Opinion:

Has annual Literary Awards Festival become a farce?

by Premaranjith TILAKARATNE

Since the birth of the Cultural Ministry in 1956 under the first ever S.L.F.P-M.E.P. Government there had been annual State Literary Award ceremonies almost each year. Have these Awards contributed to the enhancement of the Sri Lankan literature? If not, what have they achieved? Of course, every year Literary Awards have caused endless literary controversies among literary elite in the Island.

Recently the Sahithya Award Ceremony has been belittled to a rather unimportant event under the huge umbrella of a glorified Annual Sahithya Mahothsavaya (with drum beating, dancing and what not) although the President is often invited to distribute these haphazard prizes. The present Chairman of the State Sahithya Panel is reported to have uttered several times that such controversies are a sine qua non for the advancement of all the literary genres and that selections should made in utter secrecy and should not be justified in public even after the award festival. This seems to be a cynical callous statement ever made by a responsible official.

The duty of those who are supposed to promote and coordinate literary activities is to avoid creating disputes and encourage writers as far as possible. And such literary judges should not dance to the tune of Book Publishers at the expense of hapless writers. Since these literary judgements set standards for future developments in the literary field and they are pursued in the name of the Government in power and also public funds are utilized for such Ceremonies and Awards - the members of the Literary Panel should follow approved standards consistent with the policies of the Government of the day and the cultural norms prevailing in the country. But have they done it? Alas! They have definitely acted as a state within a state!

As reported in the ‘Montage’ section of the Sunday Observer of 20 December, there was a big uproar among the scholars and the spectators who participated in a Literary Seminar held in Colombo a fortnight ago. Their main target happened to be a novel called ‘Podu purushaya’ which had won the Sahithya Award for the Best Sinhala Novel from the departmental Literary Panel in addition to the Swarna Pusthaka Sammanaya offered by a cartel of Book Publishers. It seemed that the Literary Panel had slavishly followed the decision of the Publishers who are normally carried away by the publicized image of a writer more than the literary style and the significant content of a particular work. At the end of the discussion the consensus was that ‘Podu purushaya’ was not at all a masterpiece deserving prestigious awards or bonanzas but unreadable pulp fiction without any substance, although the prolific writer had been able to turn out better books in the past.

However, this revelation was only the tip of the iceberg. Beneath at the nadir lay a sinister agenda of sheer ignorance, mystery, conspiracy, wilful disregard for scholarship and outright malice. This anti-social attitude seems to have taken root as mediocre scribes through sheer influence have crept into the Literary Panel and the Jury posing as guardian deities of Literature and Criticism. Leaving alone the case of the ‘Podu purushaya’ as an amateurish attempt by an experienced Novelist let me peep into the realm of English drama where the Best playscript award was offered to ‘Three Star K.’ a play that portrays the incestuous relationship between an immoral mother and a sadistic son while welcoming the separatist Civil War. To illustrate this point let me quote few extracts from its dialogue which is full of recurrent four letter words.

Page: 106 MOTHER: (Wearily) Yes, I do. You were high on arrack ad cannabis. You didn’t know what you were doing. While raping me you called me Mala and Kamala and a host of other names.

Page: 120 RUWAN: ‘The war is the best thing that happened to this country. Poor guys like me got rich overnight. As long as Mr. P (Prabhakaran) is around, I’m okay. He is my best friend. I will tell you, old boy, Hurrah for the LTTE. Hurrah for Mr.P.’

Now will anybody believe that this playscript ‘Three Star K.’ was celebrated as the Best English playscript when it contained such pornographic material? How did the present Chairman of the Literary Panel approve this vulgar piece of writing, when he has apparently embraced the official Vision of Mahinda Chinthanaya which envisages a moral re-habilitation among the people of Sri Lanka. On the otherhand why did the Literary Panel venture to reward a volume of plays that contained two plays which had won awards a few years ago from the Gratiaen Trust and the English Association of Sri Lanka? Is it imperative that the Literary Panel of a Government department should adhere to the literary and cultural standards of an external agency? Yet the present structure and the formation of the Literary Panel of the Cultural Department and the methodology utilized to evaluate literary works for Awards also contributes to this fiasco. As it is, the Cultural Department in organizing the Literary Award Festival confines itself to survey the printed books of a certain year registered in the Department of National Archives. However, according to the existing National Archives Act, the responsibility for the registration of books rests on the publishers and printers who mostly neglect this duty. As a result certain published books are not duly registered in the National Archives Department and not subject to the annual survey held by the Literary Panel.

For instance, my own translation of the R.K. Narayan novel, published in March 2008 ie. ‘Masuru Sihina’ has still not been registered at the National Archives Department.

There are so many instances of books of reputed authors which have missed this chance and therefore never have been evaluated for an Award. Secondly, who selects or recommends the Chairman of the Literary Panel? What should be the credentials of this assignment? Should he be a well-known erudite scholar or just a cynical scribe from anywhere? There seems to be no definite answers to these clear-cut questions. Further, should the so-called Chairman of the Literary Panel be entrusted with the task of selecting his colleagues according to his whims and fancies? When a book has been recommended by a highly qualified university faculty member at a lower level ie. first or the second round, has the Chairman got a moral right to appoint a lesser individual to a third round with the intention of eliminating the selected work?

This was what happened to a pioneering playscript which marked the emergence of the realistic genre of Sinhala drama in the sixties, and strangely enough the juror happened to be himself a practising dramatist who had submitted his own play for the ongoing State Drama Festival. (A juror and a competitor at the same time!) It is apparent that the chairman of the Literary Panel has become so autocratic to make or mar literature. His decisions have been so secretive and mysterious that as if divine commandments, they have not been questioned or challenged by any higher authority like the chairman of the Arts Council, the Director of Cultural Affairs or finally the Secretary of the Ministry of Culture.

So the time has come that the Secretary of the Ministry of Culture should assert his powers to supervise the actions of the runaway Literary Panel to guide Literary Awards and thereby save Sri Lankan Literature from degeneration and the final slide to pornography!

(The writer is a reputed dramatist and a competent translator of novels. Being a retired S.L.A.S. officer, he had served as the Deputy Director (Publications) in the Department of Cultural Affairs in the late eighties.(87-88) He is currently serving as the Advisor (International Relations) of the Tower Hall Theatre Foundation.)

(Open for debate)