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| Sunday, 16 May 2004 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Vesak: Media spectacle and spiritual wasteland Sunday Essay by Ajith Samaranayake The commercial exploitation of Vesak is all the more insidious for
being subtle. The Aluth Avurudda and Christmas are quite patently a
paradise for both supermarkets and pavement hawkers but the The first to fall victim to this mass-scale exploitation of the festival was the Vesak card. Although mass-produced and part of the commodity market, the Vesak card was an example of a kind of folk art. With its images drawn from Buddhist iconography and a pastoral way of life, they suggested a throwback to a more leisurely manner of life before the coming of the age of the machine. Unbuddhistic Vesak cards Their verses (some of them written by well-known poets) generated a sense of quiet melancholia. In later years there was much indignation over what was described as 'unbuddhistic' Vesak cards chiefly of a 'boy meets girl' kind with syrupy verses but even these have been eclipsed by the triumph of the commercial Vesak. Hardly anybody sends Vesak cards these days. Commercialisation and mass production thus crush all forms of primal art and community amusement and incorporate them into the gigantic on-going spectacle. The home-made Vesak 'koodu' is replaced by the ready-made lantern. It is sucked into the commercial pantheon by awarding fantastic prizes for what was to begin with a simple form of family amusement particularly among teenagers and the young. The mellow light that was shed by the Vesak lantern is now eclipsed by the garish neon-lit pandals in which the sacred element of Vesak is lost. Each television channel tries to outdo the other in the tawdriness of its spectacle and the scale of its bounty. The advent of the television spectacle is also destructive of the community's involvement with Vesak. The danselas and the Vesak plays are two forms of this involvement. They provided means by which young people in working class and lower middle class neighbourhoods could become involved with the community and even an actor such as Nihal Silva who was undoubtedly a gifted actor in spite of the monstrous 'Sergeant Nallathambi' took his first public bow on the modest wayside Vesak stage. While the danselas and the Vesak plays still survive we are more and more encouraged these days to move away from these small simple forms of amusement and are being steadily herded into the mass spectacle of a TV-sponsored Vesak at locations such as Bauddhaloka Mawatha (ITN), Dehiwala (Rupavahini) and Kandy (Swarnavahini). Here from being creators of or participants in the forms of Vesak entertainment we become mere passive consumers of a spectacle manufactured by the media. Electronic media The electronic media itself has its own agenda and timetables as anybody watching the morning beams these days for example can see for themselves. The Sirasa and Swarnavahini channels both have pirith at the same time perhaps in homage to the emergence of the JHU. The sermons on the electronic media too have proliferated in recent times and now there is no need for an excuse such as a Poya day for a sermon to be telecast. There are even young monks or even samaneras preaching to the young. But all these sermons have a stylised quality which gives one the impression of listening to the same sermon or the same monk. There is very little of the robust individualism which used to characterise a bhikkhu such as the late Ven. Kotikawatte Saddhatissa (one of the most popular preachers of his time). Instead the typical tele-sermons these days are rendered in a sing-song style by monks who seem to be intent on soothing the nerves of their hearers rather than rousing their conscience. Sexual crimes But all this fervent sermonising seems to have had little effect when one sees not merely conventional crime but all kinds of novel skulduggery increasing by leaps and bounds all about us. There are contract killings, kidnappings for ransom and robbery, looting and pillage on a hitherto unprecedented scale. Sexual crimes have assumed every kind of twist and deviation possible with young girls and boys being abused by family elders becoming a routine occurrence which no longer excites comment. The Sangha itself is deeply divided on lines of nikayas, factions and now political persuasions. Obviously this outpouring of sermonising has had no bearing on the immediate day-to-day problems of the people. The content of these sermons have been as esoteric as the manner of their delivery. One would expect that this surfeit of piety would make us a more sensitive people more in tune with the feelings of our fellow men and women. But sadly the effect seems to be the opposite. The best illustrations were again provided by the Vesak festival. Outside my window for example at Dehiwela, a loudspeaker blared forth without interruption for six nights from 6 pm to 4 am. The Dehiwala Mount Lavinia Municipal Council was celebrating the thrice-blessed day under the sponsorship of Rupavahini. The functions of the loudspeaker was to broadcast supposedly Buddhist songs at full volume and make announcements of people missing in the nightly throng. They were not really missing but merely wanted their names announced by a well-known television announcer or were using the loudspeaker as a convenient means of summoning their straying flock before leaving for the next attraction in a similarly crowded location. These far from musical sounds and a catalogue of names which plumbed the depths of Sinhala middle-class identity combined to keep the residents of several of the most residential parts of Dehiwala awake for six full nights as they wrestled with their private demons under the Vesak moon. The very fervour with which we create an ersatasz Aluth Avurudda or Vesak within the frame of the Idiot Box only demonstrates that our roots in tradition have grown withered. If they are robust and thriving and renewing themselves we need not seek to give them artificial respiration through the media. In the case of Vesak, the more we try to make a festival of it, the more it moves away from its religious and spiritual roots. In the past children made Vesak lanterns for the simple joy of it and not for cash prizes awarded by big companies. |
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commercialisation of Vesak proceeds behind the carapace of a fake piety.
Time was when it was the Vesak card and later the ready-made Vesak lantern
which was the only commodities associated with the festival but today the
thrice-blessed day is as much part of the market place as the other
festivals until the people at large now lead their lives within one
gigantic annual media spectacle which has incorporated the Aluth Avurudda,
Vesak, Poson, the Kandy Esala Perahera and Christmas and even the monthly
Poya days.
