Editorial

Security

Politics

World

Letters

Sports

Obituaries

Archives

Sunday ESSAY by Ajith Samaranayake

"Where wealth accumulates men decay' wrote the poet while another poet lamented that 'commerce had settled on every tree.' Those were the days of great wealth created by the Industrial Revolution when in that phantasmagoric world great wealth existed by the side of abysmal poverty, the grim Dickensian world of the blacking factory when children were exploited and cast aside by villains like Fagin.

The whole world is moving in the direction of English as a language of Cosmopolis not because Shakespeare wrote in it but Bush speaks it.

In our own post-capitalist world how do these words stand up? How do they fit into a world where great wealth is personified not so much by individual capitalists as by the great Multi-National Corporation and where children and women are still exploited but where perforce all of us are called upon under pain of punishment to genuflect to global capitalism masquerading under that banner with the strange device 'Globalisation.'

Let us listen to the words of Prof. U.R. Ananthamurthy who delivered the keynote address at the State Literary Festival held early this month at the BMICH. He said: "A character in Ignazio Silone's novel 'Fontamara' speaks of two evils, money and state, which are as old as fleas, hateful in themselves but bearable as long as they are kept within limits. But both money and state are able to access the single-minded devotion of some passionate people. These people in politics and big business could be righteous in their self-centred pursuit of power and justify any immoral act in the name of the welfare of the people. For instance, the slow ecological disaster is justified in the name of prosperity and a strong state."

So things do not seem to have changed all that much. Children may not be exploited as mercilessly as in the time of Dickens and the wicked capitalist might not squeeze the throat of the hapless worker but money as personified by the multi-national corporation or Mr. George Soros is as powerful as ever and if at all the Leviathan State has aggrandised itself even more at the expense of the people at a time when only a single super power bestrides the world. What then are we to do?

Earlier Prof. Anuradha Seneviratne the newly appointed Chairman of the Literary Panel of the Arts Council had in his address of welcome spoken on the dichotomy between sustainable development and culture and asked for the re-introduction of Sinhala literature into the school syllabus but had mused aloud whether this would be useful in the context of a Global Village. In other words countries like Sri Lanka which are still described as under-developed are asked to live beyond their means because that is how the gurus of the IMF and the World Bank want the world to be ordered but in this great scheme of things where does culture fit in?

Even if literature is re-introduced into the school syllabus who is going to study Sarachchandra let alone Gurulugomi in the midst of the scramble to become doctors, engineers, chartered accountants and computer whiz kids?

These, however, are pertinent questions if the Sri Lanka of this century and brave millennium is not going to become a cultural desert. It was Sir Ivor Jennings the first Vice Chancellor of the University of Ceylon (now Peradeniya, which incidentally celebrated its 50th birth anniversary this month) who declared pontifically that Ceylon (as it was then) was a cultural wasteland. But today even if few students will opt to study Sinhala literature at the level of the Advanced Level or the University we will be placing ourselves in serious moral jeopardy if we do not give even a basic grounding in the Sinhala language (if not literature) to all our secondary school students. Already Prof. J.B. Dissanayake is seriously worried about the vulgarisation of Sinhala as spoken over most of the electronic media (a subject to which we propose to return more fully in another essay). If language is the articulation of the soul of a people and a nation we can no longer postpone the task of teaching correct Sinhala to our school-going population.

In his own address Prof. Ananthamurthy (himself a renowned writer in Kannada) was emphatic about the need to preserve indigenous languages, something which India feels with the keenest importance because of the variegated regional languages it possesses. In fact, he was justly caustic when he remarked: "Under the impact of globalisation we see after a thousand years another cycle. People's languages are threatened; their power is diminishing. Perhaps the whole world is moving in the direction of English as a language of Cosmopolis because the most powerful nation in the world, the USA, uses it. Of course, not because Shakespeare wrote in it but Bush speaks it. (In fact the good professor was departing from his text in the last four words quoted above, an irony which was lost on most of his audience).

This then is another dilemma. How do we preserve and indeed foster our indigenous languages while giving at least a basic grounding in English to a new generation? Today a young person cannot even obtain a job in a decent hotel without at least a knowledge of spoken English. How are we to quench their thirst for English at school and university level? Of course, path-finders such as Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha have done some excellent work in teaching English to those who had come without the least knowledge of it but much more remains to be done at an organised institutional level. Meanwhile, charlatans and quacks who call themselves 'Sirs' thrive teaching a pidgin English to the new generation.

In his own address Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe who was the chief guest sought to strike a more practical note and perhaps outline the contours of what he sees as the golden mean. He admitted that the English which is spoken today is a far cry from the Anglo-Saxon English of yore. But contrary to Prof. Ananthamurthy's somewhat gloomy world view he saw the present century as the American century although I do not think he meant by this that we have to imitate every American verbal fashion. However, even more positively he asserted that we of Asia could make this the century of Asian English as well. After all Asia is awakening in numerous ways and why not through language and literature as well.

The Prime Minister has a point, for in Asia we need not imitate either Anglo-Saxon English or American English. Drawing strength and vigour from both these branches of the English language we can shape and fashion our own English. This need not even be the kind of English which for sometime has been styled Commonwealth English, a term which writers from some ex-colonial countries see as condescending if not downright derogatory.

But what of the national languages. The Prime Minister emphasised the need to translate the best works in Sinhala and Tamil and publish them in English. This is certainly necessary for except for a very few works such as Lakshmi de Silva's translation of Martin Wickremasinghe's 'Apey Gama' and Ashley Halpe's translation of the same author's 'Viragaya' and Prof. D.C.R.A. Goonethilleke's Penguin anthology of Sinhala and Tamil short stories and verse (including original English works as well) very little has been done.

Recently some translations have been done by younger persons but they are embarrassingly amateurish to put it at its kindest.

These then are the challenges. How do we preserve and foster our indigenous languages under the hegemonistic panoply of the Global Village? And conversely how do we impart a knowledge of English (at least sufficient for their particular purposes) to a new generation, English being the conversational currency of the Global Village?

One last thought which perhaps strictly does not arise from the foregoing. If as the Prime Minister suggested Sinhala works should be translated into English it strikes me that our Sinhala writers might themselves have to think afresh. At the moment there is much lamentation about Sinhala fiction being still encrusted by the conventional mode and mould and the need for post-modernist paths to be pursued.

While this is a valid point we might, if our works are to be translated and reach an international audience, have to find our own golden mean as well. Convention will have to be imaginatively blended with modernity if this is to be accomplished. After all we do not want our translated works to be pale imitations at best and caricatures at worst of post-modernist literature in other parts of the world, do we?

News | Business | Features | Editorial | Security
Politics | World | Letters | Sports | Obituaries

Produced by Lake House
Copyright 2001 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.
Comments and suggestions to :Web Manager