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| Sunday, 23 February 2003 |
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Musings of a ghost from the past by Prof. Suwanda H. J. Sugunasiri : Part 1V Author not alone So, is it, then, a question of a misguided professor who has lost his social bearing? Let me suggest, if it is any comfort, that Professor Gamlath may be merely symptomatic of what I see as a larger social malaise. He is by no means alone in this kind of thinking or attitude towards the lesser educated, and by extension, to the village, and indeed anything deemed to be un-urban, un-modern, un-western. It seems to be, in fact, ingrained in the culture. Take, for example, the very understanding we Sinhalese speakers have of language usage that is not eloquent. It is called 'graamya', literally, 'of the village'. So we have here a modest piece of evidence of the connection in the Sinhalese ethos between lowliness and villageness. In case you think this far-fetched, please allow me to vouch from my own experience, when, several hundred moons ago, I was a participant in Sri Lankan society. Good books cheap The first was in the early sixties. I had resigned my job as Assistant Assessor to take to the humbler task of writing. But then I had a brainwave! Or at least I thought so. Every writer of the time knew that selling a thousand copies of a book was about the best one could expect. The exception may have been Martin Wickremasinghe. But this was a country with a literacy rate of 80 per cent. So my smart solution was to give the average reader good books at a price they could afford. Good books cheap was to be my slogan. I was elated when I had been able to convince some of the leading writers and critics of the time to come to a meeting to take a crack at my perhaps crazy idea. This writer confesses to being in the stratosphere when he was invited by Martin Wickremasinghe to join him in his car from home to the Cultural Ministry. But it didn't take much time for my budding ego to be deflated when my idea was sort of laughed off. I don't know why this point remains in my mind, but we all conversed in English. And clearly, the man and woman on the street, the villager, the farmer, fisherfolk, washerfolk, drummer and dancer, were on nobody's radar. People's movement shuns people's language My second case comes from my involvement with Sarvodaya in the early seventies. Digging a mile long canal in Boondala to divert water into the dried up fields further south, I had done some informal research. Fresh from overseas, and with an MA in Linguistics, I was very much into communication. Reading Sarvodaya literature, I felt that the language used in it was far too difficult for the average person. As if to see if my hunch had any merit, I had gone around during the week with tape recorder in hand asking if the villagers who had been partners in the endeavour if they understood (a) the Sarvodaya literature, and (b) the talks given by the leaders (including myself, having accidentally fallen into the position of being camp leader). In one voice, they said that they had a general notion of what was being said but not much beyond. Upon returning, I made a case for reaching the masses in the spoken idiom. I had some inspiration in this. Prof. Paranavitana had pointed out that the spoken idiom was indeed grammatical ("jana sammata Sinhala wiyaakaranaanukoolay" (in Lipi Maalaa, 1972:117-135)). Prof. Siri Gunasighe had used it effectively in poetry and novel writing - a middle class activity. Taken up for discussion at the next Sarvodaya Executive Committee meeting, my proposal was simply jeered down! Interesting was that leading the opposition was a Sinhalese teacher, one who spoke no English. "If we've come so far with the standard variety, who wants your spoken variety?" he seemed to be asking. Middle class attitude? Oh, don't take me wrong. If you think I am taking a jibe at Sarvodya, you're barking up the wrong tree. I have the highest respect for this great model of development, itself unmatched in the world, and have the highest personal regard for its founder, Dr Ariyaratna. But I give these examples because I feel the antagonistic attitude towards the village and the uneducated class is not a sole preserve of Professor Gamlath, but rather cuts across the middle class, both Sinhala-only- and English-speaking. So what we encounter is how the village is being kept down under the iron foot of the city. Do we see it in the professor's words that he would rather take to farming (p.136) than write in the people's language? Clearly farming itself, to him, is an indignity only a notch above writing in the farmer's language. Now is all this a recipe for development? You tell me. All I know is that it is the farmer that keeps the nation fed, rice being the country's staple food, providing also employment to millions. It is farming that turned the country to the Granaries of the East in ancient times. But today, it is an untouchable, even though it was the money earned by the sweat, blood and tears of the farmers that footed the bill for free education - of our university educated Peradeni kalliya in particular. Professor Gamlath, e.g., says he is not writing for saamaanya minissu (p.123).. Although, of course, he means to say 'the average (uneducated) person', it is interesting that the words also mean 'normal people". So, in essence, the middle class seems to want to keep knowledge for 'abnormal people'. Is it the abnormality of the middle class that keeps them in such a mindset? Just asking. Of course, the mind-set also has the effect of keeping knowledge from the masses, who in the case of Maname and Sinhabahu, for example, were the very ones who kept up the tradition against all colonial odds - for the entertainment of the very middle class that are now seeking to push them out of the national radar. What reminds one in all this are the words of Steinbeck's character Kino in The Pearl. The poor peasant makes a living by diving for pearls. And, one day when he comes up with a prize pearl, he finds the merchants in the big city, conspiring to cheat him out of it, devaluing it for being humungous. And then he muses, "I wonder, then, for how long they have been trying to rob us." The comment equally applies to the Padres of the Church who keeps the Bible, and learning away from them. Is the Middle class of Sri Lankan society, then trying the same fast one on their village kith and kin? If we need any more evidence of the attitude of the city towards the village, we have it well captured in the song by the Gypsies. In it, a woman sees herself in the mirror for the first time in her life, and berates the husband for having brought home another woman. The husband insists that what she sees in the mirror is his own father. He is sure of it, with beard and all. To settle the matter, the couple goes to the village temple. Declares the monk, chiding them: "You're both wrong. What you see is a wise son of The Buddha." The song makes a fool of not only the village man and woman, but also the Buddhist monk, the venerable sangha who has guarded the sasana for a full 2300 years, and bequeathed the culture for us. This would have been sweet music to the then colonial masters. But today? Oh, of course... what was it that name that Tarzie Vittacchi coined? Oh yes, Brown Sahibs. Or, as we in the west are more familiar with, Oreo cookies - brown on the out, white inside. Indeed can we say that what we have in Professor Gamlath's language, then, is not just Anaucityaad rasa bhangam (inappropriateness ruins the taste), but more? Uddhacca samwardhanam (promotes arrogance), panti bhedam (divides society into classes), samaja samwardhana pratishedham (retards social progress)! So should the new revolutionary slogan be, ahankaara ugatun bhanga waywaa? Prof. Gamlath makes the cogent point that it is the responsibility of professors to be kushagra buddhimattu [123] - sharp as the tip of (a blade of) kusa grass. I don't believe anybody would dispute that. The issue rather, I would think, is how society could, and should, benefit from such profound knowledge and wisdom. English perhaps provides the best model of how this could be achieved. Today, the Toronto Star, for which I had the fortune to write, sells over a million copies on a Saturday. Part of the success of the Star is certainly its liberal and left-of-centre editorial stance, one that clearly jives with a majority of the people. But part of it is also its simple language. What we see in the newspapers in Canada is an English, taken away from the hands of Biblical and Shakespearean scholars, by writers and journalists whose job it is to reach a maximum audience. But it is not a language created by them. Rather it is the language borrowed from the people. So hello, there, Professor up on high. We, the Sinhalese readers, humbly petition that you help us lift the oppressive veil of darkness (timira patalaya), like the birds in the folktale, and place it over the branches of arrogance, so you could join us in escaping from under to enjoy the warmth of the brighter world that you create with the deft strokes of your pen, fed by the sharp insights of your intellect. Please don't us leave behind, to be carried away by the waves of ignorance. Help us shatter the beams of the cycle of samsara with the knowledge and wisdom you have helped us gain. Let us all march together towards the Revolution of Knowledge, putting tuition mudalalis out of business. And for this, you will attain that incomparable Nibbana! |
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