Pioneers of Sinhala journalism

Sinhala Puvathpath Kalawe Purogamiyo
Author: Sandagomi Coperahewa
A Godage publication

Reviewed by Padma Edirisinghe

It is an extremely wide corpus that the author has attempted to pocket into a 250 plus paged text. The book encapsulates the literary and academic careers of 18 pioneers of Sinhala journalism along with a fitting focus on how each of them helped in the resuscitation of a sinking academic and literary arena subsequent to three periods of colonial rule.

The Colebrooke Report issued in 1832 gives an explicit picture of this degradation. Learning had fallen so low that very few were literate. Pirivenas, the native educational institutes had deteriorated so much so that they hardly earn mention in the report.

And then the tide turned. A blossoming period erupted again. One of the conundrums the reviewer had in a colonial-oriented educational set up was, who was responsible for this stupendous turning of tides, when a rich legacy of ancient Lanka rotated to its owner. It was a fascinating drama, the chief actors of which the author of this book presents in all their academic glory and incredible perseverance. The last factor mattered much, for the group was up against a formidable task.

Off the track

To illustrate the point we may have to go off the track to the End of the World episode that never happened. The only result was that it gave a blaze of publicity to the Mesoamerican races. They fought a losing battle against the Conquistadors who went on to destroy the indigenous languages, literature and culture. Only in Paraguay in Latin America that a news snippet in the original language has been preserved.

All others today use the lingua franca of the conqueror. The severe bludgeoning covered not only their age old buildings but all aspects of their culture.

Coperahewa in his well – researched book presents to us, 18 such heroes who helped to turn the tide. Of course, the Maha Sangha was an equally powerful force. But these newspaper people as we can call them in mundane style, served equally. The author has performed a remarkable feat sieving them out and pooling all the relevant details into a 250 page text that a researcher in a higher seat of learning, or a student in a higher school Form or an ordinary reader may find equally entrancing.

The eighteen journalists/ pioneers of the Sinhala newspaper world thus covered are: Koggala Johannes Pandithathilaka, M. Dharmaratne, G.D. Pelis Appuhamy, C. Don Bastina, Weragama Punchibandara, Thomas Karunaratne, H.S. Perera, Piyadasa Sirisena, M.C.F. Perera, Munidasa Kumaratunga, Alexander Weliwita, C.W. Wickremearachchi, Piyasena Nissanka, Martin Wickremesinghe, Julius De Lanerolle, Hemapala Munidasa, D.B. Dhananapala and David Karunaratne.

Renaissance

Can newspapers turn the tide and preserve an age old civilisation from getting drawn into a hopeless abyss ridding a whole populace of its soul? They did. First, they hung on to the already awakening renaissance monitored by the Sangha and the patriots. And the rest, their newspapers performed. The trials and tribulations these men underwent, the uphill voyages that involved indescribable tedium, the myriad incidents and adventures gone through are all here in lucid Sinhala replete with rare photographs of the personnel dealt with.

Founts of knowledge

The book indeed fills the hunger for research–oriented works of this nature by suitable writers who themselves are founts of knowledge, keeping their minds always refreshed intellectually.

The time phase the “18 group” flourished and sets one thinking. A good number of them have been born in the 19th century in the 1830s, '40s and '50s that is a few years after the last king of Sri Lanka bid adieu to her shores. Till the first phases of the 20th century they tirelessly worked for the national rejuvenation, not only editing their newspapers, but putting out a profusion of books, forming societies, inciting the average populace to new ways of thinking, away from the stalemate conditioning by colonialism and wrangling with the state when not aiding.

When a free Lanka was born most of them had rehearsed their roles, and set the stage. Writing is a powerful tool of immortalising such icons and the author has done it remarkably.

He himself is a recognised writer and researcher. Senior lecturer at the Sinhala Faculty of the Colombo University replete with all the due qualifications, he has to his credit 15 other works, some co-authored. He has a great future ahead in Lanka's intellectual firmament carrying to posterity the torch of learning that resisted for 2500 years all attempts to efface it.