A cultural perspective from down under

By Ranga CHANDRARATHNE

Australia hosts a large number of Sri Lankan immigrants who have reached the highest in their chosen career. In this week, Montage had the privilege of interviewing Perth based Dr Siri Galhenage who has now become a creative writer after a very successful career as a psychiatrist in the UK, and Australia. Apart from his professional work, Siri also served as the President of Sri Lankan Cultural Society, Western Australia.

Q: You are a trained psychiatrist and had received training in the UK. You have lived and worked in Australia from 1980. Would you please tell me your background and professional training and work in the UK and Australia?

Dr Siri Galhenage

A: I was born in Homagama in 1940. My father came from a farming community in Boralesgamuwa and Gangodawila, and was a businessman. I had my education at Thurstan College, Colombo.

There was considerable encouragement for me to do medicine, as a large number of people on my mother’s side of the family over several generations have been medical men, mostly native doctors or as we call them Vedamahaththayas.

I was selected to study medicine at the Faculty of Medicine at Peradeniya with the first batch of medical students there. After internship and a brief period of general practice in Kandy with my uncle Dr. Soma Weeratunge, I migrated to the UK with my family and trained as a Psychiatrist, with a special interest in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

My last trainee position was at St. Georges Hospital, London, where I was a Senior Registrar.

In 1980 we moved to Perth, Western Australia, where I was offered a Consultant Psychiatrist position in Adult General Psychiatry at Graylands Hospital and was later promoted as Director to Heathcote Hospital in South Perth. Due to my interest in clinical teaching, I moved to Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital (Queen Elizabeth II Medical Centre, Nedlands) which is a major Teaching Hospital in Perth where I took over the newly established position of Senior Consultant Psychiatrist in Consultation Liaison Psychiatry associated with General Medical and Surgical Wards dealing with patients with psychosocial and psychosomatic problems.

As a reward to my teaching interest I was also appointed as an Examiner to the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists. As a prelude to my retirement in 2006, I worked for several years in Old Age Psychiatry in the community setting.

Q: I want to focus this interview on some aspects of cultural identity and your insights into Sri Lankan and Australian society and literature. In your opinion, what is cultural identity?

A: Cultural identity is a rather abstract concept. As you know there are several theories that address the concept and I will not delve into those theories.

In general, it refers to a system of values, beliefs, and attitudes that are learned and shared by members of a society and which shape and influence their perception and behaviour.

Q: Is it important to maintain one’s cultural identity throughout an individual’s life?

A: It is not difficult to maintain one’s cultural identity living for a long period in a foreign country such as Australia or elsewhere. But I must hasten to add that culture is a learned experience and is always in a state of flux, and may not remain unique or static.

Firm adherence to one’s system of values and lack of adaptability may also pose difficulties living in a foreign land.

Q: Could an individual maintain unique cultural ties after having left his/her homeland and living in a foreign country for so long?

A: I think it is important to maintain one’s cultural identity throughout an individual’s life as it sustains one’s integrity and ‘connectedness’; the loss of which leads to a sense of dispossession and despair.

Q: In your case, you roam between your two homes in Australia and Sri Lanka and perhaps trying to get the best out of two worlds. Please comment?

A: After I retired in 2006 and my two sons being married, and one settled down in Paris and the other in Perth - my wife, Niranjala and I decided to live, perhaps half the year, in Sri Lanka.

This is the desire of some migrants I know, but only a few have been successful in putting it to practice. Speaking for myself, despite the comfortable lifestyle, satisfaction in my chosen profession, and the opportunities provided for my family by the ‘lucky country’ (An affectionate name for Australia!) I always had a sense of lingering ‘grief’ (not debilitating!) regarding the ‘loss’ of my homeland. Hence this ‘ethological drive I suppose to return and to be reunited.

As a Scottish friend of mine put it beautifully, “Perth (in Australia) is the best place on earth to live, provided I get back to Scotland once a year. It’s good for my soul”, I suppose everyone has a certain spiritual connection with one’s motherland.

However, their desire to return poses many dilemmas, the most important of which for me is that the ‘things’ that I have grieved for over 37 years are no longer there.

This is obviously an inevitable consequence of the economic political and social changes the country has faced over the past three decades - the landscape that I grew up in has changed (trees cut, residential patches replaced by car yards, junk shops, bill boards, busy highways, reckless drivers and exhaust fumes).

Also my friends have either left the country or have died or retired. People and their attitudes have changed. There are attitudinal differences regarding behaviour of individuals, family and societal values, social order etc.

I also have changed. One has to grapple with two competing issues of individual autonomy and obligations towards your extended family and your country, once you have made the decision to migrate. This can lead to a sense of dissonance.

I certainly did experience it. I have to accept all these realities and had to make necessary adjustments as well.

As one reaches old age, and your children having set their roots firmly in the country of adoption the pull is more towards your immediate family, especially towards your grandchildren whom you believe you can make a contribution towards, in view of your life experiences.

With the possibility of increasing frailty and ill-health associated with old age, the roaming between two homes, as you say, may have to come to an end one day (may only be journeys within your mind!).

Is Australia a true multicultural country? Could one write, express, and publish their work in mother tongue, say like in Singapore? Could it be said that Australia’s identity as a so-called multicultural society has much to do with marketing an image to the world? As a new country, Australia suffers from an unclear identity that tries to integrate multiple cultural perspectives and indigenous cultural rights within a dominant white Anglo-Saxon cultural paradigm.

Australia is a multicultural country. I must say that Australians value the wealth of cultural diversity and the social sophistication it brings. They have complete freedom to practise their religion and culture, and that right is protected by law. Racial vilification is an indictable offence. Although Australians celebrate their cultural diversity, I am not sure whether it is ‘much to do with marketing an image to the world,’ as you suggest.

Australia (compared to Sri Lanka) is a relatively young nation, and their cultural identity is still evolving, with a continuous inflow of migrants from all over the world, the composition of which varying with refugee intake and the source of skilled migrants.

I think you are correct in suggesting that Australia still tries to integrate multiple cultural perspectives and indigenous cultural rights within a dominant white Anglo-Saxon cultural paradigm.

However, Australia has established the pillars on which multiculturalism can be built on and continue to progress towards a harmonious secular society.

There are institutions that are firmly established to address various social issues. There are Equal Rights/Opportunities Commission, The Human Rights Commission, and Anti Discrimination Board which deals with matters relating to Race, Sex and Spiritual Beliefs, Availability of Interpreter, Translator Services, The Legal Aid and the English Language Services for new migrants and so on.

The dominance of the Anglo-Saxon cultural paradigm was brought back to focus by the previous Howard Government, although successive Labour Governments, Whitlam, Hawke, Keating, Rudd (and current Prime Minister Julia Gillard) tended to diffuse that image. Sadly there is still a long way to go in improving links between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Communities.

In Australia, there is complete freedom to write, express and publish one’s work in his/her mother tongue, but I do not think there is a market for it within Australia and adequate facilities to publish such work.

What lessons could Sri Lanka learn from Australia?

I cannot claim to be an expert on socio-political situation but I believe there are a lot of lessons that we Sri Lankans can learn from other countries, especially a developed nation, such as Australia.

We should strive to emulate the social order that is achieved in Australia through discipline. Lack of discipline is an ongoing concern for many Sri Lankans. Respect for life, accountability and good governance are other areas that come to my mind. Focus on healthy lifestyle with appropriate dietary intake and exercise, and the achievement of physical prowess are constant preoccupations with many Australians.

Australians have a heightened awareness of the need to protect the environment, and they maintain a high standard in refuse disposal. Despite many shortcomings Australians have a much better coordinated health service than many other developed nations in the world, and the system of education takes a more holistic approach than being merely exam oriented.

It does not mean that Australians have achieved perfection in all these areas; there is an ongoing dialogue and critique regarding standards achieved. We Sri Lankans are poor at self-criticism.

We Sri Lankans have a rich cultural heritage (not meant in a chauvinistic way) that we can use as a template. Buddhism provides principles that could potentially enrich our lives, not denying the positive spiritual influences of other mainstream religions such as Christianity, Hinduism and Islam.

The country has a great human reserve with high intellectual potential.

Unarguably Sri Lanka is one of the most beautiful and fertile lands on earth to live in. But I believe that so far we have failed to tie all these threads together. What could Australian society learn from Sri Lanka?

I am unsure as to what ‘Australians’ could learn from Sri Lanka as

Australian society is so multi-ethnic. There is an Ethnic Communities

Council in each state geared towards increasing the awareness of each other’s cultures. Frequent multicultural events are held in schools and in the community setting with the exposition of art items of music, food, dress belonging to different ethnic communities. Fusions of art, music and dress designs are attempted from time to time.

In the main stream Australian society, there seems to be a greater reliance

on self-actualisation than maintaining family bonds, and a greater emphasis placed on achieving physical prowess than spirituality, sometimes leading to difficulties at an individual level. Australians, perhaps, could learn from more traditional societies such as Sri Lanka in maintaining a balance.

Looking at the simple life indicators such as health or life expectancy,

how would you see the plight of Australia’s Aborigines?

Is it a fair description to sum up the plight of Aboriginal people belonging to the Third world?

The plight of the Aboriginal people has been one of the most serious and complex issues successive Australian Governments have had to deal with, sadly, so far without much success. Poor housing, unemployment, school

non-attendance, alcohol and substance abuse, family violence, high rate of criminal convictions and incarceration, and low life expectancy form a

cluster of major problems faced by certain Aboriginal communities, mostly in the outback.

I do not doubt the sincerity of the present Australian government in

dealing with the problem. Mr Kevin Rudd, former Prime Minister, made a very powerful symbolic gesture in an ‘Apology’ to the Aboriginal people at the commencement of his term as Prime Minister of Australia, as a first step towards Reconciliation, in his well received ‘Sorry’ speech, but in my view, progress with regard to practical help has been slow.

Maladaptive and cumulative nature of the problems, difficulties in engaging Aboriginal people in mainstream services due to lack of trust, alleged lack of resource allocation, apathy, stereotyping, and perhaps prejudice on the part of some service providers may have retarded progress. Some Aboriginal leaders assert that there is a strong need to empower them and that there should be less dependence on welfare payments.

I understand now in your retirement you are into creative writing.

Yes, I try to do a bit of writing when I have the time. They are mostly

short stories based on migration issues. I don’t know how good I am at it,

but I am greatly encouraged by some positive comments by Prof. Wimal

Dissanayake who very kindly read some of my stories.

I want to know why we Sri Lankans are not very familiar with Australian literature and cinema. Australia had produced great writers such as Henry Lawson, Banjo Patterson, and even a Nobel Laureate such as Patrick White.

Even at present you have widely acclaimed writers such as Patrick White, and New York based Aussie writer Peter Carey. But Sri Lankans are clueless about Australian literature and cinema. What are your views?

I think the reason is that Sri Lankans have traditionally been Anglo

centric, a fact probably perpetuated by our ‘colonial masters’. It was also

due to the British style of thinking that dominated the teaching in our

educational institutions and their curricular in the past. I also wonder

whether there is a general waning of literary interest in Sri Lanka,

especially in the English medium, due to a more restrictive exam oriented

curriculum in schools and also due to a lack of versatile teachers who

could generate interest.

I agree with you that Australia has a lot to offer in relation to

literature and cinema, and that is an area that we should tap into as ties between the two countries are strengthening.

Do you think that the Australian High Commission staff in Colombo could look into these and first consider donating some good Australian books to our libraries and assist in locating good translators if they don’t have any cultural programs, perhaps other than sending their staff to Galle Literary Festival!

I do not know of any cultural programs run by the Australian High Commission in Sri Lanka. As the relationship between Australia and Sri Lanka is becoming increasingly important, it would be of mutual benefit for Australia to donate good Australian literary books, to libraries here and locate and assist any translators in Sinhala and Tamil as part of an aid package. The time is right.