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Sunday Essay by Ajith Samaranayake

The last two Sunday Essays have still left one loose end behind, namely the intelligentsia to which we made a passing reference last week. In a bid to fill this gap I am reproducing something I wrote in January 1988 by way of a presentation made at the International Centre for Ethnic Studies. What follows is that presentation.

The International Centre for Ethnic Studies appears to feel that I am possessed of either enough presumption or foolhardiness to comment on the crisis of the intelligentsia. To anyone who knows Sri lanka's Intelligentsia and the curious posturing and tribal warfare it is capable of this will look almost like an act of self-immolation or a voluntary delivering of oneself to the wolves. But on the other hand I can not conceal the fact that I am keenly interested even though in an amateurish and impressionistic way in the subject which has been assigned to me. So having accepted the invitation I can not but carry on doggedly. In the hope that I will be spared the wrath of our leaders of intellectual fashion.

I do not propose to define the term 'intellectual' in any elaborate sense. I am sure that as far as "crisis" is concerned you will agree that the country is presently subjected to the most profound moral and intellectual crisis in her contemporary experience. The intelligentsia is both partly victim as well as partly agent of this crisis. The failure of vision of the country's post-independence intelligentsia is largely responsible for this state of crisis.

If we take an "intellectual" to mean a cerebral worker as against a manual worker for the purpose of this presentation we can define an intellectual as somebody who works in the realm of ideas. From that I propose to examine what idea shave influenced political and social developments in the country in contemporary times and to what extent the intelligentsia has been able to generate ideas which have been humane and possessed of a vision capable of promoting the social good. a brahmin caste

If we begin with the granting of independence (as well we might in the light of the 40th anniversary of that event which will fall in a few days) we can say broadly that the idea which inspired the movement towards independence was liberal democratic in essence. But an almost immediate qualifications seems to be called for.

This idea derived from the British liberal democratic tradition was mixed up with and almost overlaid by patriarchal and backward-looking elements drived from the country's feudal past. The leadership which inherited independence was patriarchal and easy-going in its attitude towards people at large. They were intellectually flaccid and had no vision of how the new Ceylon should be built.

They were imitative in their ways and had imbibed little of the genuine liberal intellectual tradition of the West or its critical and rationalist culture although his was concealed by the veneer of sophistication most of them assumed.

In his short novel "Miringuwa" Martin Wickramasinghe, who was a trenchant critic of this class which he called a brahmin caste offers us a telling portrait of this shallow and imitative upper bourgeoisie in the character of Westic Dhanasooriya (note the name) an upper-class gentleman much given to entertaining Englishmen. His knowledge of English is confined to the English newspapers. He thinks that "Pickwick papers" is the name of an English journal in Britain. To him Bernard Shaw is a book-seller and G.K. Chewsterton a tavern keeper.

This shallowness and taste for trivia of the anglicised ruling class which inherited independence was largely responsible for the stagnation which the country was subjected to in the immediate post-independence years. This class had no historic sense and therefore did not grasp the immense possibilities which independence offered for a resurgence of the nation. This is why I am rather sceptical of the hopes and objectives of the newly risen Liberal party when it seeks to revive some imaginary tradition of liberalism which it identifies with a now defunct branch of the United National party. The liberal bourgeoisie which moulded itself on the Englishman. In the aftermath of independence has much to answer for today's tragic national condition.

the overturn of 1956

The reaction to this, of course came in 1956. The idea which inspired the overturn of 1956 was nationalism in its Sinhala Buddhist manifestation. It was a reaction to the deracinated cosmopolitanism of the then ruling classes and summoned up considerable populist resources which urged that the hitherto suppressed social layers and their language, religion and way of life should be given its proper place.

While the upheaval of 1956 broke the monopoly of the English-educated classes over society (for example those who did not know English could not personally transact any business in a Government department before 1956) it also placed itself. In opposition to the idea of a Ceylonese nation by emphasising the dominance of the Sinhala-Buddhist ethos. Things were not helped at all by the fact that the Tamil political leadership which in essential ways was as alienated as its Sinhala counterparts had chosen the same path of militant nationalism.

It is axiomatic to say that the Sinhala intelligentsia composed of that magical trinity of Sangha, Veda, Guru gave leadership to the 1956 victory but it is worth asking whether they in fact gave leadership or were swept with the tide. If their target was to shatter the leadership of the Western-educated elite over society they certianly did not wholly succeed.

The Western-educated elite remained very much a presence and even adjusted themselves to the changes by becoming bilingual. In fact three decades after 1956, it is worth asking whether the cultural forces unleashed by the 1959 victory are even represented at the highest levels of the Sri Lnka Freedom Prty today. Certainly the Sinhala-educated rural elite was able to displace their urban counterparts in the power structure for some time and restore certain aspects of the native ethos such as the Sinhala language, Buddhism, traditional cultural forms, Ayurveda etc. which had been neglected but now with the benefit of hindsight we can see that what has been achieved is really a duplication of the ruling elite.

The resurgence in the fortunes of the UNP which took place in 1977 and the far reaching changes which its Government then imposed on the country show that the old elite has by no means been dislodged. On the other hand the Sinhala-educated class which came to the fore. In 1956 had itself undergone a kind of cultural mongrelism which combines curious features of traditional culture with equally strange features of the new popular culture of the West which some of them at least seem to see as the great white hope of the future.

The failure of the Sinhala-educated intelligentsia to transform the changes of 1956 into something worthwhile can be seen by the failure of the Cultural Affairs Ministry and Department established by the MEP Government in that year. It will not be wrong to say that under every dispensation the cultural bureaucracy has been wedded to a narrow and almost obsolete view of culture. By culture they only mean the past as demonstrated by the obsession with the Cultural Triangle, the false piety attendant on such events as the exhibition of the Kapilavastu Relics and the fetish that is made of Pirith Pinkamas and the like.

There has been an almost complete official turning away from the fine arts, literature and drama which had been reduced to fending for itself, in a market place which of course is ruled by the forces of commerce which have driven away the Muse into exile. What this demonstrates is the failure of the predominantly.

Sinhala-educated intelligentsia to go beyond the narrow bounds of a past conditioned by the remnants of feudal social relations and evolve a humane and forward-looking culture composed of the humanistic and rationalistic elements of traditions compassionate towards the culture, and ways of life of other communities in our midst and responsive to the challenges and pressures of the presence. The current harking back to a past golden age, the obsession with atavistic fears and the almost obsessive concern with some backward looking aspects of tradition are all signs of this failure.

If I have been harsh on the dominantly Sinhala-educated intelligentsia it is not because I wish to under-estimate the historic significance of 1956 but rather because I am conscious of what they could have, but did not achieve. It is almost a case of the 'God that failed'. If we treat the changes in Sri Lankan society in terms of culture there is no doubt that 1956 was a significant watershed. It was a challenge by the native intelligentsia mounted at the ramparts and fortifications of the anglicised ruling class and its elite. This Westernised elite was composed of not only the liberal upper bourgeoisie but also the cosmopolitan Marxist leadership and intelligentsia who emphasising class to the exclusion of culture were also divorced from the native ethos.

Marxist intelligentsia

Tribute has to be paid here to the secular and non-racialist attitude that this Marxist intelligentsia adopted as against the revivalist approach of the native elite but it is at the same time true that the Marxists with their urban roots and cosmopolitan foreign education had no sympathetic relationship to the larger countryside where the people lived. It was hoped that the generation produced by the 1956 upheaval - the offspring of the native elite which spearheaded that campaign - would emerge as a new intelligentsia acting as a synthesis of all that was good in both traditions.

The most articulate champion of such an attitude was Gunadasa Amarasekera - the novelist, poet and social critic. The son of an Ayurvedic practitioner and a Sinhala schoolteacher Amarasekera benefited by both the tradition of classical Sinhala literature as well as modern Western writing. Amarasekera's generation looked up to the Bandaranayake triumph almost reverently as a challenge to the brahmin caste. Amarasekera had studied marxism but was critical of the Marxists 'emphasis of the urban working class as the vanguard of the revolution and their neglect of the cultural factors in the process of the socialist transformation. In a now celebrated essay in the journal 'Sanksruthi' Amarasekera argued that it was the educated class of the village which was destined to give true leadership to our society.

Steeped in the life-giving rural ethos but yet open to the best influences from all quarters of the globe, nurtured by tradition but yet modernist in its outlook this class of native son would be the true leaders of any meaningful social transformation, he argued.

But Amarasekera was destined to be disappointed and his disappointment was closely bound up with the failure of this dominantly Sinhala Educated but by now bilingual intelligentsia to which I have referred. Far from giving leadership to any meaningful social movement this new elite was quite satisfied to enter the professions and the newly-installed Administrative Service displacing the old CCS Brahmins, forge matrimonial alliances with the national bourgeoisie and move into posh addresses in Colombo which they had got as part of their dowries. Those who could not where condemned to teaching in rural schools - the ultimate purgatory - were their modernist Marxist ideas came into inevitable conflict with conservatism and rural idiocy.

the ultimate purgatory

Some of the most penetrating and satirical of Amarasekera's later short stories such as 'Mithura Balaporothuwen" and 'Upa Comasaris' are the results of this disillusion.

In this first short story appearing in 'Ekama Kathawa', his first work after his spiritual rebirth in the 1960s Amarasekera offers us a picture of Mahaliyana, an assistant secretary in a Ministry who is waiting impatiently for his old friend Siriwardena to come. Mahaliyana is the renegade from the native revolution now married confortably into the mudalali class and full of contempt for his social-climbing wife, the daughter of a rubber merchant. In Siriwardana he sees all his lost idealism, Siriwardana is his university batch-mate and soul mate who had turned his face away from the 'good life' to still pursue his socialist ideals.

Having bumped into Siriwardana accidentally Mahallyana, who is a victim of the spiritual ennui of the upstart upper class surrounded by the trinkets of urban triviality and a gossipy wife, is impatient to re-enter that timeless world of youthful idealism and heady intellectual discourse which he has forsaken.

But Siriwardana does not come. Instead comes a letter. Beneath all Siriwardene's bravado and the caustic taunts which he had flung at Mahaliyana's betrayal at their last accidental meeting has been a deep sense of misgiving. The death of his elder sister who had brought him up single-handedly after the early death of his parents had plunged Siriwardana into a deep spiritual crisis. His sister, a schoolteacher of the old school, had remained as plaster to educate and bring up Sirwardana and make him a 'big man'. Siriwardana's maverick ways and in her eyes unfashionable and ungodly politics had been a greater source of distress to her. In these two old university friends, one trapped by a soulless bureaucracy and a secured marriage and the other condemned to a dissatisfied petty bourgeois existence, Amarasekera poignantly sketches the tragedy of the post-1956 generation, the gods that failed.

And when that challenge to Establishment, both liberal bourgeois as well as middle-class radical came. It did not come from any enlightened section of native sons, a modernist intelligentsia steeped in tradition, but from the petty bourgeois sections of both town and countryside which had become frustrated and impatient with the monopoly mounted by both branches of the Establishment. If Amarasekera's generation was drawn from the village middle-class the cadres of the 1971 Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna were drawn from the lower middle-class and peasantry of the villages.

Frustrated by the explosion of their ambitions within a contracting economy, stifled by the intellectual asphyxiation of mono-lingual education and driven to anger and social envy by the dominance of the elite the JVP's revolt was destructive and without any meaningful program of social change. But yet this cannot obscure the fact that this futile adventure was the result of the failure of the established elite and its intelligentsia, a failure to lead the society in any meaningful direction towards social change capable of drawing the new layers of the educated into the mainstream of change and social transformation, failure to evolve new social structures, institutions and social relationships a failure of dialogue and a failure to establish sympathetic ties with the emerging generation.

At this point I would like to refer to a major discussion on the intelligentsia which took place in the 1960's. It was titled the 'Role of the Western-educated elite' and took place at the Community Institute in 1962 and is brought together in 'Community' Volume 4 No. 1. I would like to quote somewhat extensively from two participants at this discussion, Hector Abhayavardhana and Godfrey Gunatilake.

I think these statements are important because they throw light on how members of the Western-educated intelligentsia saw themselves and how they conceived their role in the aftermath of the changes of 1956.

While Mr. Abhayavardhana is severely critical of this elite and their limitations Mr. Gunatilake while conceding the limitations tries to envisage a more productive role for this segment within the large nation, says Mr. Abayavardhana:

'But if the Western-educated elite is to recover its place in society, it can not do so on the basis of the exaggerated notions it entertained about itself in the past. Two things, it seems, are especially necessary.

the function of an elite

Firstly, it must banish the fanciful idea that it can sweep back the sea of mass movement in the country with such ridiculous devices as the UNP or a reactionary Army-Policy officers' coup. On the other hand it must accept the fact of the masses and establish contact with them through the use of Sinhala and Tamil for many purposes as possible in everyday life.

Secondly, it must exchange its present smug, largely idle, consuming role in society for one of informed, zealous productive activity. It must accept that the function of an elite is not to rest on the laurels of academic success but to strive to the furthest to place knowledge and skill at the service of one's people'.

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