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| Sunday, 25 August 2002 |
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In an American and Sri Lankan Mirror Sunday Essay by Ajith Samaranayake
In a foreword to 'Excursions and Explorations' which is sub-titled 'Cultural encounters between Sri Lanka and the United States' its editor Tissa Jayatilaka explains that the idea for this volume sprang from a suggestion made by former US Ambassador James Spain (himself resident in Colombo) that it was time somebody updated H. A. I. Goonetilake's Images of Sri Lanka Through American Eyes 'first published in 1976 to mark the American bicentennial in Sri Lanka and re-printed for the fourth time in 1998 to mark the Golden Jubilee of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the USA and Sri Lanka. However the juxtaposition between the two volumes cannot be sharper. While Goonetileke's book, which Jayatilaka justly calls venerable, was an elegant anthology of vignettes by Americans (among them Olcott, Mark Twain and Paul Bowles) evoking a gracious aristocratic or colonial era in Ceylon Jayatilake's volume comes riven with all the conflicts of our time and pulsating with the desperate urgencies of a country virtually tearing itself asunder. views of the United States The idea at first, as the Editor has explained, was to put together a collection of essays which should offer images of Sri Lanka through contemporary American eyes but as the project progressed it was felt appropriate to return the compliment as it were and seek Sri Lankan views of the United States as well. So two volumes were envisaged but now this book comes out as a single work and coincides with the fiftieth anniversary of the Fullbright academic exchange programme between Sri Lanka and America. The book therefore bears the marks of the parameters of its conception. Its contributors are all academics, writers and diplomats who had benefitted by exposure to either Sri Lanka or America as the case may be. The contributions vary in length, approach and quality. Some are serious reflective essays on selected issues (the Sri Lankan crisis invariably looming large), others are accounts of a writer's academic experiences in a country (this mostly being the case with Sri Lankans doing post-graduate or further studies in the US) while yet others detail the domestic experiences of settling down and adjusting to a strange milieu. Both sides make no pretensions that it is possible to judge a country after a short stay but there is an attempt to come to grips with problems of identity in a foreign setting and an attempt to see the country afresh and free of popular prejudices and perceptions. The book also cuts across the generational divide. There are accounts on the American side by such venerable figures as Ambassadors Howard Wriggins (who recounts a conversation with S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike when he was Leader of the Opposition) and James Spain and on the Sri Lankan side by figures such as Ambassadors Jayantha Dhanapala and K. Godage and Bradman Weerakoon. And on both sides a stream of young scholars criss-cross each other as they offer their reflections and reminiscences of Sri Lanka and America, a young American researcher describing his studies in the Sinharaja for instance and Sinharaja Tammita-Delgoda offering a hilariously zany account of a wild car ride on the road to Miami in a Walter Mitty-like fantasy of reliving the American Dream. Prism of a British lens The contrast between the older Sri Lankans and their younger contemporaries in their attitude to America is also apparent. As Jayantha Dhanapala puts it, earlier generations of Sri Lankans viewed America through the prism of a British lens. For them everything American was a caricature of the great classical tradition of which Britain alone was the guardian and custodian. Tissa Abeysekera sees a reflection of this in the disdain shown by Sri Lanka's academy and its Establishment intellectuals towards American literature in particular which was seen as inferior to that which was produced by the European and Russian masters. K. Godage traces these attitudes to a distaste for America's imperial role, its frontier mentality and its extreme individualism bred by the economics of Adam Smith and Milton Friedman which is in contrast with the more paternalistic and caring outlook of Asian societies. However with a new generation there is a perceptible shift. They are more at home with America and its ethos not least because of CNN which comes in for repeated references although not being free of its own hang-ups. Mario Gomez writes of the diversity and the 'space' of modern American society and says that there is room for all at the American Inn. Is this I wonder because all of us are now prisoners of a Global Village and devotees of an Americanised popular culture? Partly perhaps but also certainly because of the inexorable cultural and technological changes which have uprooted even the most traditional societies in the world from their moorings in the past. The paradox, however, is that it is in search of tradition that the reverse flow from America occurs. The American scholars, post-graduate students and visiting fellows who come to Sri Lanka come expecting a traditional society rooted in Buddhism and custom. The paradox Of course they are not unprepared for the ethnic conflict which has ravaged Sri Lanka but are they ready for the degree of modernisation (or Americanistation?) in present day Sri Lanka? If they have been surprised there is no visible sign of it in this volume. Stephen C. Berkwitz, who is married to a Sri Lankan, speaks of his not always successful attempts to lessen his radical 'otherness' and communicate with people more on their own terms. But he can never transcend the respectful distance built up by Sri Lankans between foreigners and themselves. 'No matter how I dress, I am automatically a mahattaya, and sales clerks have often tried to serve me right away, ahead of any others who were already waiting. However he is tremendously impressed by the people's capacity to feel warmth and compassion for others in the midst of their own anxiety and despair. This is a recurring motif in the narration of most American visitors. This despair and anxiety is, of course, bred by the war and there are many references to bomb blasts, curfews, check-points and Army patrols with the Central Bank bomb blast figuring as the most horrendous and traumatic event to all those who had experienced it. It is perhaps Anne M. Blackburn who comes to grips with being a foreigner in Sri Lanka best in a perceptive and gracefully written essay. She is aware that it is her academic calendar and dollared privilege which makes her contemplative leisure possible but she admits that the intensity of her experience has been driven also by the stark circumstances which characterise Sri Lanka life. She is also aware that as a foreign academic she enjoys an international mobility denied to her local counterparts but finds it moving that nevertheless they should show her so much consistent generosity. At the same time as a scholar of Buddhist learning, monastic education, history and language she realises the ambivalent position in which she is placed vis-a-vis Sri Lanka' strife-ridden civil society. She says that in the context of Sri Lanka's tense political climate it is impossible to avoid the politicisation of historical work and while seeking to show her respect for the Buddhist teachings and for the local creativity that has characterised the interpretation and institutionalisation of these teachings, she tries to avoid turns of phrase and analytical conjunctions that might be assimilated into incautious, and sometimes dangerous, heroic accounts of Sri Lankan Buddhism. There are also fine essays by Bardwell Smith and John Holt (the latter perhaps the best here) an excellent assessment of how the Buddha had appeared to him as a scholar cloistered in western academia and how he had seen the Buddha in the context of the society and politics of Sri Lanka. Analyzing Buddhism and its rituals against the Vesak festival and the practices associated with the Dalada Maligawa and the Kandy Perahera and encountering the Buddhist monks assembled at a SLFP political rally in the deep south he embarks on a wide-ranging survey concluding that the Buddha would figure prominently in defining the nature, inclusion or exclusion of any social and cultural transformation in the making. One of the fiercest wars It is perhaps no accident that the best and most perceptive essays here are written by scholars of Buddhism Sri Lanka still remaining the foremost centre of Theravada Buddhism in the world. In this context it is certainly tragic that it should be also home to one of the fiercest wars in the world fuelled partly by Sinhala Buddhist self-perceptions of an exclusivist identify. What then of the opposite pole? While the Sri Lankan writers are not as perceptive as their American counterparts perhaps we can leave Ambassador Jayantha Dhanapala, Sri Lanka's most distinguished international civil servant, with the last word. After detailing the great historical achievements of America and predicting a leadership role for it in the present century he writes: Hubris is perhaps the most likely cause of any country's decline from the top, apart from inexorable economic and political factors. Will the USA's exceptionalism avoid the historic pattern of the rise and fall of empires? Whatever may happen to the political, economic and military power of the USA in the global context, the example of this unique human adventure and the achievement of its people will remain a great saga in human history. |
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