“PAVENA PARANDEL” OF WESTERN SCIENCES AND
TECHNOLOGIES - VI
I
have to respond only to the use of de Silva as my “surname” and the
difference between Chinthanaya and Jathika Chinthanaya before I get
onto the more important subject of Reality, creation of knowledge and
manasa raised by the three articles “Tamil Problem and World Power
Polarization”, “Still a Marxist” and “Knowledge, Reality and Nirvana”
by Prof. N. A. de S. Amaratunga. In “Still a Marxist” he says “How
successful they (Portuguese) have been is seen by the ironic situation
that Prof. Nalin de Silva himself continues to use that cultural
endowment – Silva!” referring to the cultural conquest by the
Portuguese. In “Still a Marxist” he had only considered the cultural
component of western Christian colonialism neglecting the political and
economic components. I have dealt with his description of the
colonialisms of the Portuguese, Dutch and the English and in this part
of the series I consider only his reference to my “surname”.
We have been imposed with surnames by western Christian colonialism and
it is very unlikely that we would be having names such as Lindamulage
Nalin even at present. Instead we have names such as Nalin de Silva
having a Portuguese de Silva part in the case of some individuals. Just
as much we are having baila in our culture surnames have also become an
element of the culture in identifying the pedigree of a person. Thus I
would imagine that it would be very hard to eliminate surnames and go
back to some other method of identification in the near future.
Surnames, Vasagamas and such other names are there to identify the
ancestral heritage of a person. It could be patrilineal or matrilineal
but in many societies the practice has been to trace the origin from
the paternal side. However, I must admit that I have not studied this
problem in detail and it may be that there was a usage of “gothra”
names in ancient Dambadiva. For example the Prince Siddhartha has been
identified as Siddhartha Gauthama, the latter referring I suppose to
the gothra. In Sinhala we say Goyum Goth and incidentally Prince
Siddhartha had belonged to the same gothra in a matrilineal way as
well. It is clear from the fact that the sister of the Prince’s mother
(I would not call her the step mother of the Prince) is known as Maha
Prajapathi Gothami. Kisha Gothami (reminding us the name Heen Ethana)
would have belonged to the same gothra.
I
am not trying to defend the use of “surnames” referring to the gothra
names but surnames in one form or the other are in usage among the
Sinhalas today. On the other hand the vasagama and the so called ge
names may be of recent origin and were not found in the Anuradhapura
period. In any event, Prof. N. A. de Silva (or Soysa or some other
Portuguese surname) Amaratunga is very much concerned with my decision
to use de Silva as my surname. Before I proceed further I must mention
that though my children continue to use a surname it is not de Silva
and when my father was alive we (my father and his sons) had decided to
drop de Silva and use part of our vasagama as the surname of the next
generation. I did not want to change my name as I wanted to continue to
use de Silva to my grave as it would continuously remind me of cultural
colonialism until I die. Prof. N. A. de S. Amaratunga can rest assured
that he is not the first person to ask that question and get that
reply. However Prof. Amaratunga is the first person with a surname such
as de S. Amaratunga to ask this particular question and he deserves a
supplement to the above answer. He is a de S. Amaratumga and not simply
an Amaratunga.
When
the elite Sinhala people turned to trousers some wore the clothe over
the trousers as they did not want to give up the “redda” and they were
called by the Sinhala villagers as “redda asse mahaththuru” (gentlemen
underneath the clothe). Prof N. A. de S. Amaratunga using de Silva or
whatever Portuguese surname represented by de S, followed (covered) by
the Sinhala name Amaratunga reminds me of a “redda asse mahaththaya”.
Of course “redda asse mahaththaya” is a phenomenon not associated with
the Portuguese though de Silva, de Soysa or whatever is from the
Portuguese and I hope the readers would not find fault with me for this
discrepancy.
Now
we turn to Chinthanaya and Jathika Chinthanaya. As I have said Jathika
Chinthanaya is a woolly idea that Dr. Gunadasa Amaraselera had copied
from Waliki who apparently had referred to the national thought of the
Russians in interpreting the October Revolution, and if asked to
explain what is meant by it nobody could do so in precise terms. When
pressed for an explanation in the late eighties in the pages of Divaina
Dr. Amarasekera came out with the social character as it had been used
by Erich Fromm. So much for the Jathika Chinthanaya that has been
“explained” using the ideas of Vijathika thinkers. I would not have
said all these if not for Prof. Amaratunga’s following comment in his
article “Still a Marxist”. “I feel sad that by this nonsensical
"pravada", Prof. de Silva is out to make a mockery of that valuable
concept Jathika Chinthanaya enunciated by Dr. Gunadasa Amarasekera. By
trying to make it an all-encompassing great narrative, he is bound to
make a mockery of it.”
I must say that I have
never tried to make Jathika Chinthanaya or even Chinthanaya an all
encompassing great narrative, the meta narrative of the so called
postmodernists. They are sometimes called mega narratives especially
with respect to western science where narratives or theories are worked
out in the background of a mega narrative. I had been using Chinthanaya
for sometime when Dr. Amarasekera came out with Jathika Chinthanaya and
later on I called the Jathika Chinthanaya as popularized by Dr.
Amarasekera the Chinthanaya of the Sinhala nation, saying further that
every nation has its own Jathika Chinthanaya.
I must say that I had
been influenced by the concept of paradigm formulated by late Thomas
Kuhn in his celebrated work “The Structure of Scientific Revolution”. I
had been thinking as to why all these brilliant men (and women)
produced by the then University of Ceylon at Peradeniya and Colombo, of
which our intellectuals are proud of had failed to win a Nobel Prize or
even a Fellowship of the Royal Society of London and add FRS at the end
of their names. (Recently a Sri Lankan working abroad was made an FRS
for leading the team that identified the so called bird flu virus but
even in his case it was not for any theoretical work.) There are a few
FRSs among the Indians and a fewer number of Nobel Laureates. I am not
fit to become even a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences and I
must say I am nowhere when compared to these brilliant men and women
who are fellows of the Academy. However, I was interested in finding
out why these intellectual heavyweights who have numerous publications
in the so called prestigious international journals of science could
not get themselves to be elected as Fellows of the Royal Society of
London let alone winning a Nobel Prize for Sri Lanka. In my case almost
all my publications are in the newspapers of the Upali group, and as
they are not peer reviewed they are not considered as suitable for
admitting to Fellowships. The concept of Chinthanaya was created in
order to explain the phenomenon of Sinhala Buddhists not creating
important concepts, theories and theorems in western sciences and
Mathematics, while a disproportionate number of the Jewish community
even among the westerners ending up as creators of such concepts etc.,
and Nobel Laureates.
Professor
Nalin de Silva
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