Question of transparency looms Galle Literary Festival

Stratford on Avon which is the birthplace of William Shakespeare is located in the picturesque countryside of Warwickshire in the UK. Apart from Shakespeare's birthplace, it is a village steeped in history with a host of places of interest for tourists and literary enthusiasts. Inter alia, the place offers live performance of Shakespearean plays on a regular basis.

If literary enthusiasts would draw a parallel with the recently concluded Galle Literary Festival (GLF) with an imaginary literary festival being held annually in Stratford on Avon presumably by Geoffrey Dobbs, internationally famed local writer (in this case Shakespeare) would be excluded from the festival for the obvious reason that he being a local writer. The ethos on the part of the organisers, foreign sponsors and their local agents of the GLF seem to be that the festival would only be truly international when the local literati, particularly vernacular being excluded from it.

The theme of the heavily sponsored GLF of 2010 was pulp fiction. As in the previous years, the gamut of local and foreign writers had been invited for the festival. Some of the participants included Amit Varma, Angela Patrella, Anthony Beevor, Artemis Cooper, and Mohammed Hanif together with their Sri Lankan counterparts such as Richard Boyle, Lal Medawattegedara and Ashok Ferrey. There were other participants who were not directly associated with the world of literature.

As a keen observer of the GLF from its very inception, I have noticed and often pointed out the lack of participation of non-English language literati in the festival and the absence of the sessions on literary work of prominent Sinhala and Tamil writers in general and those who are directly associated with Southern Province or with the city of Galle in particular. Over the years, it has been obvious that though the objectives of the GLF was to promote the international literature in Sri Lanka and close interaction among the international and local literati, the peripheral objectives such as hotel and tourism promotion have come to the fore. We confirmed that the Secretary of Sri Lanka's Ministry of Cultural Affairs and National Heritage had not been either informed of or invited to the festival.

Prominent Sinhala language literary figures such as Martin Wickremasinghe or Gunadasa Amarasekara or poets like Rathna Sri Wijesinghe (who happened to live in Galle Fort) or their work have not been discussed during the 2010 festival. The irony is that both widely acclaimed Martin Wickramasinghe and Gunadasa Amarsekara were born in Koggala and Yatalamaththa in the Galle district respectively.

Is Amarasekara not a good enough writer even to receive an invitation for the GLF? Do the organisers know the work of Gunadasa Amarasekara?

Amarasekara as a local bard

It is pertinent here to examine, albeit, in brief, the singular contribution that Gunadasa Amarasekara has made to the enrichment of Sinhala literature. Prof. Wimal Dissanayake, Sri Lankan born, internationally acclaimed academic in his monograph 'Enabling Traditions, Four Sinhala Cultural Intellectuals' writes: " Gunadasa Amarasekara (1929) is arguably the leading Sinhala Cultural Intellectual. As with most public intellectuals, his writings are controversial and generate intense public debate. He writes about literature, criticism, culture, modernization, consumerism, globalisation and so on with intense passion ... Gunadasa Amarasekara is a novelist, short story writer, poet of distinction who has shaped the imagination of many generations of Sinhala readers and widening their social awareness ..." The sad issue is since its inception the GLF organisers have failed to allocate even a single session to discuss Amarasekara's work!

For Amarasekara, poetry represents the essence of a nation's mirror. He observes that "poetry constitutes the language of the national heart. It is also the conscience of the nation. The fact that nearly half a century elapsed since attaining our independence, and we have not been able to reach the language of the heart ('hada basa') has generated anxiety and foreboding in me for a long time. Does this indicate the death of our heart? We know that a dead heart cannot speak to us or possess a language. If so, does it prefigure that we are facing a spiritual death that precedes physical death? " Here in his vibrant prose Amarasekara sees the ignorance of tradition as a key determinant to an intellectual and emotional sterility.

It is Amarasekara's deeply held belief that one way of ascertaining whether a given tradition is dead or alive is by examining the response of modern readers to the poetry created within the matrix of that tradition. Are we able to respond to the forms, styles and techniques contained in those poems readily? If we are able to do so, it is his contention that the past carries with it presentness, they are alive, pulsating and relevant.

The GLF seems to be of lesser and lesser literary value to and seems to assume a character of a cheap carnival sans literature and an annual outing for the Anglo-aping upper middle class Sri Lankans and foreigners. For me, the very fact that the Secretary or the Minister of Cultural Affairs and National Heritage had not been invited to the festival held in and around a UNESCO designated heritage site of Sri Lanka raises serious doubts of the motives and the objectives of the festival.

The exclusion of writers of the calibre of Amarasekara or excluding the seminal cannon of works by prominent Sinhala and Tamil literati, the organisers of the GLF have raised doubts in our mind whether there is neo -colonial cultural invasion taking place in our backyard perhaps using the funds meant for cultural programs of Sri Lanka.

Were the funds meant for the Sri Lankan cultural programs from the British Council, the Embassy of the Netherlands, Sri Lanka's American Center, Canada Council for the Arts, The Goethe-Institute Sri Lanka, and The Norwegian Embassy in Colombo channelled to the GLF which has nothing do with the promotion of culture or literature of Sri Lanka? It is a question of transparency.