedness of "objective" dresses with fig leaves. The French have created a culture in France and until the Muslims defeat the French in that country, the significance, in this case the dominance, of the French culture is accepted. What the Sinhalas want is not the dominance but the significance of the Sinhala Buddhist culture to be recognised in Sri Lanka.
The Norwegians are not the "aborigines" in Norway but it is their culture that is the dominant in that country. The Vikings probablydefeated the "aborigines" sometime in the past, and built a culture of their own, of course, within western Christian modernity after about the sixteenth century. Today it is the Norwegian Protestant Culture that is the dominant culture in the country, and until the Tamils in Norway agitate for recognition of their culture in Norway the Vikings are secure. However, it may happen that in no time the Tamils in Norway may become fully fledged Christians in culture even if some of them remain as Hindus by religion and the Norwegians would not be troubled by a different culture, except by a different coloured skin. Let us talk of history taking all these into consideration. Though history can be written by victors as well as losers it has to be consistent with other "facts". It has to be emphasised that very often the losers absorb the culture of the victors, and also that intermittent invasions of a country by a particular group of people that have taken place over thousands of years do not establish a continuous existence of the group in the country.
Professor Nalin de Silva
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