Culture of eulogising pseudo I-cons

Venerating the deceased and worshiping the icons is a phenomenon which is common to diverse cultures across the globe. Some cultures and faith-group entertain the belief that deceased, very often family members and kith and kin could still influence the course of lives of their relations living. Some faith communities, particularly Christians venerate saints as intercessors with God.

However, in some Eastern and Native American traditions, venerating the ancestors is practised aimed at ensuring wellbeing of the ancestors and sometimes asking favours from them. Apart from venerating the deceased, at another level, social and non-religious functions associated with ancestor veneration serve to cultivate kingship and value such as filial piety, family loyalty and the continuity of lineage. Although the practice of ancestor veneration is far from universal, the practice is seen in societies with higher level of social political and technological complexity. For instance ancestor veneration is practised in some form or the other in countries such as Japan, Korea and even in the USA.

Idolatry in Christianity

In simple terms, an idol is a material object symbolising a deity. Hinduism is one of the ancient religions that can be identified with idol worshipping as diverse avatars of God Vishnu and host of other gods and godaess worshiped in the form of their idols or statues. As a result of overarching influence of Hinduism on Buddhism, idol worshipping is practised in Buddhism albeit to a lesser extent compared to other Eastern religions.

According to Christianity, idolatry refers to the worship of gods other than the gold of Abraham through idols. However the idea of idolatry is some instances where the so-called iconoclasts using idolatry in negative sense (pejoratively), describing the Orthodox Christian practices of worshiping gods through icons, small religious portraits. Orthodox Christians strongly reject this approach. Protestants also used to pejoratively describe some of the catholic practices such as veneration of sculptures and statues and flat images of Virgin Mary and saints. However, Catholics do not consider them as idolatry.

Although the history of idol worshiping goes back to the era of pagan religions, it is important here to understand the process of idol making in modern societies with life dominated by fast moving technologies.

Modern-day icon making process

Modern day idol making or elevating public figures to iconic status are done, while they alive or posthumously by the mass media. Mass media have an overarching influence on the population at large in moulding public opinion and create and icon or idol. Although the print media has a stake in modern day idol or icon making, it is particularly the powerful electronic media such as television which is in the forefront of the process.

An important feature of this process of icon-making is that it is neither phenomenal with historical progression like in the idol worshiping in diverse religious traditions nor is it a process of natural selection on the pure basic of merits and demerits or on the basis of credentials of the personalities.

Apart from the iconic figures of national importance such as national heroes or important personalities of diverse fields such as Charles Darwin, Leonardo Da Vinci, Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, President Mandela etc, some of the iconic figures of the recent past had dubious credentials with unspeakable past. However, my intention here is to look at some of the so called literary icons floating in our society.

Dressing up personalities with ill-fitting garments

The core of the process is the dedicated fellowship of these 'I-cons'. The fellowship of 'I-cons' is often made of family members, well-wishers and persons with tribal affiliations to deceased 'I-cons'. However, one of the predominant characteristics of these 'I-cons' in the field of Art and Culture is that they have made-up past and emerged as new literary personalities with borrowed surnames.

Since surnames or family names in Sri Lanka are identifiers of cast, regions and in some instances social status of the bearers, they have been readily borrowed and fitted on to a new identity of the "I-con". Another factor which stands out among the pseudo I-cons is that most of these 'personalities' happened to be converts of a Judea-Christian religion not on theological grounds but often with ulterior motive of worldly gains. It is a home truth that one who changes one's religion at the drop of hat is certainly not a religious person but a religious charlatan. Though they could not really pronounce a syllable correctly, they derive cheap pleasure in rendering their voices to songs such as Sunil Shantha's Olu Pipila Vilaleladevana which contains primary notes while moving the fingers on piano.

One of the biggest damages that this process of icon making would cause is to obliterate the memories of true iconic figures from the minds of generations to come. For instance, very little is spoken about iconic figure of Sri Lankan English journalism such as Tarzi Vittachchi and Ajith Samaranayake and academics in the calibre of Lionel Edirisinghe, a brilliant musician who formulated syllabi for the University of Visual and Performing Arts (Then known as Haywood College) and Prof. Ediriweera Sarachchandra and poets like Gunadasa Amarasekara, Wimal Dissanayake, Mahagama Sekera and Dayasena Gunasinghe.

What is pathetic is that recent ill-informed eulogy which was circulated among media contained monumental factual errors, attributing someone else's work to an 'I-con'. It should be stated here that the true 'contribution' of this 'I-con' was to shut doors for thousands of talented youth passing out from system of university to popular stage.

The process of icon-making has created a host of such 'I-cons' in the field of Arts and Culture; dramatists who have beautified their hats with stolen scripts, soap opera actresses like academics. Although Sri Lankans practise venerating deceased and worshiping icons, it is imperative to look through the modern day 'I-cons' not on the basis of what other opinion leaders might say in the media but on the basis of their true credentials. What is important here is not to attack such persons on individual basis but to stamp out the culture of eulogising pseudo 'I-cons'.

Another feature of modern literary icon creation is the use of terminology and labelling them as "post-modernist writers" in Sri Lanka and attempting to slander great Sri Lankan writers such as Dr Gunadasa Amaraseka as anti-western, pro-Sinhalese, and nationalists writers through that superficial arguments. The irony is that such characters do this through out of reach online publications or newspaper articles which are not peer reviewed papers, and in my opinion, these writings have no literary merits.

'Montage' will continue to reveal such academic charlatans, particularly, in the field of art and culture simply for the public good and not with an enmity towards such persons.