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| Sunday, 18 September 2005 |
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Wimal Dissanayake on four cultural intellectuals - Part VI : Jathika Chinthanaya and the twilight of the gods Sunday Essay by Ajith Samaranayake The Jathika Chinthanaya or national thinking which has made Gunadasa Amarasekera both famous and notorious (depending on through which prism you view him) Dissanayake sees essentially as stemming from his preoccupation with tradition reflected in his poetry and literary criticism. For as a young man Amarasekera had like many of his generation been influenced by Marxism although one suspects that in his case it would have been humanistic socialism. However, he has also long argued that socialism failed to take root in Sri Lanka because it failed to understand the culture and tradition of the country. Here Dissanayake quoting Raymond Williams in his 'Culture and Society' argues that culture is not a passive reflector of the base but an active transformer of social life. As Dissanayake points out Amarasekera's is certainly a strong and trenchant voice raised against the rampant vulgar consumerism of the times and the ever-extending over lordship of neo-colonialism in all areas of Third World life. Tradition then is seen as a formidable bulwark of political neo-colonialism, consumerism fostered by capitalist modernity and its attendant popular culture. However, where Amarasekera runs into flak is when he identifies Jathika Chinthanaya as Sinhala Buddhist thinking which has evolved over 2,500 years. This has been attacked as an archaic idea in a country inhabited by three communities professing four religions. But Amarasekera would argue that both the Tamils and the Muslims have more in common with the Sinhala Buddhists than with the Hindu culture of South India or the Islamic culture of Arab countries respectively. In his more arch moments Amarasekera has even argued that this whole concept of multi-culturalism is another neo-colonial trap to ensure the Third World. But if on a philosophical level of tradition Amarasekera's argument might pass muster his greatest peril is in the realm of practical politics. This is particularly so since he is something of a quasi-politician himself. For example, in the face of the LTTE's fierce hegemonistic onslaughts, themselves based on a nationalist Tamil tradition, what solution could be offered to the National Question? In the light of Presidential candidate Mahinda Rajapakse refusing to eschew entirely the open market economy what path is open to the country out of the neo-colonialist trap? But most importantly what answers are available within tradition itself to our contemporary economic and social dilemmas? Amarasekera is too sophisticated an intellectual to argue that the answer would be to retreat to the agrarian civilisation of the past. But there are suggestions of this in his valorisation of the ascetic Buddhist way of life and the old simple village ways suggestive of primitive Communism. In other words can an under-developed, semi-feudal country such as Sri Lanka get out of the neo-liberal grip and chart a path of its own? How valid for us are the nostrums held out by the western prophets of the Third Way or the Green parties of Europe? How in short can our Sinhala Buddhist humanistic tradition be reconciled with western liberalism, Marxism or humanism? To be sure these are not issues discussed by Dissanayake who is largely concerned with his philosophical and critical writings but can not be brushed aside in the context of his public semi-political role. In the concluding part of his essay Dissanayake discusses Amarasekera's fiction and fictional criticism. Here he positions him as 'an imaginative social historian' basing himself on his series of semi-autobiographical novel's beginning with 'Gamanaka Mula.' But while these do explore the barrenness of middle-class life the more powerful expressions of these would be in his short stories such as 'Dharmasena', or 'Mithura Balaporuththuven.' As Dissanayake points out Amarasekera has been a constant critic of the failure of Sinhala literary criticism to proceed beyond aestheticism and unearth the social forces and currents of the time. He has also maintained that there can be no meaningful literary dialogue in society without a political dialogue and has devoted himself to expanding the social and political horizons of Sinhala literature in this direction. Dissanayake quotes from F. R. Leavis, to whom as an old Cambridge hand he makes a nostalgic nod, and invokes the figure of Dickens whom the old guru describes as 'a great novelist, and as such, an incomparable' social historian. In summation therefore Amarasekera with his traditional village roots and
his liberal education has sought to evolve both tradition and modernity and
on whatever score he could be challenged on the tenets of Jathika
Chinthanaya has as poet, critic, social novelist-historian and thinker
emerged as Sri Lanka's leading cultural intellectual in this sad twilight of
the gods. |
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